Adolescent Substance Use

A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking

“…One of the hallmarks of adolescent risk-taking is that it is far more likely than that of adults to occur in groups. The degree to which an adolescent's peers use alcohol or illicit drugs is one of the strongest, if not the single strongest, predictor of that adolescent's own substance use (Chassin et al, 2004). Research on automobile accidents indicates that the presence of same-aged passengers in a car driven by an adolescent driver significantly increases the risk of a serious accident (SimonsMorton, Lerner, & Springer, 2005).…”

Parent and Child Cigarette Use: A Longitudinal, Multigenerational Study

“…This intergenerational association may reflect the relatively strong genetic influence on tobacco use compared with other substances or the modeling and reinforcement of parental smoking behavior by offspring. 3,4 Parental smoking may also elevate the risk of offspring cigarette use through child school failure, psychological distress, or weakened attachment to parents, as well as factors such as low parental education or older sibling cigarette use.…”

Social marketing and social influences: Using social ecology as a theoretical framework

“…The resulting social influences operate at both the micro-social and the macro-cultural levels. At the micro level, adolescents may behave anti-socially in response to peer pressure (for example, although it is generally considered undesirable for young women to become pregnant when they lack the social and economic resources to care for the baby effectively, teenage girls without such resources have been found to be more likely to get pregnant if they see others around them doing so (Chassin et al, 2004;SimonsMorton et al, 2005;Thaler and Sunstein, 2008)). At the macro level, the UK "car culture" Edensor (2004) or "binge drinking culture" (Plant and Plant, 2006) are examples of large-scale social influence.…”