Post: Alcohol Ads Spur Youth Drinking - But Communities Can Respond
Alcohol Ads Spur Youth Drinking - But Communities Can Respond
New groundbreaking research documenting a strong link between alcohol ads and youth drinking could be the spark that gets more parents involved in collective efforts to limit youth exposure to alcohol promotion.
Vigilant parents who help their kids make careful choices about the media they consume will be gratified by one of the findings in the new study published in the January 2006 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. This first-ever national longitudinal survey found that young people who report seeing few alcohol ads drink less than similar youth living in the same media market who report seeing many such ads. That's the good news.
The bad news is that, even when they report seeing the same number of ads, young people who live in media markets with high levels of alcohol ads drink more than their counterparts in media markets with less alcohol advertising. Sadly, this suggests that even the most media savvy and engaged parents can't completely protect their kids from the harm of alcohol promotions that saturate the community-at-large.
Moving to an area with fewer alcohol ads might work for some families. But supporting community-wide efforts to limit exposure of young people to alcohol advertising is a more practical option for most. Keeping alcohol billboards away from parks and schools, finding alternative sponsors for community fairs and festivals and pressuring the NCAA to eliminate alcohol ads from college sports broadcasts are a few ways to clean-up an environment that is polluted with too many ads for booze.
To learn more and help protect kids from Big Alcohol, visit www.MarinInstitute.org
alcohol
alcohol ads alcohol study youth drinking