Turning Points, Friendship (In)stability, and Substance Use from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

• In Event: Peers and Deviant Behavior

Abstract

Life course criminology suggests that certain turning points, such as getting married, obtaining employment, and graduating high school, offer individuals a chance to knife off their connections to anti-social peers and start anew. However, limited research empirically evaluates whether the friendship instability that follows these changes can directly impact individuals’ risky behavior trajectories. In the current project, we evaluate whether patterns of adolescent friendship maintenance and dissolution after high school graduation can inform individuals’ substance use trajectories by analyzing data on 1,906 young people who participated in 9 waves of the PROSPER study from early adolescence to young adulthood. We find that severing certain ties with high school friends can lead to positive impacts on individuals’ substance use trajectories, however, this relationship varies across substances and according to the prior use reported by individuals. For example, young adults who used marijuana in adolescence and remain in contact with high school friends are significantly more likely to report marijuana use in adulthood than previous users who knife off these connections. Severing high school ties brings fewer benefits for smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. These findings carry implications for improving the long-term impacts of school-based substance use intervention and prevention programs.

Authors

• Cassie McMillan, Northeastern University

• Wade C. Jacobsen, University of Maryland

• Erin Tinney, University of Maryland, College Park

• Nayan Ramirez, California State University, Northridge