Abstract
BackgroundWe evaluated the contributions of teen alcohol use to the formation and continuation of new and existing friendships while in turn estimating the influence of friend drinking on individuals’ regular use and heavy drinking.MethodLongitudinal network analysis was used to assess the mutual influences between teen drinking and social networks among adolescents in two large Add Health schools where full network data was collected three times. Friendship processes were disaggregated into the formation of new friendships and the continuation of existing friendships in a joint model isolating friendship selection and friend influences.ResultsFriends have a modest influence on one another when selection is controlled. Selection is more complicated than prior studies suggest, and is only related to new friendships and not their duration in the largest school. Alcohol use predicts decreasing popularity in some cases, and popularity does not predict alcohol consumption.ConclusionIntervention efforts should continue pursuing strategies that mitigate negative peer influences. The development of socializing opportunities that facilitate relationship opportunities to select on healthy behaviors also appears promising. Future work preventing teen substance use should incorporate longitudinal network assessments to determine whether programs promote protective peer relationships in addition to how treatment effects diffuse through social networks.
Highlights
Friends and peers are key to whether, when, and how much adolescents drink alcohol [1,2,3] and are central to prevention [4,5,6,7]
Alcohol use and drunkenness means are stable over time, and are slightly higher in Sunshine than Jefferson, even though similar proportions of youth report that alcohol is easy to get
The average number of friends nominated in Sunshine decreased from nearly 6 at observation 1 to 3.5 at observation 3, and from 3.6 to fewer than 2 in Jefferson Table 3
Summary
Friends and peers are key to whether, when, and how much adolescents drink alcohol [1,2,3] and are central to prevention [4,5,6,7]. In service to programmatic efforts to reduce teen drinking, researchers have sought to determine the magnitude of friend influence [15] by linking friends’ drinking to individual drinking [16]. One central challenge has been the inherent difficulty in accounting for friend selection, the process by which peers become friends, when estimating friend influence [17,18]. We evaluated the contributions of teen alcohol use to the formation and continuation of new and existing friendships while in turn estimating the influence of friend drinking on individuals’ regular use and heavy drinking
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