Crystal Smit

General Introduction 1 13 such as water—which contains no calories and also reduces cravings—has been found to be a promising approach (Zheng, Allman-Farinelli, Heitmann, & Rangan, 2015). Several longitudinal studies have shown that replacing SSBs with water can have a beneficial effect on body weight in children (Avery, Bostock, & McCullough, 2015; Zheng, Allman-Farinelli, et al., 2015; Zheng, Rangan, et al., 2015). However, the water intake of children aged 9 to 13 years has been relatively low for years (Drewnowski, Rehm, & Constant, 2013; Piernas, Barquera, & Popkin, 2014; Vieux, Maillot, Constant, & Drewnowski, 2016, 2017; Vieux, Maillot, Rehm, Barrios, & Drewnowski, 2020), below the recommended level of 2000 ml/day total water intake (i.e., including water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and food moisture; EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition, and Allergies (NDA), 2010). A recent study of water consumption patterns among children aged 9 to 13 years showed that their total dietary water intake was 1691 ml/day, from which only 577 ml/day came from drinking plain water (Vieux et al., 2020). It is therefore essential that interventions focus on encouraging and promoting water intake in children. Mass media interventions are widely used in the public health sector to address a variety of health behaviors (Wakefield, Loken, & Hornik, 2010), including the consumption of water and SSBs (e.g., Bleakley, Jordan, Mallya, Hennessy, & Piotrowski, 2018; Caldwell et al., 2020; Farley et al., 2017; Kite et al., 2018; Morley et al., 2019). Such mass interventions use standardized media messages to change the knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and behavior of multiple individuals simultaneously in a relatively inexpensive way (Wakefield et al., 2010). Unfortunately, they have a limited effect on actual health behavior change (Anker, Feeley, McCracken, & Lagoe, 2016). A possible explanation may be that these interventions do not take into account the (social) environment of the targeted individuals (Sharma, 2006). Findings from a meta-analysis suggest that water promotion interventions targeting changes in the (social) environment may have a greater impact on behavior (Franse et al., 2020). Therefore, there is a strong need to investigate interventions strategies targeting changes at the environmental level. A possible avenue might lie in incorporating the role of the social context and peer influences in interventions.