Family dinners may reduce substance-use risk for many adolescents

Regular bonding over meals may help prevent kids from using alcohol, cannabis, and e-cigarettes, but those with significant stress or trauma need additional support

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A new study from researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine finds that regular family dinners may help prevent substance use for a majority of U.S. adolescents, but suggests that the strategy is not effective for youth who have experienced significant childhood adversity.

The findings provide important insights for practitioners looking to help families prevent substance use, as well as for researchers aiming to develop interventions that better account for adolescents’ unique experiences.

For the study, published February 5th in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, researchers analyzed online survey data from 2,090 U.S. adolescents ages 12 to 17 and their parents. Participants from around the country were asked about the quality of their family meals—including communication, enjoyment, digital distractions, and logistics —as well as adolescents’ alcohol, e-cigarette, and cannabis use in the previous six months.

The researchers then examined how these patterns differed based on adolescents’ experiences of household stressors and exposure to violence, as reported by both the children and parents. Instead of counting each adverse experience equally, the researchers created a weighted score based on how strongly the different experiences are linked to substance use in prior research and this national sample.

Higher family dinner quality was associated with a 22% to 34% lower prevalence of substance use among adolescents who had either no or low to moderate levels of adverse childhood experiences.

“These findings build on what we already knew about the value of family meals as a practical and widely accessible way to reduce the risk of adolescent substance use,” said Margie Skeer, the study’s lead author, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the School of Medicine.

“Routinely connecting over meals—which can be as simple as a caregiver and child standing at a counter having a snack together—can help establish open and routine parent-child communication and parental monitoring to support more positive long-term outcomes for the majority of children,” added Skeer. “It’s not about the food, timing, or setting; it’s the parent-child relationship and interactions it helps cultivate that matter.”

Adverse childhood experiences reported by participants in the study included parents being divorced; a family member being diagnosed with a substance-use disorder; someone in the family having a mental-health disorder; the adolescent witnessing violence; the adolescent often being teased about their weight; a parent using non-prescribed drugs daily; or the adolescent experiencing sexual or physical dating violence.

The study found that family meals offered little protection for adolescents whose adversity score reached the equivalent of four or more experiences—a population that encompasses nearly one in five U.S. high school students younger than 18, according to a study of the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey data.

“While our research suggests that adolescents who have experienced more severe stressors may not see the same benefits from family meals, they may benefit from more targeted and trauma-informed approaches, such as mental health support and alternative forms of family engagement,” said Skeer.

She added that future research should explore whether other supportive routines—beyond shared meals or outside the family environment—can help protect adolescents exposed to highly stressful or traumatic childhood experiences.