Teen Risking

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Menstuff® has compiled the following information on teen risking behavior.

A Snapshot of Annual High-Risk College Drinking Consequences
It's Often Not Just Rewards. New research may explain typical adolescent risk-taking.
Young Americans Still Shunning Seat Belts
Deadly States For Teen Drivers
Drunk Driving Statistics & Facts
Related Issues: Talking to Your Kids about Tough Issues, Body Piercing, Tattoos, Binge Drinking, Sex

A Snapshot of Annual High-Risk College Drinking Consequences

• Death: 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes (Hingson et al., 2009).
• Injury: 599,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are unintentionally injured under the influence of alcohol (Hingson et al., 2009).
• Assault: 696,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking (Hingson et al., 2009).
• Sexual Abuse: 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape (Hingson et al., 2009).
• Unsafe Sex: 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 had unprotected sex and more than 100,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex (Hingson et al., 2002).
• Academic Problems: About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall (Engs et al., 1996; Presley et al., 1996a, 1996b; Wechsler et al., 2002).
• Health Problems/Suicide Attempts: More than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem (Hingson et al., 2002), and between 1.2 and 1.5 percent of students indicate that they tried to commit suicide within the past year due to drinking or drug use (Presley et al., 1998).
• Drunk Driving: 3,360,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 drive under the influence of alcohol (Hingson et al., 2009).
• Vandalism: About 11 percent of college student drinkers report that they have damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (Wechsler et al., 2002).
• Property Damage: More than 25 percent of administrators from schools with relatively low drinking levels and over 50 percent from schools with high drinking levels say their campuses have a "moderate" or "major" problem with alcohol-related property damage (Wechsler et al., 1995).
• Police Involvement: About 5 percent of 4-year college students are involved with the police or campus security as a result of their drinking (Wechsler et al., 2002), and 110,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are arrested for an alcohol-related violation such as public drunkenness or driving under the influence (Hingson et al., 2002).
• Alcohol Abuse and Dependence: 31 percent of college students met criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and 6 percent for a diagnosis of alcohol dependence in the past 12 months, according to questionnaire-based self-reports about their drinking (Knight et al., 2002).

  Source: www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/statssummaries/snapshot.aspx

   

It's Often Not Just Rewards. New research may explain typical adolescent risk-taking.

It turns out it actually takes quite a bit to motivate a teen, because the reward center in an adolescent's brain isn't fully developed and isn't as responsive as the reward center in adults.

That's the conclusion of a study in the Feb. 25 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

And these findings may explain why teens are more apt to drink alcohol, use drugs or engage in unsafe sex, because these activities require little effort for a seemingly greater reward.

"Adults have readily active motivation in the brain," says study co-author James Bjork, a research fellow in the laboratory of clinical studies at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. But, he says, "it may take exceptionally strong incentives to get kids jazzed up."

Bjork and his colleagues compared MRI scans of 12 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 to MRI scans of 12 adults between the ages of 22 and 28. While undergoing the MRI scans, the study volunteers were asked to play a game. If they could hit a target on a screen, they were rewarded with 20 cents, $1 or $5. If they couldn't hit the target, they would lose money.

In both the teens and adults, the MRI images showed that in anticipation of a potential gain, the ventral stratium, right insula, dorsal thalamus and dorsal midbrain sections of the brain were activated. And the ventral stratium, which is believed to be a reward center in the brain, showed increased activation as the reward amount increased for both groups.

But, the right ventral stratium showed less activation in teens than in adults. According to Bjork, other research has shown this area of the brain is responsible for motivation.

"That region of the brain controls how much an organism is willing to work to get a reward," Bjork says. "The data show that adolescents are just as happy and excited at the prospect of winning as adults, but they differed in the expenditure of effort for that reward."

For parents, these findings show "there might be a normal developmental reason why it's so tough to get your teen off the couch," Bjork says. Additionally, he says, the findings could explain why teens are drawn to risky behavior such as alcohol and drugs, because they offer a strong reward for very little effort.

Dr. Ramon Solhkhah, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, says the findings "give us information about how teenagers prove rewards in a different way than adults do."

He says it's important to realize their brains are still developing, and they are not just small adults. Teens rarely consider long-term consequences, he says.

"Their sense of the future is processed differently than an adult's. It appears [teens] do much better with short-term consequences, so the high they get from using drugs may be more powerful than the potential long-term health consequences," Solhkhah explains.

He recommends telling your teen how things will affect him or her now, rather than in the future. Don't tell your child that smoking will give him lung cancer in 30 years, he says, because it won't mean anything to your teen. Instead, he says, focus on here and now. For example, tell your child how smoking can stain teeth or make it difficult to participate in athletics.

More information

The University of Minnesota's College of Human Ecology offers advice about your teens behavior (www.che.umn.edu ). The National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information discusses the importance of setting rules for your teen (family.samhsa.gov ).

Source: Serena Gordon, www.healthcentral.com/news/NewsFullText.cfm?id=517628  

Young Americans Still Shunning Seat Belts

Deadly States For Teen Drivers

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