X-ray of alcohol in adolescence: the higher the level of studies, the more consumption

Carla, a 16-year-old Valencian, drinks when she goes out to “last longer” at parties and be “more uninhibited”; Marta, 15, because she “laughs more” and she is not “so serious”; Alicia, 17, says that “shyness disappears.” They all started between 13 and 14 and, although alcohol in adolescence has been on a clear downward trend for three decades, it is still as normalized as 74% of those between 14 and 18 have drunk at some point and more than half have done so in the last month. Several studies that have been presented this week at the Congress of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE) in Porto have shed more light on this reality. And some have surprised researchers: several parameters suggest that the higher level of education or socioeconomic status of families has been correlated with more consumption and from a younger age.

One of the investigations, based on the Estudes survey that Health carries out every two years among high school adolescents, addressed precocity in consumption. It divided early consumers (below 14, which is the average age of initiation) and later consumers (over 14). Among those who drink, 70% start with less than 14, the girls consume before and more quantity. This study shows that in homes with parents with higher education, consumption tends to be earlier and that children who drink from a very young age miss classes more, but repeat fewer grades. In the absence of delving deeper into the causes, the professor of Public Health at the Complutense University of Madrid Luis Sordo, who presented the work, believes that this may be due to a normalization of the drink: “It gives the impression that it is rare do not drink”.

Early onset is especially worrying due to the health consequences that alcohol has at these stages: the brain of adolescents is especially vulnerable to the effects of alcohol and numerous studies have shown the association between consumption and brain damage. Furthermore, among those who start drinking earlier there is a greater consumption of all other drugs (except tranquilizers), according to the research by Sordo and his collaborators, which has the same limitation as all the data based on Estudes: it only measures the population educated and leaves out those who are not.

“In this universe, it seems that there is a more permissive environment with early use among parents with university education. There is a normalization: I don’t know parents who stop ordering a beer because the children are in front of them and they smoke secretly,” says Sordo.

In the case of Carla, the 16-year-old from Valencia, it is her own parents who often buy her alcohol. “We mostly drink 43 and Red Label liqueur, and shots of cassalla (aniseed) or Jäger.” She explains that she was one of the first to start drinking in her group of friends and was introduced to the rest of her. They mostly did it at home with friends and now, more and more, going out to parties, and more in summer than in winter. Alicia, also 16 years old, lives in the province of Burgos: “I started drinking late, she was in her fourth year of ESO, when she was 15 or so. When you drink you don’t really think about the risks. Although, catching a coma is what people fear the most. I think that drinking can affect you in the long term, but since you don’t see changes in the present, you don’t do anything to stop it. Furthermore, you see that there are many people who have been drinking all their lives and are not affected. So, you say, why not?

When kids arrive at the University, consumption also grows and is significantly higher than in those who do not access higher education, according to another research being carried out by Lorena Botella Juan, a predoctoral researcher in the Area of ​​Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University. of Lion. According to her analysis, they consume more and more intensively. Above all, there are many differences between the patterns of binge eating, which in the last month is 50% among university students, compared to 25% of those who are not.

From what is known from the scientific literature, Botella Juan considers that these differences are mainly due to the fact that university is an ideal time to start using these substances. “Due to the great bombardment of advertising for university parties and discounts, they enter an environment in which they have to socialize, with people they do not know, and this is often combined with leaving the family home… perhaps young people from the population In general, those who are not university students already have these environments created, many are workers and have other socialization dynamics. At the university, intensive patterns are promoted a lot, ”he points out.

A third investigation, still in progress, presented by Irene Martín Turrero, a predoctoral researcher at the University of Alcalá, has studied alcohol sales points around 55 educational centers in Madrid. “Although the results are still preliminary, we are seeing that, despite the fact that in neighborhoods with a lower socioeconomic level there is greater exposure to alcohol, that is, more points of sale, it is not translating into greater consumption; It is the kids from the upper neighborhoods who drink the most. It seems that the variable of the higher level of studies of the parents may have to do with it, ”she points out.

This is in line with the results of another study carried out in central Catalonia, which correlates higher levels of alcohol and other drug consumption with higher socioeconomic status. “It probably has to do with the fact that they are expensive substances that kids with greater purchasing power can afford,” hypothesizes Albert Espelt, a researcher at the University of Vic.

Why do teenagers drink?

In addition to the quantitative investigations, at the SEE congress, to which EL PAÍS has attended at the invitation of the organization, others have been presented that investigated the whys and hows. The main reasons for consuming alcohol coincide with the one expressed by the adolescents mentioned at the beginning of this report. “Fun is the main reason,” explains Sheila Ares, who has studied it in Santiago de Compostela. “They look for popularity, to fit in with the group, equal approval. Unlike what the literature says, they claim not to be conditioned by influencers and social networks, although they may consider that they are not, when in reality they are,” she adds.

Eva, 17 years old and living in Tenerife, assures that alcohol raises her mood: “We make a common purchase in establishments where they never ask us for documentation, or someone buys it and we give them the money. By losing my shame, I feel more confident talking to people I don’t know and, on many occasions, I have made many friends who are now some of the closest I have.”

In addition to leisure and pleasure, drinking is associated with “getting older,” says Lucía Martínez-Manrique, from the Madrid Public Health Association. She has presented a qualitative study on gender issues and alcohol consumption in adolescents in which she has detected a triple risk of consumption in girls: greater physiological vulnerability (drinking affects them more), greater stigma and greater relational vulnerability, that has to do with harassment and sexual relations.

One of the girls who participated, 15 years old, explained it like this: “The women around me have more responsible consumption for safety reasons. What can happen if I lose control and a guy comes to do something to me? When talking about gender, the issue is another move, they don’t have to worry about a guy coming up behind them to do anything to them, or if they are yelled at or touched in the street.”

Despite this, there is an increase in consumption by girls and the gender gap that used to exist is narrowing or, often, reversing, according to Martínez-Manrique. “Some claim to want to drink more to please boys and to be like them, to break stereotypes.”

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