A Northeastern historian and alcohol industry expert says the aftershock of the COVID-19 pandemic and social media have played a major role in why fewer people, especially young people, are drinking.
Americans’ taste for booze could be slipping, with the percentage of those who say they consume alcohol hitting an 86-year low, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Only 54% of U.S. adults polled say they drink alcohol, and those who are drinking are drinking less. It’s part of an ongoing decline in drinking among Americans — and seemingly Germans as well — with the steepest drop among young people.
Why are Americans ditching booze?
Malcolm Purinton, an assistant teaching professor of history at Northeastern University who specializes in the history of beer, says there are an array of factors that explain Americans’ current falling out with drinking.
Public health officials have mounted a campaign to inform the public about the health risks associated with any amount of alcohol consumption. Purinton says that, along with the more general health and wellness movement, have had a clear impact. But when it comes to the 18- to 34-year-old age range that has backed off alcohol the most, there are other factors at play.
Perhaps the biggest: the aftershock of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alcohol consumption in the U.S. skyrocketed during the pandemic, but for young people who were coming of age during the lockdown, it was a different kind of exposure to alcohol.
“In high school, generally people will start experimenting with alcohol, usually in a social atmosphere,” Purinton says. “You didn’t have that social component. What you did have is you had [them] witnessing people drinking more, your parents and people of age drinking a whole lot more.”
Without the socialized element of drinking and with alcohol consumption defined by excess, Purinton says this has resulted in a generational shift in drinking habits. In previous generations, the shift wasn’t so much whether people were drinking but what they were drinking. Choosing what and when to drink has long been a way for young people to define themselves, he says.
“Craft beer was a big thing because people were like, ‘I’m not going to drink the Budweiser because that’s what my parents drank. I’m going to be doing something different,’” Purinton says. “Now, the craft beer drinkers are the parents, so you see people either not drinking or choosing something else. … Right now that expression of individuality is, ‘I’m not going to drink. I’m not going to be inebriated. I’m going to have control because you all didn’t.’”
The other major factor responsible for the decline in drinking among young people is social media and the omnipresent lens of the camera.
“What is that feeling [of getting drunk]?” he says. “It’s usually a lack of control. If you lose control, it’s going to be filmed somehow, whether that’s on the street, whether that’s your friends or yourself with your phone, and that’s going to be going up on social media. … That desire for control, it may be an actual feeling of control but also [control of] how you’re being represented to the world, to your friends, to peers, to the universities, your school, to the administrators, to your parents, even to future employers.”
For its part, the alcohol industry has steadily been pivoting to accommodate the move away from drinking alcohol. You’re now more likely to find non-alcoholic beers or mocktails on the menu at most breweries, wineries or bars.
“Pendulums do swing back and forth,” Purinton notes, and it’s just as likely that the next few years will see a shift back toward alcohol consumption as a commitment to sobriety. The best-case scenario is the current decline in drinking represents a broader movement toward healthy living. The worst case, he says, is “a pendulum swing toward nihilism” where, amid chaotic economic and political circumstances, people drift toward heavy drinking.
In the meantime, Americans will have to reevaluate social life on a grand scale: What does it mean to socialize without alcohol?
As the U.S. faces a loneliness epidemic, throwing a longstanding “social lubricant” like alcohol out the window means people will need to figure out how to connect through other means. More traditional, almost “old-fashioned,” in-person interactions — run clubs and book clubs — have started to come back into vogue. Meanwhile, dating culture has started to back away from apps.
“People [will need] to educate themselves on how that actually works because before alcohol played a really large role in that, of having that ‘liquid courage’ to say hi to someone, getting rid of some of those insecurities,” Purinton says. “That could lead to more drinking, but I also think we’re going to see a social awkwardness that’s going to play out over the next couple of years with so much of that surveilled life too. … We’re just trying to learn how to talk to people.”