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. 2023 Jul;51(5):718-726.
doi: 10.1177/14034948221075406. Epub 2022 Feb 4.

Alcohol use among adolescents during the first pandemic lockdown in Denmark, May 2020

Signe Skovgaard Hviid  1 , Veronica Pisinger  1 , Sofie Have Hoffman  1 , Johanne Aviaja Rosing  1 , Janne Shurmann Tolstrup  1
Affiliations

Alcohol use among adolescents during the first pandemic lockdown in Denmark, May 2020

Signe Skovgaard Hviid et al. Scand J Public Health. 2023 Jul.

Abstract

Objective: As alcohol is often consumed for social purposes, we aimed to explore how restrictions during the first Danish COVID-19 lockdown affected the alcohol use among adolescents aged 15-20.

Method: In May 2020, 11,596 15- to 20-year-olds from two subpopulations answered a survey regarding their alcohol use and social life, as well as changes to these, during the Danish lockdown. Using survey data from all participants, we performed a multinomial logistic regression to assess the association between determinants of alcohol use and perceived change in alcohol use during the Danish lockdown. We used longitudinal data from one subpopulation (n=1869) to perform negative binomial regressions exploring changes in frequency of alcohol use from 2019 to 2020.

Results: Of all participants, 59% drank less, 75% had fewer in-person social interactions and 56% met more frequently online during lockdown. Girls were more likely than boys to have a perceived decrease in alcohol use during lockdown (odds ratio (OR)=1.41; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.27-1.56). A perceived decrease in in-person social interaction during lockdown was associated with less drinking (OR=2.27; 95% CI 1.98-2.61), while a perceived increase in in-person social interaction during lockdown was associated with more drinking (OR=1.42; 95% CI 1.11-1.82) compared to unchanged drinking behaviour and social interaction.

Conclusions: Adolescents in Denmark drank less during the Danish lockdown than before. Findings indicate that there is a close relationship between in-person social interactions and frequency of drinking. Drinking episodes when meeting online were rare and were not unambiguously associated with changes in drinking during lockdown.

Keywords: COVID-19; Danish; adolescents; alcohol; corona; drinking; lockdown; pandemic; social interaction; virus.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Perceived changes in alcohol use and social interaction stratified by gender. Values are percentages of the given group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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