Abstract
Smoking prevalence has decreased significantly among US adolescents and young adults in the past 20 years. It is possible that adolescent and young adult smokers were moving from core to peripheral positions in social networks and thus less influential as suggested in previous research on adult smokers. We construct five sample datasets to test these hypotheses but none of them receives much support. When the proportion of smokers is relatively higher in two sample datasets, smokers tended to be at more marginal network positions than nonsmokers, both smokers and nonsmoker could exert peer influence, and the magnitude of peer influence from smokers was even greater than that from nonsmokers. When smoking was less frequent in the other three sample datasets, smokers and nonsmokers were at random network positions and no peer influence on smoking behavior was detected. Therefore, core/periphery network positions are still the key linking smoking prevalence and peer influence among US adolescents and young adults but operating through a different mechanism from their adult counterparts. When scientists design and conduct prevention programs against adolescent and young adult smoking behavior, core/periphery network positions, smoking prevalence, and peer influence should all be taken into consideration.
Highlights
Health researchers, policymakers, experts, and other stakeholders in the field have done a good job in controlling the smoking behavior among US adolescents and young adults
We expected to see adolescent and young adult smokers to be at core of social networks as their adult counterparts [2] when smoking was prevalent, e.g., in sample datasets 1 and 2
Core/periphery network positions, and peer influence among US adolescents and young adults the same token, we supposed smokers to be at periphery of social networks and less influential when there were fewer of them, e.g., in sample datasets 3–5
Summary
Policymakers, experts, and other stakeholders in the field have done a good job in controlling the smoking behavior among US adolescents and young adults. In the past 25 years the smoking prevalence among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in the United States, as shown, is observed to increase at the beginning of 1990s, peak at mid-1990s, and decline significantly in the two decades [1] In their classic work on the association between substance use and social networks, Christakis and Fowler [2] traced 12,067 participants aged 21 years old and above in the Framingham Heart Study from 1971 to 2003. The NetHealth data are publicly accessible via the following URL: http://sites.nd.edu/nethealth/ data-2/
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