Drinking isn't an innocuous pastime for teens and young adults. Research has linked drinking to many negative consequences, including academic problems, risky sex, addiction to alcohol and other dangerous substances, and deadly motor vehicle accidents. Some health experts have alleged that alcohol advertising - often placed on billboards, TV shows, magazines, and radio stations to which teens are exposed - could be contributing to youth drinking problems, so researchers from the University of Connecticut in Storrs and Colorado State University in Fort Collins investigated the impact of alcohol ads on alcohol consumption by young people.
Between April 1999 and February 2001, researchers surveyed a total of 4,420 15- to 26-year-olds in large cities across the United States. Participants noted how often they drank alcohol during the past 4 weeks, how many drinks they had, and the most they had to drink on one occasion. They also reported how often they'd seen media ads for beer, liquor, or premixed drinks within the last month. The study researchers also examined how much alcohol was sold in each state and how many advertising dollars were spent in each city to help determine how alcohol ads might be affecting drink consumption.
Overall, 61% of the teens and young adults had at least one drink within the past month. On average, drinkers had about 39 drinks within the last month - about four and a half drinks every time they consumed alcohol. Under-21-year-olds consumed an average 29 drinks a month.
At the beginning of the study, teens and young adults reported seeing an average of almost 23 alcohol ads a month. An individual's exposure to more alcohol ads appeared to have a significant effect on youth drinking behaviors - exposure to one more ad than average was associated with a person having 1% more drinks over the course of a month. And for every additional dollar per capita spent on alcohol advertising in an area, participants consumed 3% more drinks a month.
For example: A 20-year-old guy who saw five alcohol ads and lived in an area with little alcohol advertising had about nine drinks in the past month, compared with 16 drinks if he saw 45 ads. But a guy of the same age who lived in a market with the highest alcohol ad spending had about 15 drinks if he saw five ads and 26 drinks if he was exposed to 45 ads.
What This Means to You: The results of this study suggest that alcohol ads do play a role in teens' and young adults' drinking habits. You may not be able to limit your teen's exposure to alcohol ads on billboards, but you can control his or her exposure to media sources such as TV, radio, and magazines. The Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth, run by Georgetown University, offers interactive tools to help you gauge your child's exposure to alcohol marketing in magazines and on TV shows and radio stations. For more information, visit http://www.camy.org.
Source: Leslie B. Snyder, PhD; Frances Fleming Milici, PhD; Michael Slater, PhD; Helen Sun, MA; Yuliya Strizhakova, PhD; Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, January 2006.
Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD
Date reviewed: January 2006
