Popular YouTube Videos Seem to Glorify Drunken Behavior
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iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(PITTSBURGH) — You can find virtually anyone doing anything on YouTube, including people who are intoxicated, whether it’s with their knowledge or not.
This is disturbing to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health (CRMTH), who say that these videos often don’t show the ramifications of drunkenness, which can lead to violence, vehicular accidents and health problems.
In fact while examining the 70 most popular YouTube videos that display excessive alcohol consumption, the researchers say that humor is used in about 80 percent of them with very few referencing alcohol dependence.
Perhaps even more disconcerting is that the videos have been watched more than 333 million times, and the ratio of likes to dislikes is better than 23-to-one.
Lead author Brian A. Primack says that while people tend to cast a wary eye on ads or music videos that tend to show drinking in a benign way, “those same viewers may be less cynical when viewing user-generated YouTube videos portraying humorous and socially rewarding escapades of a group of intoxicated peers.”
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