Study: Text messaging helps curb young adult binge drinking

Mobile text messages can influence behavioral changes when it comes to binge or hazardous drinking, according to a study published in Annuals of Emergency Medicine.

Hazardous drinking is defined as five or more drinks per day as a man and four or more drinks per day as a woman. Excessive alcohol consumption contributes to 10 percent of deaths among working-age adults in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a study of 765 young adult emergency patients with a history of hazardous drinking, more than 50 percent reduced their consumption after receiving mobile phone text messages.

For 12 weeks, one-third of enrollees received text messages prompting them to respond to drinking-related queries and received text messages in return offering feedback on their answers. The feedback was tailored to strengthen their low-risk drinking plan or to promote reflection on either their drinking plan or their decision not to set a low-risk goal. One-third received only text message queries about their drinking and one-third received no text messages.

The cohort receiving both text message queries and feedback decreased their self-reported binge drinking days by 51 percent and decreased the number of self-reported drinks per day by 31 percent.  The groups that received only text messages or no text messages increased the number of binge drinking days, according to the study.

"Illicit drugs and opiates grab all the headlines, but alcohol remains the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.," said study author Brian Suffoletto, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pittsburgh, Pa., in a statement. "If we can intervene in a meaningful way in the health and habits of people when they are young, we could make a real dent in that tragic statistic. Alcohol may bring them to the ER, but we can do our part to keep them from becoming repeat visitors."