- Teens Feel As Social Outcasts If Not Surrounded By Drinkers
Friday, June 15, 2012
Teenage turmoil currently in the school environment is worth noting. The reason is, teenagers feel like a social outcast if it is not surrounded by teenage drinkers.
Published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the study shows alcohol consumption leads to increased social stress and poor grades, especially among students in schools with tightly-connected friendship cliques and low levels of alcohol abuse.
For their study, Robert Crosnoe, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, Aprile Benner, an assistant professor of human ecology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Barbara Schneider, a professor of sociology and education at Michigan State University, analyzed National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data on 8,271 adolescents from 126 schools. Add Health, which began in 1994, is the largest and most comprehensive survey of health-related behavior among adolescents between grades 7 and 12.
This fact is extremely worrying for parents, this is a major threat to the future of their children. This fact is extremely worrying for parents, this is a major threat to the future of their children. However, the existence of this fact, be an early warning to pay attention in school Teenage and youth in trouble with the school environment.
“This finding doesn’t imply that drinkers would be better off in schools in which peer networks are tightly organized around drinking,” Crosnoe said. “Instead, the results suggest that we need to pay attention to youth in problematic school environments in general but also to those who may have trouble in seemingly positive school environments.”
The researchers, who adjusted statistically for factors such as ethnicity, race, gender, and socioeconomic circumstances, tracked the respondents’ grade point averages and found a direct link between feelings of isolation and declining grades. The difference between drinkers who felt as though they did not fit in socially in school and their peers could equal as much as three tenths of a point in grade point average from year to year.
“In general, adolescents who feel as though they don’t fit in at school often struggle academically, even when capable and even when peers value academic success, because they become more focused on their social circumstances than their social and academic activities,” Crosnoe said.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, has resulted in recommendations for how public schools should address nonacademic dimensions of school life and youth development in attempts to meet academic accountability benchmarks.
“Given that social development is a crucial component of schooling, it’s important to connect these social and emotional experiences of drinking to how teenagers are doing academically,” Crosnoe said.
Editor: authors of threelas