Risky Behavior Linked To Hometown; US Teens Riskier Than Puerto Ricans

It's a known fact that teenagers are very adventurous. They tend to take unnecessary risks.

A new study of sensation-seeking behavior led by a researcher at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health with colleagues from Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry and the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine revealed that children brought up in the United States tend to be more likely to seek out new and risky behavior compared to Puerto Rican children, EurekAlert! reports.

"Sensation-seeking behavior in adolescents has been shown to be a factor in health risks from suicide and frequent illegal drug use to problem gambling and unprotected sex," said first author Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology. "Our study shows that sensation-seeking behaviors don't follow the same trajectory from childhood to adolescence in all populations: context matters."

According to Science Daily, the study involved 3,000 children with Puerto Rican background. Approximately half of the sample was residing in Puerto Rico, while the other half lives in South Bronx. The researchers examined the predictors of sensation-seeking trajectories among these children, where they were asked to either agree or disagree to statements like "Sometimes you like to do things that are a little scary" and "Riding very fast and doing tricks on a skateboard are fun."

The results were measured on a ten-item sensation-seeking scale. The researchers observed a spike of sensation-seeking behavior among children ages 10 and 11, with rates rising to age 17. Over three-quarter of the children was in the "normative" and "low-sensation-seeking" classes where sensation-seeking scores increased with age as expected.

 However, 16 percent had a sensation seeking scores that increased faster than what was expected with their age and 7 percent started with high-sensation-seeking scores that decreased over time. The rates of sensation seeking were consistently higher in South Bronx versus Puerto Rico. Moreover, teens from South Bronx, reported sensation-seeking at a younger age.

"Children born into families of migrants scored higher in sensation-seeking either because they inherited a 'novelty-seeking' trait from their parents," Martins explained. "Children born into families of migrants scored higher in sensation-seeking either because they inherited a 'novelty-seeking' trait from their parents."

Martins also stressed that children in South Bronx are exposed to poverty, violence, peer delinquency or stressful life events compared to their Puerto Ricans counterpart.

"There is growing understanding that sensation-seeking is not just a personality trait or a rite of passage" Martin noted. "There is growing evidence that this behavior is mediated by factors, including where a child grows up."

 The study is published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.