OUR PROJECTS

LATEST FINDINGS

Subjective norms as a mediator between exposure to online alcohol and marijuana content and offline use among adolescents

A new study conducted by ReACH Lab Graduate Student Julie V. Cristello, alongside ReACH Lab Director and ACE-Project Co-PI Dr. Elisa Trucco, ACE Project Co-PI Dr. Matthew Sutherland, and Dr. Dana M. Litt, explored the effects that social media had on adolescent substance use. It further explained how while adolescent substance use (SU) may be viewed as normative, SU can quickly escalate leading to consequences. Social media use may increase SU risk, as adolescents now spend over eight hours a day on screen media. Despite using social media to connect with others, adolescents also view depictions of glamorized SU (text or images) by both peers and influential figures. Exposure to online alcohol and marijuana content may impact subjective norms (i.e., injunctive or perceptions of approval and descriptive or perceptions of use) ultimately leading to increased offline SU. Data from a multi-wave project was collected to assess whether subjective norms mediated associations between exposure to alcohol and marijuana content by peers and influential figures on Instagram and Snapchat and offline SU. At Wave 1, participants were 264 adolescents (M_age = 14.91, 51% Female, 86% White, 85% Hispanic/Latino/a/x). Findings suggest that increased exposure to online alcohol and marijuana content was more consistently associated with injunctive norms, or perceptions of approval, than descriptive norms, or perceptions of use. Future research should examine which social media features (e.g., the like button) contribute to increased subjective norms. Overall, findings suggest that social media may strongly convey approval of SU behaviors rather than actual use.

Alexithymia Mediates the Association between Childhood Trauma and Adolescent E-Cigarette Use

A new study conducted by ACE Project Graduate Assistants Benjelene Sutherland and Nilofar Fallah-Sohy, alongside ReACH Lab Director and ACE-Project Co-PI Dr. Elisa Trucco and ACE Project Co-PI Dr. Matthew Sutherland, explored the mediating effects of alexithymia (i.e., difficulties identifying and describing feelings) on the relationship between childhood maltreatment and e-cigarette use. Using data from the ongoing ACE Project, results found that emotional abuse and neglect predicted difficulty describing feelings, which in turn predicted e-cigarette use. Results may indicate that, due to the oftentimes social context of vaping, adolescents who experience difficulty describing feelings may vape to connect with peers. It may also be that the nicotine effects in the brain, which may serve to improve verbalization of emotions, may lead adolescents who are limited in describing their feelings as a result of prior adverse experiences to vape as a way to connect emotionally with others and emotions within themselves.

Pathways to substance use: Examining conduct problems and parenting behaviors from preschool to adolscence

A new study conducted by ReACH Lab Graduate Student Megan M. Hare, alongside Samuel W. Hawes, Michelle Villar, Robert A. Zucker, and ReACH Lab Director Dr. Elisa Trucco, examined how child conduct problems (CP), parenting behaviors, and parents’ own antisocial behavior relate from preschool to adolescence and eventuate in substance use. Participants included 706 youth enrolled in the Michigan Longitudinal Study. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) examined reciprocal associations between parenting practices, parents’ antisocial behavior, and child CP over time (waves 1-4) and how these factors contribute to adolescent alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use (wave 5). At the within-person level, negative parenting and parents’ own antisocial behavior had a strong influence in late childhood/early adolescence. Only child CP emerged as a significant predictor of substance use. Results highlight the importance of early intervention and the potential influence of parenting and child factors throughout development in the prevention of SU.