The differential contributions of teen drinking homophily to new and existing friendships: An empirical assessment of assortative and proximity selection mechanisms

• We model friendship change in 13 schools to study how alcohol use is related to social integration.
• Adolescents prefer new friendships with others who drink similarly.
• Drinking similarity is not related to the longevity of friendships.
• New friendships with other teens who connect them to other similar drinkers are preferred.
• Old friendships with other teens who connect them to other drinkers are less durable.

Alcohol use is pervasive in adolescence. Though most research is concerned with how friends influence drinking, alcohol is also important for connecting teens to one another. Prior studies have not distinguished between new friendship creation, and existing friendship durability, however. We argue that accounting for distinctions in creation–durability processes is critical for understanding the selection mechanisms drawing drinkers into homophilous friendships, and the social integration that results. In order to address these issues, we applied stochastic actor based models of network dynamics to National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data. Adolescents only modestly prefer new friendships with others who drinker similarly, but greatly prefer friends who indirectly connect them to homophilous drinkers. These indirect homophilous drinker relationships are shorter lived, however, and suggest that drinking is a social focus that connects adolescents via proximity, rather than assortativity. These findings suggest that drinking leads to more situational and superficial social integration.