Purpose

The aim of this article is to study how Covid-19 stress-related factors and changes in social engagement during the pandemic contributed to changes in alcohol use among first-year college students.

Methods

We used data on 439 first-year students (ages 18–20) at a large public university in North Carolina both before (October 2019 to February 2020) and after (June/July 2020) the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. We evaluated changes in prevalence and days of alcohol use and binge drinking. We estimated the associations between Covid-19 stressors/stress (work reductions, health, distanced learning difficulties, perceived stress) and social engagement (perceived social support from friends, social isolation, and social distancing) after controlling for students’ pre-pandemic alcohol use, social engagement, and demographic characteristics.

Results

We found that the prevalence of alcohol use and binge drinking in the past 30 days decreased from 54.2% to 46.0% and 35.5% to 24.6%, respectively; days of use did not change significantly. The decreases were primarily associated with reductions in social engagement. Among Covid-19 stressors/stress, only challenges with distance learning were associated with higher alcohol use among those who were already drinking prior to the pandemic. Drinking increased more among those who endorsed using substances to cope, while drinking was not associated with resilient coping.

Conclusions

Unless new drinking habits are formed during the pandemic, decreases in alcohol use among college students are unlikely to be sustained as social distancing measures are removed. Colleges may want to target interventions to students who have responded to stress with increased alcohol use, partly by addressing difficulties with distance learning.

中文翻译：

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Covid-19 大流行期间社会和压力相关因素对大学生饮酒的影响

目的

本文的目的是研究 Covid-19 压力相关因素和大流行期间社会参与的变化如何影响一年级大学生饮酒的变化。

方法

我们使用了北卡罗来纳州一所大型公立大学在 Covid-19 大流行之前（2019 年 10 月至 2020 年 2 月）和之后（2020 年 6 月/7 月）的 439 名一年级学生（18-20 岁）的数据。我们评估了饮酒和酗酒的流行率和天数的变化。在控制了学生大流行前的酒精含量后，我们估计了 Covid-19 压力源/压力（工作减少、健康、远程学习困难、感知压力）与社交参与（感知到的来自朋友的社会支持、社交隔离和社交距离）之间的关联使用、社会参与和人口特征。

结果

我们发现，过去30天内饮酒和暴饮的患病率分别从54.2%下降到46.0%，从35.5%下降到24.6%；使用天数没有明显变化。下降主要与社交参与度的减少有关。在 Covid-19 压力源/压力中，只有远程学习的挑战与大流行前已经饮酒的人的饮酒量增加有关。在那些支持使用药物来应对的人中，饮酒量增加更多，而饮酒与弹性应对无关。

结论

除非在大流行期间形成新的饮酒习惯，否则随着社交距离措施的取消，大学生饮酒量的减少不太可能持续。大学可能希望针对那些因增加饮酒而应对压力的学生进行干预，部分方法是解决远程学习的困难。