Development and Pilot of a Parent Based Intervention for Reducing High-risk Social Networking Site Cognitions, Alcohol Use, and Negative Consequences Among Adolescents

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The prevalence of underage alcohol use continues to be a public health concern. Numerous studies have reported associations between teen drinking tendencies and parental attitudes and beliefs, parental awareness of teen drinking, parental monitoring and the quality of the parent–teen relationship and communication. The extensive work in this area has resulted in parent-based intervention (PBI) efforts to prevent or reduce adolescent alcohol use. Several independent studies have indicated that teens whose parents received a PBI reported less alcohol use and fewer alcohol-related consequences. Despite these strengths, one major limitation of PBI is that they do not currently take into account the large role that social networking sites (SNS) use plays in adolescents' lives and in relation to their alcohol use. Most (90%) adolescents are on SNS, and their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles include alcohol content. Thus, adolescents are making and exposed to SNS alcohol displays and these displays are associated with high-risk drinking cognitions and alcohol use. As such, we propose to develop and refine an interactive PBI designed to reduce high-risk SNS cognitions (i.e. attitudes and norms), alcohol use, and negative consequences among adolescents. To achieve study aims, we propose an iterative process of focus groups in order to develop and refine the interactive PBI to be delivered in the pilot study with 1 and 6 month follow-up among 100 parent/teen dyads. The objective of this R34 application is to establish feasibility and acceptability of the newly developed interactive PBI that focuses on the role of SNS in adolescent alcohol use as well as to determine preliminary effect sizes for future studies. Determining an efficacious way to reduce alcohol use and high-risk alcohol display cognitions affords future research the opportunity to make use of social network-based interventions, thus the proposed research has great potential to serve as a catalyst for future research.