Getting drunk is associated with a number of unwanted consequences, particularly among young people. Drinking alcohol often can raise a person's risks of engaging in unsafe sex, getting into fights, becoming alcohol dependent and being involved in potentially deadly car accidents.
Media exposure to alcohol is one factor linked with the negative consequences of alcohol use. While health-care providers and governments have attempted to curb the media exposure of young people that would entice them to drink alcohol, they continue to get a dose of this through videos that are posted on the Internet.
Researchers have found that most of the videos about drunkenness that are posted on YouTube failed to show the dangers of drinking too much alcohol and thus mislead viewers on the consequences of alcohol consumption, a recent study shows.
For the study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research on Feb. 20, Brian Primack, director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues wanted to find out what kind of message popular intoxication-related videos on YouTube send.
Using the terms drunk, hammered, buzzed, tipsy and trashed to search on YouTube, the researchers found 70 of the most popular videos that depict drunken behavior, with 79 percent of these videos featuring humor and 24 percent involving motor vehicle use.
The videos were also more likely to feature males than females and a particular alcohol brand was referred to in 44 percent of these videos. Primack and colleagues also found that while 86 percent of the videos depict active intoxication, only 7 percent of these have reference to alcohol dependence or withdrawal.
The researchers said that the disparity between how intoxication is being represented on these videos and reality may have an impact on the viewer's perception of alcohol use. They said that young people who are heavily exposed to these videos could develop a twisted sense of the actual nature and implications of heavy alcohol use.
Primack and colleagues have noted that while the videos do not often depict the unwanted consequences of drinking alcohol, their popularity can provide an opportunity for educating teens and young adults about the dangers of alcohol consumption.
"While these videos commonly juxtapose alcohol intoxication with characteristics such as humor and attractiveness, they infrequently depict negative clinical outcomes," the researchers wrote. "The popularity of this site may provide an opportunity for public health intervention."
