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Drunk YouTube videos send wrong message
Health professionals should take action against “positive portrayals” of drunkenness on YouTube, which give no regard to the risks of excessive consumption, a study has claimed.
Mining YouTube for videos based on the search terms “drunk, buzzed, hammered, tipsy and trashed”, a team from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health (CRMTH) found there were a total of 333,246,875 views for the 70 most popular “drunken” videos combined.
While the vast majority of the videos present the “humorous and socially rewarding escapades” of friends, none referenced the negative outcomes of excessive alcohol consumption.
Men tended to feature more prominently with 89% of the videos involving males, while only 49% featured females. Humor was juxtaposed with alcohol use in 79% of the videos with a specific brand of alcohol referenced in 44% of the videos.
“There has been little research examining Internet-based, alcohol-related messaging,” said lead author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., director of CRMTH and assistant vice chancellor for health and society in Pitt’s Schools of the Health Sciences.
“While we know that some viewers may be savvy enough to skeptically view music videos or advertisements portraying intoxication as fun, those same viewers may be less cynical when viewing user-generated YouTube videos portraying humorous and socially rewarding escapades of a group of intoxicated peers.”
Dr. Primack found it “concerning” that nearly half the videos contained specific brand references, which the report said could indicate industry influence, however there was no evidence of intentional advertising.
“This is the first comprehensive attempt to analyze YouTube data on intoxication, and these statistics should be valuable in guiding interventions,” said Dr. Primack, who is also a practicing physician.
“For example, we know that men tend to report more frequent binge drinking than women and that alcohol use is perceived as more socially acceptable for men. Because they are portrayed more frequently in YouTube videos, it may be useful to target men with future interventions debunking alcohol-related myths propagated on social media.”