Are schools doing enough to curb underage drinking?
It’s often been said in your favourite films, TV series and novels: teenagers have a reputation for rebellion. Not a literal rebellion like those you’d find in 300 (a possible favourite film) but a form of rebellion that culminates in the carrying out of underage activities like those you’d find in Mean Girls (which is the favourite film of possibly everyone in our generation). However, many have questioned why teenagers seek this adrenaline jump (or rather, alcohol kick) given the nature of illegality that is overtly indicated in every 7-eleven, bar or whatever means by which teenagers acquire these goods. To answer this question, interviews have been anonymously conducted with students across Hong Kong, with regards to their intention and how schools fit into the picture.
Many students indicate that they are actually attracted by the novelty of these activities… initially. They feel an imperative to be “cool”- an idea that is perpetuated by pictures posted on social media.
Like adults, students tend to find entertainment in such activities. Taking into consideration the social ‘ritual’ of it all as well as the overwhelming “stress” students feel at school, these activities could serve a more cathartic purpose. Many students appreciate the value in “meeting new people”, and also could do with a relief from school work.
Many cultures actually agree with this. Interviews have indicated a cultural acceptance of such activities, since some students actually admit to their parents what they have done and have built a system of trust between them. Seeing that there is a point at which parents have the power to either punish or allow their children to continue with any given activity, they would more often than not gauge this wrongdoing against their own set of moral values (this is not dissimilar to how perspectives on LGBT rights different from culture to culture). This begs a question: given the context of subjective morality with these activities, are schools within their authority to draw the line? Given the excessive nature of underage activities in Hong Kong, I think yes.
Hong Kong does not just incur the age-old tale of teenage house parties. The pictures seen on Instagram and the answers on Ask.fm introduce the many stages of ‘going out’: getting a fake ID, managing to get into clubs, having just one drink, then eventually… one too many. This systematic approach to drinking and social rituals is developing at a rate that encourages more and younger club-goers every year (SCMP, 2014). It’s not so much a problem with deterrence and regulation as it is a testament to teenagers’ flawed logic. Cases like Hong Kong show how social media is amplifying the effect of peer pressure, allowing itself to cultivate in teenagers’ cognitive logic. The very fact that teenagers are so open to these things on social media implies an unspoken appreciation of such activities (given the control over what is posted, social media is always about whom one wants to be and not necessarily who they actually are). This is a mindset that should not be condoned and that is what a school should try and reprimand.
Schools should try and fade the dimension of naivete associated with these actions so as to give the teenagers back their individual sense of logic. Offering methods to healthily relieve stress or socialise is one way to do so. But the inevitable fact is that the influence of social media is always going to be stronger than a school and their teachers. Teenagers practically breathe Facebook and most are not given enough time with teachers to appreciate their perspective on current social conventions.
Schools thus have a conflict of interest: maintaining faculty authority over students versus encouraging the well-being of their students. Most schools confront underage activities with no tolerance policies, undermining any possible engagement on a case-by-case basis. They prefer an idea of deterrence to condition students to associate these activities with a possible suspension or worse. However, the students already face one aspect of deterrence within the legal system; after finding the guts to ignore this policy, any rules from smaller institutions such as a school would seem less harmful. As upholding faculty authority would not work, schools should thus prioritize the student’s well-being.
In order to do so, schools should do their best to maintain a student-teacher relationship, to include building trust and being given wealth of information. Schools should begin to acknowledge these activities in order to support their students. They should talk to students at risk as well as source external support groups such as Kely so as to clarify the school’s intentions. I think this would be the best way to empower these students in making their own decisions, i.e, to acknowledge its potential backlashes as well as its explicit entertainment benefits.
The fact of the matter is, policies that require a minimum age (i.e, alcohol consumption), are implemented because the government believes that those under that age are incapable of making responsible decisions. In a city where club-going and shisha-doing has become somewhat of a fanatic between its teenagers, it’s been easier and easier to convince others of doing the same thing due to the influence of [frank/honest/explicit] social media sites. With the issue of social media influence in mind as well as the insufficiency of deterrence, I believe that the only way for a school to tackle this problem is to give its students the resources to make individual decisions.
By Miguel Borje
