Rich, educated, tech-savvy binge drinkers

However, Moss said the study findings are consistent with recent research to come out of NIAAA national surveys. While alcohol dependence has always been viewed as a disorder of middle age, 20-somethings represent the highest proportion of alcohol-dependent individuals in the U.S., he said.

It’s a similar story north of the border, according to the 2004 Canadian Addiction Survey, which found those aged 18 to 24 who had consumed alcohol in the past year had the highest percentages when it came to weekly heavy drinking. Heavy drinking was defined as having five or more drinks on one occasion for men, and four or more drinks for women.

The survey found 16.1 per cent of 18-to 19-year-olds and 14.9 per cent of 20-to 24-year-olds engaged in heavy weekly drinking.

However, unlike the U.S. findings, university graduates and those with higher levels of income were less likely to be heavy drinkers.

Moss said many Cyber Millennials in the U.S. may be continuing drinking patterns established in their late teens and early 20s, and that the affluence of group members allows them to be able to pay for multiple drinks in a bar or club.

The study noted that NIAAA has research suggesting that youth benefit most from early outreach, and that their behaviours “are less entrenched than adults so (they are) more amenable to change.”

Study authors also proposed potential ways to target high-risk youth drinkers, such as including an Internet component in prevention outreach strategies since they have a higher-than-average rate of Internet use.

One way to reach Cyber Millennials would be to create a targeted media campaign emphasizing health, such as alternating alcoholic drinks for bottled water, of which they are already “huge consumers,” Moss said.

He said the hope would be to then take advantage of their consumer habits and link them to the health message, giving them an opportunity to perhaps alter their behaviour in a positive direction.

Dr. Robert Mann, senior scientist in public health and regulatory policy at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said the findings could represent important research for people interested in preventing alcohol abuse.

“The challenge in substance abuse prevention research has been to try to understand how one might best target prevention efforts to particular audiences that would be receptive and benefit from those kinds of efforts,” Mann said.

“This study, I think, is the first that I’m aware of that is really using techniques from marketing research that do exactly that – that identify important and relatively homogenous subgroups of the population for marketing purposes.”

“This approach to substance abuse prevention by market segmentation analysis could be a very, very promising strategy,” he added.

- The Canadian Press, photo courtesy of erat