Adolescents and harmful consumptions: what do they know? A scoping review

Introduction Adolescence is highly marked by the experiencing of numerous conducts of experimentation, being the most common the use of legal or illegal substances that most of the times translates to an unweight decision-making, mostly due to peer pressure or for recreative purposes. Objectives To understand the dynamic between adolescents’ harmful consumptions and their sexuality experience. Methods It was developed a scoping review from the following review question: ‘‘do adolescents’ harmful consumptions influence their experience of sexuality?’’ using Joanna Briggs Institute’s Protocol. Alcohol drinking, health literacy, tobacco use, selfinjurious behaviour and sexuality were defined as mesh descriptors, which lead to the following search expression (health literacy OR alcohol drinking AND tobacco use OR selfinjurious behaviour AND sexuality). There were used two data bases, PubMed and ProQuest, and established a few research limiters, such as free full text, a time period since 21/03/2014 up until 21/03/2019 and adolescent (13 to 18) in both data bases. Results Most adolescents consume alcohol, tobacco and drugs in schools by the age of 14/15. The first contact with these substances occurs through their friends. This can be translated not only by the lack of information of adolescents, but also by not knowing where to find it, which suggests a lack of health literacy in this subject and possible influence in decision making, especially in the experience of sexuality. Conclusions The early experience of harmful consumption in adolescence causes problems that can affect health in general and in particular, the expression of sexuality through the adoption of unsafe behaviours. Nurses need to be attentive to the needs of young people to intervene according to their needs, increasing their health literacy.