Young People + Not-Fully-Formed-Brain = Recklessness!

Y’know how your auto insurance cost a lot more before you were 25 (even if your parents paid it at the time)?

And how you can’t rent a car until you’re 25?

Well, this is because folks under that age have way more car crashes than afterwards.

Teenagers are four times as likely as older
drivers to be involved in a crash and three times as likely to die in
one, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

This likely has a biological basis–in the brain.

Contrary to the initial expectations of some (obviously clueless) NIH researchers, brain development does not peak by age 18.

"We’d thought the highest levels of physical and brain maturity were
reached by age 18, maybe earlier — so this threw us," said Jay Giedd,
a pediatric psychiatrist leading the study, which released its first
results in April. That makes adolescence "a dangerous time, when it
should be the best."

I don’t know what kind of pediatric psychiatry idealization-of-youth rhetoric this guy has been smoking, but he’s clearly out of touch.

People as far back as Aristotle (and before!) have pointed out that young people are reckless and like to have fun, and that’s a dangerous combination.

In any event, Dr. Giedd has to be given credit for being willing to recognize what their new neurological data showed them: A part of the brain that inhibits risk-taking behavior ain’t fully formed until age 25; hence, your auto insurance rates don’t got down until that age and you don’t get to rent a car until that age.

In a related study, young people of different ages were asked to play a simulated driving video game in which the goal was to get through a particular course as quickly as possible while not hitting anything. They also brought friends to the event and were tested both with and without their friends present.

The study showed that, with the presence of youthful companions, the young people were more responsible as they had others’ lives riding (virtually) of what they did as drivers, and so they took more precautions, right?

Ha!

Of course not! They were worse drivers with friends present.

An interesting aspect of all this is the gap between the onset of puberty and the maturing of the brain’s risk-inhibiting functions:

Temple’s Steinberg said the NIH/UCLA research supports his theory that
teen recklessness is partly the result of a critical gap in time —
starting with the thrill-seeking that comes in puberty and ending when
the brain learns to temper such behavior. Since children today reach
puberty earlier than previously, about age 13, and the brain’s
reasoning center doesn’t reach maturity until the mid-twenties,
Steinberg said, "This period of recklessness has never been as long as
it is now."

GET THE STORY.

 

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

16 thoughts on “Young People + Not-Fully-Formed-Brain = Recklessness!”

  1. I read a study a couple of years ago regarding brain development. They use to think the brain stopped it’s underlying structural development about 16. As noted above it doesn’t stop until the 20’s. They also now know that EVERY time you get drunk you permanently damage that ongoing structural development bit by bit by bit.

  2. Hi Jimmy!
    You know, I’m twenty-eight now. My plan is to defy this science and remain impulsive and stupid well into old age.

  3. I was never really all that reckless or irresponsible, and I resented being treated as if I was.

  4. The auto industry figured out the obvious – kids are not adults and can be reckless. They don’t always think through the effect of their actions —- which is why we should let 14 year old girls get abortions without parents permission.
    You can’t legally smoke, can’t drive until 16, can’t drink alcohol, but kill a baby- no prob.

  5. Agreeing with BillyHW, there are a myriad of factors involved. For me, I was driving cars from the auto auction back to the dealership at 17.
    Particularily in regard to autos the larger factor seems to be driving experience. I saw this particularily in the cabbie business. The immigrant drivers who may have only been in the States for a week were bound to be in an accident, because they were not used to uncontrolled intersections and dangerous intersections overall. (As a note for those that take cabs, your typically cabbie immigrant has been in the country for well over a decade. New cabbies avoid tourists and typical business pick ups, because these people often don’t have addresses of where they are going.)
    As far as men and women go this can partially be explained by aggressiveness, but the predominate theory now is that it has more to do with driving conditions. Accident rates among men and women have been equalizing over the years as women forego children and marriage; and practice traditionally male driving patterns, i.e. driving in rush hour, driving longer, and driving in inclimate weather. Growing up in the 80’s, my father would always drive in more difficult situations like negotiating the Chicago tollway system on family trips. If you look out your window on the interstate today you will see that roughly half the men are sitting in the passenger seat.

  6. Some teenagers are more prudent than some adults.
    HOWEVER, if we had to do a case-by-case analysis of every single person, repeatedly, to determine when he was grown up, the resources expended would be enormous.
    We have to draw lines between children and adults. Where any given line is drawn may be arbitrary — but that they must be is not.

  7. I was never really all that reckless or irresponsible, and I resented being treated as if I was.
    I’m curious how old you are now … it wasn’t until I was well past 17 that I realized how reckless I had been. (Becoming a parent has also made me more aware of this.) Although I wasn’t as reckless in practice as many of my peers, that was largely because my parents treated me as if I were, and that removed many of the opportunities for me to be reckless. I resented it at the time, but now I’m grateful for it.

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