Your Teen's World

Research studies continue to show that parents do make a difference with how they act, what they do and do not allow their teens to do, how they listen and ask questions, and whether they tell their teens what to do vs. asking them questions that allow teens to work through solutions to problems. While friends become stronger influences on teens as they age, it doesn’t mean that parents are not important or don’t have an influence on teen decision-making.

Where peers fit in:

Friends or peers can influence your teen in two ways.

ACTIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE

There is active social influence, which occurs when a friend explicitly suggests that your teen engage in some behavior (e.g., “Let’s go get drunk.”).

You can talk with your teen about resistance skills for when they experience active social influence. Below are some tips to discuss with your teen.

• Saying no to an offer to drink alcohol can be difficult. Come up with ways ahead of time to decline offers so that saying no is easier when the offer happens.
• Be assertive and clear about your choice to not drink. If you tell your friends you don’t plan on drinking, it will be easier to plan other activities with them.
• Avoid places where drinking takes place. Find alternative activities with friends who also don’t want to drink.
• Have multiple friend groups so you have options to find activities that don’t involve drinking.
• Choose non-alcoholic drinks when you are at parties.

PASSIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Much of the social influences facing your teen are passive, such as when they think everyone is engaging in a behavior and that behavior is an acceptable thing to do. For example, your teen may think that many of their friends drink and that their friends approve of underage drinking.

Part of reducing social pressure is not only helping your teen resist active influence when it occurs, but also helping your teen to put into perspective the fact that not everyone is necessarily engaging in health-risk behaviors or approves of these behaviors. This can help your teen to risk passive social influence. Research shows that most teens overestimate both how much others engage in risky behaviors as well as how approving of these behaviors their peers are. Thankfully, research also shows that these misperceptions can be corrected or reduced!

Social norms are what we think is typical or desirable behavior in a given situation or group. An example could be how much and how often we think other people drink alcohol or how much others approve of drinking alcohol. People’s perception of what is normal around them is very influential. Research has shown that people tend to adjust their behavior to what they understand to be normal behavior around them. A problematic issue with social norms is that people are often inaccurate in understanding what normal or typical behavior is. This may occur from not having all of the information or not being able to observe others at all times. We may decide to conform to what we think others are doing because we believe we have accurate information or we want others to like and accept us.

Not having accurate information about social norms or what is typical or desirable behavior in a given situation or group is called a normative misperception. Teens tend to think that their peers (e.g., close friends, students at their school) engage in more risk behavior then they actually do or are more approving of risk behavior than they actually are. The graphs below compare what teens think other people do (blue bars) and what teens actually report doing (green bars).  Let’s first look at drinking and social media use. Using data from our own research, you can see that in both cases, the blue bars are greater than the green bars, showing that teens overestimate how many days per month their peers drink and how many alcohol-related posts their peers share on social media each week—this is called a normative misperception!

When considering protective behaviors (e.g., seatbelt use), there are also normative misperceptions but in this case teens tend to think that they are more likely to use protective behaviors than their peers do. The graph below uses data from our own work among high school students to compare the percentage of peers that teens perceive to wear seatbelts regularly (blue bar) to the actual percentage of teens who wear seatbelts regularly (green bar).  As you can see, there is a normative misperception such that teens underestimate the protective behavior of their peers.

Overall, these graphs demonstrate that across risk behaviors and protective behaviors, adolescents and young adults tend to overestimate risk behaviors (e.g., alcohol, social media posting) and underestimate protective behaviors (e.g., seatbelts).  These are only a few examples of normative perceptions your teen may hold.  What else might your teen misperceive?

Research has shown that we can correct normative misperceptions and, in turn, reduce risk behavior. Having discussions that highlight two potential discrepancies can lead to a reduced or corrected normative misperception.

• Talk with your teen about how much and how often they drink, and how their behavior relates to what they think others their age do. This conversation can be done with your teen sharing this information with you or just thinking about it on their own. Does your teen think they drink less than their peers do? Does your teen think they drink less often than their peers do? What does your teen make of this information?
• You can also talk with your teen about what they think their peers drink and compare that with local or national drinking norms. Did your teen think their peers drink more than teens actually do? If so, why do your teens have this impression? Click here to get national norms.

There are many ways you could initiate a conversation with your teen regarding normative perceptions. We give a few examples here but consider choosing what you are most comfortable with and what you think will resonate with your teen. You can use any examples below on their own or in combination.

• Consider focusing on a normative point of reference that is important to your teen. Talk with them about what their best or close friends, classmates, students at their school, people their age currently do, or what they think their friends do.
• Ask your teen how important it is to be similar to or fit in with their close friends or classmates, etc.? Having this conversation can help you know what groups to focus on.
• Think about what behavior you want to focus on. Do you want to focus on risk behaviors or protective behaviors? Do you want to discuss multiple behaviors at once to discuss trends or only focus on one behavior at a time?

Check out Module 1 for tips on how to talk with your teen to optimize the outcome of your conversation. Also see Module 3 for how this conversation can be tied into social media and substance use.

Because we know how much peers influence your teen’s behavior, consider stressing the importance of multiple friend groups from an early age. This allows your teen to have more options to reduce forms of active or passive social influence when it comes to alcohol. For example, if one group is going to a party, your teen might have an option to go to the movies with other friends instead.