Watching alcohol being consumed in movies can raise the likelihood teens will drink and have problems related to alcohol, a new study finds.

"We don't really get an accurate representation of what alcohol is like," said Dr. Andrea Waylen, the study author and a senior lecturer in social science at the University of Bristol in England. 

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Things like vomiting and hangovers are often left out in the movies, which can lead teens to think drinking alcohol has no consequences. For the latest study, Dr. Waylen and her team used information from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children in the UK.

When they were 15, around 5,000 British participants were surveyed about how frequently and how much alcohol they drank.

The participants were also asked whether they had watched a selection from 50 films. The films had been randomly chosen by researchers who measured how much time in each film showed alcohol use.

The teens were then categorized into groups based on how much alcohol drinking they had watched in the films.

About 86 percent of the participants said they had tried alcohol while nearly 50 percent said they had participated in heavy episodic drinking.

Over 40 percent of the teens reported they had problems with school, friends, work or police that were sort of related to alcohol.

Researchers adjusted the results for other factors that can make teens more likely to engage in drinking. Factors like socioeconomic status, parental drinking habits, mental health conditions and family characteristics were considered in the study.

Compared with teens that were least exposed to drinking in movies, teens exposed the most were still twice as likely to drink weekly or have problems related to alcohol. The teens were also 75 percent more likely to engage in binge drinking.

The findings published April 13 in the journal, Pediatrics suggested movie ratings must take alcohol use into consideration.

TagsTeen Drinking, binge drinking