Over the years, I have played a lot of games with kids, and one thing I have noticed is that they really like “house rules” that randomly screw one player and give someone else a sudden power rush. In arguing for these rules, whatever the context, they seem really sure they will be the one that benefits from the rush, and it’ll be some other guy holding the bag. I suspect this transfers to a lot of things: they just assume that the best possible outcome will be the one that happens, and they have this incredible confidence that “Most likely” is the same as “for sure”.
No, in fact, it is much the opposite for me (I am 15). I am sometimes (maybe even many times) overly cautious about things.
I did reckless things as a child and teenager. I was perfectly aware that I could be badly hurt or die in most cases, but those possibilities just didn’t seem as important as what I wanted to do at the time.
I see this in my own kids, to varying extents (my son is heedless, one of my daughters very cautious, another in the middle, and the youngest seems to take after her brother). I think it’s more a matter of impulse and overconfidence than lack of awareness of mortality really.
I guess I was a very atypical teenager because I had no problem relating consequences to actions, being concerned about my future and wanting to plan things out. I never, ever felt that I was invincible or that I knew everything.
I remember my Dad asking me what I thought about his advice or his opinions and I told him that I valued them and took them into consideration, that I respected people’s advice and wisdom who were older than me. He was so surprised! He said something like how shocking it was that I didn’t think I knew everything, because when he was my age he thought he knew everything and didn’t care what his parents or other older, more mature people said.
In fact, I just have a very hard time understanding or accepting that teenagers don’t understand consequences of their actions and that’s why they end up doing things that are bad for them or others. On an emotional level, it just seems like a really dumb excuse for bad behavior, and I know that as a teenager myself I had no problem understanding the consequences of my actions. For example, I knew I needed to get good grades in high school so I could get into college, I knew I needed to do my homework to get those good grades, and to study for tests. I knew I couldn’t waste my time partying, drinking, smoking, etc, because my goal in life when I was a teenager was to get a college degree in science and make something worthwhile out of my life. It is completely alien to me that there are evidently so many teenagers that have a difficult time understanding consequences and planning ahead for the future, and such.
And I also find it alien that evidently people often believe that “they know everything” when they are teenagers, because I certainly never felt like I knew everything back then and I know that I never will know everything!
How common is the “I am an invincible teenager” attitude? Tremendously so- just not among teenagers. By the time I hit sixteen, I was convinced that I was mostly likely going to die in jail after murdering someone for telling me “these are the best years of your life” one too many times.
True, time and age haven’t really begun to hit them yet, but I think teens are less risk-averse not necessarily because they don’t make the same cause-and-effect connections adults do, but because they’re less invested- they’re less experience in, and thus attached to, life. Add in the fact that they’re much less likely to have kids or enfeebled parents relying on them, and well, it goes from there.
When I was a teen, there was also a strong counter thought to all this immortality glurge in the thread: pointlessness. Does any of this matter? Best summed up by teens I heard in high school saying, “I’ll probably be dead by the time I’m 30”. Not a death wish, but a feeling that you’re not in control of anything that matters or will make a difference for you long term. So immediate term things like smoking cigarettes, or hell, drugs didn’t matter that much. Some of that was cold war thinking - they’ll just destroy the world, those fuckers – or just plain teen angst. But when you’re a teenager you’re pretty damn powerless and I think that breeds short term thinking.
I think it’s the pre-frontal cortex area, and it’s now known that it doesn’t get completely developed until the mid 20s.
Interestingly, a researcher at Duke has found that one of the long-term consequences of binge drinking–even only a few instances–in the teen years seems to be that it impedes permanent, full development of that part of the brain which can cognitively make the connections of future consequences to momentary actions. In other words, if this guy’s analysis is correct, even only a little abusive drinking in the teen years leads to a predisposition toward self-destructive behavior in adulthood. He believes that might be one reason that 75% of adult alcoholics started drinking in teen years, if even only a little. If true, this research could justify the drinking age of 21, I guess.
I think you’re mixing up two different things. The subject at hand is more teens and their tendency to ignore danger, rather than their ability to think long-term. I had all sorts of long-term plans as a teen and worked towards them diligently, but when faced with a dangerous situation, despite knowing intellectually that death or injury could result, the concepts didn’t seem to apply to me. Could someone die jumping off a building? Sure. Could it have happened to me? No way!
Not realizing a teen can think both ways has led to many a tearful parent, imo. They see a quiet, mature honor student and think “hey, my son can handle owning a 500hp sports car” not realizing that the same kid is absolutely certain he can’t die before graduation and drives accordingly. It’s not a case of teens thinking “eh, I’ve got nothing to lose” but rather thinking they never will.
I’m 34 and still rarely ever think about death, and when I do it’s hard for it to seem “real”. So in that sense I still behave like I’m immortal.
Ageing on the other hand is different: I’m reminded of it all the time, and it has immediate consequences.
No. I lived an ordinary, safe, risk-free life. Still do, mostly.
Death seemed a long way off, though.
Thanks for the replies. This is a fascinating topic!
In my case, I knew that my father had died in an electrical accident when I was just a few weeks old. Before I was ten years old, I had experienced several family members dying just in their forties and fifties. A couple of classmates died – one of cancer, one in a car accident – before I was thirteen. This made me realize that people don’t always live to a ripe old age.
I always disliked the characterizations of teens thinking themselves immortal. I think I always thought I was mortal, but as a teen I could barely picture a single decade and yet had perhaps seven of them left. I didn’t FEEL myself dying yet. Now I’m 55 and have something like three decades left (I hope), and I know damn well how short three decades is.
Every few years I run out of hanging file folders that I have pre labeled with the years, into which I put reconciled bank statements. So, I label another five or ten. On the one hand, I keep thinking “but I just did this!” On the other, I am also aware I only need to do it a few more times. If I took a bit of extra trouble I could prepare TOO MANY of them.
Dying is something I can kind of perceive happening gradually now, and being a teenager is now further away than death.