Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Students Drink More Living in Coed Dorms

Found this interesting piece... something that parents with teens approaching the college years should keep in mind. For college students, rates of drinking and sexual activity are higher when they live in coed dorms.

In the past 30 years, coed college dormitories have gone from rare to routine, with nearly all students who live on campus now sharing housing with members of the opposite sex.

But a new study suggests that the shift may have had unintended results.

It finds that students in coed dorms are far more likely than those in single-sex dorms to drink alcohol regularly – and nearly 2½ times as likely to drink to excess on a weekly basis.

More than 90% of college dorms today house both sexes, generally separated by floors or building wings, say the study's authors – yet very little research has accompanied the change.

The new findings, they say, suggest that colleges searching for ways to reduce binge drinking and other entrenched behaviors may consider whether the social pressures of coed housing are making matters worse.

These students were more likely to say they'd had a sexual partner in the past year and more likely to think it's all right "for two people to get together for sex and not necessarily expect anything further," the study says.

They were also more likely to say they drink alcohol at least weekly and far more likely to say they drink excessively on a regular basis – 41.5% reported weekly binge drinking. Among students in single-sex housing, the figure was 17.6%.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-11-17-coed17_ST_N.htm

Teens Think Drinking on MySpace, Facebook Is Real

Teenagers spend lots of time on MySpace, Facebook, and other social media sites talking about what they do. Often that talk is about underage drinking, risky sexual activity, and violence. But does it describe their actual activities, or is it just bragging?

About half of teenagers' social media posts refer to drinking, sex, or violence, according to Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That discovery, which was reported earlier this year, left Moreno wondering if all that chatter was reality or trash talk. She's still working on answering that question, but she has found out this: Kids do think that what they see on social media sites is real, and the younger they are, the more they believe it. That's important, because teenagers are powerfully influenced by the behavior of their peers.

"There is good data that if kids think their friends are drinking, they're more likely to drink," Moreno says. "The perception of normal is powerful." Teenagers' behavior also is influenced by seeing behavior on television and hearing about it on the radio and in music. Social media combines those two influences. "Say it's the most popular kid in your school, and they're [pictured] drinking. You might drink to be more like that kid," she says.

Moreno doesn't yet have hard data on how much of the teenage drinking on social media sites is real. She thinks some of it is, some is nonsense, and some is a "gesture of intention"—that is, a teen may be thinking of getting into the drinking scene and is testing the waters by putting up pictures or writing about it. That, she says, is good news for parents who want to know what's up with the kid. It's also a great time to step in.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2009/10/30/teens-think-drinking-on-myspace-facebook-is-real.html

Amphetamine Use In Adolescence May Impair Adult Memory

This item should be of particular interest to parents regarding long term effects for their kids who are taking amphetamines therapeutically to treat conditions such as ADHD.

Rats exposed to high doses of amphetamines at an age that corresponds to the later years of human adolescence display significant memory deficits as adults -- long after the exposure ends, researchers report.

The declines in short-term or "working" memory are most pronounced when the rats are exposed during adolescence, rather than as adults, the researchers found.

"Animals that were given the amphetamine during the adolescent time period were worse at tasks requiring working memory than adult animals that were given the same amount of amphetamine as adults," said psychology professor Joshua Gulley, who led the study with graduate student Jessica Stanis. "This tells us that their working memory capacity has been significantly altered by that pre-exposure to amphetamine."

"Adolescence is a time when the brain is continuing to develop into its mature form, so drug exposure during this critical period could have long-lasting, negative consequences," he said. "Our findings reveal that adolescents are particularly sensitive to the adverse effects of amphetamine on cognitive function and that these effects can persist well after drug use is discontinued."

Gulley and his colleagues will present their findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago.

Source: ScienceDaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091021172655.htm

Teen Attitudes Toward Smoking Linked To Likelihood Of Drinking And Using Drugs

New research by Weill Cornell Medical College researchers looks at the specific ways parents and peers influence teenagers to smoke, drink and use marijuana in combination. Among their findings: attitudes toward smoking influenced teenagers' use of multiple drugs (smoking, drinking and marijuana), and that this manifested itself differently in boys and girls.

For girls, friends were shown to be central. Ambivalent or permissive attitudes within their social group toward smoking were associated with poly-drug use -- defined as two or more of the following behaviors: smoking, drinking and marijuana use. This wasn't the case with boys, whose poly-drug use was instead predicted by the extent to which they perceived smoking to be prevalent in their larger age group -- not just among their friends.

"If a teenager feels smoking is socially acceptable and widely practiced, they are much more likely not only to smoke, but to also drink and possibly use marijuana," says lead author Dr. Jennifer A. Epstein, assistant professor of public health in the Division of Prevention and Health Behavior at Weill Cornell Medical College.

The study also revealed several factors that were the same for boys and girls. When their friends drank alcohol or smoked or when their parents had permissive or ambivalent attitudes toward drinking, both teenage boys and girls were more likely to report poly-drug use. Other major variables included teenagers' inability to refuse drugs and achieve goals through their own efforts.

"A parent's opinion matters. Moms and dads are critical role models and should let their attitudes against drug use be known. It's also important to keep an eye on their child's social circle, since, especially for girls, it's their friends who are so central to influencing their behavior," says Dr. Epstein. "At the same time, parents can do things that reduce their child's risk for using drugs, such as teaching them to set goals and assert themselves."

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930132702.htm

Alcohol Dependence Linked to Age at First Drink

A genetic predisposition to alcohol dependence may kick into gear when kids start drinking at an early age, researchers said.

Heritable influences on alcohol dependence increased with decreasing age-at-first-drink, and were considerably greater in those who reported imbibing before they were 13, Arpana Agrawal, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues reported online in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

"Drinking at an early age may create an environment where individuals can more easily transition from normative to problematic drinking," Agrawal said. "[Or, it] may induce changes in the highly sensitive adolescent brain, which may also modify an individual's subsequent genetic vulnerability to alcohol dependence."

The researchers found that risk for alcohol dependence increased with decreasing age-at-first-drink, and that heritable influences on alcohol dependence were considerably larger in those who reported being under 13 when they first started drinking.

Source: MedPage Today
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/16059

Study: Beers With Friends May Help Teen Girls (?!)

I've been doing some thinking about how to comment on this post. It's regarding a news excerpt that I'd really rather not post at all. But, I feel obligated to post about research that points out both current dangers and positive trends, and studies that fit my convictions as well as those that do not. This is one of those times.

As you can easily decipher by the post title, research done by Purdue University has found that there is some benefit to high school girls who sneak out for some beer occasionally with their friends. My first response is to reject the notion for a whole host of reasons, some of which I'll note below. Still, often research doesn't deal with morality and values, just behavior and effect. So, taken at face value, I can see how the study reached its conclusion.

According to the excerpt below, it seems the study focused on the outcome of high school girls who occasionally sneak a few beers with friends. Researchers found that the girls who do this are less depressed due to the ability to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers."

Okay, again on face value, teen drinking is typically includes a social aspect. Not many occasional teen drinkers are going to be found pounding beers by themselves.

So, couldn't another legitimate conclusion have been reached had the study not focused on beer drinking, but rather the outcomes of teen social interaction, or even other behaviors that foster teen social interaction? In other words, I would argue that teens who get together "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers" are likely to see the same benefits regardless of what they do when they are together.

Perhaps someone will come up with a better analogy, but this is simply what I thought of first. What if the focus of the behavior that resulted in the beneficial teen social interaction had been texting while driving. Teens text a lot today. They are known to text while driving on occasion. If doing so allows them to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers," would it be a good idea even if the result was that teens who text while driving are found to be less depressed? I don't think anyone will do research into this, for the obvious dangers of texting while driving outweigh any potential benefit!

I would argue the same for high school girls sneaking out to have some beers with friends. First, doing so is against the law (generally -- unless there are some very old high school girls.) Call me old fashioned, but this in itself, makes the behavior wrong, no matter what the potential benefit there might be socially. Further, there have been studies which have shown that teen drinking can lead to dangerous consequences, such as driving while drinking, and making it more likely that occasional drinking can lead to heavier drinking, drunkenness, alcoholism, and other at-risk behaviors.

Consequently, in the end, I've concluded in my own mind that the potential dangers of teen drinking far outweigh any potential benefits.

My advice to parents: stay the course in setting clear expectations with your teens regarding drinking. There's a good possibility that your kids will experiment with alcohol before they graduate from high school, but hang in there. Doing what you can to help prevent your kids from drinking is the best course of action.Help your kids find alternative, safer ways to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers." There's no doubt in my mind that kids benefit from healthy social interaction with their peers -- and with a little homework and communication with your teens, you can find better options than drinking beer!

Sneaking an occasional beer with friends could actually be a good thing for teens -- especially girls --according to new research that upends typically negative views on teens and alcohol.

Timothy Owens, a sociology professor at Purdue University in Indiana, found that high school girls who drank once or twice with their friends in the past month were less likely to feel depressed than those who didn't.

"The realistic explanation is that teens drink for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers," Owens says.

"Getting out with their friends and maybe having a few beers can actually have a positive effect on some, especially girls. It can loosen them up, but even more important, it gets them interacting with their peers.

"And because girls especially value building and maintaining social relationships, it seems to have a positive effect on how they feel," he adds.

"We forget a lot of that in our research because most research is oriented toward addressing a problem, rather than looking at the normal experiences of teenagers," Owens says.

"We wanted to look at it open-mindedly."

The research included more than 1,000 high school students, and the results are published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Source: Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Beers+with+friends+help+teen+girls/1972965/story.html

National Study Finds Parents a Big Factor in Teens Drinking, Drug Abuse

Parents be warned: It might not seem like your words and actions have any impact on your teenage child, but they do, at least according to a newest annual survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).

The report found that teens are influenced by their parents' behavior and attitudes. For instance, according to the study, teens who have seen at least one of their parents drunk are more than twice as likely to get drunk in a typical month (and three times as likely to use marijuana and smoke cigarettes) as their peers who haven't seen a parent intoxicated.

The CASA report also found that teens who believe their father is OK with their drinking are two and a half times more likely to get drunk in a typical month as teens who believe that their dad opposes their drinking.

Elizabeth Planet, CASA vice president and director of special projects, said the center wanted more insight into how parental attitudes and behavior affect teen substance use and abuse.

"This is the first time we've asked about parental behaviors," Planet said. "Parents need to understand why some kids use and some don't and what they can do about it."

In other results, the CASA study showed that kids who drink at least once a month get drunk at least once a month, and that those who get drunk at least once a month are 18 times likelier to use marijuana and likelier to associate with teens who abuse other illegal and prescription drugs.

CASA also reports that more than one-third (8.7 million) of teens can get prescription drugs within a day and nearly one in five (4.7 million) can get them within an hour.

Parents are also a factor in this speedy prescription drug procurement, Planet said, as the majority of teens are getting these drugs from home. "The medicine cabinet remains a big source" for prescription drugs, she said.

Planet said the survey's biggest message is that parents need to clearly state, and back up, their disapproval about alcohol and drug abuse.

Source: Connecticut Post
http://www.connpost.com/ci_13209103?source=most_emailed

To read the entire CASA report, click the following link:
http://www.casacolumbia.org/absolutenm/articlefiles/380-2009%20Teen%20Survey%20Report.pdf

Parents Important in Teens' Smoking Risk

Friends have a strong influence over whether teenagers move from experimenting with cigarettes to becoming full-fledged smokers -- but so do parents, a new study finds.

The study, which followed 270 teenagers who had become occasional smokers before high school, found that 58 percent made it a daily habit by 12th grade.

But the likelihood of that happening depended partly on friends and parents, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

"We found that parents play an important role in preventing teens' smoking escalation from experimental to daily smoking," Dr. Min Jung Kim, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said.

When friends or parents smoked, teens were more likely to become daily smokers. On the other hand, they were less likely to become habitual smokers when their parents had a "positive family management" style -- monitoring their comings and goings, doling out reasonable punishments for rule-breaking and rewarding good behavior.

Teens whose parents kept tabs on them and were non-smokers themselves had a 31 percent chance of becoming daily smokers. The odds were 71 percent among teenagers with parents who smoked and were more lax in managing their kids' behavior.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57P43R20090826

More Teens Abuse ADHD Stimulants

Abuse of stimulants prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) -- particularly amphetamines -- is on the rise among teens, researchers say.

Calls to poison centers about teen victims of prescription ADHD drugs jumped 76% between 1998 and 2005, Jennifer Setlik, MD, of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, and colleagues reported online in Pediatrics.

"The sharp increase, out of proportion to other poison center calls and general poison center use, suggests a rising problem with abuse, teen abuse, and particularly teen ADHD stimulant medication abuse," the researchers said. "It may be that abuse is rising, or it may be that increased calls are a result of the escalating severity, perhaps reflecting the shift toward amphetamine use."

Teens typically abuse prescription drugs to relieve pain and anxiety, to aid sleep, and to help concentration, believing they're safer than other drugs, they added.

The 76% jump in calls about ADHD medication abuse among teens was greater than the 59% increase in calls for victims of substance abuse generally, and the 55% increase in calls about teen substance abuse.

Within the ADHD stimulant category, amphetamine/dextroamphetamine-related calls increased 476% over the study period while prescriptions jumped 133% for 13- to 19-year-olds.

Source: Medpage Today
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/ADHD-ADD/15657

Teen Smoking and Binge Drinking Go Hand In Hand

Teens who smoke cigarettes are also more likely to be binge drinkers, and the two risky behaviors should be addressed together, according to Temple University researchers.

The participants were asked how many cigarettes they smoked a day over 30 days, and how many days over a 30 day period they had more than five drinks in a row.

The results showed that white teens were more likely than blacks to engage in either binge drinking or smoking. Both groups were equally likely to participate in both risky behaviors at the same time.

Source: All Headline News
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016051041?Researchers%20Find%20Teen%20Binge%20Drinking%20And%20Smoking%20Go%20Hand%20In%20Hand