This chart has been floating around, and I find it interesting to speculate about the reason for this shift.
Have attitudes changed this much? Do teens have less independence or fewer places to go to do these things? Are parents more involved in teens’ lives? Was vaping excluded in the study?
This is from 2015 showing rates of smoking in adults:
So I’m guessing there are lots of reasons we’re seeing similar patterns in high school seniors. The most obvious from the data above is that they’re mirroring the behavior of adults that are largely eschewing smoking. Smoking/drinking/drugs were or are also acts of rebellion and experimentation in the youth. I’m guessing those definitions are changing too. Rebellion may be taking on slightly different forms and much of the taboo of smoking/drinking/drugs is being removed if the adults around them are also using less or none at all.
Except a lot of these things don’t include vaping. That has skyrocketed in kids and iirc vaping rates are higher in kids than smoking rates were when I was in high school
I agree. I’m 41 and was a smoker for like 16 years starting in high school. I saw cool adults smoking as a kid and that’s that. I still vape some, but I strictly don’t do it in front of the kids in my life. I don’t want them to think it’s cool.