Young people who avoid drinking alcohol heavily are doing so because of concerns about the long- and short-term risks of drinking.
Australian researchers recruited 40 teens aged 16-19 in 2018 who said they rarely or never drank. They were interviewed again two years later, by which time many had begun drinking regularly, yet 11 were still either abstaining from alcohol or drinking rarely.
When asked why they limited their alcohol consumption, the researchers said most were focused on the potential for immediate harm if they drank too much, potential dependency, and the long-term health risks.
Lead author Dr Amy Pennay, a Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University’s Centre for Alcohol Policy Research (CAPR), explained that young people’s drinking had been declining in high income countries for almost 20 years.
“Our findings endorse the idea that risk avoidance has become routine and is manifested through the practice of restraint and control,” she said.
“This appears particular to high income countries like Australia where concerns about young people’s futures and economic security are increasing.”
A comparison of qualitative literature on alcohol use from 15 years ago suggests significant differences in the way young people talk about drinking and states of intoxication, particularly about notions of risk and reward.
It was argued that the constant pressure to be successful in the post-industrial world was increasingly being offset with ‘time out’ or reward through the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures: heavy weekend drinking was understood as a way to experiment with identities, forget daily pressures and suspend life’s continual focus on risk and responsibility.
Fifteen years later, such findings stand in stark contrast to contemporary studies which report that many young people have become wary of alcohol use, emphasising moderation, control, responsibility and needing to stay focused on everyday realities.
As one 18-year-old participant, Joel Rashid, noted, moderation was now an important boundary.
“If you’re having a little bit here and there it’s all right but if you’re really abusing it, it can be really bad for you. I’d equate it to be as bad as meth or something, you know, because if you get on the drink super hard you can see people just throw their lives away,” he said.
“With any substances that affect the brain, I think you can take anything you want and have a good time as long as you do it in moderation.”
Similarly, while research from the past two decades suggested that young people were more concerned about the immediate risks from heavy drinking (e.g., accidents, injuries, altercations, embarrassment); the new data revealed a much greater level of concern about longer-term health problems.
For both young men and women, alcohol was persistently framed as unhealthy, dangerous, or as morally irresponsible, and participants (both drinkers and non-drinkers) often reflected on the idea that a single occasion of heavy drinking had the potential to destroy lives (e.g., drink driving and accidental death), and that regular drinking could impact their future physical, social, and mental health.
“In our data, the risks of drinking were not only positioned regarding future health, but also in terms of future productivity,” Dr Pennay said.
“It was common for participants to report having been intoxicated once or a handful of times, and learning very quickly that they either did not enjoy that or felt embarrassed afterwards or unable to meet their obligations due to tiredness, and so deliberately curtailed their drinking going forward.
“Risk avoidance has become routine and is manifested through the practice of restraint and control. While risk taking and risk avoidance is embodied, we identified very little mention of embodied pleasures, hedonism, escape, switching off and even celebrating with alcohol.
“This suggests that institutional discourses of alcohol as a long-term risk factor are salient for young people today.”