The silver lining of no Spring Break

No gatherings over 1,000… wait, over 500… I mean, over 250. Make that 10.

Regardless the number, Spring Break has officially been cancelled for college students around the world. The question is… is this really a bad thing?

In the midst of the insanity, I stumbled across an interesting study about Spring Break… and how many hangovers young people might actually avoid this year.

For many college students Spring Break is almost synonymous with the word “party!” How many college students exactly? The internet is full of “uncited” statistics (don’t get me started on uncited studies, articles like this that link another article as a source, who might even link another articles, but if you keep clicking you’ll actually never find the actual study, because there wasn’t one… sigh), but here’s a couple interesting factual studies:

This National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism study reveals 42% of college students get drunk during spring break.

But how much more is that than normal?

Glad you asked. The same organization did a study observing some of the peek drinking times throughout the year and found a “distinct fluctuation in students’ alcohol consumption.” In fact, alcohol consumption during the summer dropped 29% when students were home and away from campus (like they are now, thanks to the Coronavirus). When they return to school in the fall, alcohol consumption spikes 31 percent, then again another 18 percent around spring break.

That’s a lot of drunk college students.

Interesting side facts:

• 82 percent of students who experienced unwanted sexual intercourse were intoxicated at the time.
• 72 percent of respondents to a Harvard CAS study who reported being raped were intoxicated at the time.

So what are you going to do if your kids are home right now? (having just posted an article on TheSource4Parents.com with 7 ideas for families stuck at home, and another article on TheSource4YM.com with 15 ideas to build faith and community during this time)