New research suggests that underage youths exposed to television alcohol commercials could encourage them to engage in binge drinking and other alcohol-related habits.
The findings suggest some youths could be less likely to engage in underage drinking behaviors if they are shielded from the ads, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center reported.
To make their findings, the researchers looked at telephone and web-based surveys involving 2,541 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 23 years with 1,596 completing a follow-up survey. The surveys asked participants to recall more than 300 television advertising images. The subjects were then given an alcohol receptivity score based on whether or not they had seen the ad, remembered it and liked it.
"The alcohol industry claims that their advertising self-regulation program protects underage youths from seeing their ads," said pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Susanne E. Tanski. "Our study indicates that it does not."
The results suggest higher alcohol receptivity scores among underage participants predicted the onset of drinking and potentially hazardous behaviors such as binge drinking. The rates of binge drinking (having more than six drinks in one sitting) and hazardous drinking (meeting or exceeding a threshold score for alcohol use) were between 29 percent and 18 percent of young people ages 15 to 17 years, respectively, and for 29 percent and 19 percent of young people ages 18 to 20 years, respectively.
"Our study found that familiarity with and response to images of television alcohol marketing was associated with the subsequent onset of drinking across a range of outcomes of varying severity among adolescents and young adults, adding to studies suggesting that alcohol advertising is one cause of youth drinking," the authors concluded. "Current self-regulatory standards for televised alcohol advertising appear to inadequately protect underage youth from exposure to televised alcohol advertising and its probable effect on behavior."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
