News
Youthful non-drinking - alive and well but socially invisible
Recent survey data, exploring young people's attitudes towards alcohol (pdf 146kb), challenges the assumption that drinking is an integral part of growing up.
Published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the report
states that it is commonplace for young people to choose not to drink or
drink lightly, and that doing so is a positive choice.
Researchers invited 52 people aged between 16 and 25 who
drink little or no alcohol to express their opinions on how their
choices and patterns of consumption affect their lives and to examine
the discrepancy between this and the wider social perceptions of young
people's relationship with alcohol.
They found that respondents did not believe that getting
drunk was an automatic rite of passage, that not drinking was just as
likely to be a personal choice rather than a moral one and that the
immediate effects of drinking – such as having a hangover – were of
greater concern to them than the longer-term health effects.
Messages about alcohol from school, education and the
media were felt by some young people to reinforce stereotypes and norms
around drinking behaviour. Young people were angered by the lack of
support for their choice and wanted their personal preferences to be
respected and recognised as being valid.
Non-drinkers were particularly frustrated at the negative
portrayals of young people as heavy binge drinkers in the media and
wanted their preference for not drinking to be respected as a legitimate
option.
One of the report's authors, Mariana Bayley, observed in
the JRF blog that the ease with which the respondents were chosen for
the survey was in line with data from the 2010 General Lifestyle Survey,
which suggests that 52% of young men and 54% of young women aged
between 16 and 25 years had not drunk alcohol in the previous week.