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Outdoor Alcohol Ads Boost Kids' Urge to Drink |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: In the world depicted in an alcohol billboard, bikini-clad babes clutch icy bottles, frothy beer flows over frosty mugs and the slogan reads, "Life is good." Ads like these may target adults, but children are getting the message too, a University of Florida and University of Minnesota study shows. Adolescents attending schools in neighborhoods where alcohol ads litter the landscape tend to want to drink more and, compared with other children, have more positive views of alcohol, researchers report in this month's issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. UF and UM researchers counted the number of alcohol ads within a two-block radius of 63 Chicago schools and compared students' opinions on drinking when they were in sixth grade and again two years later. About half of all teens sample their first alcoholic drink by the time they are 15, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, which released a report on teen drinking earlier this year. Prior research has shown that adolescents' intentions and attitudes about alcohol generally predict their later behavior, said Komro, an associate professor of epidemiology and child health policy in the UF College of Medicine. By eighth grade, the students who attended schools with more alcohol advertising in the surrounding neighborhood had more intentions to drink alcohol and gave fewer reasons for not drinking when researchers surveyed them, the study shows. "A lot of times advertisers say ads are targeted to people who are already drinking, so we looked at kids who were already drinking in sixth grade and kids who were not," she said.
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