Risk Behavior in Youth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Risk Behavior in Youth - Essay Example Most of the established studies on young people in Western societies have been devoted to an understanding of their transition within their families and schools towards adulthood and their working lives. During the different stages of their transition, the young people confront or create risks as they go through. Risk behaviours that include tobacco, alcohol, and drug use are common in young adults, and it is a common finding that those who engage in risky behaviours are prone to engage in additional risky behaviours with passage of time. Social sciences have established that as the number of risky behaviours increase, depression as a comorbidity emerges that take away the productive and fruitful time out of the youth (Viner, R. and Macfarlane, A., 2000). Although not universally true, the young people are prone to take risks sometimes to the extent of a risky life. More recent research in Europe, the UK, the US, and Australia demonstrate a out of bound mismatch between the conventio nal models of transition and the attitudes, choices, and experience of young people themselves in reality. The reason may be significant social and economic changes since the early 1970s. These could have introduced elements of uncertainty, unpredictability and risk into the lives of the young (Young, R., Beinum, MV., Sweeting, H., and West, P., 2007). Thus, it can be stated that risk is a useful concept in understanding young people. In the following sections, evidence for that would be analysed in order to find support for this statement, so some solution can be found to prevent this. Endemicity of Risk There is evidence that risk and uncertainty are certainly endemic, and technology and social institutions are unable to eliminate it. The modern notion of risk is guided largely by uncertainty. Harvest failure, pestilence, migrations, new currents in religion, technological developments, and the unforeseen consequences of urbanization have all exerted a powerful and typically unpredicted influence on the problems and difficulties the population including the young face (Case, S., 2006). Traditionally, lack of certainty in life was attributed to "the other" agencies beyond human control: the ignorance of imperfect humanity, divine agency, luck, destiny, or fate. Many events in the history of society have been the eye openers of the fact that risk has accompanied technical development and revealed the weaknesses of institutions for managing the resulting uncertainty. The social scientific study of people's responses to risk tends to focus on either their narrow cognitive or their broad sociocultural roots (Dworkin, J., 2005). The Young There is a diversity of experiences that characterises the lives of the young people. Although they belong to the same generation they have emerged with different aspirations for the future and have made different choices about their personal interests and priorities, and hence they have different life patterns that do not match with any linear assumption or prediction. Research has shown that young people do indeed possess a sense of persistence and determination in the face of frustrated expectations. After education, every