Is the tide finally turning on the British drinking culture?

[Moonpig82]

I’ve not drank in 6 months and I don’t miss it!

Article from the BBC today about Pryzm nightclubs but one of the factors surrounding their closure is how young people are spending their money and time differently, alongside the lack of interest in drinking.

When I was a student it was all about the £1 shots, VodBull, sessions before we went out! 🤢

Our poor livers! Really hope drinking is really not a thing at all when my DC are older.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68295306

I believe the preference to socialise online has changed the drink culture of yesteryear. Aside from vaping, young people today are also far more health aware than older generations, they know binge drinking and alcohol in general ruins your body and has massive implications later in life.

Yeah, I agree that it's to do with how young people socialise differently now. Obviously it'll be different from area to area, but where I live you hardly ever see big groups of teens hanging about, drinking and smoking like back in my day. My teen boys barely even leave their rooms on a weekend-they speak to their mates through Snapchat or play games online together.
Young people also seem to take a greater interest in exercising, healthy lifestyles, skincare, looking after their mental health etc than my generation ever did, which obviously goes against the drinking culture. I guess everyone just wants to look as good as possible for social media.

I'm kind of sad that my kid's won't have the same wild, misspent youth that I did, but extremely grateful at the same time😂

More pub/club closures with the loss of jobs and hit to the economy.

More money for organised crime with people buying drugs instead - lovely cause and effect

Supermarkets will rake it in as well on alcohol sales instead as young people do drink, they just don't go out the house as much

Pubs are generally clinging on with older drinkers and will slowly die off with them (Boomers/Gen X). Especially with increasing demographic change (cultures that don't drink alcohol at all, or not like we traditionally do).

Pubs will die out in England at least over the next generation or two. The few that survive will be ones that adapt to a Wetherspoons type market.

I don't think things have changed that much
As a student 35 years ago we usually drank in the very cheap SU before going clubbing and then didn't buy the expensive drinks in the clubs.
We only went to clubs with free entry (different one each night!)
If we didn't go drinking first, we wouldn't head out to a club until 10/11 pm.
Which seems to be the situation described in the article.

My 2 are both at uni now. The main difference seems to be the union bar is nearly as expensive as everywhere else now so they have pre's in their homes before heading out to the clubs. I think most students still drink to some extent, but probably less these days due to cost.

The drinking culture is shifting but don't underestimate the drug culture amongst young people, it is rife, particularly ketamine which causes the most terrible mental and physical harm, its use is widespread amongst young people. Cocaine and ketamine are cheaper than alcohol and just as accessible. It really isn't like you friends smoking weed at uni anymore, and it's pervasive across all classes.

A lot of this is down to women feeling unsafe because spiking is so prevalent. Dd is at uni overseas where it isn't such a problem, but she says lots of her friends in the uk don't go clubbing very often because needle spiking is everywhere and you have to watch your drink like a hawk. Awful really.

Definitely social media . Who wants their drunken antics splashed all over social media ? I believe this is what killed Club 18 to 30 style holidays . Plus people are scared of being spiked , up-skirted and stabbed on a night out . My friend's sons is a club bouncer and he says clubbing is dying out . Plus the cost of alcohol. I think there has been a shift towards bottomless brunches and eating out as they are seen as more value for money.

I think clubbing has had its day as well. 80s/90s/2000s was the era for that with the dance scene. There's been no fresh music scene for decades which is how these things evolve.

Plus back then you went out to pull/get attention, that was the main way people would do that. Now you just swipe on OLD for dates/attention or upload pics to Instagram and you get all the attention you could possibly want. Therefore going to nightclubs is less appealing.

I went to my local pub early on Monday lunchtime. By the time I left it was really busy, lots of women meeting up, oldish geezers, lads, people with dogs. Pubs are definitely very popular

Hadn't thought of it that way, but yes makes sense. It's fascinating how society changes.

Many, many teens aren't doing either.

The drug issue is way worse in the younger generation now than had ever been the case.

A generation ago alcohol in pubs was far cheaper than drugs. The opposite is the case now.

Add in the obsession with appearance due to SM that the younger generation suffer from and it only goes to make things worse as it encourages them to favour drugs over alcohol.

At some point there will be wider concern given to the external impact of this shift in behaviour. Alcohol raises tax revenues whereas drugs increase crime.

It’ll all be cyclical. The next generation will quite likely reverse the trend just to be different to their parents as always happens.

Sounds like you know what you're talking about

Teenagers are boring and antisocial these days.

I don't think young people have changed their attitude to drinking and abandoned binge drinking in favour of either drugs or wholesome pursuits. Even if some MNetters DC are into the latter, a walk round city and town centres at night ,particularly in student areas, shows the culture is alive and well. I think what has happened is they have been forced to limit their number of nights out through financial necessity rather than change in attitude, but drink just as much when they can afford to, and also do more pre drinking at home than spending when they get to the venues.

My mil finds it baffling. She genuinely can't understand how anyone can meet a partner (husband/wife) if they aren't getting drunk in a pub. We have explained that people meet at work/ gym/online.

She says no not possible, everyone would be too shy.

A surprising number of our graduate intake scheme do not drink. I would say about 25% with an equal split m/f. Younger age groups are more health conscious and more confident on a number of areas where alcohol was used to lower inhibitions- forming relationships for example. I think this is on the whole very positive.

The tide has turned for sure, particularly in the younger generation. I work with teens and none of them drink much. Drug use is much more popular, as cheaper! Most smoke strong weed, do smart whip or even coke these days..I know I’m old and probably out of touch, but to me this seems worse as all these drugs mess up your mental health..

I live in Scotland where there's still quite a big drinking culture among all ages. Youngsters who go out scantily clad at the weekends and get absolutely hammered and the older men who spend all day in the pub when they're home.

Personally I've never liked pubs. I prefer to drink in the comfort of my own home with people I like rather than in a place full of people I don't know at expensive prices.

I wish people would fuck off with their weed which is a filthy habbit. Vile smell everywhere you go. If we're going to have a bullshit war on drugs (which finances organised crime) at least clamp down on that. If people want to wreck their own brains then that's their lookout, but stop stinking the streets out.

Society pats itself on the back for largely stamping out tobacco (which was legal and taxed) and younger people drinking less. Instead people use all kinds of illegal drugs (which finances organised crime). Hardly a net positive.

The lesson from less alcohol intake among teenagers and tobacco would be legalise and tax drugs and use will go down.

I agree with you herewegoroundthebastatdbush ( love your username btw!)

My daughter turns eighteen in June and has said this morning she can't wait to go to a cocktail bar for her birthday. Granted, she will no doubt end up having one too many, but a part of me did think a lot of it will be about portraying an image on Instagram.

Yes, we do know that there is evidence that younger generations are drinking less than we did at that age.

I suspect that some of it is also cost of living (harder to afford alcohol when you can barely stretch your student loan to cover the rent that your landlord has raised by 40% in the past 2 years). And I think mental health and social isolation may be the case for some too.

If you think, today's uni students were coming of age in lockdown. I'm a uni lecturer and thinking of our students we have significantly more students struggling with mental health issues, insomnia, stress, learning difficulties, than in the past. They are just hanging in there barely keeping their heads above water. It's much different than it was, say, 5 years ago. I think those students are not going out clubbing on the weekends. I think a lot of them are home trying to just hold it all together and keep going or may be struggling too much to go out and socialise or may not have a strong social network because of hybrid learning. That's not at all a criticism of the current system - I think it's actually working very well for some students. But it will impact on people's sense of social isolation and how they want to spent their leisure time.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/24/gen-z-for-zero-tolerance-why-british-youth-are-turning-off-booze

I think they take other scary drugs that we don’t really understand.

@mindutopia thank you for sharing.