A latest study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggests that smoking behavior in children is influenced by junior high friends more than high school friends.
Around 1000 adolescents, aged 11 to 37, participated in the research named Midwestern Prevention Project (MPP), a program for community-based substance abuse.
The researchers initially studied seventh graders in junior high school. After six months they were studied again and annually through 12th grade.
Participants were asked to tell the researcher the number of close friends and parents, or any two important adults they knew who smoked. The researchers also asked them how frequently they smoked. The effects of friends' and parents' smoking were assessed from early to late adolescence in order to identify changes in the influence.
The findings revealed that the impact of both friends' and parents' smoking was significant. However, while friends' influence was generally higher in junior high school than in high school, parental influence remained same between these two periods
"Based on social developmental model research, we thought friends would have more influence on cigarette use during high school than junior high school," says first author Yue Liao, a doctoral student in the department of preventive medicine's Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research (IPR) at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California.
"But what we found was friends have greater influence during junior high school than high school. We think the reason may be that friends' cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age. During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence."
This research supports the observations made by previous studies that in high school friends and other social circles have greater influence on youth behavior than parents.
The findings also said that girls were more influenced than boys by their friends in ninth and 10th grade. But the study witnessed an increase in the number of smoking among boys influenced by their friends in 11th grade and girls were less influenced by their friends and family from 10th to 12th grade.
This is because, Liao explains, girls focus on emotional sharing compared to the shared behavior of boys to maintain their friendships.
"We observed a big dip in friends' effect on smoking behavior from eighth to ninth grade. Thus, the first year of high school represents an opportunity for interventions to counteract peer influence and to continue to target parents as their behavior remains influential through the end of high school," Liao says.
"In addition, teaching students refusal skills during junior high school could be effective in decreasing cigarette use at the beginning of high school. Programs could also promote positive parenting skills to protect children from deviant peer influence."
