Social media is causing influxes of alcoholism in young adults, here's why?

College parties should be a thing of the past with all the warnings about drugs and alcohol targeting our younger generations but that could not be farther from the truth. Many students enjoy a party or a few in college, and with sororities hosting events weekly it's hard not to. With time issues concerning underage drinking and the consequences should've gotten better but it has only been maintained by the use of social media in today's young adults.

A study published by Duquesne Univerity states "almost 55% of full-time college students between the ages of 18 and 22 drank alcohol in the past month and about 37% engaged in binge drinking". This is a staggering but unsurprising statistic. We constantly hear from college students back home on a break about how much fun they'd usually be having at this weekend's party. Not only do they continually talk about it, but it is also constantly on their social media sites. Instagram and Snapchat get flooded with photos of students engaging in unhealthy behaviors. One of these behaviors is drunk driving. The alcohol rehab guide states "51% of young drivers who died in traffic crashes tested positive for alcohol". 

Tweet by BlackLezTV on Drunk Driving

Aside from drunk driving, many young adults aren't thinking about the consequences of posting drunk pictures on social media. Just look at the video above of a young female performing a dance instead of the sobriety test the officer just asked her to perform. As emphasized in an article called Social Media, Alcohol, and Young People the consequences for underage drinking usually do not resurface until years later when an employer may find images or posts on social media. Pairing this with the fact that young adults are one of the heaviest social media users, as said by Pew in an article from Duquesne University, this makes young adults one of the most unintelligent when it comes to social media use and alcohol.

Young adults are one of the largest users of social media to the point of addiction. This addiction wasn't an issue in the past. Why is it now such a prevalent one? Mainly because of the amount of exposure to social media and personalized ads today’s younger generations receive. In an article by the Alcohol Rehab Guide, a researcher created fake social media accounts to determine how many advertisements that contained alcohol-based content were being displayed to minors and the security methods protecting said minors. The results were shocking. There were no measures against interacting or sharing the media except for an age verification regarding a follow request. This puts younger audiences at a much higher level of exposure when it comes to alcohol-related content. 

This higher level of exposure then increases the risk of engaging in drinking-related behaviors. This is proven in a study by the National Institute of Health. In summary one is at a higher risk of drinking if one's peers engage and are open about drinking activities. The higher the degrees of separation the lower the risk however for direct friends the percentage is 50% and friends of friends is at 36%. This is still significantly high! Due to the influence that social media has on the issues with drinking, there are truly only 2 solutions. Eliminate social media or regulate it better. Elimination is not an option. While it may cause addiction and issues in younger generations it still influences major parts of our day-to-day lives. Young adults stay connected through apps like Facetime, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok daily. Without these apps communication between these individuals would be very constricted.

Without social media, events such as Covid would have been unsurvivable. This leaves management as a solution. The main issue with social media is the inability to regulate the information users are entering. When creating profiles on apps the process is dependent on user information. Anyone could enter any information and suddenly be someone entirely new. Using advanced identification software could help eliminate this. Technology like such has already been implemented on certain sites and is easier than thought to manage. This sort of technology uses facial identification or proof of identification with things like ids. This technology was trial run on sites like Facebook to provide interventions based on user postings and interactions. These were successful however always relayed back to the issue of knowing if the person is actually who they say they are.