Let’s look at the good news first. From 2002 to 2021, past 30-day alcohol use among 16-year-olds and their 17-year-olds decreased by 58%. Among 14- and 15-year-olds, there was a 69% decrease. Today’s high school and college students consume less alcohol and are less likely to binge drink than their predecessors.
Among teenagers, the decline was larger for men than for women, but drinking rates for both groups decreased. This continues from the age of 18 to the age of 25, but there are many twists and turns. Previously, men in this age group drank far more alcohol than women. Currently, college women are more They are more likely to drink alcohol and binge eat than men.
Overall, it’s a good thing that young people are drinking less. The problem is that this positive trend won’t last.
Aaron White, NIAAA’s senior scientific advisor, hypothesized that young people who rarely or never drink alcohol will remain non-drinkers or light drinkers as they get older. “But that’s not what’s happening right now,” he said.
White believes there are two possible explanations. One is that life transitions such as marriage and childbirth are occurring later than before. “These life changes can help prevent excessive drinking,” he says. Therefore, more and more people are putting them off or putting them off altogether, which means that consumption rates at the population level will continue to rise.
Another explanation is increased alcohol consumption among women. The amount of alcohol consumed by men aged 26 to 64 has decreased slightly, but the amount consumed by adult women, particularly those aged 30 to 45, has increased.
Catherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who has done extensive research on this topic, explained to me: education level. ” Alcohol consumption and binge drinking have skyrocketed among women with a college degree or above, women in the highest income brackets, and women in the “most prestigious professions.”
Like White, Keyes believes part of this change is due to a delay in family responsibilities. Additionally, “there are a lot of messages about alcohol consumption as part of a luxurious lifestyle,” she said. “Professions that have typically male-dominated occupations, drinking cultures and workplaces, all of which combine to create conditions where women want to drink more, are likely to have women with higher levels of discretionary income. There are many.”
Neither White nor Keyes discount the role of stress in this trend. Mr White is concerned about the increasing incidence of solitary drinking among some young people, as some young people use alcohol as a treatment for underlying mental health concerns. It may be a sign that you are.
But Keyes told me that drinking to cope with work is not the main factor behind the rise in professional women. Although her research on this topic has not yet been published, she says, “In general, the biggest factors mediating the occurrence of reversals are [for women] From adolescence to adulthood, people drink alcohol for fun. ” For them, drinking culture is part of a desirable lifestyle, and alcohol companies are keen to capitalize on it.
The decline in drinking among underage Americans and young people is evidence of the power of public health messages. Given these new demographic trends, the next area of focus should be educating adults, especially women, about the harms of excessive drinking.
Research should also examine what types of messages resonate most. For example, would women change their behavior if they learned that alcoholic liver disease is rapidly increasing among young women? Or that drinking just one drink of alcohol a day increases the risk of breast cancer by about 10%? Does that mean that the risk increases exponentially with additional alcohol consumption?
“It’s difficult because the alcohol industry has a lot of funding to counter this kind of public health messaging,” Keyes said. Reversing current trends will not be easy, but it would be a shame if women’s overall health worsened as a result of women having more opportunities to pursue careers and decide when to start a family.