Media Literacy As a Prevention Strategy in a Brazilian Private School

Introduction:A regional study on drug use among 37 private school from city of São Paulo, Brazil with 5.226 students showed that the behavior of binge drinking in the past month was higher among boys (26.8%), and girls (21.7%). About 7.3% of boys and 5.4% of girls reported binge drinking at three to five times in the last month. Companies apply marketing strategies that are one of the factors that influence alcohol use among teenagers. The ineffectiveness of auto-regulation on advertising by advertisers has also played an important role there. Media content showing alcohol in a positive light has been show to be related to increased prevalence in alcohol use. For example, beer is advertised in an array of different medias and using lots of strategies, and that is always growing and being improved. Our youngsters abilities to deal with that must also be improved

Methods:Activities were developed with teenagers between the ages of 13 and 14, during a weekly class for 3 months. After receiving guidelines about the techniques which are used in commercials, they analyzed, under the teacher's supervision, 10 old-fashioned cigarette TV commercials and 10 beer commercials. In Brazil, cigarette ads are now restricted to the point of sale; the old-fashioned cigarette commercials were used only for comparison and to highlight some of the “catches” which are employed by tobacco and beer companies today. Acting as judges, the students pointed out which techniques were being used in the cigarette and then beer commercials. As a conclusion, the students were grouped and had to produce a prevention campaign using the same techniques. Short movies were the media chosen by the students.

Results:Our pilot study shows most students able to identify at least 3 characteristics which were common in the commercials of both products. The way students got involved with the activity and consequently more aware of the risky factors was remarkable. After the activities students were better at noticing the differences between facts and opinions. They also showed an improved ability to choose which messages to believe in and to evaluate what they watch and read.

Conclusions: Introducing media literacy strategies in a prevention program to the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs is of paramount importance. It is necessary to intensify the development of media literacy abilities among teenagers.