Examining Adolescent Substance Abuse: Factors and Correlates

Abstract

Adolescent substance abuse can have serious, long-lasting consequences for one's physical and mental health as well as one's ability to learn, interact with others and pursue future opportunities. The most significant worldwide public health issue is substance misuse, which first appears in teenagers. The study explores the relationship between Substance abuse and Parenting style, peer pressure, social media engagement, personality traits, and illegal activity among adolescents. A quantitative study design and stratified sampling technique was used in the research. Five instruments were used in research and data was collected from 150 participants with the mean age (M=16.340, SD=2.084) and all participants were adolescents. The participants were recruited in various government and private drug rehabilitation centers in Karachi, Pakistan. The results show that Parenting style and peers pressure has no correlate with substances abuse Authoritative (r=.020, p>0.05), Authoritarian (r=.099, p>0.05) and Permissive (r=-.115, p>0.05) peer pressure (r=126, p>0.05). whereas substance abuse shows negative correlate with social media engagement among adolescents and (r=-129, p>0.05).Personality traits has no correlate with substance abuse Extraversion (r=.044, p>0.05), Agreeableness  (r=.010, p>0.05), Conscientiousness (r=001, p>0.05), Neuroticism (r=-023, p>0.05), Openness (r=-.062, p>0.05) moreover Illegal activity found to be  positively correlate with substances abuse and (r=.037, p<0.05). This finding will help to understand about substance abuse among adolescents.