Teenage Drinking in High School:

An Examination of how it has Become Socially Accepted

Riley Ferlito and Ryan Marszal

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Teenage Drinking In High School:

An Examination of how it has Become Socially Accepted

Everyday we as a society remind ourselves and others that drinking alcohol during our teenage years is socially accepted through our media. There are countless television shows, movies and songs that make references and show teenagers partying and drinking with their friends. Drinking under the legal age has now become seen as normal to both teenagers and their parents. Even though under age drinking is illegal and can cause legal trouble for the ones consuming the alcohol as well as the ones who provided it; it is still scene as an acceptable act that most permit.  Throughout this paper we will analyze how society has normalized teenage drinking as well as statistics on underage drinking and its effects. We explored this idea by assessing our time in highschool and our personal experience with consuming alcohol and the people’s habits around us. We then used this information we had gathered from each others’ experiences to analyze scholarly sources to see if they could give us information that can accurately show how society now functions with teenagers consuming alcohol underage. 

In this paper we will look at many scholarly articles and studies of underage drinking and how they affect the ones who participate in the action of drinking alcohol. First we will analyze statistics given from scholarly articles and see how many teenagers partake in drinking, from their we will analyze how the media and society has made drinking a social norm. To understand why teenagers seem to think that drinking under the legal age we must first at the statistics on how many teenagers actually drink. From there we can accurately analyze the question at hand of why it has become a social norm for underage teenagers to drink alcohol. 

Teenage drinking has become a growing social norm in today’s society and growing numbers of teens have begun to drink. According to Patrick (2017) In 2013, an estimated 29% of 18–20-year-olds in the United States reported having 5+ drinks in a row at least once during the past 30 days (1). Aswell statistics taken from a study that Megan E. Patrick & Yvonne M. Terry-McElrath did with the Society for the Study of Addiction shows that 29 percent of teenagers during their time in highschool admitted to having five or more drinks in a two week span.(Patrick 2017). These statistics show that teens are in fact drinking during their time at highschool and under the legal age. Using these stats we can see that alcohol use is not an uncommon thing among highschool students and teenagers alike but what can drinking at such a young age lead to.

Studies have come up with a way to analyze situations to establish the possibilities of future drinking problems. The criteria is four different steps, one is if they started drinking before the age of fourteen and the next is if they drink three or more days a week. The next criteria is if for males have more than fourteen drinks a week and seven for females. The final one is the max number of drinks a day is four for men and three for women. (Sullivan 2015) These statistics show that starting to drink at such a young age can lead to later problems with substance abuse and possible further deviant behavior. With these statistics we can also confirms that teens are drinking in highschool but the question is why do they see it as something that is their right since they are in highschool and that’s what highschoolers do. Is it because no one tells them that drinking underage is wrong so therefore these teenagers partake in this illegal activity. According to Pattrick (2017) having five or more drinks in highschool would lead to increased numbers of drinking in college and having ten or more drinks in highschool would create an even larger number of drinks in college. With multiple studies showing that highschoolers are starting to drink as young as fourteen and once they graduate at eighteen they would have already been drinking for four years. Clearly teens are drinking but what is pushing them to drink and how is being accepted by society? 

Teens are drinking during their time at highschool but why it’s clearly against the law, aren’t parents or the school preventing them from doing so? What is driving these teenagers to drink at such young ages and what makes them think that breaking the law is ok? “Most teenagers claimed parental approval of their drinking, particularly that which occurs in the home” (McKay 1967 pg 47). This quote shows one of the reasons teens believed drinking underage is an acceptable thing, if their parents who are their authority figure say that they can drink what else is stopping them. Family plays a big part in a teens decision if they are going to be involved with drinking alcohol. As well according to Mckay(1967) many factors contribute to a teens decision in drinking such as peer influence, mass media, religious ideologies, and other people outside ones family such as teachers and coaches. This academic paper was published in 1967 but still is very relevant since it discusses many factors that contribute to a teens decision on drinking in today’s society. A parents or coaches approval is a very influential force that can drive a teen to choose what to do in difficult situations. Having the support of an authority figure can greatly affect a teens actions. Another factor the article talks about is how mass media can affect a teens decision on drinking and that is extremely prevalent in today’s society. With all the movies and television shows that depict highschoolers drinking and partying can show teenagers that drinking is cool according to these shows. As well many of the music today discuss more than just drinking but drug use and other deviant acts. There are so many different factors that can push teens to drink but that’s not all that they are doing, they are creating an idea that drinking in highschool as an underage teenager is a normal thing. It makes its seem like breaking the law in this instance is what people do and why shouldn’t I do it, this is what many teenagers are now thinking. 

An anonymous questionnaire was given to to 1,283 middle school/high school students and 930 college students. They were asked questions that would answer the severity of their alcohol use, their perceived social norms on alcohol and their social context on drinking. (Thombs 1991 pg 1). The overall response that they received was that “Overall, the findings indicate that alcohol consumption has linkages to both social context and perceived norms”(Thombs 1991). With these findings it is clear that others perceptions on alcohol can affect one’s decision on if they are going to partake in drinking under the legal age. Peers perceptions can highly influence one’s decision on drinking, “According to Perkins (1994), social norms produce a strong desire in individuals to drink in accordance with their peers’ drinking behavior, or at least perceptions of their peers’ drinking behavior”.( Thombs 1997) The way people view is a large factor in people’s decision making many examples include wearing the nicest clothes to school or driving to school in the nicest car. One of the major factors that affect one’s view of another in highschool is if they like to party or drink. Just like in real life school has its own social class, the upper class are the athletes and popular of the school and a lot of the times they are heavy drinkers according to many movies and television shows. With many of these movies and television shows you see a lower class student try to be accepted by drinking or doing some other form of delinquent behavior. A great example of this would be the movie SuperBad where the main character gets asked by a girl he likes if he could get alcohol for a party. From their he has to have one of his friends use a fake ID to get them drinks and from there everything goes downhill. Yes, this movie is a comedy but it truly shows the power of someone’s view on another and what they are willing to do to be accepted. 

It is safe to say that schools provide an environment for drinking more than the home environment does because teenagers drink in groups and take most of their alcohol through binge drinking. Because of the culture of drinking in colleges over the years, it has reached a point where students consider drinking a basic right, especially when celebrating traditional school occasions. Students choose hard liquor over a beer in the attempt to get extremely drunk and usually get drunk in advance of social events. Have schools allowed for drinking to be the norm?

Although evidence has suggested that information alone is not enough to deal with the problem of underage drinking, colleges still approach this issue as a personal problem, one that can be dealt with through awareness and education. This is their secondary contribution to making drinking normal. Nevertheless, what makes drinking to be considered normal is the fact that most schools look the other way. Not many have gone after environmental aspects such as easy access to liquor and affordable prices or tolerant attitudes towards drinking teenagers.

At some schools, presidents are unwilling to go against promoters and alumni who are very vocal and passionate about defending rituals that create a drinking environment where the act can get out of control. Speaking of getting out of control, alcohol is the cause of at least 1,800 teenage deaths through various injuries such as car wrecks, fall, burns or self-inflicted harm (Murcmutrie, 2014). The administration, on its part, does not have the organizing skills to suggest new approaches to dealing with the problem or get local authorities, alcohol traders and the police to implement them. A student death or a bad image in society is most likely to prompt action, but the action will most times run for the period the tension is high after which it dies down.

To be fair, schools make underage drinking a social norm only but subconsciously. At least every school has plans to confront this issue, but limited budgets and turnover are major hindrances as turnover changes the administration so does the priorities. One of the notable attempts to deal with the problem was the National College Health Improvement Program that was led by Jim Yong Kim the then President of Dartmouth College who put extreme effort to bring the issue to the limelight. He drummed up support from 32 institutions and raised money to run the program for the two years he was in office (Murcmutrie, 2014. p. 6). However, when he left office, the program did not last more than two years and closed down in 2013. Today, only half a dozen schools enforce their policies against liquor in dormitories, at tailgates or fraternities and sororities — less than this number, conduct compliance monitoring of illegal alcohol sales in areas around the schools. Only a mere 7 percent try to limit the number of outlets selling alcohol around the schools and 2 percent work against cheap drink specials at surrounding outlets, according to information released by the University of Minnesota (Murcmutrie, 2014. p. 7).

Ideally, many educators do not conform to the idea of policing students. They would rather have them make liberal choices as young adults only providing the right motivation. In one of the Minnesota surveys, 40 percent of school law-enforcement officials admitted to not enforcing alcohol policies in a proactive way. An even lesser percentage of school criminal law-enforcement has referred students found in serious alcohol-related crimes to the criminal justice system or issued criminal citations. Instead, they have preferred to send these cases to more lenient officers from the student’s opinion, such as student or judicial affairs.

The media is another significant player in influencing this pattern among teenagers and creating the impression that drinking is okay and normal. The adolescent brain is in a phase where it is undergoing significant development, which augments the vulnerability to impulsive behaviour and increased sensitivity to pleasure and reward. The media, through advertising, manipulate these adolescent vulnerabilities by influencing their perceptions, shaping their attitudes and their expectations with regard to alcohol, which then guides their decision to drink. Substantial evidence exists that suggest commercial communications for alcohol are tailored for the young audience. Alcohol is the number one intoxicating substance depicted on America television. There is at least a drinking scene every half an hour. On music television, teenagers are likely to see drinking every quarter an hour.

A vast amount of substantiation exists that suggests commercials on alcohol are associated with affirmative attitudes and opinions concerning drinking among adolescents and underage drinkers in general. In addition, the content that constitutes these commercials are strongly connected to the expectations about alcohol consumption among children and the role liquors have in their lives. This is a clear indication that these advertisements are tailored to target young people. Adolescents are specifically fascinated by components of music, humour, characters and story. this groups is manipulated by advertisements and trust in positive significances of drinking have friends that drink on many occasions, have peers that consider drinking positive, and approve of the behavior. These results should not be considered a surprise considering the intention of advertising.

Social norms are a reflection of the customariness and suitability of certain beliefs and behaviors, as a result, individuals succumb to the pressures to conform and behave in a certain manner. Majority of the time, the pressure to conform is always internal and emanates from a person’s idea of what others expect of them in certain situations. According to social cognitive theory, social norms are in most occasions learned through experiences and observation. For instance, teenagers who watch their peers consume alcohol on television or in real-life experiences get the impression every other teenager drinks, in turn creating the burden to conform to this norm. The problem gets out of hand as teenagers exaggerate the frequency of drinking by their peers resulting in opinions and stresses that are not consistent with actuality.

For adolescents who are yet to have their first taste of alcohol, expectations or succumbing to the assumption that the reality of future drinking is inevitable is influenced by normative conventions of other teenagers drinking, observing adults around them drinking as well as a similar portrayal of this reality in the media. There has been a mounting body of investigations that links the exposure to alcohol drinking in mainstream media with the increase in affirmative drinking anticipations by adolescents. These studies suggest that this portrayal of alcohol use in the mass media through entertainment programs, messages and images in advertising shape the beliefs and behaviors in children and adolescents. The analysis of content points out that many liquor commercials connect drinking to esteemed individual traits such as elegance, cordiality, physical desirability and desirable outcomes such as wealth, adventure, success, romance and relaxation. In general, the portrayal of alcohol using celebrity endorsers, humor, popular music, and animation creates a string appeal among adolescents. Adolescent boys also strongly connect with alcohol promotion portrayed using sports.

One large study on this topic was conducted on the awareness of alcohol advertising by children and its connection to their knowledge and beliefs about drinking (McCreanor et al. 2013). The researchers presented the study population with a sequence of still photos obtained from visual infomercials for beer without allusions to the product and the brand already erased. They were asked if they had come across the commercial and if so, to name the merchandise. Those that were found to be more aware of the advertisement had also augmented awareness of beer brands and slogans. These lot also recorded positive beliefs on alcohol consumption. Although there is a possibility that these children’s knowledge of advertising was influenced by prior beliefs and knowledge, a huge possibility that their perception of alcohol was shared by this extensive knowledge of advertising exist.

Another study made the conclusion that adolescents more affirmative reactions to alcohol advertising had more positive drinking expectations, supposed greater social approval and assumed drinking was more common among adolescents and adults (Atkinson, Elliot, Ellis, & Sumnall, 2011). They perceived that as adults, they were expected to drink more, with increased frequency and in large quantities. Although there was a possibility of reciprocal effects of alcohol use, there is still a significant chance that children who use alcohol and engage in binge drinking (taking more than four drinks at a go) react positively to alcohol advertising.

A similar study that targeted children between the age of 7 and 12 years sought to find out whether a section of this group that enjoy alcohol advertisements behaved differently from those who did not care for these advertisements. They found out that the more the children were aware and enjoyed alcohol advertising, the higher the probability of them to have experimented with liquor (Anderson, 2007).

In summary, roughly $6 billion dollars is spent on alcohol advertising on an annual basis. The alcohol commercials are effectively custom-made to target and appeal to young people by using images of successful young people who appear fun-loving and are physically attractive (Borzekowski et al. 2015). These images in every occasion portray people having the time of their lives thanks to the alcohol. The limited restrictions on alcohol advertising do not help with the growing problem of underage drinking. Much of the commercials for liquor are concentrated in shows and sports programs that are in no doubt, teen-oriented. Alcohol commercials are found in all of the top 10 shows for teenagers. Today, teenagers are 400 times more probable to come across an alcohol commercial than one that discourages underage drinking. Statistics indicated that magazines made for the teenage audience have approximately 50 percent more beer ads, 20 percent more hard liquor ads, and 92 percent more ads for sweetened vinous drinks than is found in magazines for people of legal drinking age.

According to Strasburger (2010) and the Council on Communications and Media Executive Committee, the effect of mainstream media, especially advertising, is becoming more apparent. Their research indicates that children between the ages of 9 and 10 could identify the Budweiser frogs from one of the most iconic alcohol adverts as habitually as they could point out Bugs Bunny a popular cartoon character. The study that had 3,500 students from South Dakota recording findings that were as follows: a quarter of this number and almost 90 percent of 9th graders recognized the Budweiser commercial. Connecting this with the studies that suggest positive beliefs of alcohol consumption suggest an alarming trend.

All these information cast little doubt that mainstream media and particularly alcohol advertising has a direct effect on the positive attitude and beliefs concerning alcohol consumption among adolescents and the role of alcohol use in their lives. The content of advertising and entertainment shows have a strong connection to the positive outlooks about alcohol use and consequently, its role in their lives. In simpler terms, the media has made alcohol use a normal thing by becoming insensitive of its audience. There is also the possibility that the content is intentionally targeted.

References

Anderson, P. (2007). The impact of alcohol advertising: ELSA project report on the evidence to strengthen regulation to protect young people. Utrecht: National foundation for alcohol prevention.

Atkinson, A., Elliot, G., Ellis, M., & Sumnall, H. (2011). Young people, alcohol and the media.

Borzekowski, D. L., Ross, C. S., Jernigan, D. H., DeJong, W., & Siegel, M. (2015). Patterns of media use and alcohol brand consumption among underage drinking youth in the United States. Journal of health communication, 20(3), 314-320.

McCreanor, T., Lyons, A., Griffin, C., Goodwin, I., Moewaka Barnes, H., & Hutton, F. (2013). Youth drinking cultures, social networking and alcohol marketing: Implications for public health. Critical public health, 23(1), 110-120.

Murcmutrie, B. (2014, December 19). Why Colleges Haven’t Stopped Binge Drinking. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/us/why-colleges-havent-stopped-binge-drinking.htmlStrasburger, V. C. (2010). Policy statement–children, adolescents, substance abuse, and the media. Pediatrics, 126(4), 791-799.