Understanding youth's health-compromising behaviors in Germany - An application of the risk-behavior framework

In this article, we analyze German youth 's health-compromising behaviors from the perspective of risk-taking behaviors. As with American youth, peer influence is found to be important not only on smoking and drinking behavior, bur also on the perception of these behaviors as socially appealing (an opposite measure of risk) among German youth. Moreover association with friends who smoke leads to less concern about one's own health and an over-assessment of one 's own control over health behaviors, both of which contribute to other health-compromising behaviors-alcohol consumption, unhealthy nutrition and lack of physical exercise. Concern about one's own health, though directly preventing unhealthy nutrition and low level of physical activity, does not have significant effects on smoking and drinking behavior It reflects the fact that smoking and drinking are not considered by German youth as health threatening behaviors; rather these behaviors are seen as socially appealing and desirable. Implications for health education are discussed in the conclusion.