Every person remembers the first time they tried an alcoholic drink as an adult. However, most people wouldn't remember probably what beverage that was. This drink perhaps is part of an influence that we often see in movies or advertisements. According to Medical Daily, a new report has discovered that brand-specific alcohol advertisement has a big influence in the kind of alcohol consumed by underage drinkers.
A team of researchers from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Boston University School of Public Health has found that kids aging 13 to 20 were likely to drink the brands they saw on TV and about 36 percent will choose the ones they saw on the magazines.
The study co-author David Jernigan said in a press release that because of marketing exposure, the brands are recognized easily and it is also an important factor when we talk about underage drinking. However, few studies have found the connection between advertising and brand consumption. Jernigan is the director of CAMY and an associate professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health, Behavior, and Society. He added that these results indicate that the youth would usually consume alcohol brands that they are most heavily exposed to because of advertising.
Previous studies have used self-reporting to measure how advertising affects underage drinking. Meanwhile, Jernigan and his team used exposure estimates from research firms, like Nielsen for TV and MRi for magazines. His team also used an online survey conducted last 2011 and 2012. They asked 1,038 youth drinkers that among the 898 brands available in the market, which one they had consumed over the last 30 days. Another study discovered a small connection between how much advertising exposure and how likely they were to start drinking or to continue drinking among youth.
Underage drinking is not as usual as it was once before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that about 35 percent of high school students have consumed some alcohol in the last 30 days. This is the reason for at least 5,000 deaths a year because 38 percent of those involve car accidents.
