DAILY BEAST Column: An upcoming study shows that the more you engage in binge drinking, the higher your social status. But that doesn’t mean you should start hitting the bottle…
Dr. Tara Dumas, the lead author behind the study, recruited 357 young adults between May and July 2012, en route to bars in downtown Ontario with their friends. Using three different surveys, she and her three colleagues analyzed how much heavy drinking episodes—both the number of drinks consumed and frequency of them—played into status. Their answer backed up Dumas hypothesis: that more frequent drinking—consuming a larger number of drinks during one’s episode—and engaging in more heavy drinking occasions in the past year would be associated with higher peer group status.
“Research already demonstrates that young people use alcohol for social means…as a way of fitting in,” Dumas tells The Daily Beast. “Our research further suggests that young people might be gaining social status benefits via their heavy drinking, or that higher social status might encourage riskier drinking practices among young people.”… (more)
EDITOR: The last part of the above paragraph is why we put the question mark behind the articles heading. Rather than drinking making people more socially acceptable, people who are inherently more socially acceptable may be inclined to drink excessively.
Very few people go binge drinking by themselves!
Binge drinking is common on today’s campuses and are a threat to student safety and well being, not just from physical accidents but through greater likelihood of rape or charges of rape.
For more on the subject, see “Root problem isn’t rape, it’s binge drinking”
