Australian teenagers and young adults are quitting or reducing booze at a higher rate than the rest of the population, according to a new study published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.
Looking at data from four years of the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, the researchers found that all Australians are reducing or quitting drinking at an increasing rate.
Thirty percent of Australians are now saying that they are reducing their alcohol intake and 6% say that they’ve given up booze completely.
Young adults aged 24–29 are reducing their alcohol intake more than anybody else, with 49% claiming to have recently reduced drinking.
Surprisingly, 14- to 17-year-olds are the most likely age bracket to quit drinking completely, with 13% of teenagers in this bracket claiming to have recently given up on alcohol altogether.
Lead researcher Amy Pennay from La Trobe University’s Centre for Alcohol Policy Research told BuzzFeed News that teenagers giving up booze is a bit of an anomaly in alcohol research.
“It’s really surprising from an alcohol policy perspective … the fact that it’s being driven by a particular cohort and that is the youngest group is pretty unique to history.”
Pennay believes that the reduction in alcohol consumption is the product of effective public health campaigning as well as wider cultural shifts in how Australians socialise.
The researchers can’t be certain that cultural changes are responsible long-term for Australians choosing to abandon alcohol, as this was a cross-sectional study (it didn’t look at the same individuals over the 12-year period). However Pennay says that this effect has been observed in other studies.
"Younger people are talking about alcohol less as part of their world. They don’t need it to socialise, they’re doing a lot of socialising online, [and] there’s a café culture that’s as strong as the bar culture now. People are finding a way to enjoy their leisure time without drinking."
Pennay also notes that this change could be a reaction to the peak of alcohol consumption, witnessed throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in Australia.
According to a National Drug Research Institute study, in 2001 10% of all Australian men and 8% of women drank more than the amount recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council to avoid chronic harm.
“We’re not seeing older people modify their drinking as much, but we are seeing young people," Pennay said. "Perhaps it’s even a generational revolt – ‘My heavy-drinking Generation X / Baby Boomer parents have shown me how uncool it is to be drunk.'”
Pennay’s study also suggests that there is a difference between the sexes in their reasons for reducing alcohol intake. Women are more likely to quit it completely, while men tend to just cut back.
“I think it might speak to the kind of health reasons they’re thinking about — women might be thinking more about weight loss or body image and men might be thinking more about cancer risk and those sorts of things,” she said.