Teen Drinking Linked With Increased Recreational Computer Time

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.