Reuters – Kathryn Doyle
“In a study of 15-year-olds in the U.K., those who had been most exposed to alcohol use in films were also most likely to have tried alcohol, and about twice as likely as the least exposed to have been binge drinking. After accounting for factors in early childhood, and even before birth that might explain the link, the associations were still “very robust,” said lead author Andrea Waylen of the School of Oral and Dental Sciences in Bristol, England. The study only looked at a single point in time, so it cannot prove cause and effect, Waylen noted in an email. But the results are in line with research from the USA, Europe and elsewhere that links youth “viewing of depictions of alcohol use in movies and the onset of drinking, regular drinking, binge-drinking and alcohol-related problems,” she said. Waylen and her coauthors analyzed data from another long-term study of children born near Bristol between 1991 and 1992, who were followed periodically from birth. At age 15, more than 5,000 of the kids completed a computer-based interview, assessing whether they had seen 50 randomly selected popular contemporary movies. Researchers had coded how many seconds of alcohol use appeared in each film, and totaled the amount each kid had seen based on their answers.”(more)