CHICAGO – High school students who watch lots of

television and music videos are more likely to start drinking than other

youngsters, researchers say. The Stanford University study of 1,533

ninth-graders also showed that youngsters who rented movies were less likely

to start drinking, while playing video and computer games had no effect.

Watching TV and videos made no difference in the drinking habits of those who

already drank. The findings are not surprising given research that shows

alcohol is the most common beverage shown on television, the study’s lead

author, Dr. Thomas Robinson, said Monday.

”The great majority of drinking on television is by the most attractive and

most influential people, and it is often associated with sexually suggestive

content,” said Robinson, who works at the school’s Center for Research and

Disease Prevention.

The study found that each increase of one hour per day of watching music

videos brought a 31% greater risk of starting to drink over the next 18

months. Each hour increase of watching other kinds of television corresponded

to a 9% greater risk. Each hour spent watching movies in a VCR corresponded to

an 11% decreased risk of starting to drink alcohol. Computer and video games

had no effect either way.

The study, reported in this month’s edition of the journal Pediatrics, looked

at 2,609 ninth-graders in San Jose, Calif., and followed 1,533 of them

throughout the 18 months. They reported their activities – how many hours

playing video games, for example – and were asked how many drinks of alcohol

they had ever had, and how many they had in the

previous month. Over the next 18 months, 36.2% of 898 nondrinkers began to

drink.

Television habits had no effect on the 635 students who already drank, the

authors said. But of the students who did not drink at the start of the study,

what they watched on television played a major role in what they did over the

next 18 months, the study found.

Robinson said there needs to be ”balance in the way alcohol is portrayed so

that people who did drink did suffer some consequences from it.”

Alyse Booth, spokeswoman for the National Center on Addiction and Substance

Abuse at Columbia University in New York, said the results of the study did

not surprise her. ”There is a tremendous glamorization of the use of

alcohol,” she said. ”Alcohol use is portrayed as normal and glamorous, never

with the consequences.”

– Associated Press