The teenage brain: There may be a silver lining to all that misbehavior

The Washington Post:

Teenagers tend to have a bad reputation in our society, and perhaps rightly so. When compared to children or adults, adolescents are more likely to engage in binge drinking, drug use, unprotected sex, criminal activity, and reckless driving. Risk-taking is like second nature to youth of a certain age, leading health experts to cite preventable and self-inflicted causes as the biggest threats to adolescent well-being in industrialized societies.

But before going off on a tirade about groups of reckless young hooligans, consider that a recent study may have revealed a silver lining to all that misbehavior. While adolescents will take more risks in the presence of their peers than when alone, it turns out that peers can also encourage them to learn faster and engage in more exploratory acts.

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“Risk-taking in and of itself is not a bad thing, and taking risks is one way we learn about the world around us,” said study author Laurence Steinberg, the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. “Peers may motivate each other to explore their environment in a way they might not do if they were being more cautious. Sometimes that leads to harmful consequences, but sometimes it leads to learning new things that are good, and I think that’s one of the points of the paper.”

Read the whole story: The Washington Post