Young adults can't stop partying during the pandemic because they're wired that way

• From spring break crowds to TikTok influencer parties, some young adults have been ignoring pandemic guidelines.
• Four psychologists told Business Insider why teenagers and young 20-somethings won't stop partying during the pandemic.
• Their brains are still developing, which leads to risky behavior. Socializing is also important to their identity development and serves as a coping mechanism.

It all began with the spring breakers.

The week the coronavirus was declared a pandemic, students swarmed Texas and Florida beaches and hopped on flights to Cabo. Come summer, young adults flocked to bars in large groups as states slowly reopened. And TikTok and YouTube stars have recently been gathering for massive parties despite record COVID-19 cases in California.

Many young adults are safely social distancing and wearing masks, but others have been ignoring warnings. Officials have been reporting nationwide that many new infections are among young adults under age 35, Business Insider's Holly Secon reported at the end of June. Officials have urged young adults to follow guidelines and take the pandemic more seriously.

But for these millennials and Gen Zers, that's all easier said than done. Four psychologists weighed in on why young people won't stop partying, and their risky behavior has a lot to due with their developmental stage.

Science makes young adults think they're invincible

Eighteen may be considered the legal marker of adulthood in the US, but the brain doesn't stop developing until at least the mid-20s, Katie Lear, a North Carolina-based therapist who specializes in child and adolescent anxiety and trauma, told Business Insider.

Much of the brain's restructuring during this time occurs in the frontal cortex, which controls judgement, problem solving, impulse control, and emotional regulation. During this development, she said, young people rely more on their amygdala, the fight or flight part of the brain, for decision-making.

"This might help explain why young people may have a hard time thinking about the long-term repercussions of their decisions and their possible impact on other people, even if they've been informed of the risks," she said.

She added that it doesn't help that early coronavirus media coverage made it seem like young people were at zero risk of experiencing severe symptoms if infected, even though it's possible for the young to asymptomatically spread the virus or experience prolonged illness from it themselves.

Part of this development involves a phase where young adults feel "invincible," Forrest Talley, a clinical psychologist who spent 20 years working at the University of California - Davis Medical Center, told Business Insider. Not only do young people tend to feel immune from the laws of physics and common sense, a Max Planck Institute study found, they have a strong tendency to selectively ignore information that would refute this view.

So when the youth hear they shouldn't gather in large groups, Talley explained, many will place little personal importance on the information. "Youth is not marked by risk aversion, but rather by risk taking," he said.

Socializing is critical to forming their identity

Socializing takes on special importance for young adults. They're in the midst of identity development, which often happens in the context of social relationships. Feeling part of a group is critical to their identity and self-esteem.

This is known as the identity versus role confusion phase in developmental psychologist Erik Erikson's psychosocial stage of development theory. Christie Kederian, a marriage and family therapist and educational psychologist who specializes in working with young adults, told Business Insider that this is when social approval begins to matter more and when adolescents and young adults experience egocentrism.

She explained that telling them to wear a mask to protect others goes against their emotional development, which focuses inward on their own thoughts and feelings. Combined with the rise of social media apps like TikTok, this thinking can "reaffirm that belief that 'everyone is watching and caring about me,' which can increase the self-centered way of thinking and decrease the care and empathy for others," she said.

If socializing with peers helps form their identity, Talley added, then remaining homebound cuts off this source of affirmation, sometimes reinforcing a sense of being childlike in that they need follow rules about who they can associate with. Rebelling against "the establishment," where socializing restrictions are currently coming from, also enables young adults to develop a sense of independence, he said.

Socializing is also a coping mechanism

Leela Magavi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, told Business Insider that socializing helps adolescents and young adults attain a sense of normalcy. She said many of her patients do party or socialize with their friends because it diverts their attention from pandemic-related frustration and emotional distress.

"Although many of them are well aware of the risks involved, they gather in large groups and engage in activities to distract themselves from feelings of helplessness and loneliness," she said. For some, she added, it's a case of FOMO and losing friends. Others, she said, don't have secure relationships with their parents and rely on friends for emotional support.

Kederian points out that while everyone is grieving during the pandemic, everyone has their own unique grieving process. Young adults are also in the intimacy vs. isolation phase, she said, where they desire deeper connections with others and their ultimate fear is isolation.

This means that their stage of grief may perpetually be the first stage of grief, she said: denial. Thus, hanging out with friends and partying are all acts of denial centered around a fear of loneliness.

"Ultimately, their fear of being alone trumps the fear of illness or death, which becomes a deeper fear psychologically in late adulthood," she said.