“The first anti-smoking movement led by young people in Spain begins,” proclaimed Pepe Otada, director of the Foundation. What really matters (LQDVI), at the conclusion of the presentation of Project Zero, an initiative created by the Alliance of Tobacco-Free Entitiesin which dozens of young people presented their ideas, aimed at achieving a very ambitious challenge: that the youth who reach 18 in 2030 do so ‘free’ of tobacco.
The project, whose seed originated in 2023 after the 9th European Conference on Tobacco or Health, was born with the intention of “giving a voice to young people and making them protagonists in the fight against Tobacco in Spain.”
This is how thousands of students—both high school and university—wanted to know more when they found an advertisement on platforms like Instagram calling on them to lead this initiative. Gemma Crespo, a Business and Technology student at Carlos III, explains that what motivated her to participate was, among other things, having lived experiences with lung cancer in her family: “It is a topic that touches me very closely. Mixed with entrepreneurship, which is what I want to do in my life, it was perfect.”
He assures that it is not an isolated case, since many of the young people with whom he has worked side by side during eleven sessions felt appealed for the same reasons. “When it touches you so closely, it’s like you have the commitment already deep inside of you,” he explains.
Self-help apps or “smoke-free” events
She, along with her colleagues, presented their proposal during the day: an application called BeeZaC which is based on the following desire: that young people develop strategies to prevent substance addiction. “In Spain, around 50,000 people die as a result of tobacco each year. This is a fact that gives food for thought, because young people are not intercepting the risk message. That is why we think that we have to change the paradigm in education,” they stated.
The application, focused on children and adolescents between 10 and 13 years old, “because it is the stage in which beliefs of good and evil and social roles begin to be generated,” would have different training blocks, such as Relaxation or Emotional Control. With this, teachers could plan guided activities and group exercises, and this would be tracked: once they reached 21 consecutive days they would begin to unlock digital rewards.
Another of the 12 teams proposed an “innovative platform” called No Smoke Crewwhich is based on the premise that “quitting smoking is a journey full of challenges” so, through it, you could form friendships with people who share the same goal, share experiences, seek support, and motivate each other, “ offering the necessary resources to face the most complicated temptations”, such as exercises to control anxiety, games, self-help videos, resources to ask for help and contacts with experts, as well as a personal diary where they could record their processes.
For Noa Rey, secretary of the National Committee for the Prevention of Smoking (CNPT) and the Spanish Society of Tobacco Experts (SEDET), the students are “hitting the nail on the head” since “the strength of all the projects is around the community, social networks, and being where young people are.”
We are often focused on the bad things that the tribe contributes. Well, let’s turn it around and make it positive.
Isabel Orbe, General Director of the Spanish Association Against Cancer
“We all know that there are certain ages where what we older people say goes nowhere. In that context, the power of the tribe is very important: for good and for bad. We are often focused on the bad things that the tribe contributes. Well, let’s turn it around and do it positively,” reinforces Isabel Orbe, General Director of the Spanish Association against Cancer, the entity that leads the innovative project together with LQDVI. “It is perfectly demonstrated: healthy leisure, healthy environments, generating activities of trust and security, is what must be achieved,” he emphasizes.
Another idea had precisely this approach as its starting point: that of a future “where social pressure begins to generate a positive impact on young people.” The project BeHealth It would be aimed at creating “exclusive events and experiences for those young people who commit to not smoking.” By attending (free of charge), young people would earn points that could later be used to obtain discounts in other places or businesses.
Anti-smoking messages no longer connect with youth
One of the general sensations of young people is that the anti-tobacco discourse, repeated in a “so alarmist and negative” way, has lost effect. “If alarming messages no longer connect with youth, it is time to innovate. Let’s make anti-smoking content that is really eye-catching.” “We young people do not want to feel singled out, but rather empowered,” said one of the creators of the project. Firewalla “digital outreach community.”
I do not feel that tobacco consumption is decreasing in my generation, but on the contrary because of the vaper issue: those who do not smoke tobacco or vapers are the rare ones. It is important that the messages that youth receive about these issues are thought by other young people.
Gemma Crespo, university student and Project Zero participant
“I don’t feel that tobacco consumption is decreasing in my generation, but on the contrary because of the issue of vapers: those who do not smoke tobacco or vapers are the rare ones. It is important that the messages that youth receive about these issues are thought by other young people because sometimes when we receive campaigns from the administrations, as adults, we do not pay attention to them because we have internalized that it is not the language we speak, that they do not to know how to address us, and when you see a young person talking to you, that’s when the message really sinks in,” explains university student Gemma Crespo.
Marta Martínez Muñoz, sociologist specialized in the social and political universe of childhood and adolescence and co-author of the recently published book Adultocentrism: What do girls and boys think?thinks the same: “I think that in general we have a generational gap in terms of credibility in which adults are not necessarily a lesson in coherence and good work for young people and, in that sense, it seems to me that the fact Having your peers transmit that information can be a good way. As an initiative, I find it extremely interesting.”
The sociologist recalls that we live in a “quite adult-centric” society that does not legitimize the perspectives of young people, and emphasizes that it is important “not only that they feel like leaders of their own generational future, but that they are leaders.” ”That we do not do ‘participation drills’, but that they participate. It is not about giving them a voice, what we have to do is listen to them, because giving a voice means that I, an adult, grant you this voice, but they have the voice: what we have to do is generate respectful, inclusive, and diverse channels , so that they can express themselves,” he points out.
Ignacio Lucero, manager in Cáceres of the AECC and one of the mentors of the projects, states that, now that the ideas have already been presented, the AECC “takes the baton” and will try to transfer the different ideas to the provincial level. “We are going to try to present the young people who have participated to the Health Ministers of the autonomous communities. If there are young people who are not falling into smoking, we must give them a voice, and we believe that youth and associative movements move the world.”
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