Research has found that parents have a good reason to be upset by alcohol marketing. Young people in markets where there is a saturation of alcohol advertising tend to keep increasing their drinking over time to the point that they consume an average of 50 drinks per month by age Researchers found that many of the ads placed in magazines with a high youth readership and on radio formats that appeal to ages 12 to 20 are for beverages that appeal to young drinkers.
A three-year study of magazine advertising found that Other studies have found that alcohol ads are targeted at specific groups deemed more likely to be vulnerable to the advertising message. Researchers found that magazine ads targeted girls more than boys with ads for beer and ale, distilled spirits, and low-alcohol refreshers. Black youth is another group targeted by the alcohol industry.
You've seen and heard commercials from alcohol advertisers reminding you of the dangers of underage drinking and warning against drinking and driving. But the truth is those ads are rare. The study found that advertisements for alcoholic beverages outnumbered the industry's "responsibility" ads. In today's culture, parents trying to prevent their children from underage drinking not only have to worry about peer pressure but also about pressure from the alcohol industry which is pouring millions into advertising into media that attracts young people.
You can't assume your child is unaware of different alcohol brands and isn't being swayed towards early use. Get diet and wellness tips to help your kids stay healthy and happy. Adger H Jr, Saha S. Alcohol Use Disorders in Adolescents. Pediatr Rev. However, when the product is the nation's number one drug, there are consequences that go far beyond product sales.
Most people know that alcohol can cause problems. But how many realize that 10 percent of all deaths in the United States - including half of all homicides and at least one quarter of all suicides - are related to alcohol? At least 13,, Americans, about one out of 10, are alcoholic - the personal cost to them and their families is incalculable. The tab for alcohol use doesn't end there.
Problem drinkers and young people are the primary targets of these advertisers. Of course, industry spokespeople disagree with this claim. Over and over again, their public statements assert that they are not trying to create new or heavier drinkers. Instead, they say they only want people who already drink to switch to another brand and to drink it in moderation.
However, the most basic analysis of alcohol advertising reveals an emphasis on both recruiting new, young users and pushing heavy consumption of their products. Indeed, advertising that encouraged only moderate drinking would be an economic failure. This becomes clear when you know that only 10 percent of the drinking-age population consumes over half of all alcoholic beverages sold.
According to Robert Hammond, director of the Alcohol Research Information Service, if all million drinkers of legal age consumed the official maximum "moderate" amount of alcohol -.
These figures make it clear that if alcoholics were to recover - i. I can't believe that industry executives want that to happen. On the contrary, my year study of alcohol advertising makes me certain that advertisers deliberately target the heavy drinker and devise ads designed to appeal to him or her. As with any product, the heavy user is the best customer.
However, when the product is a drug, the heavy user is often an addict. Not all problem drinkers are alcoholics. Youthful drinking is frequently characterized by binges and episodes of drunkenness, making young people a lucrative market for alcohol producers. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse survey of high school seniors, 33 percent of students reported that they had consumed five or more drinks on one occasion within the previous two weeks. This group is vulnerable to ad campaigns that present heavy drinking as fun and normal.
Media sell target audiences to the alcohol industry on a cost-per-drinker basis. The primary purpose of the mass media is to deliver audiences to advertisers.
It's worthwhile taking a closer look at how some of the common myths alcohol advertisers have created do this. Ads like these tell the alcoholic and those around him or her that is all right, indeed splendid, to be obsessed by alcohol, to consume large amounts of it on a daily basis and to have it be a part of all one's activities. At the same time, all signs of trouble and any hint of addiction are erased.
Every instance of use seems spontaneous, unique. The daily drinking takes place on yachts at sunset, not at kitchen tables in the morning. Alcohol ads typically associate a brand with cool, sexy people and a fun activity. The various elements in alcohol ads are specifically chosen to communicate ideas llike this product is for people like me; this alcohol product makes occasions better; this product is popular, or stylish, or creative; and people want to be seen drinking this product.
Ultimately, these concepts come together to suggest: if I use this product, I can be cool, sexy, and successful like the people in the ad, having fun like they seem to be. Use "media literacy" techniques to help your teen view ads critically. From time to time, when your family sits down to watch television, use the occasion as a teachable moment.
Pick an ad, and draw out their thoughts by asking questions like:. Above age 23 years, drinking declines over time in the markets with low levels of advertising expenditures per capita, declining most steeply in older age groups. The figures depict growth curves, assuming mean levels of continuous factors and zero values for dummy variables, including male, not in school, not black, and not Hispanic. Alcohol use over time by age in markets with high alcohol advertising expenditures per capita.
Alcohol use over time by age in markets with low alcohol advertising expenditures per capita. To better illustrate the effects of the main variables of interest, Figure 3 depicts the relationship among alcohol use, mean levels of advertising exposure, advertising expenditures per capita, and gender. We held constant the other factors in the model; therefore, the figure shows predicted drinking levels for a year-old who is not currently a student, neither African American nor Hispanic, and living in a market with an average amount of alcohol sales per capita measured at the mean date of the study and who reported, in the prior month, exposure to his or her average number of advertisements.
The results indicate that a year-old man who saw few alcohol advertisements 5 and lived in a market with minimal alcohol advertising expenditures per capita was predicted to have 9 alcoholic drinks in the past month compared with 16 drinks if he saw many advertisements A man with the same profile but living in a market with the highest advertising spending per capita was predicted to have 15 drinks if he reported little advertising exposure and 26 drinks if he saw many advertisements.
Alcohol use by mean advertising exposure, market advertising expenditures per capita, and gender. We tested the same hierarchical linear model for the subset of the sample younger than the legal drinking age. The results were similar to those for the sample as a whole. Drinking was greater among underage youth who reported higher mean levels of alcohol advertising exposure Table 3. Drinking levels were higher among underage youth living in markets with greater per capita advertising expenditures event rate ratio, 1.
A 3-way interaction effect still occurred among time, age, and market advertising expenditures, following similar growth curves to those in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Youth younger than the legal drinking age displayed a similar pattern of advertising effects as the entire age range, which is important because there is often a greater policy interest in protecting underage youth from harmful communications than in protecting youth older than 21 years.
Greater alcohol advertising expenditures in a market were related to both greater levels of youth drinking and steeper increases in drinking over time. Youth who lived in markets with more alcohol advertising drank more, increased their drinking levels more over time, and continued to increase drinking levels into their late 20s. Youth who lived in markets with less alcohol advertising drank less and showed a pattern of increasing their drinking modestly until their early 20s, when their drinking levels started to decline.
The results are consistent with findings from studies of advertising bans 31 , 32 and extend them by linking alcohol advertising expenditures per capita directly with individual youth behavior. The effect of market advertising spending on youth drinking was not attributable to differences in alcohol sales, which was controlled for statistically in the model.
The results are consistent with theories of cumulative effects of media exposure. Youth reporting greater amounts of exposure to alcohol advertising over the long term drank more than youth who saw fewer ads. Alcohol consumption was less sensitive to short-term differences in alcohol advertising exposure than to the long-term effects of exposure. Given that there was an impact on drinking using an objective measure of advertising expenditures, the results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that a correlation between advertising exposure and drinking could be caused entirely by selective attention on the part of drinkers.
The results also contradict claims that advertising is unrelated to youth drinking amounts: that advertising at best causes brand switching, only affects those older than the legal drinking age, or is effectively countered by current educational efforts. Alcohol advertising was a contributing factor to youth drinking quantities over time. The strength of the study was the relatively large national sample, the use of an objective measure of advertising expenditures to complement the subjective measure of advertising exposure, and the matching of expenditure data with individual behavior.
The study was limited by the industry data used to measure advertising exposure, which largely reflects the most expensive medium for advertising—television.
During this period, data on outdoor advertising was spotty and may have been incomplete in some markets. It is also possible that using a measure of likely advertising exposures such as gross rating points would increase effects. There may also be variation in the national advertising expenditures in markets, through differences in cable systems and presence of national stations or programming, that were not measured. Note, too, that other forms of marketing were not included here such as product placements in programming, promotions, sports sponsorships, and stadium advertising that could affect youth drinking.
Future research could examine the impact of different forms of advertising and the consumption of various alcoholic products. Other limitations of the study were the sample attrition and the fact that those who drank more at baseline were more likely to drop out of the study. Future research should also control for the effects of parent and peer influences on drinking. Finally, the study does not explain the process by which advertising affects youth.
Correspondence: Leslie B. Author Contributions: Leslie B. Snyder, PhD, had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
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