Research shows young people may be exposed to more than 20 alcohol ads per hour on social media. It has renewed calls for an independent regulatory body to minimise potential harm from drinking.
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00:00So, we did a very simple study.
00:03What we did is that we recruited 125 university students.
00:07We just asked them to scroll their phone on their favourite social medias for 30 minutes
00:11and take screenshots for whatever advertisement they've seen and then send it back to us.
00:17So the result is very shocking because the majority of these young people, they see at
00:23least one advertisement in the 30-minute period.
00:27And actually, on average, they see one advertisement every two to three minutes.
00:32We mainly focus on Facebook and Instagram.
00:34Many of these ads have links that ask young people to buy their products straight away.
00:40And of course, this is not surprising because the sole purpose of advertisements is to get
00:45young people to purchase the product, and in this case, it's alcohol.
00:49And in our research, unfortunately, we also have some of these young people under 18 years
00:55old, which is completely illegal to purchase alcohol.
00:59The most concerning bit is that the frequency that these young people see these ads.
01:03Because in traditional medias, you see advertisements for alcohol in a lot of places anyway, but
01:11the frequency is not that high.
01:12You will not see one alcohol advertisement every three minutes.
01:15There's not much strong government regulations in this area, unfortunately.
01:20At the moment, the industry uses self-regulated models, which means that there's
01:25complete lack of independence, there's complete lack of transparency.