Young people make better choices

Take a moment and think about how you’ve made change happen in your life. The first step is to eliminate perceptions holding you back, and once you embrace the reality of the situation then you can make a decision to motivate positive change in your life. This is the concept behind the Social Norms approach of positive message promotion, which aims to normalize people’s perceptions of behavior and attitudes.

Youth behaviors and attitudes are influenced by perceptions of what they believe to be the “norm”. The problem is most people misperceive what their peers are doing and are more likely to engage in negative behaviors because of the perception that “everyone is doing it”. For example, if someone believes most of their peers are drinking alcohol, than they are more likely to drink alcohol themselves instead of making a decision about what is right for them.

The goal of a social norms intervention is to show youth what the “norm” behaviors actually are based on what the young people said. Accurate perceptions are shown to promote healthy behaviors. The ERYC administers a biannual survey to all public high school students in Eagle County to find out what they’re feeling and doing. This data is then evaluated, and The ERYC markets the positive norms (behaviors and attitudes) of youth with the You Told Us campaign.

Messages via posters are put up in the high schools, throughout the community, as advertisements in the newspaper, on the radio, and featured in movie slides. The more the high school students see the messages, the more likely their perceptions start to change about what everyone is actually doing.

To find out more about social norms, which is a best practice approach based on science and research, please visit “The National Social Norms Institute” at www.socialnorms.org. To learn about successful interventions and see other examples, visit “Most of Us” at www.mostofus.org.