Page 5 - MEDLIFE MAGAZINE

5 MEDLIFE

HelwegLarsen, & Gerrard, 1995). In the society nowadays, every single background details
matters. Various social, biological, and environmental factors are known to play an influential
role in teenagers’ decision making about and attitudes toward substance use such as family
problems or friends(Cleveland, Feinberg, Bontempo & Greenberg, 2008).

As teenagers, everyone wants to known, wants to be included in everything and wants
to look cool (Fitzsimons and Moore, 2008). When insecurities can be fierce, they induced
needs to “fit in”, be popular, and look cool. And that is why teenagers tend to take drugs so that
they can get close and have the same topic to the others. Many teenagers have the mindset that
drugs could relieve stress and that is how they start taking drugs, and this is the time where
families starts to have a distance against them. They felt like escaping away from reality or
family because they feel like “getting a kick out of danger” (Vaughn et al., 2012).

Last but not least teenagers are often influenced by mass medias. According to
incidences of drugs intake using teens in films potentially amplifies the effect of the seemingly
consequence-free actions of those teens who are shown to partake in drugs used on film (Dorr
A., 1981). Some of the teenagers are always streaming movies online during their free time.
Teenagers get influenced by movies that take drugs are awesome and teens have focused on
taking drugs imagery and conclude that most films have contained at least one instance of
taking drugs (Sargent et al., 2002).
As you can see everyone in this society are always looking at their phone no matter
what, and especially teenagers likes to scroll through Facebook, Twitter, and other similar
platform and this will risk them towards drug intake. Moreover, communications to targeted
high-risk segments of teenagers may also involve the use of social media because outlets such
as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have the ability to use teens as peers offering emotion-
laden messages about both the positive consequences of not abusing prescription drugs and
the negative consequences of doing so (Wakefield et al., 2010).

Teenagers often thinks that what the media show is true and that leads them to taking
drugs for example. Teenagers get motivated to take drugs when sad, happy, and relaxed, and to
relieve stress as they saw on movies or mass media (Tanski et al., 2009).
In a nutshell, the causes of teenagers taking drugs are coming from all different fields, like
persuasion by friends, influenced from mass media, and many other more. Teenagers cannot
avoid the dangerous landmines that devastate and destroy the lives of so many young people.
The society and parents should pay more attention to issue like this to prevent teens got into
a wrong way.