ABSTRACT
This book has presented an inevitably selective and incomplete picture of a number of potentially risky behaviours. A number of major conclusions emerge from this review. The first is that ‘young people’ are by no means the only members of the human race to expose themselves to possible harm. In certain respects the young compare well with older people. They are less likely to smoke than their parents and they are probably less inclined to use prescribed tranquillizers than are older people. Even so, from a variety of perspectives, youth, adolescence and the twenties are a time of active experience seeking. A degree of risk-taking is not deviant but normal amongst young people in all socio-economic positions.
