With the growing dependency on smartphones, the way teenagers are using these devices, is overwhelmingly, causing them to feel more depressed. They often spend less time with their family and enjoy fewer hobbies. They’re more distracted and likelier to experience a higher level of baseline anxiety – due to their smartphone addiction.
There are of course the traditional pressures with needing to do well at school too – which are partly responsible for this heightened depression. With exam pressures and the range of hormonal changes teenagers experience, they usually turn to certain vices to make themselves feel better. These may include anything from playing video games to taking drugs, cigarettes, and now smartphones.
Over the last centuries, we’ve seen cigarette uptake by teenagers to be remarkably high. Due to these pressures, and the smart marketing that smoking is “cool”, many generations have been lured into smoking from a young age. Thankfully, with vaping, there’s now a healthier more viable alternative.
With vape juice and e-liquid products, teenagers now have a far healthier way to dissipate their woes. The experience of smoking is also a lot more enjoying, due to the range of flavours available. Not to mention, the expenses over the course of a year end up being a lot less. Vaping is also less harmful and toxic. At least, most certainly so, when compared to tobacco cigarettes.
With traditional smoking, an alarming insight has been made by researchers. Goodman and Capitman assessed 8,704 adolescents and found that depressive symptoms did not predict smoking. Instead, smoking predicted subsequent depressive symptoms in their study. Which means that cigarettes only end up adding to the problem of depression – even if they give teenagers the illusion that they feel better.
With the growing number of people enjoying vaping products, the health of nations will be far better in the long term. After all, smoking tobacco consistently, eventually produces dire results. While depression may be growing in teenagers (for a whole variety of reasons), we’re thankful that there’s now a more optimal way for teens to relieve their discomforts in life.
Solving the root of the growing depression crisis will always be primordial – and something that will need to looked into further. As more studies are done, we expect changes to be made to schools to ensure that all their emotional needs are being met. In the meantime, we are glad that teenagers are less enticed by smoking cigarettes – due to the abundance of vapour products now available.