Both of those things are right, it's just about what type of risk.
A young investor should go high risk in terms of asset classes. In other words, if you're in your 20s and you are only investing money that you do not plan on needing within the next 5 years, you can really go 100% stocks and not even bother messing around with bonds or treasuries or whatever.
Experience comes into play when deciding whether to index or try and pick. I'd suggest you just go with index funds until you build up experience. Also, plan on having your first five or so stock picks fail miserably. That's what happened to me at least!
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