Dealing with Alcohol-Related Posts on Social Media: Using a Mixed-Method Approach to Understand Young Peoples' Problem Awareness and Evaluations of Intervention Ideas

Overview

Journal Int J Environ Res Public Health

Publisher MDPI

Specialties Environmental Health
Public Health

Date 2023 May 27

PMID 37239547

Authors

Hanneke Hendriks

Tu Thanh Le

Winifred A Gebhardt

Bas van den Putte

Robyn Vanherle

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Young individuals frequently share and encounter alcohol-related content (i.e., alcohol posts) on social networking sites. The prevalence of these posts is problematic because both the sharing of and exposure to these posts can increase young individuals' alcohol (mis)use. Consequently, it is essential to develop effective intervention strategies that hinder young individuals from sharing these posts. This study aimed to develop such intervention strategies by following four steps: (1) assessing young individuals' problem awareness of alcohol posts, (2) unraveling individuals' own intervention ideas to tackle the problem of alcohol posts, (3) examining their evaluations of theory/empirical-based intervention ideas, and (4) exploring individual differences in both problem awareness and intervention evaluations. To reach these aims, a mixed-method study (i.e., focus-group interviews and surveys) among Dutch high-school and college students ( = 292, Age = 16-28 years) was conducted. According to the results, most youth did not consider alcohol posts to be a problem and were, therefore, in favor of using automated warning messages to raise awareness. However, these messages might not work for every individual, as group differences in problem awareness and intervention evaluations exist. Overall, this study puts forward potential intervention ideas to reduce alcohol posts in digital spheres and can therefore serve as a steppingstone to test the actual effects of the ideas.

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