Review shows alcohol companies reach youth online

A beer bottle was lit up like a Christmas tree on one Facebook page and flanked by stuffed animals in another.

Then there were the iPhone apps that allowed drinking enthusiasts to hunt for virtual trophies or monitor the weather through drink prices, and the video on YouTube that featured cartoon characters using spirits to reduce stress.

David Jernigan came across these alcohol advertisements during a recent study of social media. And he says that while they may be effective marketing for legal imbibers, they're also appealing to kids.

The alcohol companies' voluntary limits on print, radio and television that alcohol companies are largely being ignored online, concluded Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"We tried to get a sense of everything the companies are doing on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and iPhone apps and it's amazing how much they're doing," said Jernigan. "It's far more than I think most parents or adults are aware of. It's the wild west without a sheriff."

Associations representing alcohol companies say they've developed voluntary codes for advertising in social media, similar to those crafted for traditional media outlets.

"The spirits industry is committed to responsible advertising regardless of the medium," the Distilled Spirits Council said in statement. "Social networking sites are used primarily by adults, which makes these platforms responsible and appropriate channels for spirits marketers."

Jernigan said there's no way to determine how many kids are seeing, or responding to, the alcohol marketing. But considering their heavy social media use, he concluded, "it's probably a lot."

He said 13- to 20-year-olds make up about 13.6 percent of the population but about 22 percent of Facebook users.

A May study from Consumer Reports found that amounts to about 20 million Facebook users under age 21. More than a third were actually younger than 13 — violating the site's terms — and their accounts were largely unsupervised by parents.

They could be among the 6.7 million people who "liked" the 10 Facebook pages the center studied or the large number of fan-uploaded photos and videos.

Jernigan said seeing such content can make a lasting impression. He cited 14 studies finding evidence that exposure to ads influences whether young people start drinking and how much. He said about 4,700 underage youth die from excessive alcohol use each year.

Tighter controls on content, more parental involvement and better technology to limit underage access are needed, he said.

The Distilled Spirits Council said it calls on companies to advertise in any medium only when close to three-quarters of the audience is reasonably expected to be age 21. The group cited Nielsen data from August that show about 82 percent of Facebook users, 87 percent of Twitter users and 81 percent of YouTube users are at least 21.