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Most adults would guess correctly that the number-one cause of teen deaths is car accidents. Ranking second is death by other kinds of accidents. Some of these fatalities occur after a teen accepted a dare, tried to impress friends, experimented with drugs, or otherwise took some unnecessary risk that ended in tragedy.
For example, many teenagers enjoy drag racing. Races often occur spontaneously when two cars stop at a light, and one driver revs his engine as if to challenge the other. More often than not, there are passengers in both cars, cheering on the drivers. According to the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, 45 percent of teen fatal accidents involve speeding, and about half of those involve drag racing.
About 3,000 children and teens die of gunshot wounds every year. Having a gun in your house increases the chances of someone committing suicide on your property by 500 percent and of someone dying from a gunshot wound there by 300 percent. Everyone has seen a local news story about a teen who accidentally killed a friend when the two were playing around with a gun.
Drinking games like Beer Pong and 21 on 21 are common risky behaviors involving alcohol. According to The New York Times, four out of five young people go drinking on their 21st birthdays. Researchers from the University of Missouri, writing in a report published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that 34 percent of the men and 24 percent of the women in their study went through a ritual called "21 on 21." This involves drinking 21 alcoholic beverages in a row, which can create blood alcohol levels of 0.26 in most people, and above 0.30 in many women. At these levels, respiration can slow to levels that cause death.
Teens also die accidentally from drug overdoses, often by trying unknown drugs at parties or combining them with alcohol. Sometimes there can be a daredevil element in drug abuse. For example, teens from the suburbs of New York enjoy the thrill of going into inner city neighborhoods and buying methadone from recovering heroin addicts. They often land up in dangerous neighborhoods with complex cultures they do not understand, using a drug that is almost as addictive as heroin itself.
Many teens using drugs and alcohol become involved in risky sexual situations, becoming victims of date rape or having sex when they are too impaired to make good decisions. The consequences are usually harder on girls, not only because they can get pregnant, but also because they are four times more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases than males.
Most scientists believe that teens are prone to risk-taking because their brains are in a rapid period of development until age 25 or so. The teen brain has what Dr. Anna Rose Childress calls an overdeveloped "GO!" system and an underdeveloped "STOP!" system. Dr. Childress, a scientist with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, uses brain-imaging techniques in her work. She believes that the teen "GO!" system responds more quickly to environmental cues of pleasure, including sexual stimuli, food smells, the thought of a thrill, and so on. However, the teen "STOP!" system, which involves higher level thinking and evaluation, is not developed sufficiently to weigh and measure risks involving certain pleasures or thrill-seeking.
Parents can help their teens channel their natural need to explore and experiment into healthy activities. Extreme sports and other physical challenges or volunteering in interesting settings, such as hospital emergency rooms, can provide healthy stimulation.
Daredevil behaviors can be a symptom of mental health problems. For example, teens with Attention Deficit Disorder may have insufficient control over their impulses and rush into dangerous situations without thinking. They often are more in need of friends than average teens, and that makes them even more susceptible to following through on dares. If you believe your teen has such problems, consult a mental health professional.