Ronsisvalle: Ambiguity leads teenagers to be more impulsive, engage in riskier behavior
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My son walked into the house as proud as a peacock about his latest plan for adolescent fun.
He and his buddy hatched the idea only minutes beforehand and could not contain their excitement as they explained what seemed like a perfectly reasonable activity to them.
“Dad, this is going to be epic. We are going to tie a rope to the back of the golf cart and skimboard in the standing stormwater on the side of the road!”
Needless to say, I was not quite as excited as the boys.
I took this “parenting opportunity” to explain all the potential dangers and pitfalls of such a reckless choice.
Outwardly, I did a decent job of not being too condescending as I helped them conclude that it was not a great idea.
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On the inside, I was having a different experience though. I was ticked off that my son could entertain such reckless behavior.
“I’ve raised him to think about choices and consequences, he knows better than to even consider this. He’s not thinking!”
As he and his friend walked outside to find different mayhem to create, I stewed for a minute in disbelief about my boy's decision-making capacity.
Then, in a moment of clarity, I had a memory of a similar idea I had as a 14-year-old.
My cousin and I tied a rope to the back of a four-wheeler and rode a boogie board all through the flooded areas of the orange grove we grew up in.
The only difference between my son and me is that I followed through with the horrible idea. And to be honest with you, it was a crazy amount of fun.
I sat there in my kitchen with the stark realization that my son wasn’t being crazy for wanting to skimboard behind a golf cart.
He was just being an adolescent and making the same kind of choices that his old man made a few decades ago.
As I reflected on this humbling parenting experience I started to remember some of the reasons adolescents tend to be prone to the more adventurous and fleeting kind of decision-making.
To put it plainly, adolescents are just wired to engage in risky dangerous behaviors.
It’s not just me or my son — teenagers, in general, tend to be impulsive.
Skimboarding behind a golf cart is not that big of a deal when you consider some of the trappings of the culture this current generation of teenagers is growing up in.
The stakes are higher now than ever before, that’s for sure.
For instance, we are now seeing fentanyl distributed across the country in brightly colored pills that resemble candy.
There are reports of kids as young as 11 who have overdosed and died from taking just one of these candy fentanyl.
The list of reasons adolescent impulsivity and risky behavior can become problematic is almost endless: 24/7 access to pornography on the internet, 95% THC marijuana, and addictive social media and video games are just the tip of the iceberg.
If we desire to help this generation navigate adolescence, we must figure out how to help them make choices that honor their passion for life without the consequences of risky and impulsive behaviors.
Why are teenagers prone to take risks?
As I alluded to already, we have to start from the position that it’s not crazy when our adolescents act on impulse and make risky choices.
After all, taking risks is part of growing up.
Understanding why, when, and how behavioral and neurological changes may result in impulsive, risky decisions is essential to support teenagers with their physical and mental health.
Here are some reasons your teenager might tend to make some questionable choices
They Tolerate Ambiguity
While I have been describing the typical adolescent as more prone to “risk-taking,” it’s more accurate to say adolescents are more comfortable with ambiguity than they are with risk.
For instance, it’s impossible to know your exact chance of injury or death when skimboarding behind a golf cart. So the actual risk of being injured is unclear or ambiguous.
My son is just more comfortable with that ambiguity, just as I was when I was his age.
Teenagers are just willing to take the gamble.
Some studies even show that teenagers are as cautious as adults when the probabilities are known and certain.
How your teenager estimates the chance of positive and negative outcomes when they are ambiguous could be the deciding factor that drives whether or not he makes dangerous choices about drugs, the internet or sexual behaviors.
Translation: if an adolescent underestimates the chance of harm from a behavior, they might be more likely to make a poor choice.
They Are Driven By Rewards
When considering skimboarding behind the golf cart an adolescent thinks about all the fun they might have.
The younger the adolescent the more likely they are to be driven almost exclusively by the dopamine released by exhilarating experiences.
When they weigh the cost and benefits of a decision, they will almost always gamble if there’s a chance at a big reward.
As adults, we can learn from both reward and punishment.
Adolescents, on the other hand, tend to learn much more from rewards than from punishments. If an action leads to a positive outcome it’s human nature to repeat it.
Both adults and adolescents will go for it almost every time.
If the behavior leads to a negative outcome adults are less likely to do it again whereas adolescents struggle to connect current behavior with potential punishment.
This means if a young person makes a choice that has negative consequences they may still choose it again in the future.
This probably explains why teenagers persist with negative risky behaviors in the face of constant punishment at home.
They are Driven By Relationships
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that teenagers care a lot about what other people think.
However, it might surprise you to know the research shows consistently that the peer group becomes significantly more powerful than the family of origin in adolescence.
Many teenagers are simply driven by an intense fear of rejection by peers and this sensitivity to social outcomes often results in risky dangerous behaviors.
As cliché as it might sound, peer pressure is real and is responsible for many of the poor choices adolescents make every day.
The power of pure influence is so significant that it plays a significant part in the adolescent programs we run at our LiveWell clinics for depression, anxiety and addictions.
We spend an inordinate amount of time helping our teenage clients understand toxic negative peer relationships and how incredibly important it is to change the friend group to maintain long-term recovery from mental health problems or addiction.
How we can help?
We have established that teens are more likely to engage in risky behaviors because they tolerate ambiguity, struggle to learn from punishments and are terrified by rejection from their peers.
How can we respond to the adolescents in our life to help them make healthy choices?
For starters, we can focus on communication.
If teens are just as cautious as adults if they have all the information on potential risks we need to focus on educating them on real harm that might come from poor choices.
As adults, we allow fear to stop us from having real honest conversations with our teens.
One of the requirements of our adolescent program is that parents attend a parent support group every week.
During these parent nights, it has become very clear to us that the parents are cautious to talk about drugs, alcohol and especially sex with their kids.
The younger the adolescent, the more cautious the parents are.
Ironically, the friends our kids are hanging out with have no problem talking with them about the same topics.
Removing ambiguity as much as possible is essential so we can give our teens real data on all the uncomfortable topics.
Considering the truth that our adolescents don’t learn as much from punishment, we should attempt to find ways to reinforce them for healthy choices.
Sometimes that’s as easy as taking the time to process alternative choices that might produce similar amounts of dopamine without all the risk.
Take the situation of my son and the skimboard for instance.
While it’s not a good idea to condone pulling the skimboard with the golf cart, maybe I could have offered him a ride to the beach so that he could skimboard in a safer environment.
This kind of distraction method that offers alternative ways of activating that reward system in the brain can be much more effective.
Concerning the negative influence of peer pressure the solution here is probably much more complicated.
Our kids are rooted in a culture that reinforces their risky choices in many ways.
Limiting their exposure to specific friends or social media platforms will probably only make those environments more attractive.
Instead, we should focus on the fear of rejection that drives so much compromise in a teenage life.
This fear is based in many ways on the insecurity most adolescents experience regarding their worth and value.
Although they need healthy connections with their peers, a belief that the adults in their life are proud of them and believe in their ability to demonstrate character and integrity goes a long way.
Punishment produces behavior change sometimes, but it seldom produces heart change.
Our job is to find ways to speak life into our adolescents and help them believe that they have inherent worth and value that is indeed independent of the approval of their peers.
These recommendations aren’t made flippantly simply because I know how difficult it can be to parent a teenager, especially in this culture.
But as we stated earlier, the stakes have never been higher.
Our kids need to believe in no uncertain terms that we understand their proclivity for risk and reward, and we can certainly approach them with empathy considering that we were all adolescents at one point.
That empathy is perhaps the foundation of every strategy we use to help our children navigate the path to adulthood.
It’s what helped me respond in a more productive way to my son with the skimboard incident and it’s the very emotion that will allow you address the adolescents in a healthy manner that you interact with every day.
If you’re in a situation where your adolescent is truly at risk because of impulsive choices please know you’re not alone.
While it is natural for every adolescent to make some mistakes, it’s important not to allow poor choices become consistent or truly dangerous.
The professionals at LiveWell behavioral Health have specialized training in adolescent and family therapy and are ready to help you navigate whatever difficult situation you face as a family.
Whether it’s poor choices with alcohol and drugs, risky sexual behavior, or addiction to gaming or social media, we are here to help.
We can help you reclaim a healthy relationship with your teen and help them learn how to make positive choices, stay safe, and have fun.
Dr. Mike Ronsisvalle is a Licensed Psychologist and the President of LiveWell Behavioral Health, a psychological services agency that provides counseling to clients of all ages and addictions treatment to adolescents and adults. You can find him at www.LiveWellbehavioralhealth.com or call 321-259-1662.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Teenagers tend to be more impulsive, engage in risky behavior
