Dating in Middle School Linked to Dropouts and Drug Use

Though dating in school is considered pointless, the pressure to date in middle school is overwhelming and the trend is common among teenagers in the U.S.

Oddly enough, the consequences of this phenomenon are not pleasing. According to researchers at the University of Georgia, middle-school dating leads to worse study skills. Those students who date in middle school are four times more likely to drop out of school, and are two times more likely to get addicted to the use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, when compared to those who don't date.

The study was conducted on a group of 624 students who were a part of the Healthy Teens Longitudinal Study. It included students from six school districts in northeast Georgia and was followed for a period of 7 years from sixth to 12^th grade. Each year, the participants were asked to complete a survey stating whether or not they dated. They even had to state the different behaviors they experienced that included use of drugs and alcohol. Their academic details were taken from their teachers.

The two markers of students school success the researchers used included, "High school dropout rates" and "yearly teacher-rated study skills".

Pamela Orpinas, study author and professor in the College of Public Health and head of the Department of Health Promotion and Behavior said in a press statement, "Some students never or hardly ever reported dating from middle to high school, and these students had consistently the best study skills according to their teachers. Other students dated infrequently in middle school but increased the frequency of dating in high school. We also saw a large number of students who reported dating since sixth grade."

Nearly 38 percent of the kids started dating at the measurement points in the study and 22 percent came under the high middle-school dating.

Those with lowest frequency of dating had the best study skills and those with highest dating frequency had the worst study skills.

Those children in the early dating period were twice as likely to use alcohol and drugs.

Further study is needed to identify characteristics that distinguish dating as a healthy developmental process from dating as part of a problem behavior syndrome.

The study was published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.