Late on a Friday or Saturday evening, loud, pounding music is heard in the street and it can be assumed that the commotion is caused by a group of teenagers having a party at the House. This party is their form of experimentation, mainly with drugs, alcohol and various sexual partners. This experimentation is part of a long tradition of adolescent risk-taking, one in which teenagers tend to walk on very thin ice. In the book Divergent by Veronica Roth, the main character, Beatrice or Tris for short, takes many risks in her new faction and house called the Dauntless. She jumps and ziplines out of buildings, volunteers to have knives thrown in her face, fights boys whose muscle mass is almost twice her muscle mass, and much more. For her, the effect of risk-taking is positive: it leads to a sense of belonging and welcome into the Dauntless community as a top-ranked initiate, but the effects of skating on such thin ice do not. do not always work as well. Risk-taking among adolescents can have various causes and consequences. Risks such as excessive drinking, smoking, unprotected sex, and wild partying obviously have negative connotations due to their harmful effects, but there are many lesser-known positive effects of risk-taking. Risk taking is often thought to simply be due to peer pressure, but it can be caused by physiological and psychological changes and other outside influences. The deeper reason for bold action is the physiological basis of adolescent risk-taking. In the adolescent brain, the "flowering and pruning" phase of development of the prefrontal cortex, the PFC for short, is not yet complete when the child enters puberty, as experts once thought. , and it is the prefrontal cortex that controls the ability to anticipate and think... middle of paper ... but not drugs and alcohol. Risks and gambles are a part of life and cannot be avoided, only compromised. Works Cited Kittleson, Mark J. “Adolescent Substance Abuse Risk Factors and Risk Taking.” The Truth About Drugs, (nd). Facts on file Health Reference Center. Internet. February 18, 2014. Kittleson, Mark J. “Adolescents, Risk Taking and Alcohol Abuse.” The Truth About Alcohol, (nd). Facts about File Health Reference Center.Web. February 18, 2014. Pickhardt, Carl. “Surviving (your child’s) adolescence: risk prevention during adolescence.” Psychology today. Psychology Today, December 27, 2009. Web. February 18, 2014. Price-Mitchell, Marilyn. “The moment of youth”. Psychology today. Psychology Today, July 15, 2013. Web. February 18, 2014. Roth, Veronica. Divergent. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2011. Print. Walsh, David. Why do they act this way? New York: Free Press, 2004. Print.