If drinking alcohol is a normal activity for a given peer group, then a teenager who associates himself or herself with such a group is more likely of becoming an underage drinker. Advertising and Media Influences In today’s modern culture, young adults and the youth are usually bombarded with advertisements, movies, and television programs, which portray drinking alcohol as being “cool, sexy and fun”. In some instances, these ads and media outlets tend to influence negatively and support the young adults’ beliefs that consuming alcohol is cool and fun. Just like everyone
The author did a phenomenal job at explain different reasons as to why teenagers drink. The one that stuck out to me was because teenagers go through things that they don’t always feel comfortable sharing but alcohol brings them comfort. This is something that I had never thought about. Bichler also brought up points like the dangers of alcohol, what teenagers mostly drink, and the choices that teenagers make. This would me a fantastic source for my paper because of the different insights that it brings forth.
It is obvious that the law has not succeeded in preventing the underage group from drinking. Violating the law will make the students to likely act unlawful manners, so why not make it legal? Once this law is approved, it will benefit the students from inhibiting them to make irresponsible behaviors. Since it is considered as an illegal activity for underage drinkers, teenagers have not been educated on how to drink in moderation beforehand. This is a great opportunity to teach those who are underage so they will have an idea of knowing their limits earlier.
The cognitive model believes the addiction is a result of faulty thinking; therefore relapse occurs due to an irrational cognitive biased. The individual cannot correctly see that life without the addiction is better, as their faulty cognition is biased to towards the addiction behaviour such as taking a drug. The expectancy theory in particular believes that biased is that the individual expects life with the addiction to be better that life without the addiction, mainly due to the negative withdrawal symptoms. Tate provided evidence for this idea with the study of smokers who were trying to give up. He found that people were much more likely to relapse when they believed withdrawals were going to be negative.
Positive Effects of a Lower Drinking Age in America Arguments about the United States drinking age are commonly discussed. The law is thought of by some as a great way to keep young adults out of trouble, but by others it is thought to be an unsuccessful law that has only brought harm to many young adults. Not enough people are taking action in changing the drinking age to eighteen, which may be because Americans feel it is not necessary or because American citizens have not thought into full detail about all of the positive effects a lower drinking age could have. The United States Federal Government believes that citizens under twenty one years of age are not fully developed and consuming alcohol can harm their development, but America has the highest drinking age in the world. Other countries with low drinking ages do not have major health problems concerning alcohol and their young adults, thus proving alcohol is not necessarily unhealthy for developing young adults.
How Alcohol Affects the Brain In today’s society, alcohol (also known as) ethanol is a colorless, flammable liquid that resembles water in a sense (Dictionary.com). It also has a strong odor that can burn the nostrils if inhaled improperly, as well as leave a burning after taste if one chooses to drink it by itself. Unfortunately, alcohol is becoming a necessity in our everyday lives, especially when it comes to young adults. The constant use of alcohol can create an addiction, to the point that one feels they need to consume it in order to feel good. People tend to enjoy the affects they receive when they drink alcohol because they feel more relaxed.
The social action approach, argues that individuals experience the social world by interpreting their actions and interactions with others and the meaning they assign to social phenomena. The starting point for understanding society should be the individual as they are authors of their own ideas. Emphasis should be given to how shared meanings develop and how these influence the way individuals define, act and react to their environment. Opposing the social action approach are the structural theories. Structural theories such as functionalism and Marxism are macro (large scale), and deterministic: they see society as a real thing existing over and above us, shaping our ideas and behaviour – individuals are like puppets, manipulated by society.
These big ideas can be categorized under social thinking, social influence, or social relations. The idea that we construct our social reality falls under social thinking, it describes the natural human urge to explain behavior, by attempting to attribute it to a cause, in order to make it seem orderly, predictable, and controllable (Myers, 2010). According to social psychology our social intuitions are powerful and sometimes perilous, suggesting that the human ability to understand something immediately, molds or influences behavior because it also shapes fears, attitudes, impressions, and relationships (Myers, 2010). It is also believed that social influences shape behavior as does behavior shape social influences. Myers (2010) provides an example as to how behavior is shaped by social influences making humans social creatures, “We speak and think in words we learned from others (Social psychology, p. 7).
Letting younger people drink is giving immature citizens more of the ability to make bad decisions that not only affect themselves but can also be very harmful to others. So in the end the obvious recommendation is to keep the drinking age at 21, because this allows people extra time to let their brains develop both physically and
If the age limit was lowered the alcohol would no longer be a forbidden, therefore it would not be as appealing as it would normally. When it is forbidden, such as right now, it makes teens desire it even more and gives them a sort of satisfaction, either because the person actually sold it to them using a fake ID, or because they are doing something against the law and being disobedient. Either way, being forbidden from something makes it that much more exciting. For example, you are underage but you have acquired a fake id stating you are 18 or 21 when in reality you are 16 or so, when you go to a club you will definitely be more excited that you got in when you really shouldn't have been