A study suggests sleep problems and energy product use are associated with increased alcohol use in teens, even after controlling for sociodemographics and mental health.
Results show that both sleeping problems and use of energy products are associated with greater risk of alcohol use in teenagers, according to a study conducted by the RAND Corp.
“Our findings suggest that teenagers may be using highly caffeinated energy products to cope with sleep loss, and both sleep problems and energy product use are associated with increased risk of alcohol use,” says lead author Wendy Troxel, PhD, behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corp, in a release.
The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and presented June 10 at SLEEP 2015.
The study group comprised 2,539 racially/ethnically diverse teens. The mean age of the study subjects was 16 and 54.2% was female. The current study was a cross-sectional examination of the association between self-reported measures of trouble sleeping, weekend and weekday total sleep time, and energy product use, and past month alcohol use. They also examined associations separately by race/ethnicity for Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and “other” racial/ethnic categories.
You seem to be implying in your synopsis that sleep loss results in increased use of alcohol and caffeine. Correlation does not imply causation, and this is exactly what the study authors mean when they use the word “associated with” throughout the report. It is just as likely that use of caffeine and alcohol causes sleep problems as it is that sleep problems cause teens to use alcohol & caffeine.
That is a great point. Correlation doesn’t imply causation. There’s no suggestion in this study (and we hope we didn’t imply one!) that one either explains or causes the other, and there could be a third factor that is causal.