The moment you’ve all been waiting for—the results of the 2020 Cortland County Youth Survey!
Okay, okay maybe it was just me eagerly refreshing my email inbox waiting to get this year’s data. Regardless, the results are here and they are promising for the health and wellness of our local youth.
This year, with coordination from each and every school district in the county, we took on the challenge of surveying students during COVID-19. We even had a similar response rate for the youth survey as past years with 1,871 student surveys collected between October and November of 2020, compared to 2,002 surveys last year.
Before you keep reading (or stop reading…)—
you may be thinking that most kids lie on these types of surveys so this data doesn’t mean anything anyway. I totally get this. Luckily, the survey we use is a validated tool that incorporates five different ‘checks’ that prompt surveys to get thrown out if a student may have been dishonest. For more questions about the survey: https://www.upstreamparent.org/?p=1030
Survey Results
Sometimes it’s easy to get into our adult heads that ALL kids are drinking or using marijuana or that there is a real vaping problem here in Cortland County. Don’t get me wrong—substance use prevention efforts will still be a main priority as long as there are any teens using substances. However, it’s also important to give credit where credit is due. MOST Cortland County teens are not drinking, they are not smoking marijuana, and they are not vaping.
Exciting news! This year’s survey shows that the percentage of 7th-12th graders in Cortland County who report using alcohol, marijuana, vaping products, prescriptions drugs and cigarettes in the past month is down from 2019.
In fact, students who report using alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes in the past month are at all-time lows since 2014. We’re also seeing a steady decline in students reporting vaping in the past month, after doubling from 2017 to 2018. Reported prescription drug use has historically been low for 7th-12th graders.
Of course, I have to sneak a graph in here for you all.
Pssst. Check out our DATA PAGE!
COVID-19 Impact
Recent reports have suggested that adult substance use has increased across the nation during the pandemic (yes, this is based on real data and not just the number of pro-day-drinking memes we’ve all been seeing since March).
As a good researcher should never do—I (and many other professionals) assumed that substance use would increase for youth this year as well. Unfortunately, no national data for 2020 has been released for us to compare our local trends to. However, some experts have suggested that factors such as less access and less peer pressure may influence national trends as well. Regardless, it will take several years for us here in Cortland County, and the nation, to truly determine the impact COVID-19 has had on substance use for teens.
