#Drink or #Drunk? An Experimental Study Investigating the Impact of Positive and Negative Alcohol Depictions in Ephemeral Social Media on Alcohol Cognitions

Exposure to alcohol on social media has been linked to offline alcohol use. With the rise of ephemeral messages (e.g. Snapchat), social media users are exposed to a wider variety of alcohol depictions, ranging from negative to more positive ones. However, it remains unclear how exposure to differential alcohol depictions influences offline alcohol cognitions and who is most susceptible to them. We conducted an online between-subjects experiment manipulating the type of alcohol-related social media depictions (negative vs. positive vs. control) to investigate the impact on alcohol outcome expectations and attitudes. We also assessed whether alcohol status moderates these effects. A total of 361 emerging adults participated in the study (<i>M</i>_<i>age</i> = 23.32; <i>SD</i> = 2.50; 77.3% females; 66.5% students). Our results showed that exposure to positive depictions did not exert an impact on positive outcome expectations (<i>b</i> = -.14, <i>confidence interval [CI]</i> = -.44/.11), nor on negative outcome expectations (<i>b</i> = -.18, <i>[CI]</i> = -.46/.11), or attitudes (<i>b</i> = -.04, <i>[CI]</i> = -.25/.18). For negative depictions, we found an impact on attitudes (<i>b</i> = -.34, <i>[CI]</i> = -.56/-.13), but not on positive outcome expectations (<i>b</i> = -.04, <i>[CI]</i> = -.34/.27) or negative outcome expectations (<i>b</i> = .07; <i>[CI]</i> = -.22/.35). This implied that emerging adults exposed to negative alcohol depictions had more negative attitudes toward alcohol use. This effect remained robust even when taking the individuals' frequency of alcohol use into account. These findings suggest that positive and negative depictions on social media may operate differently, thereby informing future research and health interventions.