Music might be playing a subtle role in encouraging teens to drink alcohol, a latest research says.
The study conducted by the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth collected data of over 3,400 youngsters aged between 15 and 23. These participants were interviewed in 2010 and 2011 through landline and mobile numbers.
The researchers then divided the respondents into three groups based on their liking to the music that mentioned names of alcohol brands. The groups were low, medium and high.
The study results showed that those in the high group were three times more likely than the people from the low group to have a complete drink of alcohol - an important outcome in the age group. People from the high group were also twice more likely to participate in binge drinking.
"Alcohol brand names are quite prevalent in popular music," Lisa Henriksen, senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center said in the press release.
"For example, hip-hop/rap lyrics favor luxury brands, such as Cristal and Hennessy, and brand references in rap music have increased four-fold over time, from eight percent in 1979 to 44 percent in 1997. It would be foolish to think that the alcohol industry is unaware of and uninvolved with alcohol-brand mentions in music. The strategy of associating products with hip culture and celebrities who are attractive to youth comes straight from a playbook written by the tobacco industry," she explained.
"This is based on average exposure of 2.5 hours of music per day, with 3-4 brand mentions each hour," said Brian Primack, an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh. "However, this is just an average. For some kids it will be more, and for others it will be less."
The study was published in the journal, 'Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.'
