You just said the teens will do it because they think they'd be cool to their friends. Who do you think they listen the most while they are still teens, their parents or their friends or the school?
Because in some cases teens who do all of those vices change after they get older, some friends get married and work at their father's business, some become successful working in the city. They mature eventually and stop the nonsense. Those who got deeper got worse though. I must depend and who they listen.
Kids listen to their so called
cool friends, they don't listen to their parents. In fact, kids hate to listen to their parents and many of them intentionally do opposite of what would please their parents. 14 years old kids smoke cigarettes man, they drink and take different drugs, they gamble, they do everything bad because for some strange reasons, it means that you are
cool and kids want to be cool, they want to gain attention and respect from their inner circle.
As they grow, they mature but the problem is that many of them are sometimes left with anxiety, depression, addiction and so on. Today you are a cool guy if you are on Prozac. The world has gone crazy. The maturity situation is getting worse in kids who turned adults recently.
World really has gone crazy indeed. These teenagers are being influenced by their peers hence, they are making some things that aren't good for themselves and even worse, these things might lead them to anxiety which will turn out to be depression that might cause to death. I hope that nobody here will have a child that will experience those kind of things.
Nevertheless, their definition of "COOL" seems to be wrong. If they smoke cigarettes or worse, weed, if they drink alcohol until get drunk, if they have large amounts of money, if they are wearing these expensive clothing, they find themselves as "COOL" already. TBH, this is getting worse that the age of kids who are doing these kinds of things are getting younger and younger. Heck, I've also seen kids here in our community that are gambling already (both physical and online), and the range of their ages are between 13-16. I asked them if where they are getting those money and it's from their parents. World really is getting worse, and worse and like you said, it's going crazy.
Well, I also agree with the fact that as they grow older, they might realize any time on their lives that what they did was wrong hence, they will stop it, and change themselves. As they mature, they will realize that what they did was wrong and they will change it.