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“Follow my Finsta”: Drinking Trajectories In Relation To Auxiliary Instagram Accounts
Journal of American College Health
Abstract
Objective
This study explored the burgeoning youth practice of possessing a fake, secondary Instagram account known as a “Finsta” in relation to exposure to alcohol-related content and college drinking.
Participants
First-year university students with at least a primary Instagram account (N = 296) completed online surveys.
Method
Surveys assessed whether participants did or did not have a Finsta pre-matriculation (T1), Instagram alcohol content exposure one month into college (T2), and alcohol use at T1 and near the end of the first year (T3).
Results
Moderated mediation analysis revealed that having a Finsta at T1 was associated with greater exposure to alcohol-related posts at T2 and, for male but not female students, predicted heavier drinking at T3.
Conclusion
Findings are consistent with previous results suggesting that males may be more behaviorally impacted by peers’ depictions of alcohol use on social media. This carries implications for social media-based intervention efforts targeting first-year students.
... Perhaps because of the fact that the scoping review only included articles written in English, nearly three-fourths of the studies (73%) were conducted within the United States. 46,48,[50][51][52][53][54][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64]68,69,72,80,84,[86][87][88][89] The remaining studies were conducted in Belgium, 66,67,78 the United Kingdom, 55 Norway, 76 Australia, 75 Mexico, 47 Kenya, 56 and Uganda. 73 The vast majority of the samples consisted of college student populations (82%). ...
... 73 The vast majority of the samples consisted of college student populations (82%). 47,48,[50][51][52][53][54][56][57][58][59][60][61]63,64,66,68,72,73,75,76,80,84,[86][87][88][89][90][91] Studies that did not solely utilize college student samples (18%) 46,51,55,62,69,78 still reported the majority of their samples as being enrolled in college/university with the exception of one study. 69 These six studies recruited their samples through paid online services, 46,69 social media promotion, 55,78 or both, 51 or utilized a public school population initially recruited via email and phone for a larger longitudinal study. ...
... 62 The bulk of the studies (88%) had a majority female-identified population. [46][47][48][50][51][52][53][54][55][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64]66,68,69,72,75,76,78,80,84,[86][87][88][89] Of these, 10 studies (27%) 50,52,55,57,61,75,78,80,86,89 included over 65% femaleidentified participants, and one study 75 consisted solely of femaleidentified respondents. None of the studies reported participants' 46,48,50,52,54,55,57,64,68,69,87 including over 65% White participants. ...
... While early research on social network sites emphasized users' lack of control over the reach of personal information and communication privacy (boyd, 2008, 2014), subsequent studies demonstrated that social media users arrange communication partners such as friends, peers, family, and other contacts with multiple platforms (Miller et al., 2016;Tandoc et al., 2019) and separate social contexts using multiple private and public accounts per platform (e.g., on Facebook (Costa, 2018) and Instagram (Duffy & Chan, 2019;LaBrie et al., 2021)). ...
... Consequently, reached recipients often remained ambiguous and social media users resorted to "imagined audiences" (Litt, 2012;Litt & Hargittai, 2016) to conceptualize addressed communication partners. In light of the technological development of communication platforms and more elaborate communication practices mentioned above, this perspective has shifted to one of active social media users who deliberately separate or overlap contexts and curate their audiences (Loh & Walsh, 2021;Miller et al., 2016;Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017) using multiple platforms, multiple accounts per platform, (Duffy & Chan, 2019;LaBrie et al., 2021;Tandoc et al., 2019), and features (Duffy & Chan, 2019). On a conceptual level, scholars acknowledged these curation efforts by the distinction of deliberate context collusion and undesired context collision (Davis & Jurgenson, 2014). ...
... Furthermore, they curate audiences more often by using multiple platforms rather than multiple accounts per platform. The use of secondary accounts identified in previous research (Costa, 2018;Duffy & Chan, 2019;LaBrie et al., 2021) might have become less important due to the popularity of Snapchat in this age group and the adoption of certain key features (e.g., the ability to send ephemeral content targeting specific audiences) by other platforms (Choi et al., 2020). Future research might specifically focus on curation practices on the level of platforms to further investigate this potential development. ...
Social media play a crucial role in adolescents’ everyday lives and impact their well-being, mental health, and risk behavior. Consequently, it is vital to understand the multifaceted social media use of this age group. However, despite the increasing number of platforms affording the curation of communication and audiences, studies to date have predominantly examined single platforms while neglecting sharing behavior and the variety of communication partners. In this article, we thus apply a holistic repertoire perspective that offers essential descriptive insights. We consider active social media users that 1) use multiple communication platforms, 2) apply various communication practices, and 3) curate distinct communication partners. We analyze data from a representative survey among late adolescents (ages 15–19) in Switzerland and explore the use of six social media platforms (i.e., Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook). We identify social media repertoires, analyze consumption, sharing, and curation practices, and compare perceived and addressed actors across platforms. The implications for future media use and effects research are discussed.
... Students may be more likely to share ARC via private versus public channels [13,18], especially during the pandemic. According to self-presentation theory, people may choose to disclose or censor information about themselves depending on whom they are communicating with [19]. ...
... However, sharing private ARC with a select group of friends could encourage problematic drinking behaviours. A study revealed that possessing a 'Finsta' account (i.e., an Instagram account used for posting riskier, less acceptable content to select friends) predicted heavier drinking among college students prospectively, particular for male students [18]. These friends may provide positive feedback (i.e., likes, comments) on ARC which might reinforce and maintain drinking and posting behaviours. ...
Introduction
The COVID‐19 pandemic impacted young people's drinking. Yet, despite social gatherings posing a known risk for increased contraction, some college students still congregated to drink. Furthermore, some students posted about these drinking events to their public and/or private social media feeds. It is crucial to understand the relationships between posting alcohol‐related content (ARC), drinking and adherence to COVID‐19 recommendations because they may have contributed to the spread of the virus.
Methods
The current interval contingent, 14‐day diary study assessed students' ( N = 129) public and private ARC; their drinking; percentage of time wearing a mask and social distancing; and number of people they socialised with during drinking events (total crowd size) each day.
Results
Multilevel structural equation modelling was employed to examine relationships between ARC posting, drinking and behavioural outcomes. On days in which students posted both public and private ARC, they tended to drink more and in turn, reported attending gatherings with larger crowds. Curiously, on days in which students drank more, they indicated more mask wearing and social distancing, and on days in which students posted more private ARC, they also reported larger crowds. Finally, an indirect effect of drinking on the links between public and private ARC and mask wearing, social distancing and total crowd sizes emerged.
Discussion and Conclusions
Findings revealed students continued to post and drink socially despite the risks, which may have encouraged others within their networks to engage in similar risky behaviours. Future public health crises should balance young people's need for social connection with risk mitigation efforts.
... Second, selective social media use is increasingly recognized as the selection and deselection of communication partners, resulting in networked communication structures (Bode, 2016;Thorson & Wells, 2016). Rather than the direct selection of content, social media platforms allow users to choose the individual peers they perceive and address using multiple applications, second accounts, and specific features (Duffy & Chan, 2019;LaBrie et al., 2021). To investigate selective exposure on social media more accurately, it is necessary to examine how adolescents' dispositions (in this case drinking behavior) predict exposure to specific individual peers. ...
... Such an approach follows the call to consider specific network information when examining online exposure (Strowger & Braitman, 2022) and complies better with an unobtrusive identification of preferences demanded in selective exposure research (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015). Second, by investigating the preference toward contacts instead of content, we considered that users customize their engagement online by selecting and deselecting their contacts (Bode, 2016;Thorson & Wells, 2016) and therefore measured selective social media use as a result of common practices among adolescents (Duffy & Chan, 2019;LaBrie et al., 2021). Third, we controlled for the offline context, which is often argued to impact selective exposure (e.g., Geusens & Beullens, 2017, 2020. ...
This article applies a network approach to better understand the often-demonstrated link between adolescents’ drinking behavior and their exposure to alcohol-related content on social media. Focusing on social dynamics among adolescents and their peers, we investigate the causes and consequences of exposure to individual peers who share alcohol-related content online. Drawing on social network literature and the perspective of networked communication online, we distinguish between exposure effects and selective exposure as the two core dynamics that can explain the association between drinking behavior and exposure to alcohol-related content online. Based on a two-wave network survey among adolescents aged 14 to 17 (n = 277), we applied a longitudinal network analysis to test both dynamics simultaneously. The findings indicate no exposure effects but robust evidence for selective exposure. This means that drinking adolescents are more likely to become exposed to peers who post alcohol-related content. The stochastic actor-oriented model hereby controls for rivaling explanations, such as the tendency to be exposed to friends, classmates, and peers of the same gender. In addition to these empirical findings, we discuss the value of the network approach, outlining the implications for future research and prevention strategies.
... The majority of studies identified were from the United States and Australia (Tables 1-2). Of the studies assessing exposure to alcoholrelated content on SNS, eight were prospective cohort studies [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] and nine were cross-sectional studies [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. Of the studies exploring self-posting of alcohol-related content on SNS, five were prospective cohort [37,39,[49][50][51] and 14 [40,41,43,48,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] were cross-sectional designs. ...
... Studies assessing SNS alcohol exposure applied a diverse range of theoretical frameworks, with social norms theory and social learning theory being most prevalent (n = 6) [33,35,37,39,41,46], while four studies were assessed as largely atheoretical [38,40,44,54], as shown in Tables 1 and 2. While social norms theory remained the most prevalent theoretical framework for studies assessing self-posting of alcohol-related content on SNSs [37,41,55], 11 of 19 studies were considered atheoretical [40,43,48,51,52,54,[56][57][58][59]61]. ...
Background and aim
Social networking sites (SNS) are interactive internet‐based social platforms that facilitate information sharing. A growing body of literature on exposure to, and self‐posting of, alcohol‐related content on SNS has examined the relationship between SNS use and alcohol consumption in young people. This study aims to synthesise the literature exploring the relationship between exposure (i.e. viewing or listening of alcohol‐related media) and self‐posting (i.e. uploading images or text of alcohol content) of alcohol‐related media on SNS on alcohol consumption.
Methods
A pre‐registered systematic review was conducted in June 2022 within PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO and Web of Science. Original prospective and cross‐sectional studies assessing youth and young adults (≤ 24 years of age) that measured exposure to alcohol‐related media or posting of alcohol‐related content on SNS and self‐reported alcohol consumption outcomes were included. Meta‐analyses were conducted on comparable methodologies.
Results
Thirty studies were included ( n = 19,386). Meta‐analyses of cross‐sectional studies showed both greater exposure (five studies; pooled β = 0.34, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.23, 0.44, i ² = 27.7%) and self‐posting of alcohol‐related content (six studies; pooled β = 0.57, 95%CI = 0.25,0.88, i ² = 97.8%) was associated with greater alcohol consumption. Meta‐analyses of three prospective studies also identified that greater exposure predicted greater future alcohol consumption (three studies; pooled β = 0.13, 95%CI = 0.11,0.15, i ² = 0.0%). Narrative analyses of studies that could not be meta‐analysed due to incompatible methodologies were also conducted. Most studies (all four prospective, one of two cross‐sectional) identified positive associations between exposure to alcohol‐related content and greater average consumption. Most studies (three of four prospective, four of six cross‐sectional) reported a positive association between of alcohol‐related self‐posting and greater average alcohol consumption.
Conclusions
Both exposure to, and self‐posting of, alcohol‐related content on social networking sites are positively associated with current average consumption, problem drinking, and drinking frequency.
... General use of Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, three of the most popular SM platforms among college-aged young adults (Villanti et al., 2017;Alhabash and Ma, 2017;Perrin and Anderson, 2019), are each associated with drinking (Boyle et al., 2018;Ceballos et al., 2018;Foster et al., 2020). Using more than one platform (Ceballos et al., 2018) and having a Finstagram account (an Instagram account characterized by tight privacy settings that is only visible to a small and carefully curated group of friends; LaBrie et al., 2021b) are also associated with measures of drinking risk. The primary pathway by which general SM use increases alcohol risk among young adults is exposure to alcoholrelated content (Moreno & Whitehill, 2014;Vannucci et al., 2020). ...
... Participants were asked to complete 13 indicators of SM use (12 continuous and 1 binary; Table 1) (Boyle et al., , 2018LaBrie et al., 2021bLaBrie et al., , 2021c. Continuous indicators assessed how often participants checked (from 0 [I don't have an account] to 7 [7 or more times a day]), perceived average minutes per day spent on, and how often participants posted on Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat (from 0 [Never] to 7 [7 or more times a day]), as well as how often participants' own posts related to: partying, clubbing, going out; alcohol, getting drunk, being hungover; and marijuana, pot paraphernalia, getting high (from 0 [Never] to 4 [Always]). ...
Previous research has shown a reliable association between social media (SM) use and drinking among college students. However, most studies have investigated SM behaviors (e.g., time spent on a platform, posting frequency) in isolation and on a single site. While some have studied multiple SM behaviors across platforms using person-centered approaches (e.g., latent profile analysis [LPA]), these studies have failed to take alcohol-related SM behaviors into account. This longitudinal study addressed this gap in the literature by using LPA to identify subpopulations of SM users during the college transition (N=319; 62.1% female) using general (frequency of checking, time spent on, and frequency of posting to Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat; Finstagram ownership) and alcohol-related SM behaviors (posting alcohol, partying, and marijuana content). LPA results revealed three SM user profiles at baseline: low general use with low alcohol-related posting (LGU+LAP), high general use with low alcohol-related posting (HGU+LAP), and high general use with high alcohol-related posting (HGU+HAP). Prospective analyses revealed that HGU+HAP membership was associated with greater descriptive peer drinking norms, alcohol use, and consequences relative to HGU+LAP and LGU+LAP membership. Results suggest that there are distinct patterns of general and alcohol-related SM use during the college transition associated with risky drinking that can inform interventions combating SM-related alcohol risks. These findings illustrate the importance of investigating SM use holistically and suggests studying alcohol-related SM behaviors may reveal differences in individuals’ alcohol risk that general SM behaviors might not capture.
... Research underscores that some people share more risky depictions on their private social media posts because public displays of the same content could damage their image if viewed by parents or employers (Vanherle et al., 2023). Recent research also suggests that male students who had Finstas (fake/private Instagram accounts) had higher alcohol use than those who only had public Instagram accounts (LaBrie et al., 2023). Little is known about use of private social media accounts among non-college-attending YA. ...
... Meanwhile, many of the studies under the Determinant function in this group found a relationship between SM related activities/variables and alcohol consumption, such as Geusens, Vangeel, Vervoort, Lippevelde, and Beullens (2019) and Litt, Rodriguez, and Stewart (2021). However, a smaller number of studies also reported mixed or no effects of SM on food intake, including eight studies on the Tool function (e.g., Folkvord andde Bruijne (2020) andVander Wyst et al. (2019)) and four studies on the Determinant function (e.g., LaBrie et al. (2021) and Sumaedi and Sumardjo (2020)). ...
Background
Social media (SM) have become the integral part of consumers’ daily life, prompting multidisciplinary research on their link with human behaviors, including food attitude and consumption. However, the precise role of SM in shaping food consumer behavior remains partially explored.
Scope and approach
This review adopts a systematic literature approach, focusing on the methodological and outcome characteristics. Applying PRISMA guidelines, 377 studies were identified and categorized into three SM functions: Tool, Determinant, and Source. Tool studies involved active SM use for research, while Determinant studies measured SM-related variables' impact on outcomes, and Source studies involved data extraction and analysis from SM. This review traces the growth of studies over time, highlighting the study characteristics focusing on the methodology, and the scope of the findings per function.
Key findings and conclusion
Data collection methods differed across functions: Source studies relying on user-generated content (UGC) via data mining, other functions mostly employed surveys targeted to participants. Notable platforms include Facebook (Tool) and Twitter (Source), with cross-sectional designs being prevalent. Tool and Determinant studies linked SM with food intention and behavior, Source studies delved into categorization and exploration of UGC and consumers’ sentiments related to food. In both the Tool and Determinant functions, most studies demonstrated the influence of SM on outcome measures. As each function has its own distinct characteristics, knowledge from all functions should be considered to gain comprehensive perspective regarding the relationship between SM and food consumer behavior.
... In this emancipatory space (Kozinets, 2002), distanced from the personal branding and inherently monetised activities of their main account, influencers can share content more freely, including unedited photos and diary-like entries, or even focus on new interests such as pets, lifestyle, food, etc (LaBrie et al., 2021). Given the smaller size of Finsta audiences, many of the taboos associated with posting under the algorithmic constraints (Duffy & Chan, 2019) become rescinded, for instance influencers can open up about sensitive topics, such as societal pressures impacting women on social media today (Elias & Gill, 2018) or share 'edgier' (or R-rated) content that might otherwise jeopardise their reputation if leaked to the wrong audience (potential employers or parents) (Duffy & Chan, 2019, p. 131). ...
... Further, studies have conducted moderated mediation models examining gender and interacting with alcohol content as moderators (Alhabash, Mundel, et al., 2021;Boyle et al., 2016;LaBrie, Boyle, Baez, et al., 2021). For example, among female students, only enhancement drinking motives and pro-alcohol beliefs (but not typical student peak drinking norms) significantly mediated associations between exposure and alcohol consumption whereas all three mediators were significant among male students (Boyle et al., 2016). ...
Peer social influence is a robust predictor of problematic drinking among young adults and adolescents; it is typically assessed by collecting nonspecific social network information (i.e., behaviors of peers globally) or specific social network information (i.e., behaviors of named friends). Socialization happens both in-person and online through social media. Exposure to alcohol-related social media content is consistently related to alcohol consumption in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies alike. Previous research has often not focused on who specifically is sharing the alcohol-related social media content with most examining effects of exposure to content posted by nonspecific network members (e.g., peers, friends) and individual alcohol consumption. The purpose of the current critical review is to describe how exposure to alcohol-related social media content is commonly measured and how including a specific social network assessment may explain more variance in alcohol use. The review found inconsistencies in the reference groups used when assessing frequency of exposure and found that specific modalities of content exposure were often not assessed. Of the 30 published studies reviewed, 15 used cross-sectional designs, which is regrettable considering that the composition of adolescent and young adult peer groups have been found to change over time possibly affecting the content viewed. Understanding factors which affect the relationship between exposure to alcohol-related social media content and individual alcohol use has implications for tailoring drinking interventions to address the unique social influence of social media content. Gaps in the literature are summarized and future directions for research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Scholars have indicated that social media contribute to various health-related behaviors (e.g., substance use, body dissatisfaction) among adolescents. This study adds to the literature on health-related social media effects through theoretical advances supported by empirical evidence. First, we introduce the TAMT model, in which we assess the media environment along a continuum of two dimensions: the temporality (from ephemeral to persistent) and accessibility (from private to public) of message types. By combining these dimensions, we argue that there are four message types: ephemeral private, persistent private, ephemeral public, and persistent public. Second, we draw on the TAMT model to advance our knowledge of the role of social media in alcohol-related behaviors. We expected that, due to the distinctive characteristics of the four message types, they would be differently related to alcohol references and binge drinking. Based on cross-sectional data (N = 1,636; Mage = 15; SD = 1.17), we found that moderate alcohol references are encountered across all message types, while more extreme references are more likely to be prevalent in ephemeral private messages. We show that exposure to moderate and extreme alcohol use references in ephemeral private and persistent private messages was associated with a higher probability of engaging in binge drinking, whereas exposure to ephemeral public and persistent public messages was not. Ephemeral private messages played the most crucial role in the association with binge drinking. These findings illustrate the importance of broadening the scope of research to ephemeral private environments when studying health-related behaviors. While we have illustrated the usefulness of the TAMT model against the background of two specific types of alcohol references, this new model can be extended to other behaviors (e.g., sexual risk-taking behaviors, cyberbullying).
Social media users are routinely counseled to cultivate their online personae with acumen and diligence. But universal prescriptions for impression management may prove for vexing for college students, who confront oft-conflicting codes of normative self-presentation in digital contexts. Against this backdrop, our research sought to examine the online self-presentation activities of emerging adults (18–24) across an expansive social media ecology that included Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Twitter. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 28 Fcollege-aged youth, we highlight how the imagined surveillance of various social actors steered their self-presentation practices in patterned ways. After exploring three distinct responses to imagined surveillance—including the use of privacy settings, self-monitoring, and pseudonymous accounts (including “Finstas,” or fake + Instagram)—we consider the wider implications of a cultural moment wherein users are socialized to anticipate the incessant monitoring of social institutions: family, educators, and above all, (future) employers.
Young people frequently display alcohol-related posts ("alcoholposts") on social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Although evidence exists that such posts may be linked with increases in alcohol consumption, hardly any studies have focused on the content of such posts. This study addresses this gap by applying and extending the alcoholpost-typology previously proposed by Hendriks, Gebhardt, and van den Putte. A content analysis assessed the extent to which alcoholposts were displayed on Facebook and/or Instagram profiles of young participants (12-30 years; N = 192), and which type of alcoholpost these posts most strongly resembled. Moderate alcoholposts (e.g., in which alcohol was in the background) were most often posted. At times, textual alcoholposts and commercial alcoholposts were also displayed; however, extreme posts (e.g., about drunk people or drinking-games) were almost nonexistent. These findings confirm the previous results by Hendriks et al. that moderate posts are more frequently posted than extreme posts. This could imply that positive associations with alcohol consumption are more visible on social media than negative associations, potentially leading to an underestimation of alcohol-related risks.
Many studies to date have examined how media influence health-related behavior through social norms. However, most studies focused on traditional media. In the era of traditional and social media integration, our study advances health and mass communication scholarship by examining the influence of both traditional and social media mediated through social norms. Also, we examined a boundary condition for the norms-mediated media influence process. Namely, in the context of college binge drinking, we predict that exposure to TV and social media prodrinking messages can influence college students’ binge drinking intentions through perceived peer descriptive and injunctive norms. We also predict that group identification will moderate this indirect effect. Our moderated mediation models were tested via structural equation modeling (N = 609). We found that college students’ exposure to social media prodrinking messages indirectly influenced their binge drinking intentions via perceived injunctive norms, and students’ identification with their peers moderated this indirect effect. However, neither descriptive nor injunctive norms mediated the influence of students’ exposure to TV prodrinking messages on their binge drinking intentions. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
Accumulating evidence indicates that social media use and the consumption of alcohol are related. The present longitudinal study (N = 1006) adds to this line of research by examining the reciprocity of sharing alcohol references on social media and binge drinking among late adolescents (age 16–20 at baseline). The results indicate that binge drinking and alcohol-related self-presentation affect each other simultaneously over time. However, no support was found for the proposition that the perceived feedback of peers can strengthen this relationship, nor did we find a direct association between the perceived feedback of peers and alcohol-related self-presentation one year later. Overall, the results suggest that binge drinking and alcohol-related self-presentation on social media should be studied as tied behaviors, affecting each other simultaneously over time.
The current research explores differences between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in terms of intensity of use, time spent daily on the platform, and use motivations. The study applies the uses and gratifications (U&G) approach to contrast the four platforms. A cross-sectional survey of college students (N = 396) asked participants to indicate the intensity of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat as well as nine different use motivations. Findings show that participants spent the most time daily on Instagram, followed by Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, respectively. They also indicated the highest use intensity for Snapchat and Instagram (nearly equally), followed by Facebook and Twitter, respectively. With regard to use motivations, Snapchat takes the lead in five of the nine motivations. Findings are discussed in relation to the U&G approach and uniqueness of different social media and social networking sites (SNSs).
College drinking continues to remain a public health problem that has been exacerbated by alcohol-related posts on social networking sites (SNSs). Although existing research has linked alcohol consumption, alcohol posts, and adverse consequences to one another, comprehensive explanations for these associations have been largely unexplored. Thus, we reasoned that students’ personal motivations (i.e., espousing an alcohol identity, needing entertainment, and adhering to social norms) influence their behaviors (i.e., alcohol consumption and alcohol-related posting on SNSs), which can lead to alcohol problems. Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed data from 364 undergraduate students and found general support for our model. In particular, espousing an alcohol identity predicted alcohol consumption and alcohol-related SNS posting, needing entertainment predicted alcohol consumption but not alcohol-related SNS posting, and adhering to social norms predicted alcohol-related SNS posting but not alcohol consumption. In turn, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related SNS posting predicted alcohol problems. It is surprising that alcohol-related SNS posting was a stronger predictor of alcohol problems than alcohol consumption. We discuss the findings within their applied applications for college student health.
Despite speculation that peers’ alcohol-related content on social media sites (SMS) may influence the alcohol use behaviors of SMS frequenting college students, this relationship has not been investigated longitudinally. The current prospective study assesses the relationship between exposure to peers’ alcohol-related SMS content and later-drinking among first-year college students. Among 408 first-year students, total exposure to peers’ alcohol-related content on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat during the initial 6 weeks of college predicted alcohol consumption 6 months later. The rather robust relationship persisted even after students’ and close friends drinking were accounted for, indicating that alcohol references on SMS do not simply reflect alcohol use behaviors that would otherwise be observed in the absence of SMS and be predictive of later alcohol use. Findings also illuminate important gender differences in the degree to which peers’ alcohol-related SMS content influenced later drinking behavior as well as psychological mediators of this relationship. Among females, enhancement drinking motives and beliefs about the role of alcohol in the college experience fully mediated the relationship between SMS alcohol exposure and later drinking. Males, however, evidenced a much stronger predictive relationship between SMS alcohol exposure and second semester drinking, with this relationship only partially explained by perceptions of drinking norms, enhancement drinking motives, and beliefs about the role of alcohol in the college experience. Implications of these findings for college drinking prevention efforts and directions for future research are discussed.
Alcohol-related content is common on social media and may both reflect and influence offline drinking behavior. Posting alcohol-related content has been linked to alcohol outcomes, including higher rates of alcohol consumption, cravings, alcohol-related problems, and clinical alcohol use disorders. Exposure to alcohol-related content on social media has likewise been associated with adverse alcohol outcomes. In this paper, we review research on the relationship between social media and alcohol use, and explore the ways that online identity and social influence can account for this relationship. Finally, we call for further research on the use of social media as a platform for prevention and intervention efforts.
Research has consistently documented that college students tend to overestimate drinking norms, thus contributing to alcohol-related problems on college campuses. The current study aimed to assess whether alcohol-related content posted on online social networking sites can impact perceived drinking norms of college students. A total of 57 college students from a university in Midwestern United States participated in the fall semester of 2010. A between-subjects experimental design was used in which participants viewed a fictitious Facebook profile with or without alcohol-related content and then reported their perceptions of college student drinking norms. Participants who viewed alcohol-related content on Facebook estimated higher college drinking norms than those who did not. Findings are discussed in the context of the importance and challenge of researching online social networking content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
Emerging adulthood is proposed as a new conception of development for the period from the late teens through the twenties, with a focus on ages 18–25. A theoretical background is presented. Then evidence is provided to support the idea that emerging adulthood is a distinct period demographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity explorations. How emerging adulthood differs from adolescence and young adulthood is explained. Finally, a cultural context for the idea of emerging adulthood is outlined, and it is specified that emerging adulthood exists only in cultures that allow young people a prolonged period of independent role exploration during the late teens and twenties.
Online social networking sites (SNSs) have become a popular mode of communication among adolescents. However, little is known about the effects of social online activity on health behaviors. The authors examined the use of SNSs among friends and the degree to which SNS activities relate to face-to-face peer influences and adolescent risk behaviors.
Longitudinal egocentric friendship network data along with adolescent social media use and risk behaviors were collected from 1,563 10th-grade students across five Southern California high schools. Measures of online and offline peer influences were computed and assessed using fixed-effects models.
The frequency of adolescent SNS use and the number of their closest friends on the same SNSs were not significantly associated with risk behaviors. However, exposure to friends' online pictures of partying or drinking was significantly associated with both smoking (β = .11, p < .001) and alcohol use (β = .06, p < .05). Whereas adolescents with drinking friends had higher risk levels for drinking, adolescents without drinking friends were more likely to be affected by higher exposure to risky online pictures (β = -.10, p < .05). Myspace and Facebook had demographically distinct user characteristics and differential effects on risk behaviors.
Exposure to risky online content had a direct impact on adolescents' risk behaviors and significantly interacted with risk behaviors of their friends. These results provide evidence that friends' online behaviors should be considered a viable source of peer influence and that increased efforts should focus on educating adolescents on the negative effects of risky online displays.
A 4-factor measure of drinking motives based on a conceptual model by M. Cox and E. Klinger (see PA, Vol 75:32975; see also 1990) is presented. Using data from a representative household sample of 1,243 Black and White adolescents, confirmatory factor analyses showed that the hypothesized model provided an excellent fit to the data and that the factor pattern was invariant across gender, race, and age. Each drinking motive was related to a distinct pattern of contextual antecedents and drinking-related outcomes, and these relationships did not generally vary across demographic subgroups. Results support both the conceptual validity of Cox and Klinger's model and the utility of this measure for clinical and research purposes across a diverse range of adolescent populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The aim of this study was to document within-person and between-persons associations between the duration of day-to-day activities (volunteering, spiritual activities, media use, socializing, entertainment/campus events and clubs, athletics, classes, working for pay) and alcohol use (quantity and heavy drinking) and to examine whether these associations differed by gender and the time of week.
First-semester college students (N = 717 persons; 51.6% female) provided up to 14 consecutive days of data (N = 9,431 days) via daily web-based surveys. Multilevel analyses tested whether alcohol use was associated with activity duration, gender, and time of week.
Between-persons associations indicated that alcohol use was higher among individuals who spent more time involved in athletics and socializing and lower among students who spent more time in spiritual and volunteer activities. Within-person associations indicated that students consumed more alcohol and were more likely to drink heavily on weekends, on days they spent more time than usual socializing, and on days they spent less time than usual in spiritual activities and using media.
Select activities and days were linked with less alcohol use at both the between- and within-person levels, suggesting that attention should be paid to both selection effects and social context to understand the mechanisms linking activity duration and student drinking.
This study assessed motives for social network site (SNS) use, group belonging, collective self-esteem, and gender effects among older adolescents. Communication with peer group members was the most important motivation for SNS use. Participants high in positive collective self-esteem were strongly motivated to communicate with peer group via SNS. Females were more likely to report high positive collective self-esteem, greater overall use, and SNS use to communicate with peers. Females also posted higher means for group-in-self, passing time, and entertainment. Negative collective self-esteem correlated with social compensation, suggesting that those who felt negatively about their social group used SNS as an alternative to communicating with other group members. Males were more likely than females to report negative collective self-esteem and SNS use for social compensation and social identity gratifications.
The transition from high school to college is an important developmental milestone that holds the potential for personal growth and behavioral change. A cohort of 2,245 students was recruited during the summer before they matriculated into college and completed Internet-based surveys about their participation in a variety of behavioral risks during the last 3 months of high school and throughout the 1st year of college. Alcohol use, marijuana use, and sex with multiple partners increased during the transition from high school to college, whereas driving after drinking, aggression, and property crimes decreased. Those from rural high schools and those who elected to live in private dormitories in college were at highest risk for heavy drinking and driving after drinking.
Two studies were conducted to assess variables related to the social determinants of alcohol consumption. In Study 1, moderate- and heavy-drinking male undergraduates were paired with confederates who behaved in a sociable or unsociable manner while modeling either light or heavy consumption. Modeling occurred in the sociable conditions but not in the unsociable conditions, where subjects tended to drink heavily. In Study 2, a similar group of subjects was exposed to one of three social status conditions crossed with light versus heavy consumption. The results indicated a modeling effect in all social status conditions. These studies provide further support for the existence of a modeling effect that can be disrupted by a lack of rapport between drinking partners. This latter finding has implications for the etiology of problem drinking because it suggests that increased alcohol consumption may serve as a strategy for coping with aversive social interactions.
Surveys have documented excessive drinking among college students and tracked annual changes in consumption over time. This study extended previous work by examining drinking changes during the freshman year, using latent growth curve (LGC) analysis to model individual change, and relating risk factors for heavy drinking to growth factors in the model. Retrospective monthly assessments of daily drinking were used to generate weekly estimates. Drinking varied considerably by week, apparently as a function of academic requirements and holidays. A 4-factor LGC model adequately fit the data. In univariate analyses, gender, race/ethnicity, alcohol expectancies, sensation seeking, residence, and data completeness predicted growth factors (ps <.05); gender, expectancies, residence, and data completeness remained significant when covariates were tested simultaneously. Substantive, methodological, and policy implications are discussed.
While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self," we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.
This study evaluated perceptions of same-sex and opposite-sex gender-specific versus gender-nonspecific drinking norms among college students (115 men, 111 women). This research is consistent with previous findings that college students overestimate the quantity and frequency of drinking among their gender-nonspecific peers and demonstrates that both men and women overestimate the quantity and frequency of the drinking of their same-sex peers. The findings suggest that perceived same-sex norms are more strongly associated with problematic drinking than are gender-nonspecific norms and that perceived same-sex drinking norms are stronger predictors of alcohol consumption for women than for men. Results suggest that interventions incorporating normative feedback should be framed differently for women than for men.
Virtual copresence, or the sense of being with others in an online space, is a feeling induced on many apps and websites through user avatars and browsable profile pages. Despite the small/modest effect sizes observed in popular web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students, previous research has yet to consider how copresence might boost efficacy. This study builds on previous PNF gamification work to investigate whether specific copresence features (visual and text-based information about peers) increase PNF's ability to reduce alcohol use relative to a standard PNF condition and a gamified PNF condition. Copresence and perceptions of drinking norms (average drinks, peak drinks, and binge episodes) were assessed during a 3-week period following random assignment of college students (N = 235) to 1 of the 4 web-based PNF conditions (Standard PNF, Gamified PNF Only, Gamified PNF + Visual Copresence, and Gamified PNF + Maximum Copresence). These conditions asked the same questions about drinking and delivered identical PNF on alcohol use, but differed in the level of visual and text-based information about peers. Overall, only the gamified condition that featured maximum copresence significantly reduced drinking outcomes relative to standard PNF. However, conditional effects were moderated by pre-intervention drinking. Among heavier pre-intervention drinkers, both gamified conditions that featured copresence significantly improved upon Standard PNF in reducing alcohol use at follow-up. Findings suggest that including social media-like copresence features to visually represent and provide basic information about the peers contributing to the norms can enhance the efficacy of gamified PNF interventions, especially among high-risk heavy drinkers.
Instagram users can create two types of account to manage their self-presentation strategically. On a real Instagram account (known as Rinsta), users highlight flattering aspects of self, whereas on a fake Instagram account (known as Finsta), users show unflattering aspects of self. We conducted an online survey with college Instagram users who used both Rinsta and Finsta (N = 149) to empirically uncover how user motivations and self-presentation behaviors were different between these two accounts. We found that Instagram users rated five user motivations (i.e., social interaction, self-expression, escapism, peeking, and archiving) higher for the Rinsta than for the Finsta, and they mainly created the Finsta to provide fun daily update and to socially bond with close friends. In addition, we observed that Instagram users presented their actual-self, ideal-self, deceptive-self, and impressive-self to a greater degree on the Rinsta than on the Finsta. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.
Childhood and adolescent experiences have undergone a major transition in interaction with digital technologies since the advent of smartphones. Following a needs assessment study, adolescent online uses and motivations for social networking site use were explored. Six focus groups (comprising 42 adolescent students of secondary schools in the UK) were recruited. Transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Six motivational themes emerged from the analysis, reflecting interactivity and need for control of content and relationships, exhibiting the dynamic nature of engagement with social networking sites: (i) symbiotic relationship with peers online via social media and smartphone attachment, (ii) digital omnipresence related to the need for control and loss of control, (iii) emotional regulation and enhancement, (iv) idealization versus normalization of self and others, (v) peer comparison and ego validation, and (vi) functionality - facilitation of communication functions. These findings offer an understanding of the key drivers of normative adolescent social media behaviour that go beyond the theoretical associations with Uses and Gratifications Theory and Self-Determination Theory, suggesting an additional alternative motivational factor for social media use, that of need to control relationships, content, presentation and impressions. This need may be underlying FoMO and nomophobia and could therefore be responsible for increasing engagement or compulsive use. These findings shed light on cognitive-emotive aspects that may be implicated in problematic use and may inform interventions targeting excessive or problematic screen time and specific social media use aspects that merit scientific attention.
Despite the pervasive use of social media by young adults, there is comparatively little known about whether, and how, engagement in social media influences this group's drinking patterns and risk of alcohol‐related problems. We examined the relations between young adults’ alcohol‐related social media engagement (defined as the posting, liking, commenting, and viewing of alcohol‐related social media content) and their drinking behavior and problems. We conducted a systematic review and meta‐analysis of studies evaluating the association of alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related problems with alcohol‐related social media engagement. Summary baseline variables regarding the social media platform used (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), social media measures assessed (e.g., number of alcohol photographs posted), alcohol measures (e.g., Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test and Timeline Follow back Interview), and the number of time points at which data were collected were extracted from each published study. We used the Q statistic to examine heterogeneity in the correlations between alcohol‐related social media engagement and both drinking behavior and alcohol‐related problems. Because there was significant heterogeneity, we used a random‐effects model to evaluate the difference from zero of the weighted aggregate correlations. We used metaregression with study characteristics as moderators to test for moderators of the observed heterogeneity. Following screening, 19 articles met inclusion criteria for the meta‐analysis. The primary findings indicated a statistically significant relationship and moderate effect sizes between alcohol‐related social media engagement and both alcohol consumption (r = 0.36, 95% CI: 0.29 to 0.44, p < 0.001) and alcohol‐related problems (r = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.21 to 0.51, p < 0.001). There was significant heterogeneity among studies. Two significant predictors of heterogeneity were (i) whether there was joint measurement of alcohol‐related social media engagement and drinking behavior or these were measured on different occasions and (ii) whether measurements were taken by self‐report or observation of social media engagement. We found moderate‐sized effects across the 19 studies: Greater alcohol‐related social media engagement was correlated with both greater self‐reported drinking and alcohol‐related problems. Further research to determine the causal direction of these associations could provide opportunities for social media‐based interventions with young drinkers aimed at reducing alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related adverse consequences.
We explored adolescents' (12- to 18-year-olds; n = 51) awareness of their audience and subsequent self-presentation practices on Facebook and Instagram through focus group discussions. Findings suggest that teens, who are developmentally able to perceive a situation from the third-person perspective and who value peer approval, purposefully share content to appear interesting, well liked, and attractive. Some teens invested great effort into posting by these norms, even asking their friends to help; however, this was more common among girls. Older teens especially discussed taking the perspective of their audience when deciding what to post, which is consistent with the finding that perspective taking continues to develop throughout adolescence. These findings suggest that perspective taking skills and need for peer approval influence self-presentation online.
Objective
To investigate how alcohol marketing and peers may promote college students’ alcohol use through social media.
Participants
College students (N = 682) aged 18–22 years from a large Southern university completed paper surveys in April 2014.
Methods
Structural equation modeling was used to investigate relationships among variables as well as moderation by gender and race.
Results
Drinking behavior was directly related to perceived norms and attitudes toward alcohol that develop, in part, from direct and indirect interactions with their online and offline peers, as well as engagement with alcohol-related content on social media. Gender and ethnicity moderated some effects.
Conclusions
College student drinking is influenced by friends’ alcohol-related content posted on social networking sites and by greater engagement with traditional and online alcohol marketing. College campus alcohol misuse interventions should include components to counter peer influences and alcohol marketing on social media.
Objective:
Examine 1) whether observed social reinforcements (i.e., "likes") received by peers' alcohol-related social media posts are related to first-year college students' perceptions of peer approval for risky drinking behaviors; and 2) whether associations are moderated by students' alcohol use status.
Participants:
First-year university students (N = 296) completed an online survey in September, 2014.
Method:
Participants reported their own alcohol use, friends' alcohol use, perceptions of the typical student's approval for risky drinking, and ranked 10 types of social media posts in terms of the relative numbers of "likes" received when posted by peers.
Results:
Observed social reinforcement (i.e., "likes") for peers' alcohol-related posts predicted perceptions of peer approval for risky drinking behaviors among non-drinking students, but not drinking students.
Conclusions:
For first-year college students who have not yet initiated drinking, observing peers' alcohol-related posts to receive abundant "likes" may increase perceptions of peer approval for risky drinking.
Aim:
To examine students' exposure to user-generated alcohol content on social media, and identify characteristics (i.e. demographics, personality traits, alcohol use, alcohol-related cognitions, and social media factors) associated with monthly or more frequent exposure.
Method:
College/university students (N=11,236) in Bergen, Norway, completed a web-survey measuring exposure to alcohol on social media - both frequency and interpretations of alcohol content. The survey included questions regarding demographics, personality, alcohol-related cognitions, and general use of social media and alcohol. Binary logistic regressions were run to identify characteristics associated with monthly or more frequent exposure to alcohol-related posts on social media.
Results:
A total of 96.7% had been exposed to alcohol-related posts, exposure to posts with a positive valence of alcohol were more frequently reported than exposure to content with a negative valence of alcohol. Reports of monthly or more frequent exposure to alcohol on social media were associated with a range of characteristics, among these younger age, being native Norwegian, lower extroversion and higher agreeableness and self-monitoring scores, higher alcohol use, stronger descriptive norms for alcohol use among online-friends, and more frequent logins to social media.
Conclusions:
Students' potential inflated alcohol norms (originating from social media) should be addressed. The results suggest that exposure may be determined by high alcohol use and membership in demographical groups associated with high alcohol use, an increased attentiveness towards others' behavior, and excessive social media use. Future studies investigating the relationship between alcohol exposure on social media and later alcohol use should control for such factors.
Mediation of X’s effect on Y through a mediator M is moderated if the indirect effect of X depends on a fourth variable. Hayes [(2015). An index and test of linear moderated mediation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 50, 1–22. doi:10.1080/00273171.2014.962683] introduced an approach to testing a moderated mediation hypothesis based on an index of moderated mediation. Here, I extend this approach to models with more than one moderator. I describe how to test if X’s indirect effect on Y is moderated by one variable when a second moderator is held constant (partial moderated mediation), conditioned on (conditional moderated mediation), or dependent on a second moderator (moderated moderated mediation). Examples are provided, as is a discussion of the visualization of indirect effects and an illustration of implementation in the PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS.
Objective:
The present study aimed to explore students' reports of their sharing of alcohol-related content on different social networking sites (i.e., frequency of sharing and connotations of alcohol-related posts), and to identify indicators of such posting.
Method:
Students at the four largest institutions for higher education in Bergen, Norway, were invited to participate in an Internet-based survey. The sample size was 11,236 (a 39.4% response rate). The survey included questions about disclosure of alcohol-related content on social networking sites, alcohol use (using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test), personality factors (using the Mini-IPIP), and demographic characteristics. Binary logistic regressions were used to analyze indicators of frequent sharing of alcohol-related content depicting positive and negative aspects of alcohol use.
Results:
A majority of the students had posted alcohol-related content (71.0%), although few reported having done so frequently. Positive aspects of alcohol use (e.g., enjoyment or social community) were most frequently shared. Young, single, and extroverted students with high alcohol consumption were more likely to report frequent sharing of alcohol-related content. Positive attitudes toward posting alcohol-related content and reports of exposure to such content particularly increased the likelihood of one's own posting of alcohol-related content.
Conclusions:
Positive aspects of alcohol use seem to be emphasized on social networking sites. Sharing of alcohol-related content is associated with heightened alcohol use, which implies that such sites can be relevant for prevention agents. Social influence from social networking sites, such as exposure to others' alcohol-related content, is associated with one's own sharing of similar content.
Teenagers are major contributors of online content because of continuous communication and sharing with peers using social media or instant messaging apps. They like to immediately tell the world about their purchases and consumption experiences, which leads to the generation and transmission of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). This study uses consumer socialization perspective to examine how age, peers and Internet usage influence teenagers' eWOM intentions. The findings suggest that normative and informative influence of peers and the Internet have significant positive association with eWOM. Moreover, these influences also mediate the direct influence of age and Internet usage on eWOM. Further, the potential eWOM behavior of male teenagers is influenced by the existing peer norms, whereas for females, their reliance and belief in the credibility of online information is more critical. The insights are valuable for marketers interested in the powerful and growing teenage consumer segment, especially in the new emerging markets.
Study objective:
This study assesses the association between social media (SM) use with sexual risk, and with parental monitoring among Hispanic adolescents.
Design:
Self-administered anonymous survey SETTING: Urban primary care clinics PARTICIPANTS: 13-21 year olds primarily Hispanic adolescents MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Chi-square and regression analyses controlling for age and gender assessed associations between SM use or sexting and sexual behaviors (kissing, touching genitals, vaginal oral, and anal sex), sexual risk (>4 lifetime partners, >1 recent partner, inconsistent condom use and history of STI diagnosis) and contraceptive use. Similar analyses assessed relationships between adolescent reported parental monitoring and SM use, and sexting.
Results:
Frequent SM use (SNS or apps) had greater odds of all sexual activity. Ever sexters had greater odds of penetrative sex only (oral, vaginal and anal sex) as well as use of hormonal contraception (except LARC). Approximately half of participants reported parental access to profiles on SM. Females had higher odds of parental access to online profiles and having a parental discussion of privacy settings. Those having privacy discussions had greater odds of "private" profiles on SM and lower odds of ever sexting.
Conclusion:
Frequent SM use and sexting was associated with increase in all types of sexual behaviors; sexting alone was associated with more lifetime and recent sexual partners. Parental discussion of privacy settings was found to be protective. Providers and parents should be aware of the impact of SM use on sexual behaviors.
Background: Descriptive alcohol norms refer to the perception of how frequently and how much peers consume alcohol. University students frequently overestimate descriptive norms, which is positively associated with their own alcohol consumption. Exposure to alcohol-related content on social networking sites (SNS) is also predictive of alcohol-related problems.
Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of descriptive norms as a potential mediator of the relationship between alcohol exposure via SNS and problematic alcohol consumption.
Methods: A total of 175 students in a Canadian university completed the Alcohol and Social Networking Practice Questionnaire to assess activity on SNS, the degree of exposure to alcohol-related content on SNS via peers, and perceptions of the estimated frequency and quantity of alcohol consumed by other students. The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test was administered to assess a participant’s alcohol consumption patterns.
Results: Both frequency and quantity norms partially mediated the relationship between alcohol exposure on SNS and drinking behavior.
Conclusion: These results suggest that SNS may be useful to identify at-risk students and may serve as an effective platform for personalized normative feedback interventions.
Background:
Alcohol-related blackouts are a common consequence of heavy drinking, and these blackouts pose risk for injury and other adverse health outcomes.
Objective:
To examine the prevalence and correlates of blackouts among underage drinkers.
Methods:
Youth (ages 14-20) presenting to a suburban Emergency Department (ED) completed screening surveys. Among those reporting past-year alcohol consumption, we examined past 3-month blackouts in relation to: background characteristics (e.g., demographics, fraternity/sorority involvement), substance use, sexual risk behaviors and incapacitated sexual assault (unaware/unable to consent due to alcohol/drugs), forced sexual assault, positive depression screening, and reason for ED visit (injury vs. medical).
Results:
In total, 2,300 past-year drinkers participated: 58% female, 75% Caucasian, and mean age = 18.4. Regarding past 3-month blackouts, 72.7% reported none, 19.3% reported monthly or less, and 8% reported monthly or more. Multivariate cumulative logit regression indicated that blackout frequency was positively associated with: college involvement in Greek life, alcohol use severity, prescription drug misuse, marijuana, screening positive for depression, incapacitated sexual assault, and a gender by alcohol use severity interaction.
Conclusion:
With one-quarter of this clinical sample reporting recent blackouts, as well as the association between blackout frequency and health risk behaviors and other outcomes, findings underscore the need for programs focusing on substance use, depression, and preventing sexual assault. Interventions should also address poly-substance use and drinking motives. Although findings highlight how college students in Greek life may be at high risk for blackouts, many participants not in college also reported blackouts, suggesting that interventions in other settings are also needed.
Gamified interventions exploit the motivational characteristics of a game in order to provide prevention information and promote behavior change. Despite the modest effect sizes observed in increasingly popular web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students, previous research has yet to consider how gamification might be used to enhance efficacy. This study examines whether a novel, gamified PNF intervention format, which includes a point-based reward system, the element of chance, and personal icons to visually represent users, is more effective in reducing short-term alcohol use than the standard web-based style of PNF currently used on college campuses. Two-hundred and thirty-seven college students were randomly assigned to receive either a standard brief, web-based PNF alcohol intervention or the same alcohol intervention components delivered within a Facebook-connected social game called CampusGANDR (Gamified Alcohol Norm Discovery and Readjustment). In both study conditions participants answered identical questions about their perceptions of peer drinking norms and own drinking and then received the same PNF slides. Two weeks following PNF delivery, participants again reported their perceptions of peers' alcohol use and own drinking. Students in the CampusGANDR condition reported significantly reduced peer drinking norms and alcohol use at the two-week follow-up relative to students who received identical PNF delivered by standard online survey. Further, a mediation model demonstrated that this effect was driven by larger reductions in perceived drinking norms among participants assigned to receive CampusGANDR, relative to control. As web-based PNF is becoming an increasingly universal prevention strategy, findings from this study suggest gamification may represent one method by which intervention efficacy could be substantially improved. The potential methodological and economic benefits associated with gamified PNF interventions are emphasized and directions for future research are discussed.
Objective:
The transition to college is an important developmental period for the development of alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug (cocaine, opiates, inhalants, stimulants, hallucinogens, Ecstasy, club drugs) use. The current study explored specific changes in substance use patterns during and after the transition to college through the use of trajectory analyses.
Method:
Participants were 526 students who reported retrospectively and prospectively on their substance use from age 13 through the junior year of college. Group-based trajectory modeling was used to estimate developmental trajectory groups for alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug use during this period.
Results:
Results supported a five-group model of alcohol use, a four-group model of marijuana use, and a four-group model of hard drug use. Although three of the five alcohol trajectories indicated high escalation throughout adolescence, one of these groups decreased in alcohol use dramatically during the freshman and sophomore years, a trend also found for hard drug use. Trajectories demonstrated significant differences in terms of gender, race, and impulsive personality characteristics.
Conclusions:
These results indicate that the start of college is an important developmental transition in terms of polysubstance use, and that despite the homogeneity of this undergraduate sample, there is considerable divergence in trajectories during college.
‘Fitspiration’ is an online trend designed to inspire viewers towards a healthier lifestyle by promoting exercise and healthy food. This study provides a content analysis of fitspiration imagery on the social networking site Instagram. A set of 600 images were coded for body type, activity, objectification and textual elements. Results showed that the majority of images of women contained only one body type: thin and toned. In addition, most images contained objectifying elements. Accordingly, while fitspiration images may be inspirational for viewers, they also contain a number of elements likely to have negative effects on the viewer’s body image.
The extent to which social norms (injunctive and descriptive) are associated with collegiate alcohol use—including binge drinking—has been examined at length, but studies examining the efficacy of interventions derived thereof have reported mixed outcomes. This study examines data from 5,124 college students at 13 different colleges collected by the 2010 Indiana College Substance Use Survey in order to further elucidate the relationship between social norms and binge drinking. We apply seven different regression models to the data, finding the zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model to fit best, likely due to the unique characteristics of the binge-drinking variable; individuals who do not consume any alcohol do not binge drink, inflating the frequency of zeroes for the variable. We contrast key findings from this model to those from other regression models as well as information from the literature and provide preliminary suggestions as to future directions for social norms research as it relates to collegiate binge drinking.
Providing people with information about the behavior and attitudes of their peers is a strategy commonly employed by those seeking to reduce behavior deemed harmful either to individuals (e.g., high alcohol consumption) or the collective (e.g., high energy consumption). We review norm-based interventions, detailing the logic behind them and the various forms they can take. We give special attention to interventions designed to decrease college students' drinking and increase environment-friendly behaviors. We identify the conditions under which norm information has the highest likelihood of changing the targeted behavior and discuss why this is the case. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 67 is January 03, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
College is often a time of alcohol use initiation and displayed Facebook alcohol references. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to determine associations between initial references to alcohol on social media and college students' self-reported recent drinking, binge drinking, and excessive drinking.
First-year students from two U.S. public universities were randomly selected from registrar lists for recruitment. Data collection included 2 years of monthly Facebook evaluation. When an initial displayed Facebook alcohol reference was identified, these "New Alcohol Displayers" were contacted for phone interviews. Phone interviews used the validated timeline followback method to evaluate recent alcohol use, binge episodes, and excessive drinking. Analyses included calculation of positive predictive value and Poisson regression.
A total of 338 participants were enrolled; 56.1% participants were female, 74.8% were Caucasian, and 58.8% were from the Midwestern University. A total of 167 (49.4%) participants became new alcohol displayers during the first 2 years of college. Among new alcohol displayers, 78.5% reported past 28-day alcohol use. Among new alcohol displayers who reported recent alcohol use, 84.9% reported at least one binge episode. Posting an initial Facebook alcohol reference as a profile picture or cover photo was positively associated with excessive drinking (risk ratio = 2.34; 95% confidence interval, 1.54-3.58).
Findings suggest positive associations between references to alcohol on social media and self-reported recent alcohol use. Location of initial reference as a profile picture or cover photo was associated with problematic drinking and may suggest that a student would benefit from clinical investigation or resources.
Copyright © 2015 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Hiring professionals are increasingly using social media sites as screening tools. The primary purpose of this study was to determine what students thought employers considered important information when researching profiles. A survey was given to students enrolled in College of Business classes at a university in the Southeast. Students were cognizant that employers consider posts about drugs, alcohol, sex, profanity, and negative comments. Students did not consider posts and photo tags by friends to be important to employers, nor did they consider grammar and spelling to be important. This is in stark contrast to what recent research indicates employers consider important.
In the contemporary U.S. workplace, corporate personhood is increasingly becoming the metaphor structuring how job seekers are supposed to present themselves as employable. If one takes oneself to be a business, one should also take oneself to be an entity that requires a brand. Some ethnographic questions arise when job seekers try to embody corporate personhood. How does one transform oneself into a brand? What are the obstacles that a person encounters adopting a form of corporate personhood? How does one foster relationships or networks that will lead to a job, not just a circulation of one's brand identity? Based on research in Indiana and northern California, this article explores the conundrums of marketing oneself as a desirable employee on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, and so on. I address the reasons why the increased use of social media contributes to popularizing a notion of self-branding. I also discuss the quandaries people face when using social media to create this self-brand. In sum, this article investigates the obstacles people face when they try to embody a form of corporate personhood across media, a form of self putatively based on the individual, but one that has been transformed into a corporate form that people can not easily inhabit.
Objective:
This study investigated whether self-reports of alcohol-related postings on Facebook by oneself or one's Facebook friends were related to common motives for drinking and were uniquely predictive of self-reported alcohol outcomes (alcohol consumption, problems, and cravings).
Method:
Pacific Northwest undergraduates completed a survey of alcohol outcomes, drinking motives, and alcohol-related Facebook postings. Participants completed the survey online as part of a larger study on alcohol use and cognitive associations. Participants were randomly selected through the university registrar's office and consisted of 1,106 undergraduates (449 men, 654 women, 2 transgender, 1 declined to answer) between the ages of 18 and 25 years (M = 20.40, SD = 1.60) at a large university in the Pacific Northwest. Seven participants were excluded from analyses because of missing or suspect data.
Results:
Alcohol-related postings on Facebook were significantly correlated with social, enhancement, conformity, and coping motives for drinking (all ps < .001). After drinking motives were controlled for, self-alcohol-related postings independently and positively predicted the number of drinks per week, alcohol-related problems, risk of alcohol use disorders, and alcohol cravings (all ps < .001). In contrast, friends' alcohol-related postings only predicted the risk of alcohol use disorders (p < .05) and marginally predicted alcohol-related problems (p = .07).
Conclusions:
Posting alcohol-related content on social media platforms such as Facebook is associated with common motivations for drinking and is, in itself, a strong predictive indicator of drinking outcomes independent of drinking motives. Moreover, self-related posting activity appears to be more predictive than Facebook friends' activity. These findings suggest that social media platforms may be a useful target for future preventative and intervention efforts.
Applying a typology of social network site (SNS) usage that takes into consideration the intensity with which people use such sites, this piece offers an empirical investigation of how users' social practices on SNSs differ and whether different levels of engagement have consequences for academic performance. We rely on a unique survey-based data set representing a diverse group of young adults to answer these questions. We find, not surprisingly, that the more intense users of such sites engage in more social activities on SNSs than those who spend less time on them and only use one such site. This finding holds in the realm of both stronger-tie activities and weaker-tie activities, that is, social practices involving one's close friends as well as less established ties. Our analyses suggest gender differences in level of engagement with SNS social practices. Women pursue more stronger-tie activities than men, such as interacting with existing friends. In contrast, women engage in fewer weaker-tie activities than men, such as developing new relationships on such sites. However, neither SNS usage intensity nor social practices performed on these sites is systematically related to students' academic performance, findings that challenge some previous claims to the contrary.
The present study examines young adults’ use of social media websites, such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, to post public images and videos of themselves depicting alcohol consumption, inebriated behavior, or recreational marijuana use. A content analysis revealed that the majority of image and video representations of alcohol consumption depicted females in social gatherings while images and videos depicting marijuana use depicted solitary males. Videos typically were viewed frequently and gained positive ratings. Among a sample of college students, one-third of participants reported having posted a picture depicting substance use on a social networking site, with 97% aware that others engage in this phenomenon. Students’ perceptions of alcohol-related postings were generally positive or seen as a matter of individual choice while marijuana-related postings were generally viewed more negatively.
The present study examined the influence of gender and personality on individuals’ use of online social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Participants were 238 undergraduate students who reported being members of Facebook, MySpace, or both. Based on prior research examining online behavior, we expected that gender and scores on the Big Five personality scale would moderate online social networking behavior. The results supported our predictions. Specifically, men reported using social networking sites for forming new relationships while women reported using them more for relationship maintenance. Furthermore, women low in agreeableness reported using instant messaging features of social networking sites more often than women high in agreeableness, whereas men low in openness reported playing more games on social networking sites compared to men high in openness. Overall, these results indicate the importance of examining individual differences in online behavior.
Building on previous findings supporting the continuing influence of parents on their teens after they have gone to college [Turrisi, R., Jaccard, J., Taki, R., Dunnam, H., & Grimes, J. (2001). Examination of the short-term efficacy of a parent intervention to reduce college student drinking tendencies. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 15(4), 366-372.; Turrisi, R., Padilla, K., & Wiersma, K. (2000). College student drinking: An examination of theoretical models of drinking tendencies in freshman and upperclassmen. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 61, 598-602.[28]], this study examined the possible indirect influence that parents may have on their teen's alcohol use through the selection of alcohol using peers in college. Friend use served as a mediator of the relationship between parenting characteristics and alcohol use in a longitudinal college sample. As part of a larger study, 392 incoming college freshmen were assessed for their perceptions of their parent's parenting practices, and peer alcohol use. Results from SEM indicated that friend alcohol use (first semester freshman year) mediated the relationship between parental knowledge about what their teen was doing in his/her free time (baseline pre-matriculation to college) and individual use in college (second semester freshman year). Findings suggest that even at this late stage of early adulthood parents continue to exhibit influence on the choices their teens make as far as friends, which in turn influences their teens' drinking in college. Implications for prevention are discussed.
Peer relationships are consistently linked to alcohol use in college students. However, this disparate literature often reveals contradictory findings regarding the precise mechanisms of peer influence. In this review, we use an organisational framework based on social learning theory (SLT) to demonstrate how the quality of peer relationships may influence personal alcohol use. We propose that the quality of peer relationships enhance the influence of social reinforcement, modelling and cognitive processes on personal alcohol use. Research indicates that the quality of peer relationships influences drinking via three pathways: the lack or breakdown of quality peer relationships, alcohol use being an integral part of peer interactions, and if peers disapprove of alcohol use or do not drink. This conceptualisation of peer influence informs the consistent finding of gender differences in college student drinking. Limitations of the reviewed research include reliance on cross-sectional surveys, self-report and homogeneous populations. Future directions for research on quality peer relationships involve detailed longitudinal assessment and the application of advanced statistical methods.
This research was designed to evaluate the relative contribution of social norms, demographics, drinking motives, and alcohol expectancies in predicting alcohol consumption and related problems among heavy-drinking college students.
Participants included 818 (57.6% women) first-year undergraduates who reported at least one heavy-drinking episode in the previous month. In addition to providing demographic information (gender and fraternity/sorority membership) participants completed Web-based assessments of social norms (perceived descriptive norms regarding typical student drinking, injunctive norms regarding friends' and parents' approval), motives (social, enhancement, coping, and conformity), and expectancies and evaluations of positive and negative alcohol effects.
Regression results indicated that descriptive and injunctive norms were among the best predictors of college student drinking. With respect to alcohol problems, results indicated that coping motives accounted for the largest proportion of unique variance. Finally, results revealed that alcohol consumption mediated the relationships between predictors and problems for social norms, whereas coping motives, negative expectancies, and evaluation of negative effects were directly associated with alcohol problems despite having relatively weak or null unique associations with consumption.
The results of this study substantiate social norms as being among the best predictors of alcohol consumption in this population and suggest that drinking to cope is a better predictor of problems. The findings are discussed in terms of practical prevention and treatment implications.