Should parents worry about children seeing the Pac-Man ad? If you want my professional opinionyes!parents should approach ads for alcoholic beverages with great caution. In a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics, my colleagues at Dartmouth and I showed that youths’ involvement with alcohol marketing influenced their drinking behaviors.
We asked about alcohol use in more than 2,000 U.S. teens, ages 15-20. For the survey, we collected more than 300 alcohol advertisements that aired on American television during the prior year. From each of these ads, a still photo was captured. These stills went into a pool of images from which 20 were randomly drawn for each survey. We wanted to know whether children, when presented these images, would say they had seen them or liked them. We also airbrushed any indication of brand, and asked them if they could tell which brand of alcohol was being advertised.
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