inclinations toward sensation-seeking that are not harmful or antisocial. And with respect to self-regulation, the degree to which adolescents engage in risky behavior is in part a function of opportunities to access substances and circumstances that place them at risk. The reason that the incidence of alcohol-related driving fatalities declined when the legal drinking age was raised from 18 to 21 has nothing to do with changes in the brain development of young people that somehow magically transformed high school students en masse into mature decision-makers. By the same token, increasing parental monitoring, placing restrictions on teen driving, or providing adult supervision during after-school hours would likely reduce teen pregnancies, car crashes, and juvenile crime, but for reasons that have nothing to do with neurobiological development. Brain development undoubtedly influences adolescents' behavior, but it does so within a context.
