Why do teenagers decide to smoke and drink alcohol?

Abstract

Teenagers may be involved with psychoactive substances in various ways. Experimentation with alcohol and drugs during adolescence is common. Unfortunately, teenagers often don’t see how their actions today will have negative consequences tomorrow. They also have a tendency to feel indestructible to the problems that others experience. Using alcohol and tobacco at a young age increases the risk of using other drugs later. Some teens will experiment and stop, or continue to use occasionally, without significant problems. Others may develop a dependency, moving on to more dangerous drugs and causing significant harm to themselves. If teenagers consume these substances, they’ll get diseases at earlier age. Some teenagers try to imitate those people who smoke because they see that this people seem to have a lot of fun; but they are not being rational. Many people act in ways and make decisions without thinking very much or being careful.

Adolescence is a time for trying new things. Teens use alcohol and other drugs for many reasons, such as curiosity, because it feels good, to reduce stress, to feel grown up or to fit in a group of popular guys. It is difficult to know which teens will experiment and stop and which will develop serious problems. Researches show that teenagers at risk for developing serious alcohol and drug problems include those with a family history of substance abuse, the ones who are depressed, who have low self-esteem, and who feel like they don’t fit in on a group of peers.

Drug use is related with a variety of negative consequences, including increased risk of serious drug use later in life, school failure, and poor judgment, which may put teens at risk for accidents, violence, unsafe sex, and suicide. Some of the physical signs when a teenager is consuming these substances are when they get fatigue, repeated health complaints, red and glazed eyes, among other symptoms. Also, their personality change, they get sudden mood changes, irritability, they have reckless and irresponsible actions, low self-esteem, depression, and lack of interest when doing what they have to do. Apparently all the consequences that an adolescent can get from smoking and consuming alcohol are negative. Usually they start breaking every single rule, they withdraw from the family, get discipline problems, get low grades, have negative attitudes, and change their style on dressing and other social issues.

There are several reasons why a teenager may take drugs or alcohol. Some teenagers are just bored and like to experiment, while others do it to be accepted by their peers. Teenagers who are shy, lonely and have lack of self-confidence may find that drugs and alcohol transform them. For them, these vices are like the key to their social success. When they are ‘high’, teenagers may find that their troubles are far away and unimportant. They may take drugs and alcohol to escape from family problems or to relieve the tension if they are not performing well at school.

Introduction

Our group is very interested on finding why is that teenagers decide to smoke and drink alcohol if most of the people is aware that this brings negative consequences. Many times, we may think that teenagers do this because they want to look cool. But if they are smart they’ll realize that they have a problem. Often, we see that teenagers smoke and drink alcohol in parties so that everybody will see them doing it, which is kind of gross. But, if you asked an adult person who is more conscious of his/her actions, if he or she smokes, he/she will most probably answer that he/she is pretty embarrassed to say that they do, and if so, they will do it in their own, lonely space. So, what’s up on some teenager’s mind that make them think that smoking and drinking is good?… Many of us may have that question in our minds. And it’s exactly what we want to find out. On Psychology Today magazines we can find very interesting information of previous researches that some psychologists have done through the lasts years. On the Internet, we can also find a lot of information about this interesting subject. We’ll look up at some information and review them in order to examine the factors that influence teenagers to decide to use psychoactive drugs.

Methods

In order to make our project, we’ll use retrospective and survey methods. With the retrospective method, we will review past researches in order to find the answers for our doubts. And with the survey, we will see which is the people’s opinion toward few stuff. We’ll ask some questions to twenty five teenagers of our school and then we’ll review the results.

Research Question

Our research questions is…Why do teenagers decide to smoke and drink alcohol?

Hypothesis

Ha→ True Hypothesis

Teenagers use psychoactive drugs due to internal and external factors.

Independent variable dependent variable

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