Findings from the 2023 Monitoring the Future survey show that teen alcohol use continues to decrease. Yet, while the majority of teens who try alcohol don’t develop a problem, the majority of people with a drinking problem started using as teens. The best way to reduce a young person’s risk is to delay the onset of use.
In 1978, 93% of 12th graders reported ever having used alcohol. This number was down to 80% in 1993, and this year hit a new low of 53%.
The 2023 survey collected data from 7,584 12th graders in 83 schools; 8,494 10th grade students in 76 schools; and 6,240 eighth grade students in a different 76 schools. Schools were selected to provide “a representative cross section” of teens in the contiguous 48 states. Here are some of the 2023 survey’s noteworthy findings.
- The number of abstainers (students who had never used nicotine, alcohol or drugs; a number which the survey has been tracking since 2017) reached a high of 37.5% for 12th graders. For 10th graders, 54.4% reported total abstention from substance use. For eighth graders, this number was 70%.
- The number of students who reported drinking alcohol over the past 12 months was 45.7% for 12th graders, 30.6% for 10th graders and 15.1% for eighth graders. All of these numbers have been on a steady downward trend for decades.
- Following a small uptick in 2020, the number of students who reported having been drunk in the past 12th months also hit record lows: 25.1% for 12th graders, 13.1% for 10th graders and 4.6% for eighth graders.
- The rate at which teens in all three grades disapprove of binge drinking has been, and remains, high.
“We see that past year use in eighth and 10th graders is stable from 2022 and down in 12th graders from 2022 to 2023,” Dr. Maria Rahmandar, medical director of the substance use and prevention program at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told HuffPost. Rahmandar, who was not affiliated with the study, noted that these are encouraging trends.
These declining rates of use in high school seniors “are significant in that they demonstrate the potential lifetime reduction in substance use by delaying the onset of alcohol and other substances,” said Leslie Kimball, executive director of Responsibility.org, an organization funded by alcohol manufacturers dedicated to the prevention of underage drinking and drunk driving.
Kimball credits the steady decline in teens’ alcohol use to “adults who care and who want to keep kids safe.”
“Conversations between parents and kids have increased by over 30% over the past 20 years and in that same period, underage drinking declined by over 50%,” she said.
Research shows that a person’s risk of developing an alcohol use disorder goes up significantly the earlier they begin drinking.
This can be tricky for parents to understand. We may have seen a majority of our own peers using alcohol before high school graduation, or maybe know someone who went on to develop alcohol use disorder.
