Teens Too Exposed to Alcohol Ads on Television

Watching television has long been an acceptable pastime for teenagers, as long as the content is age appropriate. Now, it seems the commercials played between programs may be causing some problems.

The L.A. Times recently posted an article suggesting teens are exposed to too many ads promoting alcohol on television. This concept was the conclusion of a new study from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth.

The Center analyzed more than one million alcohol industry ads between 2001 and 2004 on broadcast, cable and local television and found a significant amount of underage youth exposed to the ads.

Researchers determined that 608.591 ads were placed in 205,592 unique time slots on national cable networks. Beer and spirit ad placement increased overall and played in more time slots with more than 30 percent underage viewers.

At the same time, adolescent viewership increased by one percentage point, while beer ads increased seven percent, spirit ads increased 15 percent and alcopop ads increased 22 percent.

Lead author Dr. Paul Chung, assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA., said in a news release, “[T]he ultimate effect of their advertising strategies, intentional or not, appears to be greater exposure than might be expected if adults were the sole targets of ads.” Chung is assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA.

While it is unclear whether or not these ads were specifically aimed at teens or other underage youth, the increase in exposure is clearly a problem. Laws have been put in place to limit this type of advertising to 30 percent for programs with a mostly younger audience, but not all measurements are exact. Exposure to such ideas can be limited in some respects, but total control or elimination would be feeble.