22 min
Ep 94: Why Teens Run Wild & How to Keep Them Safe Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers
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- Kids & Family
Dr. Jess Shatkin, author of Born to be Wild and expert in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, clues us into why teens run wild and how we can help keep them safe. A still-developing brain and high levels of hormones mean parents have their work cut out for them!
If you've enjoyed Talking to Teens, we'd love if you could leave us a five-star rating, and if you have time, a review!
Full show notes
We have the “talk” with our teens and make sure they at least attend health class. We push our teens to get adequate sleep and nutrition. We put our teens through D.A.R.E. and make clear drugs and alcohol are not acceptable. And vandalism and stealing are against the law--we shouldn't even have to mention that to our teens.
So Why--why! we wonder, Why do teenagers still do these things!? And for Chrissake why is it always teens doing the misbehaving? You rarely see groups of 25 year old's, 40 year old's or (spry) 80 year old's participating in reckless and risky behaviors.
Adults--from parents to deans to coaches--devote so much time and energy into trying to teach adolescents the risks of misbehaving. From broken bones to trauma, we want to help our teens avoid threats to their physical and mental health—so why don’t teens act accordingly? Why are teenagers more likely to take risks than any other age group? Do they really think they’re invincible?
Teenage risk taking is more complicated than just a single platitude. It’s not just the fact that teen brain’s executive regions are under construction: an influx of hormones muddles things up along with intense peer pressure, whether real or perceived.
To understand the interaction between the biology and neurology of the teen brain, this week I spoke with Dr. Jess Shatkin, author of Born to Be Wild: Why Teens Take Risks, and How We Can Help Keep Them Safe. As a practicing psychiatrist in Manhattan and Vice Chair for Education and Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the NYU School of Medicine, Dr. Shatkin has been entrenched in the workings of the teenage brain for decades.
Dr. Shatkin was curious as to why teenagers make risky decisions even in his early days. The youngest of eight, he watched his older siblings morph and change, from tame tweens to wild teens to mature twentysomethings and adults. When Dr. Shatkin himself was a teen, he realized that he was making decisions he logically wouldn’t otherwise, had he been younger. And with older siblings to look up to, he knew he wouldn’t always feel so, well, wild.
While teenage risk taking is more common than we’d like, it turns out teens don’t actually think they are invincible, as many adults have come to believe. We’d be wrong to assume teens feel as invincible as we think they act.
When researchers actually began to ask teens if they think they’re invincible, a curious pattern emerged. Teenagers actually tend to overestimate the risk they face from certain activities. When prompted, most teenagers will say they believe they are around 90% likely to get pregnant from one instance of unprotected sex (the real number is somewhere around 20%). Some young people do believe that they are invincible, but from Jess’s studies, this is not due to age, but instead the personality of the individual. It’s the adults, in fact, who are more likely to feel a false sense of invincibility.
So then why are teenagers more likely to take risks if they are so certain that negative consequences will arise? As Jess explained to me, this can be largely attributed to evolution. Adolescence is when our body starts to develop the need to seem attractive to potential mates as well as adjust to any new changes in the environment. We suddenly experience an influx of hormones which encourage us to impress our peers by exhibiting our affinity for danger.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we want our peers to see us as cool, interesting, and sexy--good qualities in a viable mate. In one study
Dr. Jess Shatkin, author of Born to be Wild and expert in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, clues us into why teens run wild and how we can help keep them safe. A still-developing brain and high levels of hormones mean parents have their work cut out for them!
If you've enjoyed Talking to Teens, we'd love if you could leave us a five-star rating, and if you have time, a review!
Full show notes
We have the “talk” with our teens and make sure they at least attend health class. We push our teens to get adequate sleep and nutrition. We put our teens through D.A.R.E. and make clear drugs and alcohol are not acceptable. And vandalism and stealing are against the law--we shouldn't even have to mention that to our teens.
So Why--why! we wonder, Why do teenagers still do these things!? And for Chrissake why is it always teens doing the misbehaving? You rarely see groups of 25 year old's, 40 year old's or (spry) 80 year old's participating in reckless and risky behaviors.
Adults--from parents to deans to coaches--devote so much time and energy into trying to teach adolescents the risks of misbehaving. From broken bones to trauma, we want to help our teens avoid threats to their physical and mental health—so why don’t teens act accordingly? Why are teenagers more likely to take risks than any other age group? Do they really think they’re invincible?
Teenage risk taking is more complicated than just a single platitude. It’s not just the fact that teen brain’s executive regions are under construction: an influx of hormones muddles things up along with intense peer pressure, whether real or perceived.
To understand the interaction between the biology and neurology of the teen brain, this week I spoke with Dr. Jess Shatkin, author of Born to Be Wild: Why Teens Take Risks, and How We Can Help Keep Them Safe. As a practicing psychiatrist in Manhattan and Vice Chair for Education and Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the NYU School of Medicine, Dr. Shatkin has been entrenched in the workings of the teenage brain for decades.
Dr. Shatkin was curious as to why teenagers make risky decisions even in his early days. The youngest of eight, he watched his older siblings morph and change, from tame tweens to wild teens to mature twentysomethings and adults. When Dr. Shatkin himself was a teen, he realized that he was making decisions he logically wouldn’t otherwise, had he been younger. And with older siblings to look up to, he knew he wouldn’t always feel so, well, wild.
While teenage risk taking is more common than we’d like, it turns out teens don’t actually think they are invincible, as many adults have come to believe. We’d be wrong to assume teens feel as invincible as we think they act.
When researchers actually began to ask teens if they think they’re invincible, a curious pattern emerged. Teenagers actually tend to overestimate the risk they face from certain activities. When prompted, most teenagers will say they believe they are around 90% likely to get pregnant from one instance of unprotected sex (the real number is somewhere around 20%). Some young people do believe that they are invincible, but from Jess’s studies, this is not due to age, but instead the personality of the individual. It’s the adults, in fact, who are more likely to feel a false sense of invincibility.
So then why are teenagers more likely to take risks if they are so certain that negative consequences will arise? As Jess explained to me, this can be largely attributed to evolution. Adolescence is when our body starts to develop the need to seem attractive to potential mates as well as adjust to any new changes in the environment. We suddenly experience an influx of hormones which encourage us to impress our peers by exhibiting our affinity for danger.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we want our peers to see us as cool, interesting, and sexy--good qualities in a viable mate. In one study
22 min