This week on the Recombobulator Lab Chris and Jason have brought in Dr Amy Pennay to help answer the question that is puzzling older generations: why aren't the kids boozing it up any more? 

Amy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University. Within CAPR she is the Strategic Lead of the 'Intersections of drinking cultures, health and policy' program.She has done extensive research on youth drinking patterns including the 2021 paper entitled Trends in adolescent drinking across 39 high-income countries: exploring the timing and magnitude of decline. 

Amy joked that she has always enjoyed a drink and that as a young student the idea of doing studies in a nightclub seemed very appealing. Chris mentions that friend of the show, psychologist Dr Doug Keene said a lot of people in the field of psychology got into that to better understand their own issues. 

Australia is a ‘dry’ country, you might be surprised to hear. But ‘dry’ in this context has nothing to do with abstaining from alcohol but rather when most people drink said alcohol. A ‘dry’ country is somewhere where people don’t drink a lot during the week but binge on the weekends. Places like France and Italy would be considered ‘wet’ countries as they drink throughout the week in more measured doses. 

Comparing alcohol consumption in Australia to other parts of the world, Aussies drink less than Americans, but are on par with the British. 

The current trend in youth alcohol consumption is that young people in all high income countries are drinking less. English speaking countries are noticing the highest decrease while Mediterranean and Eastern European countries are seeing the least change. This trend started around 2003. 

This pattern is particularly noticeable in under age drinking but young adults of drinking age or older are also drinking less. 

Researchers are struggling to identify policy changes as a driving factor to the change in behaviour. In Australia there have been no significant policy changes to affect behaviour. 

However, education around alcohol has definitely increased and there is a lot more research showing the harms alcohol causes. 

Jason heard anecdotally that young people are more cautious with alcohol as everything could be recorded and put on social media. Young people are aware that content on social media lives there forever and could affect future job opportunities or affect relationships with friends and family. 

Amy says this comes up a lot in their qualitative research and that it is a potential driver in young people consuming less alcohol. 

However, in other ways social media can encourage young people to go out socialising more as they see other people out and about and may get FOMO. It also helps people keep in touch and make plans very easily. 

Right now identifying social media’s impact on youth alcohol consumption is complicated. 

Chris calls Jason up on his use of the word ‘furphy’. For our non-Australian audience, a furphy is a lie. 

In Japan the government worried about the declining tax earnings caused by the decline in alcohol consumption amongst youths. Believe it or not the government created a marketing campaign to encourage young people to drink MORE. 

Amy said this news was completely unprecedented and her and her colleagues couldn’t believe it. 

Research now is revealing that alcohol consumption is a lot more harmful than we originally thought. There are 200 diseases that are causally exacerbated by alcohol. 

However in studies this does not come up as a main reason why young people don’t drink. General health and wellness is the main reason that actually comes up, according to Amy. 

Alcohol consumption generally went down during the COVID lockdown. A lot of people drank a lot more during lockdown but young people drank way less, which pulled the average down. 

There has been a huge push in alcohol free drinks. Chris, Jason and Amy all agree that they taste pretty good. Availability of these drinks is always increasing and there’s even an alcohol free bar in Melbourne. 

Research into attitudes to non-drinkers reveals that drinkers in Australia feel threatened by non-drinkers. Drinkers see non-drinkers as a threat to fun, social connection and force them to think about their own drinking.