Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse and Social Network Patterns on Social Media: Associations With Alcohol Use and Problems Among Young Adult Women

Our research provides social scientists with areas of inquiry in tobacco-related health disparities in young adult women and opportunities for intervention, as Instagram may be a powerful tool for the public health surveillance of smoking behavior and social norms among young women. Social media has fundamentally changed how to engage with health-related information. Researchers increasingly turn to social media platforms for public health surveillance. Instagram currently is one of the fastest growing social networks with over 53% of young adults (aged 18-29) using the platform and young adult women comprise a significant user base. We conducted a content analysis of a sample of smoking imagery drawn from Instagram’s public Application Programming Interface (API). From August 2014 to July 2015, 18 popular tobacco- and e-cigarette-related text tags were used to collect 2.3 million image posts. Trained undergraduate coders (aged 21-29) coded 8,000 images ( r = .91) by type of artifact, branding, number of persons, gender, age, ethnicity, and the presence of smoke. Approximately 71.5% of images were tobacco-relevant and informed our research. Images of cigarettes were the most popular (49%), followed by e-cigarettes (32.1%). “Selfies while smoking” was the dominant form of portrait expression, with 61.4% of images containing only one person, and of those, 65.7% contained images of women. The most common selfie was women engaged in “smoke play” (62.4%) that the viewer could interpret as “cool.” These “cool” images may counteract public health efforts to denormalize smoking, and young women are bearing the brunt of this under-the-radar tobacco advertising. Social media further normalizes tobacco use because positive images and brand messaging are easily seen and shared, and also operates as unpaid advertising on image-based platforms like Instagram. These findings portend a dangerous trend for young women in the absence of effective public health intervention strategies.

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Young Adult Women and Alcohol-Related Problems: The Key Role of Multidimensional Feminine Norms

Substance Abuse Research and Treatment ◽

10.1177/1178221819888650 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 ◽

pp. 117822181988865

Author(s):

Derek Kenji Iwamoto ◽

Vivian W. Mui

Keyword(s):

Young Adult ◽

Alcohol Use ◽

Alcohol Problems ◽

Heavy Episodic Drinking ◽

Future Research ◽

Adult Women ◽

Young Adult Women ◽

Feminine Norms ◽

Alcohol Related Problems

Young adult college women are closing the gender gap with respect to heavy episodic drinking and alcohol-related problems. Accordingly, it is important to understand and examine the factors that help explain within-group differences in problematic drinking patterns among this vulnerable population. One promising theoretically-relevant factor that appears to explain problematic alcohol use among young adult women is conformity to multidimensional feminine norms. Feminine norms are the beliefs and/or expectations of what it means to be a woman. This review paper identifies the current trends and limitations of research examining the role of feminine norms on alcohol use among young adult women in college. The review of the literature suggests that relationship between feminine norms and alcohol problems is complex in that there are costs and benefits for endorsing and opposing different feminine norms. Women who endorse appearance and relational feminine norms such as striving to be thin, focusing on their appearance, and maintaining relationships are at heighten risk of engaging in heavy episodic drinking and alcohol problems. Women who endorse feminine norms including maintaining sexual relationships with one partner, endorse the belief that one should be modest, and sweet, and nice, and upholding domestic values are less likely to report alcohol problems. Clinical and future research recommendations are provided.

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