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Sunday, August 17, 2008

Youth exposure to alcohol use and brand appearances in popular contemporary movies
Addiction Published Online: 14 Aug 2008

To describe alcohol use and alcohol brand appearances in popular movies and estimate adolescents' exposure to this alcohol-related content.

Most movies (83%, including 56.6% of G/PG-rated movies) depicted alcohol use and 52% (including 19.2% of G/PG movies) contained at least one alcohol brand appearance, which consisted of branded use by an actor 30.3% of the time. These movies exposed the average US adolescent 10–14 years of age to 5.6 [95% confidence interval (CI) 5.4, 5.7] hours of movie alcohol use and 243.8 (95% CI 238, 250) alcohol brand appearances (5 billion in total), mainly from youth-rated movies. Exposure to movie alcohol content was significantly higher among African American youth than youth of other races.

Alcohol use and brand appearances are portrayed frequently in popular US movies (which are distributed world-wide). Children and adolescents in the United States are exposed to hours of alcohol use depictions and numerous brand appearances in movies and most of this exposure is from movies rated for this segment of the population.

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