Hollywood movies blamed for teenage binge-drinking

YOUNG TEENAGERS who watch more films featuring alcohol are twice as likely to start drinking compared to peers who watch relatively few such films, a study published today suggests.

Researchers from Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire, who studied more than 6,500 US teenagers between the ages of 10 and 14, also found that those who watched the most “alcohol” films were more likely to progress to binge-drinking.

The study appears in the online journal BMJ Open.

In telephone interviews, participants were asked which randomly selected 50 films they had seen from among the top 100 US box office hits in each of the five years preceding 2003, plus 32 films grossing more than $15 million in the first quarter of 2003.

Prof James Sargent and his colleagues assessed the number of seconds of on-screen alcohol use, including product placement, in each of the 532 films. Based on the films they reported seeing, adolescents had typically seen an estimated 4.5 hours of on-screen alcohol use and many had seen in excess of eight hours. Previous research in regional samples of US and German adolescents has demonstrated an association between viewing alcohol use in movies and early onset of drinking.

In the German study, 80 per cent of exposure came from internationally distributed Hollywood movies, suggesting decisions made by US production companies on how alcohol is depicted may impact on drinking worldwide.

Over the course of the two-year study, the proportion of young people who started drinking alcohol more than doubled from 11 per cent to 25 per cent, while the proportion who began binge-drinking – defined as five or more drinks in a row – tripled from 4 per cent to 13 per cent.

Having parents who drank at home, and the availability of alcohol in the home, were associated with taking up drinking, but not the progression to binge-drinking.

After adjusting for other factors, the researchers say alcohol in films accounted for some 28 per cent of teenagers who started to drink and for one-fifth of those who progressed to binge-drinking. And they called for restrictions on alcohol in films to mirror the now reduced depiction of smoking in movies.

“The effect of movie exposure on progression derives from the fact that alcohol use in movies is typically modelled in positive situations, without negative effects, and often shown with alcohol brands, which consolidates both the adolescent’s identity as a drinker and brand allegiance,” the authors claim.