Social Influence And The Reduction Of Alcohol Consumption

I’ve come to notice a confluence of variables that, in my opinion, has reduced and at the least raised awareness about the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption. In the past, we haven’t seen such a rise in alcohol related incidences being loudspeakered in a social forum as we do now.

Flash forward to today, post Covid, we have stepped into a time of mental health issues and alcohol abuse. It’s as if the natural state of being was disrupted, inducing the cascading effect of negative behavior that has ultimately led to excessive drinking by many Americans. Being at home, less to do, stress, all had a compounding effect which produced a perfect storm environment to consume large amounts of alcohol at once. Purpose is a key component to modifying behavior for the good. Getting up to go to work, gym, and a movie with friends is a metaphorical guardrail to mitigate a path to excessive drinking and bad decisions. Of course many social gatherings revolve around alcohol, but it’s the purpose we create in our daily lives that works to impede us from binge drinking.

Rarely can we attribute aspects of viral social media to contributing to betterment in our society. In recent time, The discussion of alcohol’s dark side has proliferated immensely. If you’re on social media, you’ve likely been somewhere in the blast radius of this discussion. However, I believe social media gets a win for its role in reducing excessive drinking on our population. More and more I am hearing of friends, celebrities, etc giving up the booze and proclaiming the extreme benefits of living a sober life. Over a decade ago, a student at Arizona State wanted to reduce the students drinking. She was able to achieve this by making the private public — accomplished by running ads in the school newspaper. Instead of focusing on the health consequences of drinking, she created ads that merely stated the statistics around student consumption of alcohol — that most students had only 1–2 drinks and 69 percent have fewer than 4 drinks when they party.

She focused on the social information. By showcasing the reality that MOST of their peers weren’t binging, it helped others reflect on their choices around alcohol and realize they felt the same.

This realigned false inferences students made about others’ behavior which they may have otherwise deemed acceptable and ok. This approach saw heavy drinking decrease by almost 30% amongst the students.

There is an underestimated power of social proof. People follow the lead of similar behavioral patterns in others. Social media allows us to see we are all very much alike…from our daily routines to our opinions and habits.

Social creatures as we are, human rely heavily on the people around them for cues on how to think, feel, and act. We know this intuitively, but this intuition has been confirmed by experiments, such as one described in 1982 in the Journal of Applied Psychology. A group of researchers went door-to-door in Columbia, South Carolina, soliciting donations for a charity campaign and displaying a list of neighborhood residents who had already donated to the cause. The researchers found that the longer the donor list was, the more likely those solicited would donate as well.

We are seeing almost the exact same effect thanks to social media. Celebrities are coming out and quitting alcohol. Friends of friends on Facebook are making posts that they want to live a healthier life. YouTube videos showing DUI arrests and its consequences. All this openness, is allowing others to look at themselves, just like I mentioned with the Arizona State students — making the private public. This level of transparency where people can be open and share their inner voice in a constructive way is the EXACT amazing purpose of good networks curating real and impactful positive content. The social proof in this case, allows for reflection and seeing themselves in the mirror to which many think “I don’t want that for my life.” This is cornerstone to the beginnings of making change.

We need more positive effect fanning out to the pubic from social media.