Substance use and dependence are a set of heritable behaviors that have a very significant impact on global morbidity and mortality. (1) Adolescence is a sensitive and high-risk period for substance experimentation, use,... [ view full abstract ]
Substance use and dependence are a set of heritable behaviors that have a very significant impact on global morbidity and mortality. (1) Adolescence is a sensitive and high-risk period for substance experimentation, use, and dependence. Early substance use in adolescence greatly increases the risk of addiction for an individual. (2) The Colorado Online Twin Study (CoTwins) aims to expand our understanding of the genetic and environmental influences on adolescent substance use. CoTwins consists of 335 twin pairs, between the ages of 14 and 18 at enrollment, who underwent both in-person and remote internet-based ecological momentary assessments. The in-person assessments consisted of standard measures of substance use behavior, parental monitoring, cognitive ability, executive function, and other relevant traits. The remote assessments were administered with smartphone apps and web browser extensions, installed on the twins' devices during the in-person assessment. The apps and the extension were used to regularly administer questionnaires regarding substance use and related factors. They were also used to monitor social media use, web browsing activity, and mobile app usage. Smartphone GPS sensors were used to track the twins' physical location over time. To date, we have logged more than 3.5 million participant locations and will present results demonstrating that the locations are accurate, heritable, and hint at substantial sex-limitation. The twins have completed a total of 50,280 remote assessments, which show a high concordance with the in-person assessment results. Finally, we will present analyses that relate the location data to standard measures of parental monitoring and that explore the relationship between twin geographic distance and phenotypic similarity.
1. Ezzati, M., Lopez, A. D., Rodgers. A., Vander-Hoorn, S., & Murray, C. J. L. (2002). Selected major risk factors and global and regional burden of disease. Lancet, 360, 1347–1360.
2. Jordan, C. J., & Andersen, S. L. (2016). Sensitive periods of substance abuse: Early risk for the transition to dependence. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
