The following appeared on the Website Science News Today In a recent survey of more than 5 000 adolescents the teens who reported eating the most meals with their families were the least likely to use illegal drugs tobacco or alcohol Family meals were als

In this passage, we are informed that having more frequent family meals keep teens from engaging in bad behaviors. Referring to status of illegal substance usage, grade performance and mental health, the author ascribes less happening of those notorious acts to more family meals of them. Quite reasonable though such explanation appears at first glance, we cannot safely claim that it is the unique one that accounts for the fact presented in the argument. Thus, we need to consider more explanations, which could rival with the one proposed in the argument. To start off, the author attributes less abuse of substance to more frequent family meals. While more get-together with parents might eliminate chances of committing such legal stuffings, the later could have sprung from other reasons as well. First of all, it is likely that respondents in this survey don't tell the truth to avoid further blames from parents. If this is the case, family meal's frequency could have nothing to do with less reporting count of illegal behavior relevant. Consequently, such seeming decline could be explained as stemming from teen's personal motivation for eschewing with excoriation. Second, while less illegal usage could be found for those teens, such diminishing of number could not be exclusively attributable to family impacts. Instead, it is of equal probability that schools of teens have enacted more strict regulation so that they are extremely anxious about the punishments. Once the assertion that family meal or even family impact is the determined factors for less illegal behaviors proves unwarranted, the underlying logic will be weakened. Furthermore, better grade and mental status of teens could lend great support to the author's explanation that more family meals could contribute to teen's wholesome status. However, their improved sanity could be considered not only from family meals, but also presumably from other reasons as well. One possible reason is that they might gradually understand importance of GPA for their latter career, and therefore strived to pave way for their future profession life. Moreover, an alternative account might be that social fashion, which respected personal integrity, casted them great influence and forced them to abandon previous bad behaviors. Without additional information to evaluate which of those cases is true, we cannot decide which explanation could finally lead to the phenomenon mentioned above. It is even likely that all of the aforementioned reasons have conspired to such wholesome changes for teens' behaviors. Last but not least, while we can admit for a moment that more family engagement indeed facilitate their salubrious changes of daily behaviors, it is reckless to claim that having more family meals play such significant role to such extent that such only motivation has reshaped teens' general habits with less bad behaviors. Other factors could readily compete with the one proposed in the argument. Impacts from their good friends with repute, hard requirements for self-esteem from their girlfriends or boyfriends are all possible factors that the previous erratic students have automatically restricted with their previous negative acts, which help themselves establish a better personal imagine. In summary, while family meal or get-together have exerted great influence on teens, in the absence of sufficient information, we cannot establish a causal relationship between it and less illegal behaviors and even improvement of overall integrity status. Current improvement of teens' daily habit reported in the Website Science news Todays is such a case that we should consider more explanations which could rival with the one proposed in the argument.