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Fatalistic Attraction A new study reveals beliefs that teenagers think they'll die young, leading them down the wrong paths 
It long has been thought that teens make bad life decisions because they believe themselves invincible. Speeding down a sinuous road late at night after a beer or two? I'm a good enough driver. Having unprotected sex? STDs won't happen to me. Experimenting with various drugs? I have the willpower to stop. But a recent study refutes that accepted notion of teenage invincibility, instead supposing that a substantial number of teens believe they will die young. Such a mindset allows them to take risks "because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake," says study leader Dr. Iris Borowski of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Dr. Borowski's survey of more than 20,000 kids found that kids who thought they would die early often engaged in risky behavior. Their choices made them more likely to commit suicide or pick fights resulting in serious injuries. The pessimistic respondents were seven times more likely than optimistic one to be diagnosed with AIDS. Dr. Laura Davies, a psychiatrist in San Francisco, explains that this is likely, at least in part, a function of who has HIV. She says that a teenage girl who has sex with an older man who just got out of jail is more likely to contract HIV than the one who has sex with the local football-playing, varsity-jacket wearing high school senior. But Dr. Borowski's team worries that teens' fatalistic fears could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In particular, she wonders how so many came to accept their fates - even if they are fabricated fears. The years of youth are "a time of great opportunity and for such a large minority of youth to feel like they don't have a long life ahead of them was surprising," Dr. Borowski says. The good news is, the pessimistic teens were not more likely to die than others, at least during the seven-year study. Ninety-four of the 20,594 surveyed died in that time. The study's participants were students from grades 7 to 12 and were interviewed three times from 1995 to 2002; 14.7 percent of them believed they would die before the age of 35 in the first round of interviews. Ensuing interviews found these teens risking their health more often than the other 85 percent. 
Native American and black teens had the highest fatalism rates, at 30 and 26 percent respectively. Males were slightly more likely than females (15 to 13 percent) to express fatalism, and across the board, teens from lower socioeconomic groups believed they would die young much more often than those in higher brackets. Dr. Davies chalks this up to a stigma in many of these communities against seeking help for mental issues, ultimately concluding in a lack of treatment for curable conditions that may lead to fatalistic thoughts. "I don't think that's anything new," she says, adding that teens from higher socioeconomic groups also make destructive decisions, often when there is a lack of parental and neighborhood supervision. "There's been a sense that the establishment is not caring about them, and unfortunately it's true." Dr. Davies says she thinks bad decisions by teens stem from a combination of fatalism, invincibility and plain youth. "I think teens are stupid," she says. "I would say it's both [fatalism and invincibility]. I just think they don't think things through. Their thought processes are not clear." Insecurity and a desire to prove themselves to peers, Dr. Davies says, are motivating factors in teens' decisions, and she also says that the formative situations in which teens find themselves, in and out of the home, are tough but crucial grounds for teens to learn about themselves and their identities. And when something goes wrong, the 37-year-old doctor says, she doesn't blame teens that want to avoid the consequences. "I'd rather die than go to prison," Dr. Davies says, "and I think they feel that way, too." |
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