盖洛普：Z世代喝得少了，但并非滴酒不沾

A professor in the United States said on a podcast that young people should drink a little more alcohol.

Many people criticized him for being irresponsible, but he articulated a very popular judgment.

That judgment is that Gen Z doesn't drink and doesn't like going out.

Many people therefore believe that alcohol is already finished among young people.

Whether this claim can withstand the test of data — the answer is a bit complicated.

Gallup's analysis looked at people aged eighteen to twenty-nine.

Ten years ago, seventy-one percent of them had drunk alcohol in the past week.

In recent years, that proportion has dropped to fifty-five percent.

Over the past three years, the drinking rate of this age group has been lower than that of other age groups.

However, Katherine Keyes, a professor at Columbia University, is unwilling to use "plummet" to describe this.

She said, I wouldn't say it has plummeted, it has just declined.

And the extent of its decline can be seen in many age groups.

Another indicator is also going down, namely the kind of drinking where you drink a lot at one time.

A long-term survey by the University of Michigan defines it as drinking five or more drinks in a row.

In this survey, twenty-four percent of people aged nineteen to thirty had drunk this way recently.

Ten years ago, the same proportion was thirty-one percent.

However, if you move your gaze outside the United States, the picture you see is very different.

A company that specializes in researching the alcohol market conducted a survey in more than a dozen countries.

The results found that in these places, the proportion of Gen Z drinking is actually rising.

It has already approached the average level of all adults.

So the phrase "the sober generation" is, at the very least, exaggerated.

So why are young people drinking less?

Susie, an event planner in Washington, D.C., gives money as the reason.

She said the cocktails at bars here cost sixteen to twenty dollars each.

This money, I could have used on more useful things, she said.

Tyler is twenty-three and does auto detailing in North Carolina; his reason is different.

He said phones are everywhere, and videos of getting drunk and making a fool of yourself may stay online forever.

People don't want to drink to the point of blacking out in public; that is a very scary thing.

Researchers have also given several other explanations.

Young people know far more than before about the health risks of alcohol.

Not long ago, the U.S. Surgeon General called for cancer warnings to be labeled on alcohol bottles.

In addition, during the pandemic years many people delayed starting to drink, and this effect may still be around.

Some people also guess that cannabis has replaced alcohol, but Gallup's researchers think that doesn't hold up.

Because cannabis use hasn't risen that much, it can't explain this change.

Keyes reminds us that the decline in young people's drinking has lasted forty years; this is nothing new.

What is truly different is that when they grow up, the drinking rate doesn't rise along with it.

Of course, drinking less doesn't mean there are no problems.

Many young people still drink as usual, and occasionally drink too much.

Keyes said that even within Gen Z, the drinking rate is still quite high.