Since the early 2000s, alcohol use among young people – particularly teenagers – has declined significantly in many high-income countries. Over the last two decades in countries such as Australia, Sweden and the UK, rates of ever having consumed alcohol, and rates of risky drinking, have more than halved for teenagers. This means that not drinking alcohol is now majority behaviour for young people in these countries. This is a trend unique to young people, with rates of alcohol use in older populations remaining stable or increasing in some cases. In response, researchers around the world have been studying this phenomenon. We drew together the findings of the resulting body of work recently in a newly released book.
What does the evidence say?
In the book we review the literature on the elements that have shaped the decline in young people’s alcohol use, and draw on our own data from Australia, Sweden and the UK. Our chapters identify several interconnected factors that have collectively contributed to these declines. In particular, we highlight the importance of changes over time in:
- More negative attitudes towards alcohol
- Increases in health consciousness
- More risk averse attitudes
- Closer parent/child relationships
- Less face-to-face socialising with friends
- Increased surveillance via parents and social media, and
- Changing gender norms in general, and related to drinking
Absent from this list is the role of digital technologies. Although there is substantial debate about the impact of the internet, smartphones and social media on young people’s alcohol use, we argue this is best understood through their interactions with many of the factors listed above.
A number of other factors are also absent. The broader literature and our own work has not identified a strong connection between the decline in young people’s alcohol use and changes in alcohol policy, nor does it support any substitution from alcohol to other substance use. The impact of immigration from countries where alcohol is less acceptable, including social network effects arising from this, is also not one of the factors with strong supporting evidence.
What is the bigger picture?
Alcohol is not the only ‘risk-practice’ young people are engaging less in. We have a chapter focusing on changes in other risk practices that shows young people also seem to be using illicit drugs and cigarettes less, youth crime rates have dropped, risky sexual behaviours have decreased, and young people are less likely to drive riskily.
In the book, we draw on theories of social generations, social practice and risk to explore this bigger picture. We suggest that young people today are part of a distinct generation that has significantly shifted its alcohol consumption and other social practices from previous generations.
In particular, young people today are a more cautious generation, and this is underpinned by wider structural and social conditions related to economic insecurity, global politics, increasing anxieties, and internalised responsibility for their health and future success. Research also shows that in many ways, young people are more mature and reflective than previous generations, actively choosing to avoid alcohol to protect their future wellbeing.
Our contribution in this book is to provide a theoretically informed discussion of changes in young people’s alcohol use and the factors that have precipitated it within this broader socio-historical context, ultimately resulting in a generational shift towards risk aversion and caution.
What are the implications?
A recent review has found that these declines in alcohol use correspond with a drop in alcohol-related harm in many high-income countries. Research is also showing that many young adults from high-income countries are carrying lighter alcohol use practices into adulthood, meaning that, all else being equal, rates of alcohol-related harm are likely to fall in future decades as these cohorts of young people move through the life-course.
There is less robust survey data available to understand how young people’s alcohol use has changed in low- and middle-income countries. This is an important focus for future research. There are concerns that declining alcohol use trends among young people in high-income countries have occurred simultaneously with global alcohol corporations becoming more aggressive in their marketing strategies in low and middle-income countries. An important consideration that we cover in the book is that these declines in young people’s alcohol use are occurring at a time when mental health problems are increasing in high-income countries. From a public health perspective, the declines in alcohol use have been considered wholly positive. But it is also important to consider young people’s wellbeing, and the broader social and structural factors that have prompted a more worried, cautious and risk averse generation of young people. Young people today face unique conditions and new demands and in response have reinvented ways of ‘being young’. Within this culture of caution, declining alcohol use is just one symptom of a greater cause.
Written by Amy Pennay, Gabriel Caluzzi, Laura Fenton, John Holmes, Michael Livingston, Jonas Raninen and Jukka Törrönen.
All IAS Blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.