Why do young people take dangerous risks for social media approval?

The recent deaths of young people travelling the wrong way along motorways have brought renewed attention to the relationship between social media and dangerous behaviour. While it would be irresponsible to speculate about the precise motivation behind any individual tragedy before the facts are established, these incidents raise a broader question: why might a young person risk serious injury, arrest or death in pursuit of online attention?

Young people have always taken risks, and each generation has alarmed the one preceding it through behaviour that appears reckless or incomprehensible. Social media did not create the adolescent appetite for excitement, nor the desire to impress one’s peers, but it has provided risk-taking with an enormous potential audience, an immediate reward system and a means through which popularity can be measured publicly in likes, views and shares.

Why do likes matter so much?

To many adults, a social media “like” appears trivial, yet psychologically it conveys something fundamental: I have been seen, noticed and approved of. During adolescence, when identity remains relatively unstable and questions of belonging and social status assume particular importance, this recognition can carry considerable emotional weight.

The attraction is not simply popularity, but popularity that can be counted and compared. If one dangerous video attracts attention, somebody else may need to go further to produce the same response. In this way, online content can become progressively more extreme because yesterday’s shocking act rapidly becomes today’s familiar one.

Social media also creates an imbalance between reward and consequence. Approval arrives immediately, accompanied by the excitement of watching numbers rise, while injury, arrest and death remain distant possibilities that appear to happen to other people.

A young person may understand intellectually that an act could be fatal while remaining emotionally unable to imagine their own death as a realistic outcome.

The adolescent relationship with risk

Adolescence is a period in which the drive towards excitement, novelty and social reward is particularly powerful, while the psychological capacities involved in inhibiting impulses and calculating long-term consequences are still maturing. This does not mean teenagers cannot distinguish right from wrong or should not be held responsible. It means their judgement is more vulnerable to being overwhelmed in emotionally charged situations, particularly when peers are present.

Risk also has a social meaning. Driving at speed or participating in a dangerous challenge may become a way of demonstrating courage, toughness or loyalty. If danger is integral to the status offered by the act, simply warning a young person that something is dangerous may have little effect. The more useful question is not merely, “Do they understand the risk?” but, “What does taking this risk offer them?” The answer may involve belonging,
recognition, excitement or protection from humiliation.

On group mentality

Young people are more likely to take risks in groups because responsibility becomes psychologically dispersed. Each person can feel less accountable when others are participating, encouraging the behaviour or simply failing to object. One member of the group may be frightened but perform confidence to avoid appearing weak; another sees that apparent confidence and assumes everyone wishes to continue. A group of anxious individuals can therefore create a collective atmosphere of bravado in which nobody feels able to say “stop”.

Refusing can carry its own psychological threat. In the moment, the prospect of ridicule, exclusion or being recorded as the person who backed down may feel more immediate than physical harm. Withdrawing requires not only judgement, but the capacity to tolerate shame and separation from the group.

An audience inside the car

The smartphone has fundamentally altered this dynamic because it places an imagined audience inside the car. A young person may no longer be performing only for the friends physically present, but for hundreds or thousands of spectators who might later watch and share the footage.

Filming can also create psychological distance from reality. An event begins to be experienced as “content” rather than as an unfolding situation involving real bodies and irreversible consequences. Participants become preoccupied with how the event will look instead of what is actually happening.

Repeated exposure to such footage further distorts perception. Extreme behaviour appears more common and therefore more normal, while the absence of visible consequences encourages the fantasy that other people repeatedly take these risks and emerge unharmed.

Who is responsible?

Responsibility lies with those who choose to endanger themselves and others, but platforms cannot present themselves as neutral observers. Their systems reward engagement, and shocking or dangerous footage is highly engaging. Social media did not create adolescent risk-taking, but it can amplify, circulate and industrialise it.
Understanding the psychology does not excuse reckless behaviour. It recognises that prevention requires more than warnings. Parents need to help young people anticipate group pressure, consider how they might leave a dangerous situation and know whom they can call without fear of immediate punishment. Platforms, meanwhile, must recognise that removing dangerous footage only after it has reached millions is not prevention; by then, the attention has already become an advertisement.