Pediatrics for Parents

Perceptions of What Friends Think about Smokers Matters

Judy A. Andrews, Ph.D.

As part of an ongoing nine-year longitudinal study funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, we are assessing approximately 1000 children annually. The focus of this research is to identify childhood factors that predict who will begin smoking and using other drugs when they are in middle school or high school.

Starting when children were in the first through the fifth grade, we asked them if they had experimented with cigarettes, if they intended to smoke when they were older, if they thought that smokers were cool, exciting or popular, and if they thought that their friends think that smokers were cool, exciting or popular.

Twenty percent of first grade boys and fifteen percent of first grade girls said that they intended to smoke when older and this percentage increased moderately as the child ageds. We found that the number of children who experimented with cigarettes increased substantially between the 5th grade (elementary school) and the 6th grade (middle school). In the 5th grade, 5.9% of children had experimented with cigarettes. By the time they were in 6th grade, 14.4% of children had experimented with cigarettes. We attempted to identify factors that predict this increase in experimentation between 5th and 6th grade.

In 5th grade, children begin creating their own identities and they begin perceiving themselves as the center of others' thoughts. Their appearance and self-image becomes more important than when they were younger. By 5th grade, children have clear images of the type of teen who smokes. They also have clear images of what they think that their friends' think about smokers. If these images are positive, children are likely to think that if they smoke, others will view them positively. We therefore hypothesized that a child's images of a smoker and their perceptions of their friends' images of smokers will influence their subsequent experimentation with cigarettes.

Children who had positive images of smokers in 5th grade were almost one and one half times more likely to experiment with cigarettes in 6th grade than children who did not have positive images. Children who perceived that their friends had positive images of smokers were almost two times more likely to experiment with cigarettes than children who did not perceive that their friends had positive images of smokers. Further, children who thought their friends had positive images of smokers in 5th grade were four times more likely to have positive images of smokers themselves in 6th grade. Thus, a child's perception of what others think about smokers is a strong predictor of subsequent experimentation. So if children perceive that other children or adults think smokers are cool, they're more likely to try smoking.

Children tend to overestimate friend's activities. Parent's often hear kids saying, "Everyone's doing it" as justification for allowing them to do it. Often, everyone isn't "doing it," but children perceive that most kids are engaging in activities when in actuality only a few are.

Research shows that children overestimate the extent that their friend's use drugs, including the extent that their friend's smoke. We found that children's perceptions of their friend's images of smokers were much more positive than their own images. This finding suggests that children may also overestimate their friend's images. Since perception of friends' images is so important in predicting a child's subsequent experimentation, it is essential that these images are accurate.

Research suggests that the younger children start smoking, the more likely they are to become addicted to cigarettes and the more likely they are to become addicted to other drugs, as well. It is therefore important to prevent kids from trying cigarettes at a young age. One thing parents can do is teach their children to perceive smokers using negative images (e.g., smokers are not cool), starting as early as elementary school. In addition, they can show them that other kids also do not perceive smokers positively.

Dr. Andrews is a Senior Research Scientist at Oregon Research Institute located in Eugene, Oregon. Her email address is Judy@ori.org. This research was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco in Scottsdale, Arizona in 2004.