Comments on: Side-Effect of Anti-Smoking Ads

By: tom

tom — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:22:59 +0000

i was 14 teen once and i smoked i had no peer pressure in fact my friends wanted me to quite but i like it. i like the taste and feeling and i was educated on all the anti smoking propaganda. i did it first and for most to self medicate my depression of living with an alcoholic dad and a schizophrenia mother and two to assert my little freedom. we smokers all know its bad for us in the back of are minds we just think that couldn’t be us. i never thought of it anymore then drinking a cup of coffee.

By: PsychBLOG.co.uk » Health promotion and awareness carnival

PsychBLOG.co.uk » Health promotion and awareness carnival — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:33:21 +0000

[...] 4) Anti-smoking ads: more harm than good? Could anti-smoking campaigns actually be causing more teens to turn to smoking rather than their intended effect? Could teenagers actually see the message behind the adverts and see a clear way to rebel against public opinion and their parents? As we learn about in the AS course (and showed recently in Children see, children do) it seems that children are more influenced by their role models which at their age is likely to be peers. Paek said the data showed middle school students are more likely to be influenced by the perception of what their friends are doing, and that anti-smoking campaigns should be more focused on peer relations. Rather than saying, ‘Don’t smoke,’ it is better to say, ‘Your friends are listening to this message and not smoking. [Quote] [...]

By: myriadin

myriadin — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:13:24 +0000

There is a well-known phenomena in psychology, which goes something like this:

The more energy (attention) you give to a problem, the more it exists.

This doesn’t mean that “we” should ignore the smoking problem. But it does mean that far more care should be taken with the -kind- of attention given to preventing addiction to smoking (and to anything, for that matter). It’s more than clear by now that simply saying “Just Say No” doesn’t work at all. What’s needed is a real understanding of why people smoke in the first place…especially, in this case, why underage people start smoking. The catch-all phrase “peer pressure” just doesn’t cut it. Without this information, most any attempt to stem the tide of addiction will be wasted effort.

By: TechnoLust

TechnoLust — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:53:23 +0000

I know every time I see one of those ads I want to smoke. And I’m in my 20s. It just makes me want to do it just to show them they can’t tell me what to do. Maybe they should put commercials on encouraging… no ORDERING kids to smoke. They’d never touch a cig.

By: GregRogers

GregRogers — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:47:37 +0000

I think it is a fantastic example of how difficult it is to predict the consequences of any particular action or intervention – due to the extremely complex network of variables at work in any given situation. This should be kept in mind, especially any time we think that we know what we are doing.