Teens Who Scroll More Are More Likely to Drink More

Drink Up: You’ve probably scrolled past lots of social media content featuring someone sipping on a refreshing cocktail without giving it a second thought. But a new study suggests that, for younger users, that kind of exposure might be fairly influential. In fact, teens who used social media once or more per hour were more than three times as likely to report recent alcohol use compared to teens who didn’t use social media at all.

The Study: Researchers at Northwell Health used data collected from over 14,000 U.S. high schoolers after the rise of TikTok, which makes this study more current than a lot of earlier research on this topic. The analysis indicated that the more time adolescents spent on social media, the more likely they were to report drinking alcohol in the past 30 days.

The Takeaway: Researchers think frequent scrolling may mean more exposure to alcohol-related content, which could gradually normalize drinking behavior.

Keep in Mind: There’s a clear association here, but correlation is not causation. So researchers say more studies are needed before drawing firm conclusions.