Even if they don’t drink, they will at least be exposed to friends and classmates and roommates who do. What makes alcohol more problematic for kids? There’s been a good deal of research on the development of what is now called alcohol use disorder, and its precursors. People blame alcohol use disorders for the family environment, or parenting, but depression and behavior problems, such as antisocial behavior, can also be the cause. Experts also say that teens are more likely to take cool partners when they are more positive about alcohol, and in adolescence, their peers and friends have a greater influence on our behavior than their parents, so their attitudes and behaviors are important.
Dr. Wang was the first author on a study published in 2018 in the journal Development and Psychopathology and her colleagues found that genetic risk of poor serotonin function predicted depression and aggression or antisocialism, and that the conduct issues in turn predicted alcohol use. In another study they found that the serotonin function may be related to a tendency to become impulsive in the face of negative emotion, a trait called negative urgency. It may be, Dr. Wang said, that a common underlying issue for many of these kids is this negative urgency, which manifests itself differently in a young child and in an adolescent. Another study, published in 2018 in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, examined social influences on adolescent alcohol use. Rose Wesche, an assistant professor in the department of human development and family science at Virginia Tech, who was the first author on the study, said that alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood, although it can be very risky, is also “very normative. In the 2018 study, she and her colleagues looked at how the frequency of adolescent drunkenness changed as a function of the frequency of peer drunkenness, in a sample of 1,439 adolescents. They found that the adolescents reported being drunk more frequently when their friends, and their romantic partners’ friends, were drunk more frequently. Adolescents also reported getting drunk more often when their romantic partners had more positive attitudes toward alcohol.
Dr. Wesche says daily youth do not become alcoholics because they have internal, social and environmental risks that make them more vulnerable to excessive and dangerous alcohol use. Knowing some of the risks can help prevent them. Adolescence is a very important time to help you achieve happiness. Adolescents should be assisted in times of difficulty, so parents should continue to talk, ask questions, provide information, and tell their children what standards and values are.