Teen daters pal up to the bottle
A romantic partner's friends strongly sway alcohol use
By Bruce Bower
Teenage romance, that feverish swamp of intensity and angst, comes with friendly baggage. Pals of a boyfriend or girlfriend strongly influence an adolescent’s alcohol use, for better or worse, a new study finds.
A romantic partner’s friends tend to have different habits and pursuits than a love-struck teen and his or her own social circle, say sociologists Derek Kreager of Pennsylvania State University in University Park and Dana Haynie of Ohio State University. Teens want to be like a boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s friends to strengthen the relationship, so this new set of buddies shapes alcohol use more than do preexisting friends or even a romantic partner, Kreager and Haynie report in the October American Sociological Review.
“School programs interested in reducing teenage alcohol misuse should extend their focus beyond friends to the new social groups that dating creates,” Kreager says.
He and Haynie analyzed data from 449 opposite-sex couples in grades 7 through 12 tracked from 1994 to 1996 in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. In an unpublished study of more than 11,000 Pennsylvania and Iowa teens monitored from 2007 to 2010, the researchers also found that friends of romantic partners influenced alcohol use.