The Effects of Alcohol-Related Social Media Content on Adolescents’ Momentary Perceived Norms, Attitudes, and Drinking Intentions

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that exposure to alcohol posts on social media can shape adolescents’ alcohol-related normative perceptions and attitudes, which in turn play a role in their drinking intentions. However, these studies focused on content in general, neglecting the variety of alcohol posts on social media. Furthermore, they were mostly cross-sectional and studied behaviors at one-time point, thus not considering within-person/daily (co-)fluctuations in exposure to alcohol posts and drinking cognitions. Therefore, this daily diary study among 275 Belgian adolescents (M_age = 15.83, SD = .88, 56.2% girls, 43% boys, 1 X) adds to the literature by examining how two types of alcohol posts (i.e. alcohol-focused vs. friend-focused) differently predict adolescents’ normative perceptions (i.e. descriptive and injunctive), alcohol-related attitudes and intentions to drink, both on the between- and daily within-levels. The results showed that alcohol-focused posts but not friend-focused posts predicted adolescents’ drinking cognitions (i.e. injunctive norms, descriptive norms, and attitudes) on the daily within-level. Descriptive norms and attitudes also predicted the intention to drink, on the between and daily within-level for attitudes but only on the daily within-level for norms. Overall, the results highlight that specific types of alcohol posts differently shape adolescents’ daily drinking cognitions, thereby informing future interventions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. To calculate the mean response time, only assessments that were completed within 30 minutes were included. The completion time was longer than that in 162 cases because participants were able to complete the survey by the end of the day. These assessments were excluded from the average completion time calculation but not from the data set.

2. A Visual Analogue Scale represents a continuum between two ends of a scale, i.e. ranging from “0%” on the left end to “100%” on the right end.

3. Gender was initially measured with three categories, including (3) X. However, this category was left out of the analyses because only one respondent had indicated this.

4. 99.44% completed cases. Only 10 missing cases in injunctive norms and 13 in alcohol attitudes. Given the few missing cases, we excluded them in the analyses of the models using na.exclude.

5. This should be interpreted with caution because the one assessment/day setup does not allow us to make claims about the directionality of this association, specifically since all drinking cognition variables were measured for the coming evening. The alcohol posts measures, on the other hand, surveyed exposure of the past 24 hours, thereby making it a little bit more plausible to make claims about the directionality.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from Interne Fondsen KU Leuven/Internal Funds KU Leuven [project 3H190365]. We thankfully acknowledge their support.