This artice is about the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth researching the Youth (age 12-20) and adults (above the legal drinking age of 21) and their exposure to alcohol advertising on television, radio, magazines, and internet. The research shows that in the U.S, alcohol companies advertise more where the youth are more likely to see then adults. It is disocvered that the youth exposed to alcohol advertising in various venues such as sporting events, broadcast, print or outdoor will have increased and heavier drinking among youth people.
"Found that teens with alcohol use disorders show greater activity in areas of the brain previously linked to reward, desire, postive affect and episodic recall in response to alcoholic beverage advertisements..."(Jernigan). This means that alcohol advertising has a effect on youth who are already heavy drinkers. This article discussed methods to finding this information from research. 13 is the average age of initiation into alcohol use in the U.S.
Alcohol internet advertising was researched in which 55 alcohol company websites were tracked. Many of these sites had video games, free music downloads, and screen savers. In 2003 almost 700,000 underage youths visited these sites. http://www.bacardi.com/ had 60% of the views from underage people http://www.skyy.com/ had half of its viewers underage. This is an alarming amount of youth visiting these alcohol sites. The way they heard about these products were from other advertisments from the media, and these advertisments were clearly effective because they caught these youths interest and made them explore more into it. Budweisser was the most popular beer website. To reduce this exposure, the trade associations revised standards for alcohol ad placements.
Work Cited:
Jernigan, David H., Joshua Ostroff, and Craig Ross. "Alcohol Advertising and Youth: A Measured Approach." Journal of Public Health Policy 26.3 (2005): 312-325. JSTOR
I know when I was underage, drinking seemed more illusive and fun. Since I have turned 21, I can honestly say I never have used a liquor company's website. I wouldn't even know what kind of content would be on there. I do know from past experience of using liquor company's websites for school projects, that on some, they do ask your age before you enter the site. That doesn't mean 15 year olds cannot lie and say that they are 21. On the other hand, I can't imagine what these sites can have on them, aside from their products or promotions. I would hope the companies would limit their content somewhat. I think alcohol ads should be limited, not only are some semi-degrading to women, but it does promote drinking to underage people in some way. I think it's important for parents to monitor their children and talk to them about underage drinking, and set rules to stop their children from making unsafe decisions. In our society today, underage drinking is becoming a norm and in order to stop the effects of that, we as a society need to reinforce what laws have been set, and regulate content through both advertising and on the internet.
ReplyDeleteWhen i was young I never really looked at an alcohlic website to see what kind of alcohols they provide, and I still never do. Many underage people who do see alcohol related ads are more likeley to want the product.I think that the sites, along with commericials should be more careful with targeting thier products to underage people. People wonder why there are more and more alchol related accidents and problems occuring these days, well its because these young people dont know right from wrong and start drinking alot at such an early age. I think teachers in highschool should teach kids about the dangers of underage drinking. Alcholic ads dont care about these problems, they are only concerned with making a profit so someone needs to talk to the kids about the harms of alcohol.
ReplyDeleteKids should stick to playing online video games, free music downloads, and screen savers from the Lucky Charms website, not Bacardi's website. Of course they're going to want to visit these websites, predominately because they're forbidden. You always want what you can't have, and you always want to go where you're not supposed to. It's the novelty (and accessibility!) that I believe predominately leads these kids to these websites.
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