Texting and smoking and unsafe sex and–oh! binge drinking!–go hand in hand. What causes what?
“In short, teens who [text while driving] engage in a multitude of other risky behaviors.”
So concluded Andrew Adesman, senior investigator of a study conducted by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported in June’s Pediatrics. Adesman, who is chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, along with the researchers, fail to link cause and effect: that drinking causes or exacerbates all of the other risky behaviors they studied. While not a myth per se (although some might call it a “half-truth” because it leaves out crucial information), the omission of underlying cause makes the study pointless—unless one understands addiction.
The study found that teens who text while driving are also much more likely to engage in other dangerous driving habits—“including failing to buckle up and driving after they have been drinking.” They reported that “teens who text while driving are also more likely to binge drink (five or more drinks), use tobacco, use pot, use indoor tanning devices and have unsafe sex.” The implication is either texting causes all of the other risk-taking behaviors, or such behaviors go together for no particular reason and have no identifiable underlying cause.
Incredibly, the researchers failed to connect the dots even though they also found that “teens who texted while driving were five times more likely than those who didn’t to drive when they had been drinking alcohol.”
CDC Director Thomas Frieden noted it’s not surprising that kids who take such risks in one area are more likely to take risks in others. But what causes the excessive risk-taking in the first place? Does texting increase the odds of failing to buckle up? Does speeding up the odds that one might text? Does having unsafe sex cause one to increase their use of indoor tanning devices? Neither he nor the study drew any connections. They didn’t point to alcoholism as the underlying cause of the excessive risk-taking behaviors studied.
Recovering alcoholics tell us they knew they were alcoholics—“for the first time in my life, I felt powerful”—after their first drinking episode, at an average age of 13. By the time they are driving, 90% of those who will eventually trigger alcoholism have already done so. They were drinking addictively before they could drink and drive or drive, text and fail to buckle up.
Alcoholism causes egomania, which usually increases the sense of invincibility many teens already have (or, one might suggest, to decrease the odds that the sense of invincibility fails to dissipate over time). This sense of invincibility impels addicts to take inordinate risks. The resulting behaviors include texting while driving far more frequently than do non-addicts, as well as smoking, excessive use of indoor tanning beds, having unsafe sex and even failing to buckle up.
It’s crucial to get cause and effect right because once alcoholism has begun, no amount of cajoling, reason or education will cause a change in behaviors. Only by addressing alcoholism—the underlying cause of most misbehaviors—and getting addicts clean and sober can we hope to reduce excessive risk-taking. This is true even for teens.