Conflicting Perceptions of Risks Related to Nicotine Addiction Among Adolescents

Everyday close to 4,000 adolescents try their first cigarette and 1,000 transition to daily smoking. Over 60% of adolescent daily smokers make quit attempts yet only 12% are successful. There is a pervasive idea among adolescents that they can start smoking and easily quit at any point. This presentation explores this disconnect between the realities of and adolescents’ misperceptions about addiction by utilizing a mixed methods approach that includes surveys (N=365) and interviews (N=41) from adolescents living in Northern California. Adolescents rated perceived risks related to compulsive aspects of addiction (risk of addiction, risk of still being a smoker, and difficulty quitting) if either they or a peer began smoking. Using a mixed effects model, there was a significant difference in how youth perceived these aspects of addiction (p ≤ 0.00), with adolescents assessing risk of addiction as higher than risk of still being a smoker or having difficulty quitting. Interview data were also analyzed for emerging themes related to adolescents’ understanding of addiction. Resulting themes included general uncertainty for how to describe addiction, using family and friends’ experiences to help describe addiction, and describing addiction in terms of how it makes a person feel (both good and bad). These results suggest that addiction is a complicated and ambiguous term. The results suggest that messaging and educational interventions need to consider what aspects of addiction they want to address and should be specific when creating messages about risks of addiction.