Teenage Problems including Smoking, Luxury Goods Consumption, Suicide - Term Paper Example

Name: Unit: Course: Lecturer’s name: Date of submission Executive summary We all have to go through the transition from being a child to being an adult. This transition phase happens during the teenage. Being a teenager is fun but it is often coupled with a lot of challenges which if not well managed could get out of hand. This report looks at some of the problems that teenagers face. It specifically looks at smoking, luxury goods consumption, Suicide, eating disorder, under-aged sex behavior, pregnancy, idolization, drug abuse and drinking as the common problem that teenagers face. Introduction When a child grows to become a teenager, they get to a very interesting point in life where they face a lot of internal as well as external problems. It is during this time that these boys and girls are learning about themselves and making decisions on what they want to do with their lives. It is during this development stage that they face a variety of problems that make their lives very stressful. Not only are they in the middle of being both a child and an adult but they are being subjected to pressure from their peers as well as the society to do things differently or know about certain responsibilities as expected of them by the society. Teenage is a stage full of struggles, problems, difficulties and most of all confusion. Many of the problems are well known and include constant fights with parents, peer pressure, studies among other problems. Many of the problems are brought about by reasons such as the stress of completing their studies as per the expectations of their parents, the worry of getting a good job after school, or getting entry into a good college or university, lack off some on to confide in or to console them and above all these, they have to cope with the expectations of their peers or they will be otherwise be seen as being ‘uncool’ and will be out of the cool group. This report will focus on the problems that teenagers face including smoking, luxury goods consumption, Suicide, eating disorder, under-aged sex behavior, pregnancy, idolization, drug abuse and drinking. 1.0 Smoking Research have proved that children who start smoking before the age of 15 will be smokers for the rest of their lives. Teenagers might begin smoking innocently without knowing the repercussions of their actions, but it will be a long-term problem. This is why smoking is bad for teenagers. A cigarette contains more than 4000 chemical compounds of which 40 of them are carcinogens, that is, contain substance that can cause cancer .Therefore, it has adverse effects on the health of teenagers. Smoking is a habit that kills millions of people per year. It is surprisingly being picked up by heaps of teenagers every day. Smoking becomes a growing trend in the young people. The number of young smokers has been increased rapidly particular in high schools and middle school. There are many factors that might lead teenagers to smoke. To begin with, teenagers smoke because they think that by doing so, it makes you looks like a ‘gangster’ and cool in their way. They may also smoke because of the influence of their friends. For example, a teenager has a group of friends who are all smokers. In this case the one who doesn’t smoke will feel weird and feel like they do not belong to this group. As a result of these, they will be forced to start smoking to fit into the group of their peers and gain acceptance to the group. On the other hand, some of the young people start smoking just out of curiosity and they think it’s easy for them to leave it. Because of that, they try to smoke, whether they like it or not, try something new is the basis for their decision. However, most of them won’t quit after the first try, the reality is that it doesn't take long before they become addicted to smoking. Also, the environment in which they grew up in and the smoking behavior of their loved ones play a big role in it as well. Many young people start smoking simply because they grow up in an environment where their parents or grandparents or other relatives smoke. For this reason, they grow up thinking that smoking is not a big deal. After all, their relatives are smoking and for this reason, to them, smoking it just a normal behavior that proves that they are grown up and mature. Other teenagers start smoking as an act of rebellion to against their parents. 2.0 Luxury goods consumption Today’s teenagers have lots of money to spend, and also they have their own thoughts on where and how to spend the money. (Zollo, 1995). Especially teenager girls, they are interested in fashion, style and trends. Therefore, most of them are spending money on some luxury products, such as handbag, clothes and shoes. However, some of them are buying those expensive stuff because of their vanity, or just because they want to feel they are a part of their social circle, it is also a way for them to be accepted by others. Because they can feel much more confident and gain social approval from the way they dress up. Teenagers attempt to get approval from others by what they know about fashion. Therefore, for young girls, shopping is a way of socializing (Hartman and Kiecker, 1991). According to ‘seventeen magazines’, the statistic shows that 75% of teens would choose buying new shoes instead of 50 MP3 songs, and it also shows that girls are interested in clothes more than other entertainments, such as travelling and clubbing. Gossip Girl, one of the American teen dramas, tells a story about privileged young adults’ daily life on Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York. The two main actresses are regularly wear luxury brands such as Chanel, Prada in this show. According to the information from China market research group, the record shows that there are about five million Chinese are watching Gossip girl, and most of them are young girls. Therefore, this series influenced the taste of many Chinese teenagers on fashion. And it increased a large number of young girls started buying luxury products. One of the fashion magazine editors Wang said that: “Some young Chinese girls want to show their privileged social status by dressing in labels, others like wearing designer clothes and dream of meeting their Prince Charming." "More than 50 percent of our customers are young girls who don't earn much but they want to spend a month's salary on a designer bag," said saleswoman Magy Huang. And according to the information on World Luxury Association shows that in 2010, China became the world’s second largest consumption of luxury good country just following Japan. 3.0 Suicide Teenage suicide cases have becomes a major social problem in the world. Research indicates that suicide is the third-leading cause of death after accident and that young people between 15 to 24 years old die by committing suicide. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, suicide is the third leading cause of death among teens in the United States, every year nearly 5,000 American teenagers and young adults kill themselves. 11.7% of Australian males and 9.7% of Australian females have had thoughts of committing suicide. Girls attempt suicides at a rate double that of boys. But the rate of successfully committed suicide is five times as many for boys as compared to girls. Boys tend to use more lethal ways, like jumping from heights or use gun to kill themselves. Girls mostly use poisoning or wrist cutting. Young people commit suicide for many reasons. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, almost all victims of young suicide have a psychological or substance-related disorder at the time of death. Here I will used two factors to explain for why teens choice suicide to end life. One of these factors is social factor; it is an emergency situation happening in fast and teenagers may face. Examples of social factors include: breaking up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, the death of a loved one, emotional isolation, gay teens face to bully or nuclear family. People have no control over social factors; it is a challenge of how much one can take. The second factor is individual or psychological factors. Dr. Richard O’Conner said, some mental disorders like depression are difficult to recognize in young people. This is because sometimes it may look like a normal teenage behavior, such as anger, sadness and isolating themselves. Four students died together by suicide, which is classic collectivity suicide. From this case, other students didn’t want to kill themselves, but the attempted suicide ideal came from the other one. Therefore, teenage suicide behaviors have infectivity. 4.0 Eating Disorder An eating disorder is considered a psychological problem. It is an unhealthy obsession with eating food. The normal eating disorders are linked with body image. Most young people must take drastic measures to lose weight to keep their look. It is more common in girls. The most common teen eating disorders are: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binging eating. Anorexia nervosa is more common to teenagers aged between 15 and 19 teenagers. This condition makes a person to feel like they do not want to eat food. It is like human brain control their body to make them feel like they have lost their appetite and makes it following the order. Bulimia nervosa has two conditions: one, it may make some people to eat too much and they cannot stop this eating habit. The other conditions is that some people who have bulimia nervosa, may always feel hungry, but actually they stomach is full already. When they finish eating they will find some way let food get out of their body such as vomiting. Between 2 and 3% of teens have bulimia nervosa. Binge eating is another disorder where people eat too much or drink too much that they do not want stop since they feel that they do not have a choice. The teenage years are important in development. At this time the body needs good nutrition and enough energy. But some young people care about their body image; they believe they are fat even when one is skinny. Therefore, young people do not eat enough food for a long time or when they eat too much, they will stop eat for few days. Then the teen feels the compulsion to eat again. It is a significant health risk to the developing body. 5.0 Sex of teenagers who are under 18 year In many countries having sex when one is below 18 years is against the law. However, many teenagers still do that when they are under eighteen. This may be out of mere curiosity, or because they are in constant contact with some pornographic materials like erotica, blue movies and sex-related website. When they were children, they were always curious about how babies are made or where they themselves came from. As grow up, if they are not given good sex education in their schools or by their Sunday school teachers or their parents they will try and find out themselves about sex. In most cases, they will get this education from the wrong sources such as sex movies, sex books or pornographic website. This may then prompt them to try out what they have found out from their research. The teenagers who are under the age of eighteen have not developed fully physically and if they start having sex this early it will have bad influence on their health and growth. 6.0 Pregnancy For those of the teenagers who still go ahead and have underage sex, they may end up becoming pregnant. At this age, they are too young to become parents and for this reason, they may not want to keep the babies. They may then decide to go for an abortion which may have adverse effects on their health and their fertility in future. Some even die in the process of abortion. For those who go ahead and have the baies, they affect their education and may be forced to sacrifice their education to take up the roles of parenthood. According to the survey, there are 18 million teenage pregnancies each year all over the world. 7.0 Idolization Many teenagers have particular celebrities and famous people that they admire a lot. This admiration is not bad if it is impacting on the teenage positively. However, in most cases, it is the opposite. They may particularly like those idols who have negative influence on them that they end up ‘worshipping’ everything about that person. They will waste a lot of money buying anything about that idol which may include posters, clothes, jewelry or shoes that have their names on them. They may become so obsessed with these idols that they even end up having conflicts with their parents and friends. Others might even be obsessed with certain cultures such as violence or the fantasy to save the world. These obsessions may be from some books, movies or website they visit. If they are too obsessed with that, they will end up doing some crazy things like committing crimes if their idols support that. The teenagers don’t have a complete outlook on life, so it is easy for them to idolize something. 8.0 Drug abuse and Drink Adolescence is typically a period of experimentation, irrespective of parenting skills and influence. Cannabis is the most common illegal drug used by teenagers, with around out of five teenagers having tried it at least once. Parents typically worry about their child becoming dependent on drugs such as ecstasy, heroin and cocaine. However, the more likely threat to any teenager’s health is the use of drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. There is no way to guarantee your child will never take drugs, but people can reduce the possibility of teenager experiencing drug problems in a number of ways. Young people use drugs for similar reasons that adults do – to change how they feel because they want to feel better or different. Reasons may include: Socializing with friends, peer pressure or the need to feel part of a group Relaxation or fun Boredom Curiosity, experimentation or wanting to take risks To escape from psychological or physiological pain. Alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are the three most commonly used drugs among young people. According to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey of Australians aged 14–19 years, in 2010: 67 per cent had tried alcohol and just over one in five (21.1 per cent) were drinking alcohol on a weekly basis. One in five (21.5 per cent) had tried cannabis. Just fewer than 12 per cent had tried tobacco and just under seven per cent smoked on a daily basis. Just over two per cent had tried amphetamines for non-medical reasons. 4.7 per cent had tried ecstasy. 2.1 per cent had tried inhalants – such as petrol, glue and solvents. 2.1 per cent had tried cocaine. The National Drug Strategy Household Survey of Australians also found that just 0.3 per cent of 14-19 year olds had tried heroin in 2007(statistics for this age group are not available for 2010) Teens don't just drink. They drink to excess. More than 7 percent of eighth graders, 16 percent of sophomores, and 23 percent of seniors report recent binge drinking. Statistics show that the majority of current teen drinkers got drunk in the previous month. That includes 50 percent of the high school sophomores who drink and 65 percent of the high school seniors who drink. Underage drinking is linked to injury and risky behavior. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, about 5,000 kids under 21 die every year as a result of underage drinking from crashes, homicides, and suicides. Teenagers who drink also risk having a long list of other injuries and potential life-long alcohol abuse. Reducing underage drinking can reduce drinking-related harm. 8.1 Brain Development and Alcohol Abuse: Research indicates that the human brain continues to develop into a person's early 20's, and that exposure of the developing brain to alcohol may have long-lasting effects on intellectual capabilities and may increase the likelihood of alcohol addiction. The age when drinking starts affects future drinking problems. For each year that the start of drinking is delayed, the risk of later alcohol dependence is reduced by 14 percent. 8.2 Drinking and Driving: Car crashes are the leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 20. About 1,900 people under 21 die every year from car crashes involving underage drinking. Young people are more susceptible to alcohol-induced impairment of their driving skills. Drinking drivers aged 16 to 20 are twice as likely to be involved in a fatal crash as drinking drivers who are 21 or older. 8.3 Drinking and Sexual Behavior: Current teen drinkers are more than twice more likely to have sexual intercourse within the past three months than teens who don't drink. Higher drinking levels increase the likelihood of sexual activity. Adolescents who drink are more likely to engage in risky sexual activities. 8.4 Other Risks: Teenagers who drink alcohol are more likely than nondrinkers to smoke marijuana, use inhalants, or carry a weapon. Binge drinking substantially increases the likelihood of these activities. Conclusion From the above analysis, we can conclude that indeed teenage is a difficult phase in child development that is made even more difficult by internal and external pressures. Of the leading causes of all the problems analyzed above is peer pressure. The people that a teenager surrounds himself or herself with will greatly determine whether they will be able to overcome these problems or succumb to them. It is important that parents and the society at large take up their roles to help these children to go through this stage smoothly by giving the sex education to reduce the cases of teenage sex and early pregnancies. Parents should also be good role models so that their children can emulate them positively. They should not smoke or drink, and if they have to, they should not do it in front of their children. Guidance and counseling sessions should be conducted for the teenagers to reduce cases of suicide as well as drug abuse. Read More