Kaitlin Seibold
Sociology 1113
Final Paper
1-8-2017
Underage Drinking and Symbolic Interactionism
Underage drinking in the United States has become a societal norm and plays a large role in teenage culture. You see it everywhere in pop culture and real life experiences. In high school it seems like every teenager around you is drinking at some point in your high school career. Reality TV shows and movies seem to shine a light on underage drinking and make it more prevalent in society. The peer pressure of underage drinking starts to intensify and then suddenly before you realize it you have become just like every other teenager in society. You learn right from wrong at a young age and you learn that underage drinking is on the side of what
…show more content…
Teenagers realize the consequences yet they continue to participate in this social behavior. How does the social behavior of underage drinking relate to symbolic interactionism?
To understand what symbolic interactionism is you must first understand who founded the term and how they intended it to be used. George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer are both considered to be founders of symbolic interactionism. Mead is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism but he never published his work on the theory and Blumer was the one to determine what Mead meant by his work an in turn coin the term. Herbert Blumer was George Mead’s student. Blumer was born in 1900 and passed away in 1987. Blumer had three basic principles for symbolic interactionism:
1. Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things.
2. The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society.
3. These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters (Blumer 1969). (OpenStax 2015)
Herbert Blumer is considered the person that developed symbolic interactionism into the theory that it is
…show more content…
but it also occurs all the way across the pond in Europe. One example of Symbolic Interactionism and teen drinking is a crisis that has been happing in Europe with Danish teenagers around the age of 14 to 15. In the scholarly article by Demant and Järvinen about how alcohol is used for social recognition and to symbolize maturity by teenage drinking.
The function of alcohol in this struggle for recognition is so strong that the teenagers who drink very little or not at all are put under considerable pressure. With alcohol as the central marker of maturity – and the parents of the teenagers who drink are described as supporters of this view – teenagers who do not drink come out as potential losers in the status negotiations of the groups. (Demant and Järvinen 2006)
Demant and Järvinen show how the symbol of drinking a lot makes you “socially older” than teenagers that choose to drink less or not at all. “Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theoretical framework and perspective in sociology that addresses how society is created and maintained through repeated interactions among individuals,” is how Carter and Fuller (2016) describe symbolic interactionism. It shows how the repeated interactions of teenager’s underage drinking forms a society where some are “socially older” and some are considered “losers.” That is how this study shows how Symbolic interactionism relates to underage
Today’s teenager are look down upon regarding their behavior and ability to control themselves around alcohol beverage. In the article "Perils of Prohibition," by Elizabeth Whelan argues that the legal age to drink is not set to the appropriate age because moderate drinking for teens will help them be disciplined and actually take control of their life. He hopes to persuade her readers to speak out in favor of reforming the drinking age in the United States. Whelan provided valid argument for teenagers under the age of 21 with disciplined attitude towards alcohol and provides some compelling insights on the success of moderate drinking.
Symbolic interactionism perspective is a theory that is used to study social life. To do this, this theory relies on studying and observing the interactions among people and how they form meanings to things from those interactions. Although, there is much more to this theory than that. Blumer, the man who invented the term symbolic interactionism, presented three premises which help to understand this theory. The first one is, people act a certain way towards things depending on their meaning for that thing. The second premise is that we get meanings from social interaction, so we are taught meanings or we witness them from others. Lastly, the third premise is that meanings are able to change because people have the mental capacity to
Young people have been attracted to alcohol since the early 1820’s, and it “...has rattled authorities around the world for centuries” (Clark 5). Through the 1800’s and into the 1900’s, “...anti-saloon activists helped to pass Prohibition in 1919 by circulating pictures of children sneaking alcohol out of taverns” (Clark 5). Teen drinking, however, climbed quickly after World War II and proceeded in an upward motion up into, “...the early 1970’s…[where there was a] successful movement to give 18-year-olds the right to vote” (Clark 6). And with
“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college
Alcohol is usually sought after within the adolescent community and has been an issue among young people. On July 17th 1984, congress passed The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 which enforces the legal drinking age and purchasing of alcohol in the United States to be twenty-one. Since then, the debated idea of whether or not the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen has been an ongoing topic for decades. Alcoholism affects many people in the United States but promoting it at such young age would not be such a great idea for the youths in today’s society.The drinking age should not be lowered due to the fact that it poses many dangers in the lives of teenaegers especially brain damages, underage drinking has declined since 1984, enforcing alcohol among teenagers may cause an increase in drunk driving and deaths and most importantly, teenagers who start drinking at an early age are more than three times more likely to develop alcohol dependency later on in life than those who started at the legal age of 21 or later.
Underage drinking now classified as illegal triggers a barrier and a limitation to what and how one allows their selves to think and outsmart the laws creating the rebellious underage drinker. For example college, “the 21-year-old drinking age has created a climate in which terms like "binge" and "pregame" have come to describe young peoples ' choices about alcohol; in which the law is habitually and thoughtlessly ignored by adolescents and adults alike; in which colleges and communities across the nation are plagued with out-of-control parties, property damage, and belligerent drunks” a main source (Choose Responsibly). The behavior of a person under the age of 21 is in no doubt the irresponsible crazy typical
The symbolic interaction theory relates how individuals correlate actions and items to symbols they create. This association takes place between humans and the society they live in. Individuals can have the same situation going on, but associate different meaning through symbols of how they view what is going on. It is important to note that individuals will act differently based on the meaning of the interaction for the people or things around them. There is also a huge component of the symbolic interaction theory that takes into consideration how individuals think they are perceived. “In symbolic interactionism, this is known as "reflected appraisals" or "the looking glass self," and refers to our ability to think about how other people will think about us” (Boundless, 2015). This will also govern the symbols that we associate with different groups of people that we will encounter.
Humans act toward people, things, and events on the basis of the meanings they assign to them. Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences. Without language there would be no thought, no sense of self, and no socializing presence of society within the individual. (Socio-cultural tradition)
Alcohol-Related Windows on Simmel’s Social World by William J. Staudenmeier Jr. from the text, Illuminating Social Life, dives into the topic of alcohol and how its role in society can be directly reflected back to Simmel’s work. The text was introduced by explaining how alcohol has been a major influence throughout American history and how it has shaped the interactions of difference cultures, races and ethnicities by characterizing drinking as “conflict between coexisting value structures” (98). Simmel’s ideas about the core differences between dyads and triads was applied in the context of how group interaction significantly changed when the role of alcohol becomes a factor to socializing. Three different group stratifications can be seen
In American culture especially, drinking is seen as a rite of passage or assimilation into adulthood. Young people in many cultures are introduced to drinking early in life, as a normal part of daily living. Whereas in America, drinking at a young age is looked down upon, the reverse is true in societies that maintain the best moderate drinking practices. The idea of a minimum as before someone should be protected from alcohol is alien in China and France. Children learn to drink early in Zambia by taking small quantities when they are sent to buy beer; children in France, Italy, and Spain are routinely given wine as part of a meal or celebration. In the United States, the legal age to drink varies dramatically form others around the world but is still look upon as a step into adulthood. Though attitudes and behaviors vary in different places, drinking can be seen as a routine way of assimilating a youth into their respective culture’s social customs.
Underage drinking is becoming more of a noticeable problem in society, not only with high school students, but also with younger generations. Drinking is all over the television, the radio, and talked about in schools, public places, etc. Alcohol advertisements are more and more appealing to younger generations. If our youth is educated at a younger age, if school policies were stricter, and if clubs and bars cracked down on underage drinking the problem would not be as serious.
When they have the opportunity to drink, they do so in an irresponsible manner because drinking by these youth is seen as a badge of rebellion against authority and a symbol of adulthood. Clearly, this kind of devious attitude does not encourage responsible drinking.
Anyone who is below eighteen years of age is considered as underage and laws in many countries prohibit such a person from consuming alcohol. Alcohol happens to be the most commonly abused drug not only among the youth but also among adults. This paper explores underage drinking, its effects on the society and outlines what can be done to curb it.
Teenagers are America’s greatest natural resource, and they need to be protected from some of the evils that lurk in the world. A subject that needs special attention is the abuse of alcohol by teens. Statistics show that there is a problem currently between teens and alcohol. There are many causes of teenage drinking and effects that prove that drinking is an important issue that needs to be dealt with to preserve American teenagers. Teenage drinking will become worse of a problem if it continues unchecked on its current path to destruction. Alcohol abuse among teenagers in the United States is a plague that is destroying the structure of American society.
Teenagers face many difficult decisions in their lives and have many people in their lives that influence them. One of the major groups that influence teens is their peer group. “Since teenagers are not yet comfortable with themselves, they have a strong need to be accepted by their peers. And to be accepted, they feel they have to be just like their peers” (Ruth Maxwell, p. 24). From Maxwell we learn that teenagers will use alcohol to be accepted by a group. As age progresses the number of alcohol users progress 73 percent of kids that are from the ages of 16-18 are drinkers. In addition, around 90 percent of high school seniors have experienced alcohol at least once in their life.