Facebook creates a false outlook on drinking norms through overly exposing images of alcohol

Source: www.tariqwest.com

With the massive use of social media and networking sites continuing to grow, high school and college students are progressively exposed to more images and videos of friends binge drinking every day of the week. With the overly exposed images of alcohol on Facebook, it receives positive reactions from Facebook friends, creates an alcohol online social identity, and gives Facebook users a false outlook on the drinking norm, influencing students to engage in binge drinking. 

Angela Fournier and Steven Clarke conducted a study examining the amount of alcohol-related content posted by college students and the relationship between drinking behavior and perceived drinking norms. It was shown that 76.5% of participants Facebook profiles had alcohol-related contents and there was a relationship between Facebook alcohol content and reported alcohol use, as well as reported alcohol use and perceived alcohol use of Facebook friends. 

Facebook contributes to college student's perceived drinking norms.

Data from: www.cyberpsychology.edu

The study found that student participants who did not drink, had an average percent of 0.89% alcohol-related content shown on their Facebook, compared to students who did drink and had 1-2 drinks per sitting showed an average 7.53% of alcohol-related content on their Facebook, while students who had 3-4 drinks per sitting a 4.44% average and students who drank 5 or more drinks per sitting 6.14%. This data illustrates the relationship between the average amount of alcohol-related content on ones Facebook feed and the number of drinks per sitting that one who is viewing the content on their Facebook will drink. A conclusion can be made that as one views more alcohol-related content on their Facebook, they will be more influenced to consume alcohol and so will the number of alcohol consumed during a sitting. 

Facebook creates an alcohol online social identity.   

The new norm of documenting every attended event on Facebook, with various online alcohol posts, creates an alcohol online social identity. Ridout and colleagues found that young people portraying themselves as a drinker is a socially desirable identity in social network sites (SNS), creating an online culture that normalizing binge drinking. The study also found that alcohol-identity predicted problematic alcohol-related behaviors and alcohol consumption, along with the fact that 60% of the college participants exhibited problematic alcohol use. The researchers claim that the association between the increased prevalence in SNS and high alcohol consumption should be taken seriously by public health research so interventions can be made available for college students. 

Alcohol online social identity of Facebook friends can also influence younger adults that have not yet been exposed to the drinking culture, affecting their drinking behaviors when that exposure does occur.

Claire Kaplan, a student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland, discussed the effects Facebook has on upcoming college student's drinking perceptions. 

Kaplan compares the expected college alcohol content differences between when she was going into undergraduate school and how different it is for upcoming college students now. Kaplan states that when she was going into college Facebook was still unavailable, so she was unaware of the college drinking culture since she did not get any exposure, but now high school students are exposed to the drinking culture through Facebook and establish a perceived drinking norm, influencing their future drinking behaviors.

Alcohol related Facebook posts receive positive reactions from friends.

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A study done to examine the display of alcohol use on Facebook and how friends reacted to those posts found that friends reacted positively to 72.23% of the alcohol related pictures and also to 72.83% of the alcohol related messages.While students notice the prevalence and positive feedback on binge drinking, it creates a glamorous outlook on binge drinkers and encourages people to partake in such actions.

The study goes on explaining why alcohol related Facebook contents receive so much positive attention, explaining that Facebook users usually share positive things for their friends to see, so posting a picture with friends drinking illicit positive reactions from Facebook friends. 

According to Kaplan, "studies have been done to show how Facebook posts influence other people's behaviors [,...] like the kind of mood of the posts being made by your friends can definitely impact the mood of your posts". This illustrates how an alcohol related Facebook post with positive moods and reactions from fellow friends, will also influence another to engage in the same behavior and post related pictures, creating a cycle with other Facebook users. 

Social marketing campaigns about drinking have decreased student's alcohol consumption.

Fournier and Clarke also found that many universities have taken action to combat student's misconception about drinking norms and set up social marketing campaigns that depicted the majority's non-abusive drinking behaviors. The goal of these campaigns are to represent the greater student population's drinking habits, instead of the select people that an individual interacts with and may be contemplating wrong drinking-perceptions from. Results showed that when universities took action and implemented these drinking campaigns, the results were positive in student's perception of drinking norms and a decrease in alcohol consumption.

Kaplan believes that a Facebook educational intervention should be made to teach kids and young adults how things that are seen on Facebook "is not real life, and the things that they are seeing online is not a representative of what people are actually doing with their lives". 

She also believes that young adults are not aware about the possible consequences of an alcohol-related Facebook post, such as possible future employers seeing those contents and preventing one from obtaining a job, and should be taught about what is appropriate to post or not. 

With the use of Facebook, which allows thousands of people to connect with one another, college drinking norms and the frequency of future college students engaging in risky alcohol-consumption will change, incorporating more binge drinking as high school students start observing more alcohol-related posts by college students, creating a false perception that everyone in college binge drinks. 

To illustrate the drastic actions done by undergraduates though out the years, Huffington Post describes the 2015 incident of an Albany student who died after drinking a 60 oz. bottle of vodka during a fraternity hazing. ABC News also discussed the incident of West Virginia University college freshman who died pledging a fraternity, had a blood alcohol level of 0.493, six times more than the legal limit. 

Through over exposed alcohol-related images on Facebook, eliciting positive drinking images to viewers and creating an alcohol online social identity, Facebook influences the perceived college drinking norms and promotes binge drinking. To prevent future college undergraduates from engaging in such dangerous drinking activities and risking the consequences of unemployment from a dream job, getting injured, or even death, an educational Facebook intervention should be established throughout middle and high school. 

The intervention should teach kids and young adults that what they see on Facebook is not always how it is depicted, that just because a few people post something does not mean everyone is doing it or thinking it, and the possible consequences that come with posting alcohol-related contents.