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Why do teenagers take such risks? A new book has some answers

An eye-opening new book by psychologist Lucy Foulkes lifts the lid on the surprisingly rational strategies behind the risky behaviours of adolescence, finds Catherine de Lange

By Catherine de Lange

10 July 2024

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Teenage cliques can offer protection – or enforce exclusion

Virginia Woods-Jack/Millennium Images, UK

Coming of Age
Lucy Foulkes (Bodley Head (UK); Vintage Digital (US))

In the teen movie Mean Girls, protagonist Cady Heron arrives at a US high school having grown up in Africa. Baffled by her peers and the social hierarchies of school, she approaches things as her zoologist parents would – documenting the people around her as if they were animals living on the savannah.

In her new book, Coming of Age: How adolescence shapes us, psychologist Lucy Foulkes takes a similar approach to decoding the rulebook of adolescence,…

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