There is an increasing concern that the rate of smoking has increased among teens due to some reasons. Nicotine addiction is a leading cause of health concern among teens because the society has embraced a culture that warns dangers of smoking and at the same time rationalizes it, leaving individuals to choose whether to smoke or not. There are, however, other factors that increase the rate of smoking among teens, one of them being that cigarettes have been made into various forms that make them attractive to teens. For example, there are e-cigarettes which do not contain nicotine; however, it appears that they influence teens who are not addicts to start smoking nicotine cigarettes because e-cigarettes tend to orient them to the habit of smoking. This paper is written as a reflection on contents that are published on two websites, and it demonstrates that teens face a big risk of engaging in smoking due to the influence of peers and social media.
From the ongoing discussion of why teens become addicted to nicotine, the National Institute on Drug Abuse for Teens (NIDA) illustrates that teens smoke cigarettes because of the advertisement culture that is embedded into the society. Adverts carry a message of warning, such as they warn that smoking nicotine cigarettes cause cancer, infertility, respiratory diseases, and death, but they also show that smoking is a ‘cool’ habit for those who do it. As a result, teens are more inclined to choose the ‘cool’ side of lifestyle instead of avoiding the dangers associated with smoking. Also, the modern culture such as the internet has made facts about smoking readily available to everyone, which means that some teens tend to compromise their health by engaging in smoking at ‘moderated’ levels, which are levels that are estimated by experts to cause serious damages to users if they smoke too many cigarettes.
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A study by Lipari, Crane, and Strashny (2013) reveals that teens that are poly-substance users are those aged between 12 and 17 years. This is because of an issue of peer pressure, which is important during the developmental stages of teens, such as some teens would rather smoke cigarettes if that is what costs them to become accepted in a peer group. Moreover, the millennial generation is characterized by teens who like to party a lot, during which alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, and other drugs are introduced to non-users. Also, the NIDA website reveals that tobacco can be consumed in many ways, which becomes very easy for teens to use them without being suspected by authorities. For example, there are cigars and pipes which are used for smoking cigarettes and marijuana, while there are hookahs which are used to give different flavors to cigarettes.
There is a strong relationship between first substance use and the types of drugs that are used , such that the brain tends to pick specific stimulation that is given by the first substance, creating a craving for the drug and eventually addiction. The data from NIDA reveals that when teen’s brain is developing to achieve emotional intelligence, any drug they take becomes a crucial driver of certain feelings of excitement. Therefore, this first-time uses develops a problem of addiction where users develop a pattern of risky behaviors to satisfy their insatiable addiction.
Teen smoking is likely to increase in the next decade due to the problem of an assimilation culture in which people are made aware of risks but at the same time are taught how to mitigate them. Also, social media has a negative impact on shaping the development of a modern teenager such that most teens are addicted to web contents, among them including introducing teens to cigarettes smoking.
