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 Researchers also found that teens more heavily involved in sports
were less likely to smoke tobacco or pot, but more likely to drink,
whereas kids who worked part-time jobs were more likely to smoke and
drink but less likely to use pot.
Unfortunately, greater than average involvement in structured school
and after-school activities did not seem to offer a protective
effect.
The study team expected structured activities to have the strongest
negative relationship to kids’ use of forbidden substances, and
therefore the greatest predictive power, said lead author Kenneth
Lee, a doctoral student in education at the University of
California, Irvine. “But we’re seeing it’s unsupervised time with
peers that’s being the most predictive of substance abuse,” Lee told
Reuters Health by email.
Lee and co-author Deborah Lowe Vandell, an education researcher at
U.C. Irvine, point out in the Journal of Adolescent Health that
other studies have shown unsupervised time with peers and lack of
structure can increase the risk of delinquency and illegal acts.
Most research of this kind, however, tends to look at single
contexts, like sports participation, and also often focuses on ways
to stop kids from using illicit substances, rather than preventing
them from ever starting, Lee said.
“We thought it would be interesting to identify when, where and with
whom adolescents are partaking of substance use. We thought the best
way to do this would be to look at various contexts - especially in
the out-of-school time environment,” Lee said.
The study used data from a National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development study on 766 kids from 10 cities who were enrolled
as infants in 1991. Researchers focused on the teens’ activities at
age 15 and then again at the end of high school.
They found that teens who spent the most unsupervised time with
peers relative to the average amount for the entire group were 39
percent more likely to smoke cigarettes, 47 percent more likely to
drink alcohol and 71 percent more likely to smoke marijuana than
average.
Teens who spent the most time in sports were 19 percent more likely
than average to drink alcohol but less likely to use marijuana. And
those with the most paid employment were 46 percent more likely than
average to use tobacco and 28 percent more likely to drink.
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For all three substances, having used them already by age 15 raised
the odds three- to four-fold of use during the study.
Organized time, such as arts classes at school, religious activities
outside school or community volunteer work had a very modest
protective effect. Kids with the most time in these activities
showed a 7 percent to 18 percent lower than average risk of drinking
or smoking.
Lee noted that the study cannot prove cause and effect and hoped the
results could be repeated and tested across different populations.
“First and foremost, I think it was an interesting way to examine a
topic that we’ve looked at for decades in a slightly new way,” said
Jenn Matheson, a marriage and family therapist in private practice
in Longmont, Colorado, who was not involved in the study.
But Matheson, also an adjunct professor at the University of
Colorado Denver, said parental influence on teen substance abuse
would also be important to consider.
“Seeing parents or other adults in home smoking, using marijuana or
drinking is often a major predictor of whether the kids themselves
will,” said Matheson, adding that parents need to explain the risks
of substance use to their children.
“Parents need to set rules around alcohol, marijuana and tobacco use
among teenagers and there have to be consequences,” she said. “Kids
know a rule without consequences is nothing.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1hPaks5 Journal of Adolescent Health, online
August 23, 2015.
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