As any parent knows, the reality of life is such that most people will overindulge in alcohol at one time or another during their teenage years.
However, heavy drinking, and binge-drinking for the sole purpose of getting drunk can be harmful to a teenager’s physical and mental health. For this reason, many experts continue to be alarmed by teenagers’ attitudes towards alcohol consumption.
Many teenagers begin drinking before they are legally allowed to do so. Alcohol can have many negative effects on the body, especially when the body in question is not fully developed. As well as being damaging to health, consumption of alcohol also impairs judgment, which could lead teenagers to do things they normally wouldn’t.
There are more alcohol-related teenage deaths than deaths for all other drugs combined.
Alcohol is unique in its situation because, although it is a drug, and can cause just as much damage to health as illegal drugs, it is socially accepted.
Parents may in fact be relieved that their son or daughter is consuming alcohol, rather than any harder drugs. However, the reality is that alcohol consumption is fraught with danger.
Any problems or strong emotions that a teenager has to deal with can be made worse by alcohol. It is a depressant, so can increase negative or positive feelings, depending on a teenager’s original mood.
As well as being a danger to themselves, teenagers who have been drinking can also be a danger to the communities they inhabit. Loutish or rowdy behavior caused by alcohol, as well as violence, can ruin the atmosphere of a community.
Additionally, most parties that teens go to have alcohol on site, either provided by hosts, or brought in by other teens. Teens, both boy and girls don’t have the experience to know when they’ve had too much to drink, and in many cases, they drink with the sole purpose of getting drunk.
These sort of behaviors is a common cause of things like Date Rape, fighting, and of course drink driving, one of the biggest causes of fatal accidents, can put many people’s lives in danger.
In fact, given that drinking slows reaction speed, as well as being more likely to crash, a drunk person may in fact have a slightly lower chance of getting seriously injured compared to the other driver, because their muscles will not tense and remain rigid during the crash.
The key to reduce teenage alcohol consumption is education. By educating teenagers about the dangers of alcohol consumption, including drink-driving, depression, and other ill-effects to mental, date rape and physical well being, we hopefully may see a reduction in instances of teenage drinking though it is unlikely.
Because of the ease most teenagers have in obtaining alcohol, it can be regarded as the most dangerous drug of all. Parents with the attitude of ‘Well I’d rather have them drink here where I can supervise them.’ is a joke.
I was a teen once upon a time, and every party I ever went too that had alcohol, and they all did – where the alcohol was provided by the parents, never had the parents supervision anyone.
They stayed upstairs, comfortable that they were being responsible because the kids where in the house and not out driving around.
Wake up parents – you can’t do this and expect to change the behavior of your teens.
Amy Cainfield is an published author and a long time Internet Safety advocate and proponent of Parental Control Software that designed to help parents keep their children safe when they go online. She recommends all parents also use the web site Teen Chat Decoder.com to see what their kids are saying online.