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Adolescents Learn Essential Skills for Adulthood through Exploration, Discovery, and Taking Healthy Risks

Adolescents Learn Essential Skills for Adulthood through Exploration, Discovery, and Taking Healthy Risks

Upfront Insights

  • Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. Our brains undergo significant changes during this time that increase our sensitivity to positive feelings from new experiences. These positive feelings are amplified when we’re with our peers.
  • Exploration and risk taking are important to healthy development during adolescence. Our increased motivation to explore and engage in activities with uncertain outcomes is fundamental to learning the skills and knowledge we need to thrive as adults.
  • Without positive opportunities to explore and take on new challenges in adolescence, this tendency to take risks can lead us in unhealthy directions like substance use and other activities that can result in significant and lasting harm.
  • Adults can support healthy outcomes for youth by ensuring that opportunities to explore, take positive risks, and learn from mistakes are available equitably to all young people.

When policies and programs support adolescents to explore their world and take positive risks, it leads to healthier, more connected communities.

About Exploration and Risk Taking in Adolescence

Being able and willing to take risks and try new things is a part of our natural tendency to explore the world during adolescence. It’s a fundamental aspect of learning that helps us develop our skills, discover who we are, and ultimately expand our worlds beyond the familiarity of home.

Research on adolescent brain development helps explain why we’re more motivated to approach things that feel uncertain or scary during these years, and why these risks are so important to learning and development. It also provides insights into how policies and practices could recognize this drive for new and exciting experiences and provide opportunities for healthy versions of risk taking that can support positive development.

Brain development during adolescence encourages exploration. The increase in hormones at the beginning of puberty launches changes in the “reward center” of our brain. Heightened activity in this area of our brain during adolescence, compared to early in childhood or adulthood, makes us more sensitive to the rewards and good feelings that come from surprises and new experiences. This increases our motivation to explore the world, take risks, and learn from the results.

This enthusiasm to try new things is important: new experiences cause new neural connections to form and, with repeated use, strengthen within our brain. When we have opportunities to safely try new things and to learn from mistakes along the way, we build connections that support learning.

Exploration and risk taking are an important part of healthy development during adolescence. Research has shown that adolescents are more willing than adults to lean into uncertainty and explore situations in which there is a potential for a reward (in whatever form) but the outcome is not assured, and this exploration can lead to a more positive mood.

This tolerance for ambiguous outcomes is essential to learning and development during adolescence. Anything that runs the risk of failure or rejection—like attempting to learn a new skill, running for student government, trying out for a team or school play, asking someone out, or standing up for a friend—can feel uncertain or even scary, especially during adolescence when most of us are trying these things in new ways or for the first time. Adult support can help young people to take on new challenges, even those that seem intimidating.

Racism and other forms of discrimination curtail opportunities for healthy risk taking. Unfortunately, opportunities to learn from exploration and risk taking are not equally available to all of us during adolescence. A history of racial and economic inequities has led to fewer resources for organized activities in schools and neighborhoods with higher populations of youth of color.

Racism and bias, such as Black and other ethnic minority youth sometimes being perceived as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers, often result in harsher consequences (such as suspension, expulsion, arrest, or incarceration) for mistakes that might be labeled “learning experiences” when made by White adolescents.

Adolescents need healthy outlets to channel their motivation to take risks. Although not all adolescents are comfortable with risks, our reward system during these years is generally more excited by risks than at other times in our lives. Without healthy outlets, the attraction of risk and novelty can make us more vulnerable to unhealthy behaviors, such as reckless driving or drug and alcohol misuse.

Avenues to channel this motivation for new experiences into positive exploration include:

Policy and Practice Insights

Policies and programs can provide outlets for healthy risk-taking to support the developmental need to explore during these years and direct the desire for new experiences toward positive activities such as trying a new sport, engaging in activism, or making new friends.

➢ Secondary schools and college admissions processes should encourage adolescents to take academic risks. For example, high schools could provide broad access to advanced classes and new subjects for all interested students—and college admissions offices could value attempts at challenging coursework that may result in lower letter grades.

➢ Identify and counter racism and other forms of discrimination that ultimately result in young people from different backgrounds facing disparate consequences for taking risks. Recognize that racism and bias can cause adults to perceive Black and other minority youth as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers.

➢ Fund and support an array of opportunities for youth to try new activities at school, at home, in the community, and in the digital world.

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.

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5 Facts About Exploration and Risk Taking in Adolescence

Fact Sheet

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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How Can We Support Risk Taking During Adolescence?

At our first annual Adolescent Brain Development Symposium we asked experts Molly Pencke, manager of the Bezos Scholars Program, and Wouter van den Bos, PhD, faculty at the University of Amsterdam.

Taking risks and trying new things are how we explore and discover the world during adolescence. So how can we support the kinds of positive risk taking that best promote learning?

This was the second discussion topic at our May symposium, with panelists Molly Pencke, manager of the Bezos Scholars Program, and Wouter van den Bos, PhD, faculty at the University of Amsterdam.

To start, we can help young people think about taking “smart risks”—where they can learn something from taking the risk, said Wouter. Trying new things with the goal of learning as much as possible is not so different from the process of scientific experimentation. If you set up an experiment right, you always learn something even when the outcome is not what you expected or hoped for. Learning that you dislike acting or that you need a lot more practice to make the team is valuable information.

“A good experiment cannot fail, because you learn something anyway,” said Wouter. “Even if the thing you thought would happen didn’t happen, that’s fine because you learned something.”

We need to reframe our idea of failure, Wouter said, including our perceptions of who is allowed to fail at what. The consequences of exploration and trying new things is different for different communities–varying along gender and racial lines, for example.

The Bezos Scholars Program, a year-long leadership development program for teens managed by Molly Pencke, encourages positive risk taking by asking students to try something most have never done before: devise and lead a change project in their own school or community.

Molly explained that they approach the projects as a learning process. The scholars come up with an idea for change, run it by the key stakeholders, try it, iterate on it, and reflect on it. “It’s not, ‘I failed or I didn’t’” Molly said. “It’s never that cut-and-dry.”

Molly told the story of one scholar, a student in a diverse high school outside of Los Angeles, who had noticed that she was consistently one of the only Black students in her Advanced Placement classes. In an effort to make these AP classes better reflect the demographics of her school, she designed a “Black AP Expo” to increase Black students’ awareness of and participation in AP and honors classes.

The administrators pushed back on the idea, concerned that the project focused on only one race. But the scholar held firm–after all, Black students were the ones who were missing from the classes.

In this case, the student was not only tackling a new kind of project, she faced the additional risk of standing up to her school’s administration while talking about issues of race and inequity which some adults shy away from.

To help youth navigate these sorts of challenges–attempting something new and facing challenges–the Bezos Scholars program starts with the creation of a “brave space” that supports a sense of belonging in the cohort. Youth agree to a baseline code of conduct, then build their own agreements about how they treat each other. “If you create a space with consistent, supportive rituals, they cheer each other on,” said Molly.

This kind of supportive environment can help young people find their “growing edge.” Imagine three concentric circles: the one in the middle is the safest, where we’re comfortable. The second circle out is uncomfortable and a little bit scary, but we feel as though we can do it and learn from it. The third and outermost circle is the “danger zone,” where we don’t feel ready and might end up with a negative experience instead of an opportunity to grow. That second circle, where we feel scared but ready, is our “growing edge,” the place where we are challenged in ways that help us learn.

One more point about supporting exploration: youth don’t have to do it alone. Peers can influence positive risk taking, said Wouter, motivating friends to take on social projects or try new activities. In Molly’s example, the Bezos scholars provide positive feedback and encouragement as they each tackle their individual change projects. In turn, they may inspire other young people, like the scholar influencing her Black peers to join more AP and honors classes.

“Who are those peers?” Wouter asked. “How can we support them, how can you leverage that peer influence to have that smart risk taking? Because they can learn from each other’s experiences.”

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