Article on Teenage Driving

The article "Teenagers, Friends and Bad Decisions" by Tara Parker Pope was very interesting to me. Of course we all know that in the presence of friends, kids are more likely to be reckless, but this article brought up some points that I had never realized before. The test they ran was having some teenagers play a driving game in which there are stop lights that turn yellow, and the driver has a choice to stop or run through it and get a bigger prize. They compared how risky the teenagers played while they were alone, as opposed to when they knew their peers were watching. The teens appeared to be more of a derring-do when they knew their friends were watching. This proves some parents wrong when they say that kids' friends always directly pressure them into being reckless, but really they have an affect on the teen even when they are just there. I also thought it was interesting how teens being watched by people of the opposite sex did not act much more daring than under the eye of people of the same sex. I would think that teenagers would want to try to impress people of the opposite sex more to try to sway them into having an attraction to them. This article also brought up a good point that even a mature, well-behaved teenager will be influenced by his or her peers when they make the decision to be daring or play it safe.