Question: How many teenagers do copy their friends, say their friends smoke and then they copy them and start smoking as well. I read an article on a boy who started smoking at 11 because his mum and dad both smoked is this kind of what your looking at?

Emily Mattacola answered on 11 Nov 2019:

Yes, really similar! My PhD was in peer support, so the influence our friends have on us as teenagers. One of the main things that happens socially to us as teens is that we stop listening so much to our parents and teachers, and start to think our friends opinions are much more important. This is a totally normal part of growing up and isn’t something bad, but it does mean that when we get a message from our friends to engage in a behaviour that isn’t necessarily good for us, we’re much more likely to do it. That can obviously have bad consequences for our health, like in your example of someone smoking.

There are lots of theories around why this might happen, but one really famous one is social learning theory. Social learning theory argues that we learn from people we look up to, which is often our friends when we’re teenagers. We observe what others are doing, remember it, and copy it. You’re more likely to do this if you think the person you’re watching is similar to you, if you observe the other person being rewarded for the behaviour (this doesn’t have to be a material reward like money, it could be as simple as them being praised for it by others), and the consequences of that behaviour for the other person – if it has positive consequences, you’re more likely to copy. If we apply that idea to your smoking example, then the person taking up smoking might have done so because they look up to and see themselves as similar to their parents, because they saw their mum or dad feeling good as a result of smoking, and they saw smoking as having positive consequences for them.

By understanding why people copy others in this way, we can then apply these same ideas, but to undoing the unhealthy behaviour.