The Intoxicating Camera

It's coming to your campus.

I'm Shmacked, founded by Arya Toufanian and Jeffrey Ray, two twenty-something aspiring filmmakers, turns college campuses into music videos, although perhaps not in the way administrators or parents might hope. In between jump cuts to students crowd surfing and shaky cam shots of students grinding on the dance floor, the videos might showcase a few noticeable campus buildings or cheering crowds at sports games. Academics and classrooms, of course, are noticeably absent. (Though the founders claim they'd like to show them too.) 

They insist they're merely there to document the college scene and to help prospective students learn about colleges by showcasing the social life. According to Toufanian, “Kids don’t want to read anymore...Seeing a video is a much more fun way to learn about a school.”

Of course their motto is "I'm Shmacked: It's a movement," which makes it sound less like a documentary project and more like...well, a movement.

The problem is the filmmakers host the parties they claim to document. Indeed, the very name I'm Shmacked suggests their focus. It's not something you say after a hard test. It's something you say after a few shots of hard liquor. At the bottom of their videos, the company claims that "no alcohol or illegal substance is used during filming, just props." Perhaps the camera itself acts as a kind of intoxicant.

Indeed, students eagerly perform for the camera. The camera is not an objective lens onto campus life, but an invitation to perform. Much as alcohol can be used as a kind of permission slip to misbehave, so can the camera and the thrill of being on screen. Perhaps students are compelled by some strange sense of school spirit that measures a university's success in cups of beer. One of the parties, held at University of Delaware, devolved into what police described as a near riot.

Co-founder Arya Toufanian admitted as much in an interview, saying, “I have cameras and a budget now, and a bunch of college kids who will do anything to be on camera.".

Indeed, USA Today quotes one student who claims that I'm Shmacked gives students the ability to "express themselves" differently.

Other students are sensitive to the ways video and social media coax students into performing: "I'm worried that filming it will just exacerbate (students') dangerous behavior so they look 'cooler' on camera," said one student in the same USA Today news report.

Students are also divided on how appearing in one of these videos might affect their professional lives. One student thought it unlikely that he could be identified in the video:  "If my future employers were to watch the video," he said, "I doubt the likelihood of them recognizing me."

Meanwhile, another student told the New York Times, “To do this on a video that can go viral, you must have a train-wreck mentality.”

At the same time, we can't completely discount the co-founders claim. I'm Shmacked does document something, though it may not be an entirely accurate reflection of campus life. It seems to open a view onto students'  attitudes regarding campus partying and their motives to party in the first place.

I'm Shmacked offers students a chance to be seen and to "represent" their school. It's perhaps no coincidence that the videos often include shots of sporting events and/or shots of campus gear. The parties themselves are a kind of performance and competition. In several of the videos students proclaim their school is the "best." Undoubtedly a sense of competition fuels students to act crazier.

But then again, maybe we shouldn't get so worked up. Much of the actual footage is rather tame. Students screaming, dancing, or crowd surfing are pretty typical. A lot of the motion and action is in the editing.

Perhaps, then, I'm Shmacked offers campuses a way into a more nuanced discussion with their students about why they party. Why is this the story so many students seem to want tell about college? And if partying is about letting loose and forgetting yourself, why would anyone perform or show off for a camera?

In fact, I'm Shmacked has itself tried to open conversations on campus by adding short interviews with students about topics like "one night stands or relationships" or "drunk versus sober."

We don't have answers, but your students might. 

You Can't Be an Alcoholic If You're in College, Right?

Have you heard this one before? It's not uncommon to find it on the lips of college students. For some it's almost a rallying cry.

The sheer prevalence of binge drinking and the youth of college drinkers can mislead students into thinking that heavy drinking is just a college thing, a rite of passage that they'll mature out of, and that it therefore poses little risk to them in the short or long term.

For many students that may be true. But some students won't outgrow their dangerous drinking habits, while others are already suffering the negative consequences of excessive drinking.

Young Adults and Alcohol Dependency

Contrary to college lore, there is no minimum age for alcoholism. Sadly, many young adults do meet the criteria for alcohol dependency and abuse. A 2002 study found that 31% of college students abused alcohol and 6% could be diagnosed with alcohol dependency.

A 2007 study identified five "subtypes" of alcohol dependency: young adult, young antisocial, intermediate familial, functional, and chronic severe. Only the chronic severe abusers fit into popular stereotypes of what most of us associate with alcohol abuse, yet they are the smallest percentage of problem drinkers.

Shockingly, young adults made up the largest subtype (31.5%), according to the study. They are also the least likely to seek help for their drinking.

In an interview with Psychiatric News, the researchers themselves expressed surprise with their finding "that so many of the individuals who met diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence were young adults [in their early 20s]."

Young adult drinkers drank less frequently than other subtypes, but when they drank, they tended to binge (73% of the time). Since over a third of young adult drinkers are still in school, the researchers suggested that "they may be an unrecognized part of the college drinking problem."

More recently, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has changed how they define substance use disorder.

Previously, the APA treated substance abuse and dependency as an either/or scenario: either you had a problem or you didn't. In contrast, the newest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) treats substance use disorders on a continuum from mild or moderate to severe.

As Dr. Charles O'Brien explained, "In DS- 4, we had essentially two diagnoses: one was abuse and the other, dependence...By doing a lot of research, we've discovered addiction doesn't work that way. It starts off mild at the beginning and becomes gradually more severe."

There was some controversy over the new standards. Critics claimed as many as 40% of college students could end up being labelled as alcoholics if the DSM 5's new diagnoses are followed.

This increase in diagnoses, critics argued, could do more harm than good. Rather than encouraging students to seek help, the diagnosis might lock them into the identity of an alcoholic or addict, causing them to act and think accordingly.

"And that poses a huge problem," wrote Maia Szalavitz for Time,  "particularly for adolescents and young adults with mild problems who may be pushed to adopt an addict identity and to see themselves as having no way to control their drinking or drug use if they ever 'relapse'. Rather than empowering those who do have control to use it, these programs essentially tell kids that if they ever have just one drink or puff on a joint, they’re lost."

But if telling students that they're problem drinkers doesn't work, then what other solutions are available?

Drinking Problem versus Problems with Drinking

Some researchers have suggested another approach that avoids the labels associated with substance use disorders. The Harvard School of Public Health, for example, has recently released a series of books that addresses the grey area between normal and problem drinking.

The series is called the "almost effect" and discusses circumstances where individuals may experience negative consequences from their drinking, such as poor sleep, depression, a drop off in work performance, or relationship troubles, but may not qualify for a formal diagnosis of alcohol dependency. They call these individuals "almost alcoholics."

Though they may not be formally diagnosed for a substance use disorder, they may nonetheless benefit from counseling or a brief intervention in order to help them see the connection between their drinking and its consequences.

Dr. Joseph Nowinski, one of the series' authors, explains that the decision that your drinking is a problem "does not imply that you admit to having a 'diagnosis', or that you are 'mentally ill'. Rather, it simply means that you have decided to make some changes in your lifestyle in the interest of your overall health."

In other words, perhaps the problem isn't that students think you can't be an alcoholic in college, but that they're thinking in terms of alcoholic or not alcoholic. Such binary thinking prevents them from seeing how their drinking is beginning to cause them problems and from doing something about it. Even if it's not an official diagnosis and even if it doesn't lead to problems later in life, college drinking can still be a problem now.