Adolescent non‐drinkers: Who are they? Social relations, school performance, lifestyle factors and health behaviours

Abstract

Non-drinkers presented more adaptive and healthier behaviours than their drinking peers, but it is difficult to determine whether their health benefits were related to their improved alcohol status or to the more general trend towards adaptation that occurred from 2004 to 2012 among adolescents.

Adolescents drink less: How, who and why? A review of the recent research literature

“…De Looze et al's [3] analyses of HBSC-data on weekly drinking among [11][12][13][14][15] year-olds showed that the onset of the decline occurred later and was generally weaker in Eastern Europe than in other parts of Europe. From 2002 to 2010, the prevalence increased in one country (Croatia), fluctuated or remained stable in seven countries (Austria, Latvia, Portugal, Slovenia, Czechia, Ukraine, Slovenia) and decreased significantly in 20 countries.…”

“…Moreover, data from ESPAD show that the trend started earlier in Iceland than in other European countries [65]. National surveys of all Icelandic [14][15][16] year-olds provide additional evidence of a sizable and steady decline since the late 1990s [20,34].…”

“…The HBSC study of [11][12][13][14][15] year-olds showed that the overall decline in weekly drinking from 2002 to 2010 did not vary by age [3]. According to studies that include older age groups, the downward trend has mainly or exclusively been seen in early to mid-teen youth [3,15,18,21,32,42,48,49,55,59].…”

Exploring the changing landscape of youth drinking—we are still drawing the map

“…Non‐drinking may be self‐reinforcing—Larm et al . found that non‐drinkers were better off in several aspects when compared to drinkers; they were healthier, had less mental health problems and did better in school.…”

“…The changes in youth drinking seem to have been concurrent with changes in parenting practices; six studies in this special issue identify increases in parental supervision and parents’ attitudes towards youth drinking becoming more restrictive . Larm et al .…”