Teen drinking is unfortunately very common in our society today. It is causing stress on our undeveloped minds and putting so many teens in the hospital or even worse, in their grave.
When teen drinking is introduced to a crowd it is easy for many to fall under the peer pressure of others. Most teen’s brains aren't developed enough to make a mature decision about drinking. Often times it's not until they land themselves in the hospital that they realize what they are doing to their brain.
Neuroscientist Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego compared the brain scan of teens that drink heavily with the scans of teens that don't and discovered damaged nerve tissue in the brains of the teens that drank. The researchers believe “this damage negatively affects attention span in boys, and girls' ability to comprehend and interpret visual information.”
I'm going to diagnose this social issue using a functionalism approach. Functionalism is the study of people or groups as a whole working together to create one part. Schools aren’t educating students well enough on the causes of teen drinking. Therefore there is a flaw in the system also known as dysfunctional, when the group is not producing the correct outcome (less underage drinking).
How can we fix this issue in society? Me, still being a teen myself, feel like schools don’t spend enough time educating youth on the consequences of teen drinking. I think we touched on it a bit in 8th grade health class, but I really haven’t heard much about it since. To create a decline in teen alcohol abuse, we need to make a larger awareness in society about the issue. We need to educate teens better and create more after school programs for teens to get involved in to keep their minds focused on other things; more important things like sports and education.
This video says it all...
What about specific educational programs like DARE? Why were they not successful?
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