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An examination of the prospective associations between objectively assessed exposure to alcohol-related Instagram content, alcohol-specific cognitions, and first-year college drinking
Abstract
Previous research suggests that exposure to alcohol-related content on social media sites (SMSs) may inflate perceptions of drinking norms, thereby increasing drinking among college students and potentially undermining popular social norms-based alcohol interventions. However, prior research on exposure has used subjective measures of alcohol exposure and has focused mostly on Facebook. The current study focused on Instagram, a popular SMS among college students, and utilized objective time tracking and newsfeed sampling methods to rigorously examine the prospective relationship between exposure to alcohol-related Instagram content (ARIC), alcohol cognitions, and drinking. Participants were 309 matriculating college students (Mage=18.1, SD=0.26; 62.1% female; 46.9% White/Caucasian; 17.5% Hispanic) who had their Instagram use tracked and newsfeeds sampled via a macro several times during the transition into college (August & September), and completed a baseline survey and two follow-up surveys. A sequential mediation model examined theoretically derived pathways between objective ARIC exposure and alcohol use. Results revealed that objective ARIC exposure during the transition to college was positively associated with drinking at the end of the first year of college, and subjective frequency of ARIC exposure mediated this relationship between objective ARIC exposure and later drinking. Subjective frequency of ARIC exposure also mediated the association between objective ARIC exposure and perceptions of descriptive norms, which, in turn, predicted later drinking. These findings illustrate that greater objective ARIC exposure during the transition into college may increase risky drinking over the first year via increased subjective frequency of ARIC and elevated perceptions of drinking norms. Priority directions for future research are discussed and several novel ways in which social norms-based interventions for first-year students may be enhanced to better combat ARIC-related influences are introduced.
... 59,60,63 Similarly, 9% of studies employed the Facebook influence model, 71 which states that social media (e.g., ARC) influence offline behavior (e.g., drinking) through multiple factors such as users connecting with others. 58,72,73 The prototypewillingness model 74 -which states that alcohol-related normative perceptions, personal attitudes, and prototypes are associated with willingness and intentions to drink/post ARC, which in turn predicts drinking behavior-was used in 6% of studies, 75,76 as was the theory of planned behavior, 77 which posits that alcohol-related norms and attitudes predict intentions, and these in turn predict drinking. 75,78 Several frameworks were mentioned in one study each (3%), including social identity theory, 79 which suggests that identities are derived from perceived group membership, and members modify their attitudes and behavior (e.g., drinking/ARC) to match the group; 80 identity shift theory, 81 which states that posting ARC online is more closely linked to a person's own drinking behavior than to general social media posting behavior; 66 uses and gratifications theory, 82 which states that individuals who drink may actively seek out and engage with ARC online; 62 theory of reasoned action, 83 which suggests that exposure to ARC, friend approval for drinking, and personal attitudes toward alcohol predict drinking intentions, which in turn predicts drinking behavior; 84 and social impact theory, 85 which suggests that group membership can influence personal thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes related to drinking and ARC. ...
... 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. ...
... Correlational research has found that college students more engaged with alcohol content on social media and exposed to films glorifying college drinking report greater positive and/or lower negative expectancies [101,102]. Greater objective and subjective exposure to alcohol content on Instagram also has been correlated with college students' endorsement of more positive expectancies [103]. Furthermore, within experimental research, college students randomized to view film clips of positive alcohol outcomes tended to report more positive expectancies after exposure relative to those randomized to view no alcohol content [104]. ...
... Despite much recent focus on youth media engagement, media-particularly social media-influences on how youth understand and anticipate alcohol's effects appear under-researched (with a few notable exceptions: [76,101,103]. Emerging research suggests a role of social media in positive expectancy development that might promote both alcohol [103] and e-cigarette [110] use. Future research should cover the breadth of possible alcohol content sources, including friend posts (see 76), alcohol social media marketing (see [111]), and celebrity/influencer content (see [112]). ...
... Despite much recent focus on youth media engagement, media-particularly social media-influences on how youth understand and anticipate alcohol's effects appear under-researched (with a few notable exceptions: [76,101,103]. Emerging research suggests a role of social media in positive expectancy development that might promote both alcohol [103] and e-cigarette [110] use. Future research should cover the breadth of possible alcohol content sources, including friend posts (see 76), alcohol social media marketing (see [111]), and celebrity/influencer content (see [112]). ...
Alcohol outcome expectancies emerge in early childhood, develop throughout adolescence, and predict alcohol outcomes well into adulthood. Social factors shape how expectancies are learned in myriad ways, yet such social learning influences seldom are examined in the context of developmental factors. This review summarized literature on the social origins of alcohol expectancies through vicarious (observational) and experiential (direct) alcohol-related learning from childhood to young adulthood within a social learning framework.
Young children primarily endorse negative expectancies, which decline rapidly with age amidst escalations in positive expectancies across adolescence. Parents and peers can contribute to vicarious learning about alcohol and facilitate experiential learning in different ways and to varying degrees across development. Media and social media, which children are increasingly exposed to as they mature, often depict alcohol-outcome relations that may further contribute to expectancy development in later adolescence and young adulthood.
Social influences on alcohol expectancy learning are complex and change over time, although this dynamic complexity typically is not depicted in extant literature. Developmentally informed research capturing co-occurring shifts in social influences and alcohol expectancies is needed.
... 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. ...
... When considered by demographic features, Hispanic students exposed to alcohol-related videos on SNS were likely to consume more alcohol (β = 0.20, SE = 0.09, p = 0.030), but not non-Hispanic white students (β = 0.09, SE = 0.13, p = 0.500). Finally, LaBrie and colleagues [36] similarly reported that young adults exposed to greater amounts of alcohol-related Instagram content also displayed greater amounts of current consumption (β = 1.23, SE = 0.05, p < 0.050). ...
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.
... Compared to other platforms, references on Instagram tend to be more glamorized (Boyle et al., 2017;Vranken et al., 2023). Consequently, exposure to alcohol content on Instagram has repeatedly been linked to positive alcohol-related attitudes (Vranken et al., 2020), misperceptions about peers' drinking behaviors (LaBrie et al., 2021), and heightened offline alcohol use (Boyle et al., 2016;Vranken et al., 2020). Despite extant research on content (Hendriks et al., 2018;Vranken et al., 2023) and the effects of alcohol depictions on Instagram (Boyle et al., 2016;LaBrie et al., 2021), two research gaps remain. ...
... Consequently, exposure to alcohol content on Instagram has repeatedly been linked to positive alcohol-related attitudes (Vranken et al., 2020), misperceptions about peers' drinking behaviors (LaBrie et al., 2021), and heightened offline alcohol use (Boyle et al., 2016;Vranken et al., 2020). Despite extant research on content (Hendriks et al., 2018;Vranken et al., 2023) and the effects of alcohol depictions on Instagram (Boyle et al., 2016;LaBrie et al., 2021), two research gaps remain. ...
Social media users are frequently exposed to alcohol images on Instagram, which in turn influences their own alcohol behaviors. Yet, it is unclear what factors drive attention to alcohol cues. In an eye-tracking study (N = 108; Mage = 16.54), we examined adolescents' attention to Instagram Stories depending on: (a) the type of beverage depicted (beer vs water), (b) the character-product interaction portrayed (CPI: peers in images shown consuming [high CPI] vs holding beverages [low CPI]) and, (c) participant's own susceptibility (high vs low-risk alcohol drinker). Our results illustrated that adolescents allocated an equal amount of attention to beer and water depicted in Instagram images. Furthermore, they devoted more attention to Instagram images wherein peers were shown consuming water and beer (high CPI) compared to those wherein peers were holding these beverages (low CPI). Surprisingly, high-risk alcohol drinkers were more responsive to both beer and water cues than low-risk drinkers. This was particularly the case for Instagram images with high CPI. These findings have implications for how health cues on Instagram are attended to and processed.
... A large body of evidence has uncovered that college students' drinking is influenced by friends' ARC posted to social media (Alhabash et al., 2020;Curtis et al., 2018;Nesi et al., 2017;Roberson et al., 2018). Perceived ARC exposure on Instagram was found to be positively associated with weekly drinking among college students (LaBrie et al., 2021). Moreover, other research has uncovered that Facebook posts, in which the poster's drinking was displayed through their primary photos (e.g., profile picture), were indicative of the poster's heavy drinking (Moreno et al., 2015). ...
... Since students often view their peers engaged in partying and socializing through ARC posts on social media, these types of visceral displays may be contributing to the normalization of heavy drinking in college (LaBrie et al., 2021). In fact, perceiving friends as more approving of drinking has been found to be significantly and positively associated with posting ARC to social media (Steers et al., 2019). ...
Background
Drinking is a public health concern among college students. Viewing and posting alcohol‐related content (ARC) on social media may influence students' favorable prototypes of people who post, thereby impacting their drinking. This study created a measure to explore students' ARC poster prototypes. We validated our measure by examining the prototypes as mediators of the associations between viewing and posting ARC and drinking behaviors.
Methods
Students (N = 8065) were asked to complete measures related to viewing and posting ARC, drinking behaviors, and adjectives that described their perceptions of the prototypical college student who posts ARC on social media.
Results
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis yielded three prototypical images of students who post ARC on social media: hedonistic, despondent, and sociable. There were significant pathways between viewing and posting ARC and drinking. The sociable prototype emerged as a significant mediator of the association between ARC viewing and posting and drinking.
Conclusions
Understanding the role of students' poster prototypes may be important for informing targeted interventions. Our results indicate that the underlying reason for increased drinking among students with greater ARC engagement is that they perceived other ARC viewers and posters as being more sociable. Future research may focus on modifying these perceptions.
... Influencers could recommend brands for commercial purposes (i.e., commercial images) or portray alcohol use as part of their daily lives without having the intent to sell brands (e.g., pictures at a party where someone is holding wine) (i.e., non-commercial images) . Building on the social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), exposure to alcohol images can induce an observational learning process, increasing peoples' likelihood of engaging in similar behaviors (Boyle et al., 2016;Erevik et al., 2017;LaBrie et al., 2021). This may especially be the case for exposure to alcohol content from influencers as individuals feel closely related to this socialization agent (Martínez & Olsson, 2019). ...
... Multiple quantitative studies illustrated a link between exposure to online alcohol messages and offline alcohol-related behaviors (Boyle et al., 2016;Erevik et al., 2017;LaBrie et al., 2021;Mesman et al., 2020). Following the Message Interpretation Process Model (MIP) (Austin & Johnson, 1997;Austin & Meili, 1994), mere exposure to alcohol messages does not automatically lead to behavioral changes (Austin et al., 2006;Hoffman et al., 2014). ...
Influencers are important socialization agents among adolescents. There are rising concerns that influencers glamorize their alcohol behaviors and promote brands on Instagram. While exposure to alcohol messages influences adolescents’ alcohol use, it remains unclear how adolescents evaluate influencers’ alcohol images. We conducted 10 focus group interviews with 47 adolescents (Mage = 16.21; SD = 1.22). Our results demonstrated that adolescents frequently encounter images of influencers who hold alcoholic beverages, provide positive reviews for brands, or promote their own beverages. Additionally, building on the Message Interpretation Process model (Austin & Meili, 1994), we examined how individuals affectively (i.e., message desirability) and cognitively (i.e., realism, similarity) evaluate these alcohol images. Our results suggest that adolescents enjoy viewing images of influencers who depicted positive alcohol-related outcomes, highlighted their luxurious lifestyles, and were transparent about their partnership with alcohol brands. Only upon explicitly encouraging them to think aloud about the realism of and similarity to these images; and through discussions with their friends, they became more skeptical and perceived influencers’ images to be inauthentic. Where these critical evaluations took place, the persuasive effects seemed to diminish. Overall, our findings suggest that peer-led discussions and think-aloud procedures may be promising tools for media literacy interventions.
... Thus, participants may report total time across devices while only time on a specific device is tracked, artificially leading researchers to observe over-estimation. Further, findings from studies investigating self-report accuracy for total time across a broad category of SM have unclear implications for researchers who tend to be interested in the use of specific SM platforms [6,21] in order to inform the development of platform-specific health intervention or prevention efforts [22,23]. Previous studies require the assumption that self-report accuracy is consistent across SM platforms used more and less frequently used by adolescents, despite some evidence that heavier SM use affords greater opportunity for reporting an error [20]. ...
... Underscoring the importance of objective assessment in the SM use domain, reliance on only self-report measures would have led to the incorrect conclusion that daily SM time is not a predictor of drinking over the first year of college. Fortunately, compared to Junco's initial study [18], where less than half of the participants who completed the baseline assessment installed the time-tracking software on their computers, the current sample was easily recruited despite the multi-device objective time-tracking requirements and no participants withdrew from the study due to this or other SM privacy invasive aspects [21]. This suggests that SM privacy concerns among youth may have faded considerably since 2013 and should encourage researchers to find cost-effective ways to objectively track SM platform time across adolescents' electronic devices. ...
Public health researchers are increasingly interested in the potential relationships between social media (SM) use, well-being, and health behavior among adolescents. However, most research has assessed daily SM time via self-report survey questions, despite a lack of clarity around the accuracy of such reports given the current tendency of youth to access SM on multiple electronic devices and cycle between multiple SM platforms on a daily basis (i.e., platform swinging). The current study investigates the potential for systematic reporting biases to skew findings. Three hundred and twenty incoming college students downloaded software on their computers, tablets, and smartphones to track their active use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat over a 2-week surveillance period and then self-reported their average daily minutes on each platform immediately after. Larger proportions of students over-estimated than under-estimated their use, with the largest overestimations found on the most heavily used platforms. Females logged significantly more SM time and were less accurate in reporting than were males and, independently, the likelihood of substantial inaccuracies in reporting total SM time and time on most individual platforms increased with each additional SM platform participants reported using. Findings demonstrate that self-reported estimates of SM time among adolescents in the age of SM platform swinging are prone to substantial error and may lead to biased conclusions about relationships between variables. Alternative measurement approaches are suggested to improve the validity of future research in this area.
... Students who viewed the Facebook profile of a peer that featured alcohol content were more likely to have higher evaluations of how common alcohol use is among peers (Fournier et al., 2013). Prior research has also demonstrated that descriptive norms mediated the relationship between exposure to alcohol-related content on Instagram and drinking behaviors (LaBrie et al., 2021). ...
“Wine mom” culture, which encourages mothers to drink alcohol to cope with stressors associated with motherhood, has become mainstream in popular media discourse (Fetters, 2020). While this discourse can help mothers resist traditional expectations and find community, little is known about the effects of these messages on mothers’ beliefs about alcohol, especially given increases in mothers’ drinking habits over the past decade. This research used an experimental design in which mothers (N = 330) viewed nine social media posts, either representative of wine mom or sober mom messaging, or neutral social media posts. The participants reported drinking norms, social comparison orientation, drinking behavior, and previous exposure to wine mom messaging. Results suggest previous exposure to wine mom content on social media and television moderated the effects of the experiment on normative beliefs. Social comparison orientation was also related to increased descriptive norms.
... Google's Tesseract) can extract text from images for analysis with ZSL. This approach may be particularly helpful with some emerging methods, where participants are asked to take screenshots or screen-record themselves scrolling through social media [39,40]. Importantly, ZSL models can be applied to analyse the content of images or videos. ...
A vast amount of media‐related text data is generated daily in the form of social media posts, news stories or academic articles. These text data provide opportunities for researchers to analyse and understand how substance‐related issues are being discussed. The main methods to analyse large text data (content analyses or specifically trained deep‐learning models) require substantial manual annotation and resources. A machine‐learning approach called ‘zero‐shot learning’ may be quicker, more flexible and require fewer resources. Zero‐shot learning uses models trained on large, unlabelled (or weakly labelled) data sets to classify previously unseen data into categories on which the model has not been specifically trained. This means that a pre‐existing zero‐shot learning model can be used to analyse media‐related text data without the need for task‐specific annotation or model training. This approach may be particularly important for analysing data that is time critical. This article describes the relatively new concept of zero‐shot learning and how it can be applied to text data in substance use research, including a brief practical tutorial.
... Young adults (18-29 years) are the largest demographic of social media users, with 84% reporting they use at least one social media site [11]. In fact, greater social media use links to greater drinking and problems among adolescents and young adults over time [12][13][14]. Given the pervasiveness of social media usage, researchers recently postulated that social media is a super peer in that content typically features peer drinking that they may not have encountered in real life [15]. ...
Introduction:
Alcohol-related content (ARC) on social media and drinking motives impact college students' drinking. Most studies have examined peer-generated ARC on drinking outcomes but have yet to extend this relationship to other sources of influence. The current study explores the link between drinking motives, alcohol company ARC, celebrity ARC, and alcohol-related problems among college students.
Methods:
Students (N = 454) from two US universities completed a cross-sectional online survey assessing demographics; drinking motives (Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised; Cooper, Psychol Assess. 1994;6:117-28); following/awareness of alcohol company ARC; engagement with celebrity ARC; peak drinks (most drinks consumed on one occasion); and alcohol-related problems (e.g., passed out).
Results:
Greater celebrity ARC was linked to coping, enhancement, and conformity motives, and peak drinks. Frequent engagement with celebrity ARC was associated with higher problems. Positive indirect effects were observed from celebrity ARC to problems through coping and conformity motives, and peak drinks. After having adjusted for the influence of celebrity ARC, no significant pathways were found between alcohol company ARC and any of the drinking motives, peak drinks or problems, nor were there any indirect effects between alcohol company ARC and problems.
Discussion and conclusions:
Results revealed that a possible explanation for why students who engaged with celebrity ARC experience problems was due to coping and conformity motives as well as peak drinks. Interventions targeting alcohol cognitions might assess engagement with and exposure to different sources of ARC given their potential to influence problems.
... This study demonstrates that ZSL-an approach that requires virtually no additional training data, less computational resources, and less computer science expertise than supervised deep learning-can accurately address research questions such as the identification of alcohol content in images, especially when binary classification is required (i.e., identifying the presence/absence of alcoholic beverages). To date, most estimates of alcohol exposure in media are based on self-report-which is subject to recall bias-or hand-annotated data-which is time-intensive and difficult to conduct at large scale 10 . As such, ZSL could assist with determining more accurate estimates of alcohol exposure in the media, which is important for determining how common alcohol is across media platforms, how alcohol is being portrayed, and what impact alcohol exposure may have. ...
Exposure to alcohol content in media increases alcohol consumption and related harm. With exponential growth of media content, it is important to use algorithms to automatically detect and quantify alcohol exposure. Foundation models such as Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) can detect alcohol exposure through Zero-Shot Learning (ZSL) without any additional training. In this paper, we evaluated the ZSL performance of CLIP against a supervised algorithm called Alcoholic Beverage Identification Deep Learning Algorithm Version-2 (ABIDLA2), which is specifically trained to recognise alcoholic beverages in images, across three tasks. We found ZSL achieved similar performance compared to ABIDLA2 in two out of three tasks. However, ABIDLA2 outperformed ZSL in a fine-grained classification task in which determining subtle differences among alcoholic beverages (including containers) are essential. We also found that phrase engineering is essential for improving the performance of ZSL. To conclude, like ABIDLA2, ZSL with little phrase engineering can achieve promising performance in identifying alcohol exposure in images. This makes it easier for researchers, with little or no programming background, to implement ZSL effectively to obtain insightful analytics from digital media. Such analytics can assist researchers and policy makers to propose regulations that can prevent alcohol exposure and eventually prevent alcohol consumption.
... For example, Geusens and Beullens (2021a) examined images on Instagram and reported that alcohol in the background of an image was not significantly related to binge drinking behaviors. More broadly, research suggests that the mere exposure to alcohol images on Instagram predicts future alcohol consumption (LaBrie et al., 2021). It is important to note that the social media research that uses images as a data source tends to be primarily qualitative (e.g., Hendriks et al., 2018Hendriks et al., , 2020. ...
... In contrast, social media platforms have different ARC cultures (e.g., Instagram for glamorised content, Snapchat for casual content) [41,42]. Furthermore, greater use of Instagram and Snapchat associates with greater consumption and sharing ARC cross-sectionally [43][44][45] and over time [46,47]. To examine platform-specific exposure, estimates for all platforms are typically included as simultaneous predictors in the model. ...
Introduction:
Frequent exposure to peer-shared alcohol-related content (ARC) on social media is associated with greater alcohol consumption and related consequences among undergraduates. Social media influencers also share ARC; yet, the effect of exposure to influencer-shared ARC on alcohol outcomes has not been examined. The current study examined whether following influencers who share ARC and the frequency of sharing were associated with alcohol outcomes, and associations between influencer type (e.g., actors) and alcohol outcomes.
Methods:
Undergraduates (N = 528) from two universities in the United States completed an online survey assessing demographics, social media use, alcohol use and related consequences. They listed up to five influencers they followed and viewed the most content from. A series of linear regression models were conducted.
Results:
Having a larger proportion of influencers sharing ARC was associated with greater quantity, frequency and peak drinks, but not consequences. Frequency of influencers sharing ARC was associated with greater quantity and peak drinks, but not frequency or consequences. Findings remained significant, even after controlling for peer ARC. Actor ARC, everyday person ARC and 'other' type influencer ARC were associated with several alcohol outcomes.
Discussion and conclusions:
This study added to the literature by examining how following influencers who share ARC, and sharing frequency, were associated with drinking outcomes over and above exposure to peer ARC. It also examined whether ARC content from specific types of influencers was associated with alcohol outcomes. Findings highlight that the source of ARC is relevant when studying the effects of ARC exposure on college drinking.
... This is because traditionally studies have relied on manual annotation of digital media 10. For example, in their project measuring the link between exposure to alcohol-related posts on Instagram and subsequent alcohol use, LaBrie et al. 10 collected and hand-annotated 89,917 images to estimate how much alcohol people were exposed to on Instagram. Additionally, as more alcohol imagery exists than ever before and we are spending more time online, we need more sophisticated ways to analyse and provide evidence of the amount of alcohol exposure in digital media. ...
Exposure to alcohol content in media increases alcohol consumption and related harm. With exponential growth of media content, it is important to use algorithms to automatically detect and quantify alcohol exposure. Foundational models such as Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) can detect alcohol exposure through Zero-Shot Learning (ZSL) without any additional training. In this paper, we evaluated the ZSL performance of CLIP against a supervised algorithm called Alcoholic Beverage Identification Deep Learning Algorithm Version-2 (ABIDLA2), which is specifically trained to recognise alcoholic beverages in images, across three tasks. We found ZSL achieved similar performance compared to ABIDLA2 in two out of three tasks. However, ABIDLA2 outperformed ZSL in a fine-grained classification task in which determining subtle differences among alcoholic beverages (including containers) are essential. We also found that phrase engineering is essential for improving the performance of ZSL. To conclude, like ABIDLA2, ZSLwith little phrase engineering can achieve promising performance in identifying alcohol exposure in images. This makes it easier for researchers, with little or no programming background, to implement ZSL effectively to obtain insightful analytics from digital media. Such analytics can assist researchers and policy makers to propose regulations that can prevent alcohol exposure and eventually prevent alcohol consumption.
... From the perspective of recipients, SNSs are platforms for adolescents to show themselves and interact with peers. Deviant peers post photos of smoking and drinking on media platforms, and adolescents are exposed to such information about alcohol and tobacco [38,58]. This reflects the overlap between adolescents' offline and online communication, that is, SNSs are the extension of adolescents' offline communication in cyberspace [16]. ...
Due to the prevalence and severe harm of adolescent tobacco and alcohol use, researchers have been paying attention to its influencing factors. From the perspective of the ecological techno-subsystem theory, this study aimed to examine the correlations between deviant peer affiliation, tobacco and alcohol information exposure on social networking sites (SNSs), and adolescent tobacco and alcohol use, as well as the potential protective role of digital literacy. In total, 725 adolescents were recruited to participate in this study. The results showed that deviant peer affiliation was positively associated with adolescent tobacco and alcohol use, SNS tobacco and alcohol information exposure mediated this association, and digital literacy moderated the relationship between SNS information exposure and tobacco and alcohol use. Specifically, the association between SNS tobacco and alcohol information exposure and adolescent tobacco and alcohol use was weaker for those with high digital literacy. These findings not only explore the combined effects of offline and online risk factors but also provide guides for preventing adolescents’ tobacco and alcohol use by cultivating and enhancing digital literacy.
... 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.
Adolescents may be exposed to online content depicting substance use, raising the question of how exposure to others’ online substance use content relates to one’s own use. Additionally, it is of interest to explore how parental restrictive (i.e., media content restriction) and active mediation (i.e., media content discussion) may relate to links between online substance use exposure and substance use. In a sample of 1017 U.S. adolescents (55% female; T1 Mage = 15.04), this longitudinal study examined links between exposure to peers’ online postings about substances and adolescents’ own alcohol, marijuana, cigarette, and e-cigarette use two years later. Adolescents’ Time 1 exposure to peers’ online substance postings was generally associated with greater Time 2 marijuana use, alcohol use, and, to some extent, e-cigarette use. Greater Time 1 cigarette use was associated with lower Time 2 exposure to peers’ online substance postings. Time 1 parent-reported restrictive mediation was associated with lower Time 2 exposure to online postings, but mediation did not buffer associations between exposure and use. Intervention and prevention efforts should be geared towards targeting risky content adolescents are exposed to online, and what parenting behaviors may be effective in attenuating associations between online substance exposure and use.
In a community sample of emerging adults ( N = 232), this study (a) assessed participants’ exposure to and postings about alcohol, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and marijuana across social media platforms, (b) investigated how exposure to and posting about text versus visual substance-related content differentially relate to one’s own use, and (c) tested if exposure to versus posting about substances differentially relate to use. Data were collected via cross-sectional, daily, and observational methods. Participants were frequently exposed to substances on social media. Postings were less common, with Snapchat a notable outlet. Visual posts were somewhat more prominently linked to one’s own use than text posts. Posting about substances tended to be more strongly associated with own use than exposure, but this did not necessarily replicate with observed assessments. Social media platforms are key for emerging adults to encounter and post about substance use content, with implications for emerging adults’ own substance use.
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).
BACKROUND
Research suggests that the social media platforms popular on college campuses may reflect, reinforce, and even exacerbate heavy drinking practices among students. The present study was designed to directly examine: (1) whether exposure to alcohol-related content on social media diminishes the efficacy of a traditional web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol intervention among first-year drinkers; and (2) if social media inspired features and digital game mechanics can be integrated into a PNF intervention to combat social media-based alcohol influence and increase efficacy.
METHOD
Alcohol experienced first-year college students (N = 223) completed a pre-survey that assessed exposure to alcohol-related content and social media and were randomized to 1 of 3 web-based alcohol PNF conditions (traditional, gamified only, or social media inspired gamified). One month later, participants’ alcohol consumption was reassessed.
RESULTS
Among participants who received traditional PNF, social media-based alcohol exposure interacted with pre-intervention drinking such that traditional PNF was less effective in reducing drinking among heavier drinkers reporting greater exposure to alcohol-related social media content. Further, when regression models compared the efficacy of all three conditions, the social media inspired gamified PNF condition was significantly more effective in reducing drinking than was traditional PNF among moderate and heavy drinkers reporting greater exposure to alcohol on social media.
CONCLUSION
Although additional research is needed, these findings suggest that representing the population of students on whom normative statistics are based with social media-like user avatars and profiles may enhance the degree to which alcohol PNF is relatable and believable among high-risk students.
Young adults are frequently exposed to alcohol posts from their friends on social networking sites, and little research has investigated the influences of these posts on alcohol use. Therefore, this study investigated how exposure to alcohol posts influenced determinants of alcohol use, and whether alcohol posts of close friends influenced these determinants more strongly compared to alcohol posts of distant friends. Students from Dutch universities (N = 210) participated in an experiment with a 2 (post condition: alcohol or neutral) x 2 (friend condition: close or distant) between-subjects design. Participants that were exposed to alcohol posts reported higher intention to use alcohol, F(1, 204) = 4.32, p =.039, willingness to use alcohol, F(1, 204) = 8.15, p =.005, and more positive affective attitudes about alcohol, F(1, 204) = 5.84, p =.017, than participants that were exposed to neutral posts. Additionally, participants who viewed alcohol posts of close friends reported more positive affective attitudes about alcohol compared to participants who viewed alcohol posts of distant friends, F(1, 204) = 5.15, p =.024. Developers of health interventions could use these findings to raise awareness about the unhealthy influences of alcohol posts on determinants of young adults’ alcohol use.
This study is among the first to cross-culturally compare the associations between social media use and emerging adults’ drinking behavior in an accepting (Belgium) and comparatively restricted (USA) Western drinking culture. A cross-sectional survey was administered among 770 college students (nUSA = 253, 24% male; nBelgium = 487, 34% male) aged 18–20 years. Structural equation modeling was used and demonstrated that the association between exposure to others’ alcohol-related content on social media and drinking intentions operated similarly via more positive descriptive and injunctive norms for both populations, whereas the association between self-sharing and drinking intentions operated similarly via more positive attitudes. However, only among Belgian students was sharing alcohol references also related to drinking intentions through descriptive norms. Overall, this study points to the generalizability of attitudes and social norms as mechanisms of alcohol-related social media (self-)effects among emerging adult college students across Western drinking cultures.
Background
Literature has consistently shown a positive relationship between young adults’ social media alcohol-related posts and drinking outcomes; however, the reasons for this association and the psychosocial influences behind students’ posting of alcohol-related content are still unclear. Peer influences have been robustly shown to predict students’ drinking such that students’ perceptions of their friends’ drinking is positively associated with their own drinking.
Objective
Although research has demonstrated that online and offline peer influences are robust predictors of drinking among college students, perceptions of friends’ approval and students’ drinking in relation to alcohol-related posting have yet to be explored longitudinally.
Methods
The current multi-site, multi-method study examined students (N=316; 58.7% female) from a Midwest (58.8%) and Northwest university over a 4-year period. All Facebook alcohol-related posts were coded each academic calendar year and perceived friends’ approval of drinking and students’ alcohol use were assessed annually. A lagged, random coefficients negative binomial model was specified to examine between- and within-person effects.
Results
After controlling for perceptions of friends’ alcohol-related posts, results revealed that time, drinking more, and perceiving friends as more approving of drinking were significantly and positively associated with posting alcohol-related content at the between-person level. Moreover, a significant interaction of Time X Drinking, with drinking at the between-person level, emerged such that heavier drinkers tended to post less often over time.
Conclusions
Increases in alcohol-related content posts are likely to over-inflate students’ drinking norms and their drinking. Thus, it is plausible that social media networks containing more alcohol-related content may contribute to cyclical increases in drinking for individuals within that network.
Adolescents and young adults in the United States are constantly exposed to substance-related media and advertising content. The current study seeks to explore, developmentally, how exposure to substance-related media content influences both normative beliefs about peer alcohol use and individual alcohol use. Youth (N = 4‚840; 50.6% female) were followed for ten years from age 12 to 22. Auto-regressive latent trajectory with structured residual (ALT-SR) models were used to explore within-person reciprocal associations between substance-related media content, descriptive norms, and alcohol use. Results indicated that‚ across adolescence and young adulthood, exposure to substance-related media content was associated with increased alcohol use via perceived alcohol norms. The pathway from media exposure to alcohol use was mediated by increased perceived norms for adolescents only. With screen time increasing over the last decade, it is important to invest resources into real-time interventions that address substance-related social media content as it relates to misperceived norms and to begin these interventions in early adolescence.
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.
This article aims to investigate whether alcohol-related disclosure and exposure on social media can predict later alcohol use, and to identify covariates in these relationships. Data were collected by online surveys (two waves) among students in Bergen, Norway. The first survey was administered in fall 2015. The follow-up took place during fall 2016. A total of 5,217 students participated in both waves. The surveys included questions about demographics, personality, alcohol use, alcohol-related cognitions (e.g., attitudes and norms), social media use, and disclosure and exposure of alcohol on social media. Bivariate comparisons were conducted to assess differences in alcohol use between the frequent (i.e., monthly or more often) disclosure and exposure groups and low-frequent disclosure and exposure groups. Crude and adjusted linear regressions were employed to investigate if disclosure and exposure of alcohol could predict later alcohol use, when controlling for a range of covariates. Compared to the low-frequent disclosure and exposure groups, participants which frequently disclosed or were frequently exposed to alcohol-related content had higher alcohol use at baseline and 1 year later (p < 0.001), when no covariates were controlled for. Frequent disclosure of content reflecting positive aspects of alcohol predicted stable or slightly increased alcohol use at Time 2 (p < 0.01), even when all covariates (i.e., demographics, personality, alcohol use, alcohol-related cognitions, and social media use) were controlled for. In conclusion, frequent disclosure and/or exposure to alcohol-related content predicted alcohol use over time. Alcohol disclosure/exposure on social media could for the most part not predict later alcohol use when baseline alcohol use was controlled for. High alcohol use and alcohol disclosure/exposure on social media appear to be strongly intertwined, which hampers identification of directionality between alcohol use and disclosure/exposure. Disclosing content reflecting positive aspects of alcohol was the only independent variable that could predict further alcohol use when other factors, like baseline alcohol use, were held constant. This finding suggests that disclosure of alcohol content reflecting positive aspects of alcohol might have a self-enhancing effect on the sharers' further alcohol consumption, or that disclosing such content could indicate lenient alcohol-related cognitions not detected by the current measurements.
Background
In 2015, 90% of US young adults with Internet access used social media. Digital and social media are highly prevalent modalities through which young adults explore identity formation, and by extension, learn and transmit norms about health and risk behaviors during this developmental life stage.
Objective
The purpose of this study was to provide updated estimates of social media use from 2014 to 2016 and correlates of social media use and access to digital technology in data collected from a national sample of US young adults in 2016.
Methods
Young adult participants aged 18-24 years in Wave 7 (October 2014, N=1259) and Wave 9 (February 2016, N=989) of the Truth Initiative Young Adult Cohort Study were asked about use frequency for 11 social media sites and access to digital devices, in addition to sociodemographic characteristics. Regular use was defined as using a given social media site at least weekly. Weighted analyses estimated the prevalence of use of each social media site, overlap between regular use of specific sites, and correlates of using a greater number of social media sites regularly. Bivariate analyses identified sociodemographic correlates of access to specific digital devices.
Results
In 2014, 89.42% (weighted n, 1126/1298) of young adults reported regular use of at least one social media site. This increased to 97.5% (weighted n, 965/989) of young adults in 2016. Among regular users of social media sites in 2016, the top five sites were Tumblr (85.5%), Vine (84.7%), Snapchat (81.7%), Instagram (80.7%), and LinkedIn (78.9%). Respondents reported regularly using an average of 7.6 social media sites, with 85% using 6 or more sites regularly. Overall, 87% of young adults reported access or use of a smartphone with Internet access, 74% a desktop or laptop computer with Internet access, 41% a tablet with Internet access, 29% a smart TV or video game console with Internet access, 11% a cell phone without Internet access, and 3% none of these. Access to all digital devices with Internet was lower in those reporting a lower subjective financial situation; there were also significant differences in access to specific digital devices with Internet by race, ethnicity, and education.
Conclusions
The high mean number of social media sites used regularly and the substantial overlap in use of multiple social media sites reflect the rapidly changing social media environment. Mobile devices are a primary channel for social media, and our study highlights disparities in access to digital technologies with Internet access among US young adults by race/ethnicity, education, and subjective financial status. Findings from this study may guide the development and implementation of future health interventions for young adults delivered via the Internet or social media sites.
BACKGROUND: College students who engage in high-risk drinking patterns are thought to "mature out" of these patterns as they transition to adult roles. College graduation is an important milestone demarcating this transition. We examine longitudinal changes in quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption between the college years and the 4 years after graduation and explore variation in these changes by gender and race/ethnicity. METHODS: Participants were 1,128 college graduates enrolled in a longitudinal prospective study of health-risk behaviors. Standard measures of alcohol consumption were gathered during 8 annual personal interviews (76 to 91% annual follow-up). Graduation dates were culled from administrative data and self-report. Spline models, in which separate trajectories were modeled before and after the "knot" of college graduation, were fit to 8 annual observations of past-year alcohol use frequency and quantity (typical number of drinks/drinking day). RESULTS: Frequency increased linearly pregraduation, slightly decreased postgraduation, and then rebounded to pregraduation levels. Pregraduation frequency increased more steeply among individuals who drank more heavily at college entry. Quantity decreased linearly during college, followed by quadratic decreases after graduation. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the postcollege "maturing-out" phenomenon might be attributable to decreases in alcohol quantity but not frequency. High-frequency drinking patterns that develop during college appear to persist several years postgraduation. Language: en
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).
Both consuming alcohol and using social networking sites (SNS) are popular pastimes among adolescents. The current cross-sectional study (N = 3,133) aims to explore the relation between being exposed to and displaying alcohol-related content on SNS with alcohol abuse among adolescents aged 16–20 years. First, the results support that displaying alcohol-related content on SNS is more strongly associated with alcohol abuse than exposure to this kind of content. Furthermore, the associations of both exposure to and displaying alcohol-related content on SNS with alcohol abuse are mediated through perceived social norms of friends and attitudes toward excessive alcohol consumption. Yet, whereas alcohol-related attitudes and social norms seemed to be equally important mediators in the relation between exposure to alcohol-related content on SNS and alcohol abuse, the association between displaying alcohol-related content on SNS and alcohol abuse seemed to be mediated predominantly through a change in alcohol-related attitudes. Overall, this study sheds more light on the complex relations between SNS use and risky drinking behavior among adolescents.
With increasing reliance on social media and social networking sites, the current explores the differences among Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in terms of use intensity, time spent daily on the platform, and the motivations to use each platform. Additionally, the study applies the uses and gratifications approach to contrast the ways in which motivations to use each of the four platforms predict the intensity of using that platform. 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 showed 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 took the lead five of the nine motivations. Findings are discussed in relation to the uses and gratifications approach and uniqueness of different social media and SNSs.
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.
Objective:
The first year after high school is a transitional year, with increased independence from parental supervision, contact with other independent youth, and exposure to new environments, all of which may influence substance use. This article reports longitudinal predictors of change in the prevalence of alcohol use and heavy episodic drinking among adolescents and environmental correlates (i.e., residence, college attendance, and work status) with drinking the year after high school.
Method:
A national sample of study participants (N = 2,659; 55% female) in the NEXT Generation Health Study were followed annually from 10th grade (Wave 1) to the year after high school (Wave 4). Longitudinal binary outcomes, including recent (30-day) drinking and two measures of heavy episodic drinking, were examined. Transition models with generalized estimating equations estimated the effect of previous drinking behaviors, social influences, and current residential status and activity (school and/or work) on drinking prevalence.
Results:
Drinking increased from 40.5% among high school seniors (Wave 3) to 53.5% in Wave 4 for 30-day use, and from 29.0% to 41.2% for heavy episodic drinking. Significant predictors of 30-day drinking included previous drinking status (odds ratio [OR] = 5.48), peer drinking often (OR = 3.25), parental expectations (OR = 0.91), and current year living on campus (OR = 2.10). The same significant predictors with similar magnitudes were found for both measures of heavy episodic drinking. Peer use did not interact with college attendance or residence.
Conclusions:
Predictors of drinking and heavy episodic drinking during the first year after high school included being White, living on campus, previous drinking, lower parental expectations, and having peers who drink.
Background: We evaluated the contributions of teen alcohol use to the formation and continuation of new and existing friendships while in turn estimating the influence of friend drinking on individuals’ regular use and heavy drinking.
Method: Longitudinal network analysis was used to assess the mutual influences between teen drinking and social networks among adolescents in two large Add Health schools where full network data was collected three times. Friendship processes were disaggregated into the formation of new friendships and the continuation of existing friendships in a joint model isolating friendship selection and friend influences.
Results: Friends have a modest influence on one another when selection is controlled. Selection is more complicated than prior studies suggest, and is only related to new friendships and not their duration in the largest school. Alcohol use predicts decreasing popularity in some cases, and popularity does not predict alcohol consumption.
Conclusion: Intervention efforts should continue pursuing strategies that mitigate negative peer influences. The development of socializing opportunities that facilitate relationship opportunities to select on healthy behaviors also appears promising. Future work preventing teen substance use should incorporate longitudinal network assessments to determine whether programs promote protective peer relationships in addition to how treatment effects diffuse through social networks
Background:
We evaluated the contributions of teen alcohol use to the formation and continuation of new and existing friendships while in turn estimating the influence of friend drinking on individuals' regular use and heavy drinking.
Method:
Longitudinal network analysis was used to assess the mutual influences between teen drinking and social networks among adolescents in two large Add Health schools where full network data was collected three times. Friendship processes were disaggregated into the formation of new friendships and the continuation of existing friendships in a joint model isolating friendship selection and friend influences.
Results:
Friends have a modest influence on one another when selection is controlled. Selection is more complicated than prior studies suggest, and is only related to new friendships and not their duration in the largest school. Alcohol use predicts decreasing popularity in some cases, and popularity does not predict alcohol consumption.
Conclusion:
Intervention efforts should continue pursuing strategies that mitigate negative peer influences. The development of socializing opportunities that facilitate relationship opportunities to select on healthy behaviors also appears promising. Future work preventing teen substance use should incorporate longitudinal network assessments to determine whether programs promote protective peer relationships in addition to how treatment effects diffuse through social networks.
Participation in online social media Web sites (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) has skyrocketed in recent years and created a new environment in which adolescents and young adults may be exposed to and influenced by alcohol-related content. Thus, young people are exposed to and display pro-alcohol messages and images through online portrayals of drinking on personal pages as well as unregulated alcohol marketing on social media sites that may reach underage people. Such online displays of alcohol behavior have been correlated with offline alcohol behavior and risky drinking. Health behavior theories have been used to describe the influence of social media sites, including Social Learning Theory, the Media Practice Model, and a more recent conceptual approach called the Facebook Influence Model. Researchers are beginning to assess the potential of social media sites in identifying high-risk drinkers through online display patterns as well as delivering prevention messages and interventions. Future studies need to further expand existing observational work to better understand the role of social media in shaping alcohol-related behaviors and fully exploit the potential of these media for alcohol-related interventions.
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)
Research shows that multiple factors influence college drinking, from an individual's genetic susceptibility to the positive and negative effects of alcohol, alcohol use during high school, campus norms related to drinking, expectations regarding the benefits and detrimental effects of drinking, penalties for underage drinking, parental attitudes about drinking while at college, whether one is member of a Greek organization or involved in athletics, and conditions within the larger community that determine how accessible and affordable alcohol is. Consequences of college drinking include missed classes and lower grades, injuries, sexual assaults, overdoses, memory blackouts, changes in brain function, lingering cognitive deficits, and death. This article examines recent findings about the causes and consequences of excessive drinking among college students relative to their non-college peers and many of the strategies used to collect and analyze relevant data, as well as the inherent hurdles and limitations of such strategies.
Examining individual characteristics may not yield an understanding of the complex array of factors that affect college student alcohol use. Utilizing a latent class analysis, the present study investigated an alcohol and drug use database of first-year college students at 89 U.S. colleges and universities (N = 21,945). These data were collected between December, 2010 and September, 2011. This study identified: (1) classes based on alcohol consumption, alcohol-related behaviors, and past-year use of illegal drugs and nonmedical use of prescriptions medications (NMUPM); (2) demographic covariates of these classes; and (3) differential social norms awareness, perceived harmfulness of illegal drugs and NMUPM, and protective strategies. Four classes were identified: (1) Low Risk Drinking/Low Prevalence Drug Use (Class 1); (2) Lower Intake Drinking/Moderate Prevalence Drug Use (Class 2); (3) Moderate Risk Drinking/Moderate Prevalence Drug Use (Class 3); and (4) High Risk Drinking/High Prevalence Drug Use (Class 4). Classes differed in self-reported typical week drinking, estimated peak blood alcohol content over the past 2 weeks, high-risk alcohol use, negative alcohol-related consequences, driving under the influence or riding with drinking drivers, alcohol-related protective behaviors, and past-year substance use. Of particular interest was the identification of a latent class (Class 2) composed primarily of females with a relatively low alcohol intake, but with a high probability of past-year other substance use. This group reported negative alcohol-related consequences despite their relatively low intake. To our knowledge, this is the first latent class analysis of college student alcohol use that includes a drug use indicator and compares social norms awareness, harmfulness perceptions, and alcohol-related protective behaviors between classes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Objectives:
The aims of this study were (1) to investigate the prevalence and development of both online (OnSRB) and offline sexual risk behavior (OffSRB) in adolescence, (2) to establish whether OnSRBs and OffSRBs are related, and (3) to identify risk factors that determine problematic pathways of OnSRB and OffSRB.
Methods:
A 4-wave longitudinal study with 1762 Dutch adolescents aged 12 to 18 was conducted (mean age, T1 = 14.52, 49% girls). By using group-based modeling, developmental pathways for OnSRB and OffSRB were identified and the relationship between both behaviors over time was examined.
Results:
Substantial intraindividual differences in the development of OnSRB and OffSRB were found. The analysis revealed 3 developmental pathways of OnSRB: no risk (70.2%), moderate risk (23.7%), and high risk (6.1%). For OffSRB, we identified a no risk (90.6%) and an increasing pathway (9.4%). OnSRBs and OffSRBs were related and had common predictors (ie, sensation seeking, low educational level, gender).
Conclusions:
Only a minority of adolescents shows sustained high OnSRB. This group is likely to consist of low-educated, high-sensation-seeking adolescents who spend more time communicating on the Internet and come from less cohesive families. These same adolescents are also more likely to engage in OffSRB. Preventions should focus on these adolescents.
A comprehensive measure of alcohol outcome expectancies was developed through the use of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The questionnaire assesses both positive and negative expected effects of alcohol as well as the subjective evaluation of those effects. The measure was found to demonstrate adequate internal consistency, temporal stability, and construct validity. Criterion validity was demonstrated through structural regression analyses of the independent and combined influences of outcome expectancies and subjective evaluation on 3 measures of alcohol use. Information on Ss' dose-related expectancies provided further validation of the expectancy construct and yielded information about the effects people associate with drinking different amounts of alcohol. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Similarity breeds connection. This principle--the homophily principle--structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
BACKROUND
Research suggests that the social media platforms popular on college campuses may reflect, reinforce, and even exacerbate heavy drinking practices among students. The present study was designed to directly examine: (1) whether exposure to alcohol-related content on social media diminishes the efficacy of a traditional web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol intervention among first-year drinkers; and (2) if social media inspired features and digital game mechanics can be integrated into a PNF intervention to combat social media-based alcohol influence and increase efficacy.
METHOD
Alcohol experienced first-year college students (N = 223) completed a pre-survey that assessed exposure to alcohol-related content and social media and were randomized to 1 of 3 web-based alcohol PNF conditions (traditional, gamified only, or social media inspired gamified). One month later, participants’ alcohol consumption was reassessed.
RESULTS
Among participants who received traditional PNF, social media-based alcohol exposure interacted with pre-intervention drinking such that traditional PNF was less effective in reducing drinking among heavier drinkers reporting greater exposure to alcohol-related social media content. Further, when regression models compared the efficacy of all three conditions, the social media inspired gamified PNF condition was significantly more effective in reducing drinking than was traditional PNF among moderate and heavy drinkers reporting greater exposure to alcohol on social media.
CONCLUSION
Although additional research is needed, these findings suggest that representing the population of students on whom normative statistics are based with social media-like user avatars and profiles may enhance the degree to which alcohol PNF is relatable and believable among high-risk students.
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150623/1/2018-19 VOL II FINAL 2.pdf
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.
Objective:
Despite its prominence in the health communication literature, psychological reactance has rarely been considered as a factor that may undermine web-based Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students. This study built on recent gamification work to examine how chance-based uncertainty, a popular game mechanic associated with motivation and attention in digital games for learning, might be leveraged to reduce the psychological reactance experienced by heavy drinking students receiving alcohol PNF, thereby leading to larger reductions in their alcohol consumption.
Method:
Psychological reactance, perceptions of norms, and drinking behaviors were assessed during a 3-week period following random assignment of binge drinking students (N = 141, 51% female) into one of four web-based PNF conditions. These conditions asked the same questions about drinking and delivered identical PNF on alcohol use but differed in whether animated slot-machine spinners appeared to select participants' question and feedback topics as well as the number of additional topics (beyond alcohol) on which questions were asked and PNF was delivered.
Results:
All conditions similarly reduced drinking norms but differed in the degree to which they aroused cognitive reactance and reduced drinking. Relative to a no-spinner alcohol-only condition, increasing chance-based uncertainty by giving question and feedback topics the appearance of being selected by gamelike spinners substantially reduced cognitive reactance, which, in turn, reduced drinking 20 days later. Overall, participants experienced the least cognitive reactance when spinners first selected three question topics and later selected two of these topics to deliver feedback on.
Conclusions:
Findings suggest that introducing chance-based uncertainty through gamelike spinners, asking questions about multiple topics, and delivering feedback on additional topics unrelated to alcohol together work to reduce the degree to which the task feels like an alcohol intervention overtly aimed at reducing consumption, thereby making the alcohol PNF more effective among heavy drinking students.
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.
Objective:
This article estimates percentages of U.S. emerging adults ages 18-24 engaging in past-month heavy episodic drinking and past-year alcohol-impaired driving, and numbers experiencing alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths and overdose hospitalizations between 1998 and 2014.
Method:
We analyzed national injury mortality data from coroner, census, and college enrollment statistics, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and the Nationwide Inpatient Sample.
Results:
From 1999 to 2005, percentages of emerging adults ages 18-24 reporting past-month heavy episodic drinking rose from 37.1% to 43.1% and then declined to 38.8% in 2014. Alcohol-impaired driving rose from 24% to 25.5% and then declined to 16.0%. Alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths increased from 4,807 in 1998 to 5,531 in 2005 and then declined to 4,105 in 2014, a reduction of 29% per 100,000 since 1998. Alcohol-related traffic deaths increased from 3,783 in 1998 to 4,114 in 2005 and then declined to 2,614 in 2014, down 43% per 100,000 since 1998. Alcohol-related overdose deaths increased from 207 in 1998 to 891 in 2014, a 254% increase per 100,000. Other types of nontraffic unintentional injury deaths declined. Alcohol-overdose hospitalizations rose 26% per 100,000 from 1998 to 2014, especially from increases in alcohol/other drug overdoses, up 61% (alcohol/opioid overdoses up 197%).
Conclusions:
Among emerging adults, a trend toward increased alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths, heavy episodic drinking, and alcohol-impaired driving between 1998 and 2005 was reversed by 2014. Persistent high levels of heavy episodic drinking and related problems among emerging adults underscore a need to expand individually oriented interventions, college/community collaborative programs, and evidence-supported policies to reduce their drinking and related problems.
Purpose:
Adolescents' increased use of social networking sites (SNS) coincides with a developmental period of heightened risk for alcohol use initiation. However, little is known regarding associations between adolescents' SNS use and drinking initiation nor the mechanisms of this association. This study examined longitudinal associations among adolescents' exposure to friends' alcohol-related SNS postings, alcohol-favorable peer injunctive norms, and initiation of drinking behaviors.
Methods:
Participants were 658 high-school students who reported on posting of alcohol-related SNS content by self and friends, alcohol-related injunctive norms, and other developmental risk factors for alcohol use at two time points, 1 year apart. Participants also reported on initiation of three drinking behaviors: consuming a full drink, becoming drunk, and heavy episodic drinking (three or more drinks per occasion). Probit regression analyses were used to predict initiation of drinking behaviors from exposure to alcohol-related SNS content. Path analyses examined mediation of this association by peer injunctive norms.
Results:
Exposure to friends' alcohol-related SNS content predicted adolescents' initiation of drinking and heavy episodic drinking 1 year later, controlling for demographic and known developmental risk factors for alcohol use (i.e., parental monitoring and peer orientation). In addition, alcohol-favorable peer injunctive norms statistically mediated the relationship between alcohol-related SNS exposure and each drinking milestone.
Conclusions:
Results suggest that social media plays a unique role in contributing to peer influence processes surrounding alcohol use and highlight the need for future investigative and preventive efforts to account for adolescents' changing social environments.
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.
Studies examining representations of college drinking on social media have almost exclusively focused on Facebook. However, recent research suggests college students may be more influenced by peers' alcohol-related posts on Instagram and Snapchat, two image-based platforms popular among this demographic. One potential explanation for this differential influence is that qualitative distinctions in the types of alcohol-related content posted by students on these three platforms may exist. Informed by undergraduate focus groups, this study examined the hypothesis that, of the three platforms, students tend to use Instagram most often for photos glamourizing drinking and Snapchat for incriminating photos of alcohol misuse and negative consequences. Undergraduate research assistants aided investigators in developing hypothetical vignettes and photographic examples of posts both glamorizing and depicting negative consequences associated with college drinking. In an online survey, vignette and photo stimuli were followed by counterbalanced paired comparisons that presented each possible pair of social media platforms. Undergraduates (N = 196) selected the platform from each pair on which they would be more likely to see each post. Generalized Bradley-Terry models examined the probabilities of platform selections. As predicted, Instagram was seen as the most probable destination (and Facebook least probable) for photos depicting alcohol use as attractive and glamorous. Conversely, Snapchat was selected as the most probable destination (and Facebook least probable) for items depicting negative consequences associated with heavy drinking. Results suggest researchers aiming to mitigate the potential influences associated with college students' glamorous and consequential alcohol-related photos posted social media posts should shift their focus from Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat.
The aim of this study was to examine college students’ perceptions of social networking in the United States. A secondary purpose was to determine whether differences in gender and age were prevalent. One hundred and twenty eight (N = 128) students were surveyed online. Data showed that social networking was helpful for communication, information gathering, and that it positively influenced their academic work. However, students also reported that social networking had a negative impact on their social interactions, emotional health and work completion, with younger participants reporting greater negative effects of social networking on work completion. Students also reported that social networking can be addictive, distractive, and a threat to their privacy. Although no significant gender differences emerged in students’ perceptions, numerically females viewed social networking in more positive terms. Educational implications and future directions for research are discussed.
Objective:
Twitter is among the most popular social media platforms used by young adults, yet it has been underutilized in substance use research compared with older platforms (e.g., MySpace and Facebook). We took a first step toward studying the associations between exposure to pro-alcohol- and marijuana-related content among young adults via Twitter and current heavy episodic drinking and current marijuana use, respectively.
Method:
We conducted an online survey of 587 (254 men, 333 women) Twitter users between ages 18 and 25 years in February 2014 using an online survey system that has been previously used in research on health behaviors and attitudes.
Results:
Current heavy episodic drinking was significantly associated with higher levels of exposure to pro-alcohol content. Similarly, current marijuana use was significantly associated with higher levels of exposure to pro-marijuana content.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that in-depth research regarding young adults' exposure to pro-alcohol- and marijuana-related content via Twitter may provide a foundation for developing effective prevention messages on this social media platform to counter the pro-alcohol and marijuana messages.
Purpose:
Current trends suggest that adolescents and young adults typically maintain a social media "portfolio" of several sites including Facebook and Twitter, but little is known regarding how an individual chooses to display risk behaviors across these different sites. The purpose of this study was to investigate college students' displayed alcohol references on both Facebook and Twitter.
Methods:
Among a larger sample of college students from two universities, we identified participants who maintained both Facebook and Twitter profiles. Data collection included evaluation of 5 months of participants' Facebook and Twitter posts for alcohol references, number of social connections (i.e., friends or followers), and number of posts. Phone interviews assessed participants' frequency of Facebook and Twitter use and self-reported alcohol use. Analyses included Fisher's exact test, Wilcoxon matched pair sign test, Friedman rank-sum tests, and logistic regression.
Results:
Of 112 eligible participants, 94 completed the study. Participants were more likely to display alcohol references on Facebook compared with those on Twitter (76% vs. 34%, p = .02). Participants reported more social connections on Facebook versus Twitter (average 801.2 friends vs. 189.4 followers, p < .001) and were more likely to report daily use of Facebook versus Twitter (94.6% vs. 50%, p < .001). Current alcohol use was predictive of both Facebook and Twitter displayed alcohol references, but mediators differed in each model.
Conclusions:
College students were more likely to display alcohol references on Facebook compared with those on Twitter. Understanding these patterns and predictors may inform prevention and intervention efforts directed at particular social media sites.
Visiting social networking sites has become an important part of adolescents' leisure activities. The current cross-sectional survey (n = 674) of adolescents aged 13–16 years aimed to examine a conditional process model on the relationships between adolescents' use of social networking sites and their descriptive /injunctive peer norms, attitudes, and intentions regarding alcohol use. First, the results support that exposure to alcohol-related content on social networking sites predicts respondents' descriptive and injunctive norms on alcohol use. Adolescents who are more frequently exposed to alcohol-related content believe that a higher number of their friends consume alcohol and that this use is socially acceptable. These descriptive and injunctive norms were positively associated with adolescents' drinking intentions. Second, the results support that the relationship between injunctive norms and intentions is stronger for respondents being more frequently exposed to alcohol-related messages on Facebook. Overall, the results shed more light on the complex associations between social networking sites, alcohol use, and the role of peers in this relationship.
Drinking identity is a component of identity that is associated with heavier drinking and more negative alcohol-related consequences. Social identity is displayed through social networking sites, which are being used on a daily basis by millions of young adults. The current research provides insight into understanding for whom social network sites are more strongly associated with alcohol use by examining the potentially interactive effects of Facebook use and drinking identity. We explored whether the association between alcohol-related posts on Facebook and drinking differs based on the extent to which students identify with drinking. Undergraduates (N=109) provided researchers access to their Facebook profile before completing an online survey assessing their drinking identity and alcohol use (i.e., drinks per week, frequency, typical drinking, peak drinks). Their previous 100 Facebook posts (e.g., status updates, photos) were coded for alcohol-related content. Results using negative binomial regression analyses indicated significant interactions between alcohol-related Facebook posts and drinking identity in predicting all indicators of alcohol use. The direction of the simple effects suggested that the association between alcohol-related Facebook posts and drinking was stronger for individuals with lower drinking identity. Findings extend the literature on risk for drinking by incorporating social network use and drinking identity and suggest that future interventions utilizing social networks may wish to target those at traditionally lower risk. Implications and future directions are discussed.
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.
Abstract Consuming an unhealthy level of alcohol is a significant problem for some young women. Potential determinants of excess consumption include perceptions of usual consumption among peers-perceptions of what is "normal." The present study examined whether perceptions of social normative endorsement of drinking, operationalized by measures of perceived alcohol consumption of close friends (proximal norms), the consumption of the "average student" (distal norms), and the extent of alcohol-related content posted by peers on Facebook were related to alcohol-related attitudes and self-reported consumption. Female university students (n=129; Mage=21.48 years, SD=3.00) completed an online questionnaire assessing Facebook use, perceived alcohol-related norms, and self-reported alcohol attitudes and consumption. Perceptions of the consumption of the average female student were a negative predictor of attitudes. Positive alcohol attitudes, extent of own alcohol-related photographic posts on Facebook, average female student alcohol consumption, and report of male close friend consumption predicted self-report of own alcohol consumption. Interestingly, female close friend norms failed to predict consumption, whereas male close friend norms predicted consumption but not attitudes, suggesting the possibility of separate cognitive pathways for alcohol-related attitudes and behavior. This study builds on existing research by casting new light on predictors of alcohol-related attitudes, as well as describing the potential role of social networking sites such as Facebook in the formation of social norms and the modulation of drinking behavior.
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.
Similarity breeds connection. This principle - the homophily principle - structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
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.
This paper presents a parameter covariance matrix estimator which is consistent even when the disturbances of a linear regression model are heteroskedastic. This estimator does not depend on a formal model of the structure of the heteroskedasticity. By comparing the elements of the new estimator to those of the usual covariance estimator, one obtains a direct test for heteroskedasticity, since in the absence of heteroskedasticity, the two estimators will be approximately equal, but will generally diverge otherwise. The test has an appealing least squares interpretation.