1,180 students took part in the investigation of the permanent observatory on young people and alcohol carried out in collaboration with the Italian Society of Medicine of adolescence with the adolescence laboratory on the third grade pupils residing in Naples, Milan, Palermo, Rome and Turin.
The investigation, conducted in 2014 with the help of a questionnaire, touched the following topics: the first hiring of alcohol; its frequency of use; the experience of abuse; the habit of alcohol; society as an obstacle factor or facilitating alcohol abuse; images and symbols related to the use of alcohol.
The goal? Define and develop possible intervention strategies to prevent and combat thealcohol abuseso as to empower teenagers to moderate drinking based on the attitudes, perceptions and behaviors of the boys residing in the intensely urbanized city.
And according to the data presented in Milan at the conference “adolescents and alcohol in metropolitan areas, earliness, consumption models, influential factors”, those who taste the first glass in the family, that is, the majority of children, consume alcohol in a much more moderate way than those who start with friends.
To make some numbers, to make their debut with parents was 40% of the sample after 10 years, 38% between 6 and 10 and 8.3% less than six. And these guys said they were abstains in 25.7% of cases, occasional drinkers in 57% and often drinking in 17.3%.
Conversely, those who started with peers or older friends responded not to drink in 12.3% of cases, to occasionally drink in 49% and usually in 38.5%. AND the family attenuation It is even more evident in drunken rate.
Among those who made 13% debut in the family once and 3.9% more than once, while those who started with friends were drunk once in 17.8% of cases, and several times in 12.8%. “Weakening alcohol from the transgressive value by reducing it to a drink that, in appropriate ways and quantities, can be consumed at home with parents prevents teenagers from living a prohibition to be violated” explains Piernicola Garofalo, president of the Italian Society of Medicine of adolescence.
Another interesting result is that girls feel more the conditioning of the group of friends, especially in terms of abuse. Carlo Buzzi, sociologist of the University of Trento and scientific director of the research says: “that in the abuse the behavioral differences observed between the two sexes tend to cancel themselves depends in part on the sample age, 12-14 years old, in which the girls of the girls are likely to be more adult adolescents and, consequently, more accustomed to drinking.
But it also affects the desire to demonstrate one’s emancipation, especially in the face of behaviors, such as drinking, from which escaping can be a source of irrelevant and marginalization ».
But what are the reasons that lead to the use of alcohol? Three main reasons: adapt to the group and have fun, but also forget the problems. Enrico Tempesta, President of the Scientific Laboratory of the Permanent Observatory on young people and alcohol observes: “It is essential to avoid simplistic judgments and solutions, in an area, the adolescent one, in which behaviors are conditioned by contradictions of this growth phase. Therefore also the drunks must be deepened with an analysis not only quantitative, but also qualitative.
So as to better distinguish the temporary expressions of these contradictions, and which often express themselves with other behaviors such as bullying, violence or sports challenges, from the symptoms of a risky evolution associated with individual vulnerability “.
