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Teenagers who drink alcohol spend more time on the computer each week on non-school activities, such as social networking and downloading music, compared with teens who don’t drink, a new study finds.
Medical News Today reports that the anonymous survey of 264 teens found those who said they drank in the past month used a computer more hours per week for non-school activities, compared with teens who said they did not drink in the previous month. The study, published in Addictive Behaviors, did not find a link between alcohol use and school-related computer use.
Researcher Dr. Jennifer Epstein of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York said that it seems likely that exposure to online alcohol advertising or alcohol-using peers on social networking sites could reinforce teens’ own drinking. She noted that many parents do not use any form of parental monitoring on their children’s computers.
Published
May 2011