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Summary Of Why The Teen Brain Is Drawn To Risk

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Others who don’t agree with with the idea that teens are incapable of making good decisions may say teenagers actually overestimate risks. In “Why the Teen Brain Is Drawn to Risk”, a researcher named Valerie Reyna’s data,” has shown how excessively teens tend to overestimate the risk: for example when asked about the risk of AIDS in one study, adolescents estimated that a teenage girl who is sexually active has a 60% chance of contracting HIV. (The actual odds are miniscule for most Americans.)” (qtd. in Szalavitz); basically saying teens overestimate risks they are aware of. While this data has scientific approval, a weakness in this statement is that other data has proven that adolescents engage in risky behavior when a risk is unknown (Szalavitz).

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