Religious Social Support Protects against Social Risks for Adolescent Substance Use

Abstract

We used a social developmental perspective to identify how prominent social contexts influence substance use during adolescence. Longitudinal data were collected annually from 167 parent-adolescent dyads over four years. We investigated whether parent substance use was related to adolescent substance use directly and indirectly via peer substance use and whether these associations were moderated by religious social support. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicated significant moderated mediation: Greater parent substance use predicted increases in adolescent substance use indirectly via increased peer substance use when adolescent religious social support was low or average, but not high. These results suggest religious social support may protect adolescents against prominent social risks for intergenerational substance use.

How Does Religion Deter Adolescent Risk Behavior?

“…Other longitudinal research has shown that religious social support can moderate adolescent substance use. Specifically, adolescents who believed that their peers used illicit substances refrained from later using these substances themselves, but only if they reported high levels of religious social support (Peviani et al, 2020).…”

Parent-child Relations, Religiousness, and Adolescent Substance Use Disorders

“…Researchers have noted, for example, that adolescents are often socialized by members of their religious group to avoid harmful substances (Smith, 2003). Religious beliefs and group membership also provide moral directives (Pearce, Uecker & Denton, 2019; Smith, 2003); promote social bonds, emotional regulation, and delay discounting (Dougherty et al, 2014); furnish positive role models (Pearce, Uecker & Denton, 2019); teach adolescents how to cope with stressful situations (Soenke, Landau & Greenberg, 2013); provide social support (Peviani, Brieant, Holmes, King-Casas, & Kim-Spoon, 2020); and prepare them to process and manage negative emotions (Asma, 2018). Several of these factors, in turn, are associated with a lower risk of substance use problems (Allen & Lo, 2010; Holmes & Kim-Spoon, 2016).…”