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5 Facts About Exploration and Risk Taking in Adolescence

5 Facts About Exploration and Risk Taking in Adolescence

Adolescents preparing for indoor rock climbing

Taking risks during adolescence is an essential part of learning and healthy development. In our adolescent years, we’re more motivated to explore the world by trying new things in ways that help us discover who we are, expand our skills, and ultimately move beyond the familiarity of home.

Below are five facts about the importance of taking healthy risks during adolescence.

  1. During adolescence, we’re more willing to take risks and lean into uncertainty compared to adults.
    This tolerance of unknown outcomes is fundamental to learning and development in these years. Attempting to learn a new skill, trying out for a team, asking someone out, and standing up for a cause all feel very risky—especially during adolescence, when most of us are trying these things in new ways or for the first time.
  2. Brain development during adolescence helps motivate us to try new things, and these new experiences help build new neural connections.
    When we are adolescents, our brain releases more of a neurotransmitter called dopamine compared to children or adults, increasing our sensitivity to positive feelings that come from trying new things. A surprising or unexpected reward causes an extra dopamine release, which alerts other parts of our brain that the activity or situation is new and deserves attention. This is a kind of amplified learning that’s actively shaping the connections between neural systems in our brains.
  3. The rewarding feelings from trying something new are heightened when peers are present.
    Although adults often associate peers with more dangerous risk-taking behavior, peers can also encourage and motivate youth to take positive risks. Engaging in activism, standing up for causes that they believe in, or sticking up for someone else all happen in peer contexts.
  4. Opportunities for healthy risk taking are not equally available to all adolescents.
    Due to long-term underinvestment resulting from racial and economic inequalities, many schools and neighborhoods lack resources for healthy risk taking activities. In addition, racism and other forms of bias often result in more extreme consequences (such as suspension, expulsion, arrest, or incarceration) for risks taken by youth of color that might be labeled “learning experiences” when made by white adolescents.
  5. Youth need access to activities that can provide positive outlets for their increased motivation to take risks.
    Without healthy outlets, the attraction of risk and novelty can make us more vulnerable to unhealthy behaviors, such as reckless driving or excessive drug and alcohol use. Adults can support healthy outcomes for youth by ensuring that opportunities to explore, take positive risks, and learn from mistakes are available equally to all young people. Activities including student leadership, youth activism, and adventure recreation like mountain biking and rock climbing have all been shown to support positive development for adolescents.

To learn more, visit the Core Science Key Concept page on Exploration and Risk Taking.

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Additional Resources

The Connecting Adolescent Brain

Fact Sheet

This fact sheet gives an overview of adolescent brain development and explains how access to resources, opportunities, and meaningful relationships during adolescence can build connections within our brains and with the world around us that support us into adulthood.

Brain development during adolescence is fundamentally a story of connections.

Around age 9 or 10, hormonal changes kick off a period of intense learning and development, when brain cells form, strengthen, and streamline connections in response to our experiences more rapidly than in any period of life after early childhood.

Activity increases especially in the brain networks that propel us to explore the world, learn from our mistakes, and connect with others in new ways. In turn, these new experiences prompt our brain cells to connect with other neurons in ways that help us adapt to new events and new information. These neural connections become stronger the more we use them, while unused connections are pruned away, helping the brain become more efficient at acquiring and mastering new skills and new ways of thinking.

This brain-building learning happens through direct experiences in our environments and interactive, responsive relationships—with our families and peers, in our classrooms and neighborhoods, in community activities, and even online. The resources, opportunities, and experiences we as adults provide in and out of school can help young people’s brains build the extensive networks of connections that will manage the complex knowledge and behaviors needed to navigate adulthood.

Learning by Exploring the World Around Us

One of the networks that changes significantly with the increase in hormones and dopamine at the beginning of puberty is the “reward system” in our brain. Heightened activity in this system increases the feeling of reward we get from exploring the world, taking risks, and learning from the results.

Meanwhile, the network of brain regions that make up the “social brain” also changes during adolescence. These changes help us tune into social and emotional cues, like facial expressions or social rejection and approval, and increase our desire to earn respect and contribute to others. It also enables us to learn the nuances of changing social contexts in ways that help prepare us for adult relationships.

The prefrontal cortex (the region of the brain that orchestrates critical thinking and behavioral control) undergoes its most rapid period of development during adolescence. It builds on many other systems within the brain to manage our responses to the flood of new information and intensifying emotions. Engaging with other people and our environment and learning from our successes and our mistakes, known as “action-based learning,” helps shape the prefrontal cortex by strengthening the connections within it and between it and other brain networks. We learn through repeated practice—which includes trying and sometimes failing—what is adaptive and appropriate in different situations and how to guide our behavior accordingly, in ways that equip us to pursue new forward-looking goals.

When adults provide youth with opportunities to try new things, to practice navigating emotions, and to learn from failures along the way, it helps build the brain connections that we all need to grow into healthy, thriving adults.

Policies, Experiences, and Mindsets Shape the Connecting Brain

Although we can continue to learn new skills and behaviors as adults, the adaptability of the brain during adolescence means that these connections are much more likely to form quickly in response to experiences. The extent of these changes make the adolescent years a critical window when investments in the right policies and programs for youth can shape long-term positive development.

Likewise, this makes the adolescent years a time when negative experiences including racism, other forms of discrimination, poverty, or abuse can create steeper hills for young people to climb toward a healthy adulthood. When adults ensure that all young people, especially those who have experienced earlier adversity, have what they need along their journey, they can build the skills and capacities they need to thrive as adults. This includes opportunities to explore and take healthy risks, to connect with and contribute to those around us, to make decisions and learn from the outcomes, to develop a healthy sense of identity, and to rely on support from parents or other caring adults.

Understanding how and why the brain develops during adolescence lets us provide the support young people need to build healthy connections—in their world and within their brains—that will help our youth and our communities thrive.

Cultivating Purpose in Adolescence

Council Report | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination

This council report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence looks at the importance of purpose during adolescence and how we can support youth to cultivate their own sense of purpose.

Helping youth develop a sense of purpose–a forward-looking life aim that guides actions and decisions–can build resilience, support mental health, reduce negative risk taking, and provide a sense of direction and motivation.

But adolescents do not just find their purpose as if it were an object already assembled. Rather they cultivate their purpose through a process of discovering and actively exploring their unique interests, skills, and values with support from those around them.

A new report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence (NSCA) reviews research about why a sense of purpose is so important during adolescence, and how adults, schools, and communities can help young people cultivate this internal resource.

To learn more, download the full report, Cultivating Purpose in Adolescence.

Report authors Anthony Burrow, Patrick Hill, and Leslie Leve are joined by NYS 4-H Civic Engagement Specialist Jamila Walida Simon to discuss purpose in adolescence in this online panel discussion moderated by NSCA Co-director Joanna Williams.

Thumbnail Image for December 2023 Research Roundup

Winter 2023 Research Roundup

Research Roundup | Mental Health | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination

This issue provides an overview of research showcasing the effects of neighborhood environments on adolescent development, the benefits of culturally tailored interventions, the trajectory of executive function development, and links between rumination and neural response to social rejection.

In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the effects of neighborhood environments on adolescent development, the benefits of culturally tailored interventions, the trajectory of executive function development, and links between rumination and neural response to social rejection.

You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDAinfo@mednet.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.

  • Exposure to urban greenspace in childhood can benefit attentional abilities in adolescence (October 2023)
  • Large-scale datasets highlight mid-adolescence as a key period for the development of executive functions (October 2023)
  • Culturally tailored interventions can help improve sexual health in American Indian adolescents (November 2023)
  • Exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood may impact brain network organization in adolescence (December 2023)
  • Rumination is linked to altered neural responding and slowed reaction time to social rejection in adolescent girls (December 2023)

​Exposure to urban greenspace in childhood can benefit attentional abilities in adolescence

In this study, Despina Bolanis and colleagues explored whether exposure to residential greenspace (such as a tree-filled city park) in childhood relates to mental health outcomes in adolescence. Using longitudinal data from 742 participants, the authors found that youth who reported living in urban areas with more greenspace at age 10 had fewer inattention problems as reported by teachers in adolescence (ages 15 to 17 years). This association remained even when controlling for factors such as family and neighborhood socioeconomic status and prior mental health problems. (Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, October 2023).

Why this is important: These findings point to the impact of physical environments on development, suggesting that increasing greenspace in cities and urban areas may support the development of attentional capacities in adolescence.

A canonical trajectory of executive function maturation from adolescence to adulthood

Adolescence is a key period for the development of goal-directed cognitive abilities—commonly known as executive functions—that are crucial for healthy development and can be impacted in mental health disorders. Understanding the standard pattern of executive function development in adolescence can highlight critical periods for executive function development, which in turn can help identify shifts from these normative patterns that could indicate future difficulties and disorders. In this study, Brandon Tervo-Clemmens and colleagues combined data from multiple large datasets and across various cognitive assessments and tasks to explore the developmental trajectory of executive functions in a group of 10,766 individuals ages 8 to 35 years. The authors found rapid and significant development in executive function from late childhood to mid-adolescence (ages 10 to 15 years), with these complex cognitive abilities reaching their full potential in late adolescence (ages 18 to 20 years). (Nature Communications, October 2023)

Why this is important: This study maps how executive function develops over adolescence, suggesting that ages 10 to 15 are crucial years for executive function development–an understanding that can help inform developmentally appropriate interventions and policies for youth.

Parenting in 2 Worlds: Testing improved parent–adolescent communication about sexuality in Urban American Indian families

In this study, Stephen Kulis and colleagues tested the efficacy of a culturally tailored intervention designed to increase and improve parent-adolescent communication about sexual health in American Indian families. The intervention, called Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W), combined core components of a traditional parenting program with cultural elements unique to American Indian families. Participants included 575 parents/guardians of American Indian adolescents between the ages of 10 to 17 years living in urban areas of Arizona. The program consisted of 10 lessons covering topics such as building supportive parenting communities, identifying cultural traditions, understanding adolescent development, and fostering communication skills. Importantly, the curriculum emphasized Indigenous cultural heritage as a foundation for raising healthy and resilient adolescents, incorporating values shared by diverse American Indian communities such as notions of kinship and the importance of ritual and traditional language. Compared to interventions not culturally tailored to Indigenous families, P2W produced greater increases in parent-adolescent communication about general sexual health and sexual decision-making. Increases in sexual health communication were strongest for cross-gender dyads (mother and son or father and daughter), while increases in communication about sexual decision-making were strongest for adolescent sons (regardless of parent’s gender). (Journal of Research on Adolescence, November 2023)

Why this is important: This study demonstrates the efficacy of the P2W program for improving sexual health amongst American Indian adolescents, emphasizing the benefits of culturally informed interventions designed specifically for the communities they aim to serve.

Neighborhood poverty during childhood prospectively predicts adolescent functional brain network architecture

In this study, Cleanthis Michael and colleagues examined how exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood might impact the organization of brain networks in adolescence in a group of 538 twins over the ages of 6 to 19 years. The authors assessed two main aspects of functional brain network organization: network segregation (the degree to which the brain organizes into distinct, functionally specialized networks) and the balance between network segregation and integration (efficiency of information flow between brain networks). Both network segregation and balance increased during adolescence; however, these age-related associations were influenced by exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood. Children who experienced greater neighborhood disadvantage showed reduced network segregation in adolescence. These effects were observed across various functional networks, emphasizing that neighborhood conditions in childhood may have enduring effects on the organization and development of the adolescent brain. (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2023)

Why this is important: This study suggests that exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood can impact functional brain development in adolescence, highlighting the importance of policies and programs aimed at increasing available resources within neighborhoods to support positive development for young people.

Hooked on a thought: Associations between rumination and neural responses to social rejection in adolescent girls

In this study, Leehyun Yoon and colleagues investigated the association between self-reported rumination—persistent negative thought patterns—and neural responding to social rejection in a group of 116 adolescent girls. Participants completed a social evaluation task during which they received (fabricated) feedback in the form of acceptance or rejection from peers they liked or disliked. When rejected by peers they liked, girls with higher rumination levels showed more neural activity in areas of the default mode network, a key brain network for self-related processing. They also showed reduced connectivity between the default mode network and the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), a region implicated in rumination. Higher rumination was linked to slower response times on the task following rejection, and this effect was explained by neural activity during rejection. (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2023)

Why this is important: These findings link rumination to neural and behavioral response during social rejection, indicating the importance of developing more effective interventions to support the mental health of adolescent girls with high rumination levels.

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