“I’m so much cooler online…Yeah I’m cooler online…”
– Brad Paisley, Online

By David Patterson, Elizabeth Kuzmich, Francis Verhaegen, and Natalie Leopold

Why do they do it? Why do otherwise smart and savvy college and high school student post photos of themselves drinking and partying on Facebook and MySpace? To the right is just one. There are many more, some of them a lot more, um… revealing than this one.

Facebook/MySpace and the pictures posted on these websites represent a microcosm of social life. It is true that college students drink more often and in higher quantities than any other age group. Their lives include class, work, homework, club meetings…and partying. Many times, pictures of fraternity parties and keggers do not portray college students accurately. In other words, these students choose to portray only certain aspects of their lives on the Internet.

Thus, the pictures posted on Facebook/MySpace only represent some of these activities, specifically partying. For the same reason that website profiles of older adults often feature their wives and children, the profiles of college students feature what they believe is the most interesting, or ‘coolest,’ part of their life – having fun while partying and drinking.

Pictures of drinking and partying are interesting to their peers. The college social scene revolves around attending bars and fraternity parties. Just as the public looks to celebrities for cues on what to wear, where to go, and how to act, young adults look to their peers to see what are the best parties and activities, which are illustrated on Facebook/MySpace. It is unlikely that a college student would post a picture of himself or herself in the library or working at the ice cream shop.

Facebook/MySpace allows for the creation of new or altered identity and the presentation of this identity to others. Individuals can portray themselves as social, attractive, and popular by posting pictures of themselves surrounded by friends at a party. In theory, this makes them more desirable to the other sex and ‘cooler’ to their peers.

Examining the Profiles

In order to take a closer look at the prevalence of alcohol-related pictures in Facebook and MySpace profiles, 25 Facebook profiles and 25 MySpace profiles were randomly selected from a large pool of male and female individuals using a random numbers generator. The users’ ages varied from 17 to 25, essentially the average aged college students. From these profiles, the photo albums were inspected to determine whether they were alcohol or party related. Pictures containing beer cans, bottles, or handles of liquor or those taken in a bar or party setting or other miscellaneous drinking activities counted towards an “alcohol-related” picture or photo album.

Continue reading “Why Do They Do It? Portrayals of Alcohol on Facebook and MySpace”

Just like last year, groups of students from my class Alcohol and Drugs: The Anthropology of Substance Use and Abuse have put together some great posts to share with the world. This year had more of a compulsion and culture theme, looking at “addictions” in areas besides drugs and alcohol as well as the impact of music and the internet on our everyday involvements. I’ll put the first post up later today, and then go more-or-less one a day until I get through all nine.

The posts represent quality work by the students. The students developed their own arguments and ideas, and did the background research themselves. I don’t always agree with them, and that’s good – all part of academic discourse.

Last year’s posts proved very popular. The one on brain imaging is in our Top Ten overall, and another on the genetic and environmental bases of addiction is in the top twenty. All told, the eight posts have been read more than 13,000 times!

The students covered a range of topics last year, from post-conventional outlaws and the drug war to college binge drinking and gender, stress and addiction and inequality and addiction, and finally on denial and disease and on age limits on drinking.

To see all of last’s years posts, check out Why A Final Essay When We Can Do This?