Study links TV, music
videos to alcohol use by teens
BY MITCH LESLIE
By bombarding viewers with
enticing scenes of alcohol use, music videos and other
television programming may lure teens to take their first
drink, three Stanford researchers have concluded. Their
survey of more than 1,500 ninth-graders at six San Jose
high schools suggests that the more TV and music videos
teens watch, the greater the odds they will start
drinking during the next 18 months.
Specifically, every extra
hour of music videos per week brought a 31 percent
increase in the average risk of starting to drink during
the next 18 months. Every extra hour of general
TV-watching increased the average risk by 9 percent, said
Tom Robinson, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics and
of medicine.
Robinson is the lead
author of a research report published Nov. 2 on the
electronic pages of the journal Pediatrics (http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/102/5/e54). His colleagues were Joel Killen,
PhD, associate professor of medicine, and Helen Chen, a
former doctoral student in the university's Department of
Communication.
To collect data on teen
behavior, the researchers had students fill out a
"health questionnaire" inquiring about past and
present drinking and a variety of possible risk factors,
including TV viewing. Students completed a similar,
follow-up questionnaire 18 months later.
The questionnaires asked
students how much time they spent watching each of four
types of media: music videos, TV in general, videotapes,
and computer and video games. These media differ
dramatically in how frequently they depict alcohol use,
noted Robinson.
Other studies have
established that television and music videos are loaded
with positive portrayals of drinking. According to one
study, alcohol ads can run almost twice per hour during
televised sporting events. But rosy depictions of alcohol
use show up not only during commercials, where blatant
sales pitches are expected, but also during the programs
themselves. Researchers have found that the characters
who drink on television are usually attractive,
successful and influential. Moreover, alcohol use on TV
is often associated with three things that fascinate
teens: sex, cars and recreation. Negative consequences of
alcohol are rarely shown.
By contrast, alcohol
references are rare or nonexistent on videos and on
computer and video games, Robinson said.
During the 18 months
between surveys, 36 percent of the students who had been
nondrinkers tried alcohol, while 51 percent of students
who had already tried alcohol continued to drink.
Robinson and his
co-workers applied a statistical model to factor out
possible confounding variables such as age, sex and
ethnicity and to quantify each medium's effect on the
risk of drinking. Unlike music videos and television in
general, increased viewing of videotapes actually reduced
the likelihood that teens would take up alcohol: Each
extra hour of watching videos lowered the risk by 11
percent. Playing computer or video games did not affect
students' risk of subsequently starting to drink.
The analysis found no
association between the exposure to media and the
likelihood that teens would continue drinking once they
had started. For students who have already tried alcohol,
"their own experiences with alcohol are more
important to whether they will continue drinking,"
Robinson said.
More study is needed to
show what kinds of measures would best counter the
influence of TV and music videos among teens, Robinson
said. But "a ban is not a panacea," he added,
noting that it's unclear whether the ban against
cigarette advertising on TV Ð a measure in effect for
more than 20 years now Ð has had any influence on teen
smoking rates. Even so, the hard-liquor industry's recent
decision to abandon its voluntary ban on TV and radio
advertising is definitely a step in the wrong direction,
he said.
Who should sponsor any
"counter-advertising" to make alcohol less
appealing to teenagers? "I would rather have this in
the hands of the public-health community, which is
interested in reducing drinking, than in the hands of the
alcohol industry, which is interested in encouraging
drinking," Robinson said.
He added that advertisers
and programmers need to be more responsible in portraying
drinking on TV.
As examples of doomed
efforts, he pointed to ads asking teens to wait until
adulthood before they start drinking. Those appeals fly
in the face of what we know of teen behavior, he said,
and as a result they "are really advertisements for
drinking."
The study was funded
through the Stanford Center for Research in Disease
Prevention by the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute, the National Institute of Nursing Research and
the California Wellness Foundation.
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