Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff.

There's a real tendency when we're a teenager

to judge our world based upon those we hang out with.

If you have a teenager or if you've ever been a teenager, I'm sure you can remember yourself or your

teenager saying, mom, dad, this is what everyone does. And we know that everyone is

their few friends and they judge their life based upon the people that they're hanging out with.

It's very common and it's really not right or wrong.

It's just what we do as humans. And it's really amazing this force, this

force of how we shape our world and how it works based upon the people that we

hang out with.

Let me use an example to illustrate this.

Here in the US, when kids are in primary school,

that be between the ages of say six and 12,

they're giving a lot of education on the danger of drugs and alcohol.

We call it here Red Ribbon Week and the focus is to really educate our youth on the dangers and the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol.

We spend millions upon millions of dollars on these programs, and yet when our children become teenagers, they again focus on who's in their world and

what is their world doing.

And their world is their friends.

And their friends often are experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

I know it goes through quite a gamut, some become addicted, some die from it, and some just experiment and never do it again.

Some even don't even try.

But I really think that often our level of involvement

...