page_title: Adolescence
section_title: Social influence
hierarchical_section_title: Adolescence / Culture / Legal issues, rights and privileges / Alcohol and illicit drug use / Social influence
caption_attribution_description: English: Night Life in Cork, Ireland, Cork
context_page_description: Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood. Adolescence is usually associated with the teenage years, but its physical, psychological or cultural expressions may begin earlier and end later. For example, puberty now typically begins during preadolescence, particularly in females. Physical growth and cognitive development can extend into the early twenties. Thus, age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have found it difficult to agree upon a precise definition of adolescence.
  A thorough understanding of adolescence in society depends on information from various perspectives, including psychology, biology, history, sociology, education, and anthropology. Within all of these perspectives, adolescence is viewed as a transitional period between childhood and adulthood, whose cultural purpose is the preparation of children for adult roles. It is a period of multiple transitions involving education, training, employment, and unemployment, as well as transitions from one living circumstance to another.
context_section_description: Peer acceptance and social norms gain a significantly greater hand in directing behavior at the onset of adolescence; as such, the alcohol and illegal drug habits of teens tend to be shaped largely by the substance use of friends and other classmates.  In fact, studies suggest that more significantly than actual drug norms, an individual's perception of the illicit drug use by friends and peers is highly associated with his or her own habits in substance use during both middle and high school, a relationship that increases in strength over time. Whereas social influences on alcohol use and marijuana use tend to work directly in the short term, peer and friend norms on smoking cigarettes in middle school have a profound effect on one's own likelihood to smoke cigarettes well into high school. Perhaps the strong correlation between peer influence in middle school and cigarette smoking in high school may be explained by the addictive nature of cigarettes, which could lead many students to continue their smoking habits from middle school into late adolescence.
caption: Irish teenagers over 18 hanging around outside a bar. People under 18 are not allowed to drink outside the home; this is not strictly enforced in Ireland.
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