Binge Drinking In Canada Case Study

Factors Facilitating the rise of binge drinking among teenagers in Canada

For teens, the weekend is a fun time for them to let loose and enjoy a short break from the demands of school. While some partake in harmless activities during this free time, many will indulge in the harms of binge drinking. Middlesex-London Health Unit states that "Researchers have defined binge drinking as 4 or more standard drinks of alcohol for women and 5 or more standard drinks of alcohol for men." This is the universal definition of binge drinking backed up by scientific proof. Drinking relates to the 3 main reasons why young people die which are unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide (Binge Drinking and Associated Health Risk Behaviors Among High School

According to "Peer Pressure Statistics & Facts," the statistic for the number of young adults who consumed alcohol due to peer pressure was more than 75%. Drinking is a social activity, therefore adolescents will most likely never drink on their own (Gibbons et al., 2003; Pomery et al., 2009). One's years as an adolescent are highly stressful, and there's a lot of pressure on them to fit in with their peers. Teens begin to highly value their relationships with their peers during this time period and the importance of the opinions and attention of others are highly increased (Burnett et al., 2011; Nelson et al., 2005; Steinberg, 2008). An article on "Psychology Today" adds that "…brain imaging studies have shown that several areas of the brain make adolescents more sensitive to the rewards of peer relationships than adults" (Albert, Chein, & Steinberg, 2013). They crave social acceptance so they will turn to their peer norms to see how much they should be drinking, how they should behave when they are drinking, and so on. Another quote says that "Indeed, several studies showed that peer norms are predictive of adolescents' willingness to drink (Blanton et al., 1997; Gibbons et al., 2004; Ouellette et al., 1999). With that said, it is clear that there is a strong connection between the influence of others and the teen's willingness to drink. An article on "Drug Rehab Services" talks about how around 40% of Canadian tenth grade student had a consumed alcohol in the past year, show by a survey in 2001. Of those teens, many of them drank at an even younger age which was shown to be some form of peer pressure including from friends, or movie, and music industry influences. It is much easier said than done