Experimental Test of Facebook Social Drinking Norms on Adolescent Alcohol Use

The proposed research will be the first study to focus on experimentally manipulating both
injunctive and descriptive norms on social networking sites in order to elucidate the
relationship between alcohol and abstainer displays on social networking sites and subsequent
alcohol cognitions, use, and related negative consequences. Based on literature focusing on
developmentally appropriate health models for adolescents, the Prototype Willingness Model
(PWM) assumes that health-risk behaviors occur either when individuals have developed
intentions to engage in a risk behavior (and these intentions vary as a function of attitudes
and perceived injunctive norms) or through willingness to engage in risks (which varies as a
function of perceived vulnerability to negative consequences, perceived descriptive norms ,
and prototypes). To fully understand the relationships between alcohol abstaining displays on
social networking sites, we will examine 1) the role of descriptive and injunctive abstainer
and user norms, when experimentally manipulated with SNS profiles, on willingness and
intentions, subsequent alcohol use and related negative consequences among adolescents (age 1
5-20) 2) whether intentions and willingness mediate the relation between our experimental
manipulation and subsequent alcohol use and negative consequences and whether 3) individual
differences in social influence moderate the effect of the experimental manipulation on
intentions, willingness, alcohol use, and negative consequences. We will test these aims by
recruiting a community sample of adolescents (N = 300), living in the greater Seattle
metropolitan area. Participants will complete a web-based baseline assessment and participate
in an in-person experimental manipulation in which they are either assigned to see same-sex
social networking site profiles of alcohol abstainers, abstainers +users, or a control
condition where neither user or abstainer information will be provided. Immediately after the
manipulation, participants will answer a series of questions about the profiles they just
viewed and their alcohol-related cognitions. Participants will also complete a one-month in
person follow up assessment to test for impacts on intentions, willingness, alcohol use, and
related negative consequences. Additionally, individual differences in social influence will
be examined as possible moderators o f the relationship between SNS-portrayed norms and our
primary outcomes. This study is both significant and innovative in that it uses a theoretical
perspective to experimentally test the impact of alcohol content, in particular abstainer
norms, on Facebook on adolescent alcohol use and related cognitions. The results have the
potential to inform preventative interventions while addressing NIH priorities.