Aims: A wide variety of social media platforms exist, each offering tailored solutions to attract specific target audiences based on their social media needs and interests. This diversity may pose a risk factor for the development or perpetuation of harmful behaviors. Research has established a connection between social media use and increased health risk behaviors. This six-wave exploratory longitudinal study investigated the associations between active social media use, hazardous alcohol use, and problem gambling among adult social media users.
Methods: Data were collected via surveys in 6-month intervals, starting in March-April 2021 (T1: N = 1530; Mage = 46.67; SD = 16.42; 50.33% male). Of the T1 respondents, 58.10% participated in T6 (n = 889). Measures included the frequency of use of different social media platforms, the 3-item Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT-C), and the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). Hybrid multilevel regression models were used for analyses.
Results: We found positive within-person effects of weekly Facebook use and between-person effects of weekly use of Facebook, TikTok, and gambling-related online communities on drinking. These results suggest an increase in hazardous alcohol consumption over time among the platforms' active users. Weekly Instagram use had a negative between-person effect on hazardous alcohol use. Individuals using TikTok or gambling communities weekly were more prone to problem gambling compared to non-weekly users.
Conclusions: There are risks involved in the active use of some social media services among adult users. Prevention work, including digital health interventions, should be targeted according to the appropriate user group.
Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic presents the opportunity to learn about solitary drinking as many people were forced to spend time at home. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between solitary drinking and living without other adults on alcohol consumption.
Methods: A longitudinal study with four survey waves (between May and November 2020) obtained seven-day drinking diary data from Australian adults living in New South Wales. In May, a convenience sample of 586 participants (Mage = 35.3, SD = 14.8; 65.3% women) completed the first wave. Participants then completed a survey in June (n = 319, 54.4% response rate), July/August (n = 225, 38.4% response rate), and November (n = 222, 37.9% response rate). Information about alcohol consumption including risky drinking (more than four drinks on one occasion), household structure, solitary drinking, and demographics were collected. We conducted random-effects panel bivariate and multivariable regression analyses predicting the number of standard drinks and risky drinking.
Results: Participants with solitary drinking occasions consumed more and had more risky drinking occasions than participants with no solitary drinking occasions, which was also found to be the case during lockdown. Living without other adults was associated with less consumption and less risky drinking than living with other adults. However, participants who lived without other adults and had frequent solitary drinking occasions (solitary drinking in >50% drinking occasions) reported more consumption than participants without a solitary drinking occasion.
Conclusions: Individuals who consume alcohol alone and live without other adults or spend long periods of time at home may be more at risk of alcohol-related harm.
Introduction: social isolation and forced quarantines during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a steep and persistent rise in alcohol consumption among US adults. While the association between loneliness and drinking is well established, less is known about the impact of social isolation (a known correlate of loneliness) and the interplay between these two variables in relation to drinking.
Methods: we recruited US adults using the MTurk platform for an online survey in early April 2020. The initial survey was followed up with a second wave, 30 days later in mid to late May. Data from the current analyses focus on this second wave of data collection.
Results: we found significant direct effects on heavy drinking for both social isolation (c' = 0.495; P < .01) and loneliness (b = 0.071; P < .05). We also found a significant indirect path from social isolation to heavy drinking through social isolation's impact on elevating loneliness (a = 0.919; P < .001). The indirect effect of social isolation on the composite measure of heavy drinking was 0.0652 (0.919 × 0.071) and was significant at the 0.05 level after bootstrapping estimates of the variance were constructed.
Conclusions: those most isolated early in the pandemic were at increased risk for heavy drinking, in part because their social isolation led to increased loneliness. Post-pandemic research is needed to explore whether the relationships that stemmed from social isolation during the pandemic led to a persistent pattern of behavioral risk that maintained high rates of heavy drinking.
Objective: No studies have examined whether alcohol taxes may be relevant for reducing harms related to pregnant people's drinking.
Method: We examined how beverage-specific ad valorem, volume-based, and sales taxes are associated with outcomes across three data sets. Drinking outcomes came from women of reproductive age in the 1990-2020 US National Alcohol Surveys (N = 11 659 women $le$ 44 years); treatment admissions data came from the 1992-2019 Treatment Episode Data Set: Admissions (N = 1331 state-years; 582 436 pregnant women admitted to treatment); and infant and maternal outcomes came from the 2005-19 Merative Marketscan® database (1 432 979 birthing person-infant dyads). Adjusted analyses for all data sets included year fixed effects, state-year unemployment and poverty, and accounted for clustering by state.
Results: Models yield no robust significant associations between taxes and drinking. Increased spirits ad valorem taxes were robustly associated with lower rates of treatment admissions [adjusted IRR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.91, 0.99]. Increased wine and spirits volume-based taxes were both robustly associated with lower odds of infant morbidities [wine aOR = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.96, 0.99; spirits aOR = 0.99, 95% CI: 0.98, 1.00] and lower odds of severe maternal morbidities [wine aOR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.86, 0.97; spirits aOR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.92, 0.97]. Having an off-premise spirits sales tax was also robustly related to lower odds of severe maternal morbidities [aOR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.64, 0.96].
Conclusions: Results show protective associations between increased wine and spirits volume-based and sales taxes with infant and maternal morbidities. Policies that index tax rates to inflation might yield more public health benefits, including for pregnant people and infants.
Introduction: Acute and chronic alcohol use are well-known risk factors for accidents and injuries, and concurrent psychoactive drug use can increase injury risk further. Phosphatidylethanol (PEth) 16:0/18:1 is a biomarker used to determine alcohol consumption the previous 3-4 weeks. The aim was to investigate the prevalence of chronic alcohol use in trauma patients, as determined by PEth 16:0/18:1 concentrations, and how excessive chronic alcohol use relate to demographic variables, injury mechanisms and drug use.
Setting: Patients received at Norwegian trauma hospitals from March 2019 to February 2020. The study is part of the Impairing Drugs and Alcohol as Risk factors for Traumatic Injuries study.
Methods: All patients aged ≥ 16 years received with trauma team were included in the study. Data on injury date and mechanism, gender and age was registered. Blood samples were analyzed for 22 psychoactive medicinal and illicit drugs, ethanol and phosphatidylethanol 16:0/18:1. Regression analyses were conducted to assess associations between alcohol use and gender, age, injury mechanism and drug use.
Results and conclusion: Of the 4845 patients included in the study, 10% had PEth 16:0/18:1 concentration ≥ 600 nM (~430 ng/mL), indicative of excessive chronic alcohol use. Being male, between 44-61 years old, involved in violence, and testing positive for medicinal drugs was associated with excessive chronic alcohol use.Excessive chronic alcohol use was common among males, middle-aged, patients with violence as injury mechanism and those with medicinal drug use. These findings emphasize the need to detect and treat excessive chronic alcohol use among trauma patients.