Global trends in the prevalence of alcohol consumption among school-going adolescents aged 12-15 years

Background: Adolescent alcohol consumption is detrimental to multiple facets of health. However, there is a scarcity of data available on time trends in adolescents’ alcohol consumption particularly from non-Western countries and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Thus, we examined the temporal trend of alcohol use in a large representative sample of school-going adolescents aged 12-15 year from 22 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.Methods: Data from the Global School-based Student Health Survey were analyzed. Alcohol consumption referred to consuming alcohol on at least one day in the past 30 days. Crude linear trends of past 30-day alcohol consumption by country was assessed by linear regression models.Results: Data on 135,426 adolescents aged 12-15 year were analyzed [mean (SD) age 13.8 (1.0) years; 52.0% females]. The overall mean prevalence of past 30-day alcohol consumption was 14.1%. Of the 22 countries included in the study, increasing, decreasing, and stable trends were observed in 3, 8, and 11 countries, respectively. Specifically, significant increases were observed in Benin between 2009 (16.1%) and 2016 (38.6%), Myanmar between 2007 (0.9%) and 2016 (3.6%), and Vanuatu between 2011 (7.6%) and 2016 (12.2%). The most drastic decrease was observed in Samoa between 2011 (34.5%) and 2017 (9.8%), but the rate of decrease was modest in most countries. Conclusions: Among school-going adolescents, decreasing trends in alcohol consumption was more common than increasing trends but the rate of decrease was limited in most countries, suggesting that more global action is required to curb adolescent alcohol consumption.