Peer Pressure Dilemma
There’s a new kind of peer pressure on the block: digital peer pressure. CBS News published an article on August 22, 2012 entitled “Survey: ‘Digital peer pressure’ fueling drug, alcohol use in high school students” in which they discussed the results of National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University’s (CASAColumbia) 17th annual back-to-school survey. CASAColumbia found that 75% of the 1,003 surveyed 12- to 17-year olds said that seeing pictures of teenagers partying with alcohol or drugs on Facebook or other social networking sites encourages them to emulate the behavior of the teenagers in the pictures. “This year’s survey reveals a new kind of potent peer pressure – digital peer pressure,” Joseph A. Califano, founder of CASAColumbia, said, “Digital peer pressure moves beyond a child’s friends and the kids they hang out with. It invades the home and a child’s bedroom via the Internet.” Based on the results of this study, it is evident that there is a relationship between exposure to images of teen substance use and a teen’s choice to abuse substances. Our obsession with social networking sites has proven to negatively affect teenagers and is linked to increased substance abuse.
The majority of teenagers has difficulty saying no to their friends and is easily influenced by their surroundings. A teenager whose best friend is a regular drinker or drug user is more likely to participate in such dangerous activities himself. This can be modeled as a prisoner’s dilemma if you look at a system of two friends where each friend can choose to either abuse substances or not abuse substances. Let’s assume for the sake of this model that if Friend A is abusing substances, Friend B is going to experience peer pressure and will abuse substances as well, and if Friend A is not abusing substances, Friend B is not going to experience peer pressure and will not abuse substances as well.
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Friend A |
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Abuse substances |
Don’t abuse substances |
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Friend B |
Abuse substances |
11, 11 |
10, 5 |
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Don’t abuse substances |
5, 10 |
12, 12 |
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If Friend A is abusing substances but Friend B is not abusing substances, then Friend B has an incentive to start abusing substances. Since Friend A is abusing substances, Friend B is going to experience peer pressure and he will want to abuse substances as well because of the higher payoff. This also applies if Friend B is abusing substances but Friend A is not abusing substances. Therefore, both Friends A and B abusing substances is one of two pure strategy Nash equilibria. Since abusing substances is obviously not good for one’s health, Friends A and B would have a higher payoff if they both switched to not abusing substances. Therefore, the situation where both Friends A and B are not abusing substances is another pure strategy Nash equilibria. This conclusion supports the results of the survey that the article discussed. It is clear that the prisoner’s dilemma can be used to model this situation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57498147-10391704/survey-digital-peer-pressure-fueling-drug-alcohol-use-in-high-school-students/
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