[imagesource: Nablab]

The world isn’t what it used to be.

Now it’s all about slowly emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, a screwed-up economy, the rise in the cost of living, an awareness of mental health challenges, and social media pressures.

The global (and mostly Western) Gen Z generation is feeling it the most, and for that reason, they’ve mostly decided to do things sober.

Alcohol consumption and experimentation have for a long time been a sort of rite of passage into adulthood for a lot of young people. Drinking has been embraced as a social lubricant and a way to have fun, even before the legal age.

Watch a movie and it will often tell you the same thing – alcohol is there in the good times and the bad times to help you escape reality.

But it turns out, that’s not what today’s youth are after.

Rather, Gen Zers are taking it slow as they enter adulthood, either by not drinking at all or drinking less often and in less quantity than older generations, per the BBC:

The UK’s largest recent study of drinking behaviours showed in 2019, 16-to-25-year-olds were the most likely to be teetotal, with 26% not drinking, compared to the least likely generation (55-to-74-year-olds), 15% of whom didn’t drink.

Among US adults, Gallup showed those aged 35 to 54 are most likely to drink alcohol (70%), compared to Gen Zers (60%) and Boomers (52%), while a study from 2020 found that the portion of college-age Americans who are teetotal has risen from 20% to 28% in a decade.

Of those who do drink, the largest portion of young Europeans (defined as over the legal drinking age up to 39) drinks once a month (27%), while in the US, the biggest group drink once a week (25%).

This new movement of sober curiosity cannot be easily pinned down to one driver.

It has a lot to do with the “unique social landscape” that Gen Zers are growing up in, where they’re all heavily weighed down by financial and societal worries.

Deloitte asked almost 15 000 Gen Zers from around the world about their most pressing concerns. The cost of living came out tops and almost half of respondents said they lived paycheck to paycheck.

More young people also understand the nuances and have access to the facts about how alcohol can impact their mental and physical health negatively.

It is true, the “hangxiety” (hangover anxiety) is often not worth a few hours of fun. Nor is the headache and the dehydration, not to mention the way booze messes with your brain:

Google research in 2019 by showed 41% of Gen Zers associate alcohol with “vulnerability”, “anxiety” and even “abuse”; while 60% of UK Gen Zers associate drinking with a loss of control – almost double those who do not.

The spate of drink-spiking in bars and clubs may also serve a deterrent, especially for women.

Interestingly, and perhaps most unrelatable, is the fact that Gen Zers are so plugged into their social media personas that they are worried about how drinking and behaving with wild abandon might change their online image.

As a consequence, a youth culture that has “de-normalised drinking” is growing, where Gen Zers are reshaping what a ‘good night out’ looks like, and so the trade and hospitality industries are changing their tune, too.

Apparently, youth culture is looking for quality over quantity, so bars and clubs have had to switch out those fish bowls of sugary vodka for something a little more classy, like a cocktail or mocktail.

[source:bbc]