Adolescent risk-taking
Adolescent is the stage of life, in which the children encounter many significant changes in their body and social environment. Along with physical development, there are a lot of changes going on in the decision making abilities. It all starts when the puberty strikes. The priorities changes; they are more sensitive about their peer bonds. Now this relationship becomes more important to them.
During childhood, the priority was the parental bonds (Geake, 2008). A high level of tendency to take risks can be seen in their behavior. But the main concern here, like the adolescents do such kind of risky tasks in the company of peers only, in their absence it is no fun for them. When they are alone, they generally behave like adults. They show a higher level of risk taking behavior in the peer presence, maybe just to show them cool. They remain stable when they are taken into non-affective contexts (e.g. the presence of peers).
They are drawn towards activities like alcohol, smoking and rash driving. They just do such things to show others. This is the prevalent mentality that people will find you cooler if you are a rash driver. Adolescence is a more risky stage than childhood or adulthood, as then you are quite stable. In this age only, the risk taking behavior is at its peak. Teenagers are very keen to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, unprotected sexual stuff, and many other violent activities (Kirschner & Merriënboer, 2013). They like to do all those things which are said to be wrong. In fact, during a research it was found out that the adolescents are quite aware of the consequence of their risk taking behaviors, they have the proper knowledge as the adults do. But they still do the same thing; this shows how strong the peer influence is.
The thing which can be noticed is that when they are by themselves in a room or somewhere, they do not show same risk taking tendencies. If they are so keen to take risk, then why are they risk averse in the isolated space? The only answer to it is that there is no body to watch. They just don’t do it for the sake of doing; they are doing it to show others (Howard-Jones, 2014). This is the peer pressure. They find it fun when others are there to witness those things and maybe appreciate them. Like if they are asked to drink in an isolated space, they will do it in a certain limit, like the adults do. There appear to be risk averse in those situations. But the matter of concern is that most of the time they are in the company of their peers; they spend a remarkable amount of time with them. So fundamentally they are more exposed to those things. Company of other teenagers brings significant changes in their behavior. Teenagers often follow each other; they adopt their habits from each other. This establishes that they get more pleasure in social acceptance; this is not the case with adults. This is the reason, not because they are less capable of making decisions.
Peer influence on Adolescent Behavior
Parents generally believe that their kids behave in the same manner; either they are with them or with their peer group. But this is a misconception; when they are in the world of teenagers, they are someone else (Martin, 2015). Parents believe so because it is easy for them to do so. But this misconception can lead to dangerous results, this is like naïve. There is a particular age, when parents think that their child is going to do all those things like drinking is smoking. After a certain age, these voices pops up in your head, “come on, try it”, “I’m with you, try it”, “go ahead”, “and try it” and one cannot resist these voices (Martin, 2015). There is this trend of being cool. But there is a huge difference between trying to be cool and being cool. When one is trying to be cool, he starts doing new things by himself. But in being cool, one actually follows blindly what others are doing. And in this trend they just end up becoming a flock of sheep; that just follow one another. They are profoundly affected by peer pressure. They often forgets that everyone s not same, they have different capabilities and behavior.
In their attempt of being cool, they just garner contempt. They just become a flock of sheep, followers of somebody else. But all the adolescents’ out there need to get it clearly into their heads that you don’t have to be a follower every time, nor there is any need to be a leader; just be yourself. They need to call their own shots (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). Also the age group I peer influence matters, when a 14 year guy is asked by a 17 year boy to try something new or any other task. In order to get their acceptance because they know they are elder and mature, they do that task more readily in order to prove their coolness.
It has been established now that the kids don’t behave in the same manner when are with peers and friends. So the parents should not generalize how they are going to behave outside. They should be aware of all those things and leave their misconceptions behind. They should notice the changes. This is their duty as a parent (Sweller, 2012). If they don’t, then they are living somewhere in an alien land and are in their own world of illusions. In fact there is no need to tell them even. We are aware of all these things from our own life experiences. But parents often forget this at times and they needed to be remembered about all these things again. This is the case with every parent that they often see everything from the glasses of their own experience. And it is not necessary that parents are often more intelligent than children. Sometimes they are not aware of things and that becomes the reason of increased misbehaviors of teenagers.
Brain connectivity and specialization
In today’s time, the parents of the teenagers need to realize that peer pressure has been increased due to this age of social media. In fact now nothing has remained private. Even when you get in a fight with somebody, both people is there to share their part of stories (Norrish, Williams, Connor & Robinson, 2013). Thus everyone get to know everything. In fact those who listen to both sides of the story, they even get confused which side they have to take. In fact on the very personal matter, a lot of people are there to express their opinions. People take sides on the issues. Thus there is no privacy. Every single thing is out there. Another example of this can be enhanced sexual activities. Every teenager has done it during their high school time. People even circulate pictures. So out there, your privacy is hampered.
In fact it adds to a lot of competition in the lives of teenagers. Sometimes it becomes a handle over which people feel bad about their own life (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Nowadays the lives of people is transparent out there in front of others, they post every single thing of their life. This has an adverse effect. Like when one is sitting home, and watches on social media that his friends are partying out there, this makes him feel pathetic about his own life. There is also this pressure to have an active social life. People compete about posting fun things online. Thus this age of social media has increased the pressure in the lives of teenagers who were already suffering a lot due to many other age related issues (Bruning, Schraw & Norby, 2011). Like everything has been restricted to an online platform, the meaning of real life has been compromised with. Everything is there to show off.
Now we have come to the understand that this risk taking behavior increases due to peer pressure and is not there when they are alone. There is a need to find some ways in order to control this risk taking behaviors of the teenagers (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood & Elliot, 2010). This is evident now that the behavior of teenagers depends on approval from others and they don’t want to get socially excluded. This things needs to be taken into account. There should be methods in which the teenagers can influence each other in a positive way; we should push this peer pressure to the opposite side; where these young people are influencing each other to do good things like peer education. Group studies have a very positive effect. Thus this peer influences to enhance the risk taking tendency, let’s see how they can help in taking positive risks. This can be quite fruitful in academic learning and career planning. This can prove to be very advantageous.
Impact of social media on adolescents
As Shakespeare has also described about this stage in his “winter’s tale”, that this is the age between 13 to 20, a person gets all the bad influences. If this is monitored properly, future is going to be bright (Dehn, 2010). With the help of development in behavioral science, it has become easy.
More noteworthy consideration regarding scholastic development may give critical accomplishment and inspiration bolster for an extensive variety of understudies: Although numerous understudies may not outflank peers, they can beat their past endeavors; comparably, albeit numerous understudies may exhibit adequate similar accomplishment, there is frequently space for further individual development (Brewer, 2000). For sure, as per the writing, ‘the sign of human instinct is every individual’s awesome ability to adjust, to change, and to grow’ various merging lines of hypothesis propose development ways to deal with understudy improvement as a possibly energizing heading for psycho-instructive research and practice. To start with, speculating about ‘development outlooks’ expresses the versatile impacts of ‘incremental’ convictions about knowledge. People with an incremental view (i.e., a development mentality) see scholarly and non-scholastic results as something that can be tended to through subjective, enthusiastic, as well as conduct alteration. Interestingly, people holding an ‘element’ see their ability as settled and hard to address, prompting less tendency to make psycho-social changes. In fact, inquire about has recognized the job of incremental convictions on understudies’ scholarly directions through school (Sweller, 2012). This Special Issue centers around scholastic development through an examination of accomplishment development, development objective introductions, development objective setting, self-idea directions, outlooks, and evaluation and their job in understudies’ scholarly advancement.
In a family if an elder brother is pursuing or is an engineer then the adolescent will be influenced positively and will be motivated to pursue the same course .
In second case if the teenager is not influenced or is negative towards his or her elder or any other family member then he or she may chose the opposite or different course for education.
In the 3rd case, if the adolescent is forcefully motivated to pursue the same course of education, then this pressure may result in a negative effect over the adolescent. He or she may go reluctant towards the decision of the family and may chose a wrong path.
Conclusion
After analyzing the above executed research topic it has been evaluated that Adolescent is a process or stage through of developing or transforming from a child into an adult. The research is developed and is focused on the Adolescent risk taking factor, peer influence on behavior of Adolescent and connectivity of brain and specialization.
References
Alloway, T. P., Gathercole, S.E., Kirkwood, H. & Elliot, J. (2010). The cognitive and behavioural characteristics of children with low working memory. Child Development, 80(2), 606-621.
Brewer, W. F. (2000). Bartlett’s concept of the schema and its impact on theories of knowledge representation in contemporary cognitive psychology. In A Saito (Ed.), Bartlett, culture and cognition. (pp. 69-89). Psychology Press.
Bruning, R., Schraw, G. & Norby, M. (2011). Cognitive Psychology and Instruction (5th Edition). Boston: Pearson
Dehn, M. J. (2010). Long term memory problems in children and adolescents: Assessment, intervention, and effective instruction. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (E-Book).
Geake, J. (2008). Neuromythologies in education. Educational Research, 50, 123-133.
Howard-Jones, P. A. (2014). Neuroscience and education: Myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15, 817–824.
Kirschner, P. A., & van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational Psychologist, 48, 1-15.
Martin, A. J. (2015). Growth approaches to academic development: Research into academic trajectories and growth assessment, goals, and mindsets. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 133-137.
Martin, A. J. (2015). Implicit theories about intelligence and growth (personal best) goals: Exploring reciprocal relationships. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 207-223.
Norrish, J. M., Williams, P., O’Connor, M., & Robinson, J. (2013). An applied framework for positive education. International Journal of Wellbeing, 3(2), 147-161. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.2
Pintrich, P. R., & Schunk, D. H. (2002). Motivation in education: Theory, research, and Applications (2nd ed). Columbus, OH: Merrill-Prentice Hall.
Sweller, J. (2012). Human cognitive architecture: Why some instructional procedures work and others do not. APA Educational Psychology Handbook: Vol. 1. Theories, Constructs, and Critical Issues, K. Harris, S. Graham, and T. Urdan (Editors-in-Chief). American Psychological Association.
Sweller, J. (2012). Human cognitive architecture: Why some instructional procedures work and others do not. APA Educational Psychology Handbook: Vol. 1. Theories, Constructs, and Critical Issues, K. Harris, S. Graham, and T. Urdan (Editors-in-Chief). American Psychological Association.
Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, D. S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47, 302-314.
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