Fresher’s Week might make you think you’ve signed up for four years of nonstop partying – but by Week 3, it’s more Bake Off and bed by 11 than Pints of Fun. An increasing breadth of research suggests that young people in the UK are drinking less, with one study claiming young people today drink 20% less alcohol than their millennial equivalents did. But why is this? And are young people depriving themselves of “The Uni Experience”?
One clear explanation for this downward trend in alcohol consumption is the rising cost of living; the average cost of a night out in Glasgow has increased by 40% in the past two years, and the city placed 5th in a ranking of most expensive UK cities to go on a night out in. The average cost of a night out in the UK is over £73 when accounting for the must-haves like entry-fees, pre-drinks, and a taxi home.
However, rising prices are only a fraction of the picture. Students were once happy to subsist on potatoes and cornflakes so they could afford to go out and get plastered; so what happened?
The dying culture of heavy drinking may be linked more to the omnipresence of social media than anything else. When everyone in the club has a tiny device in their pocket with which to record your drunken antics and upload them to the internet, is being wasted even fun?
It’s an issue of vanity, sure, but also one previous generations never had to contend with. One might hesitate to take the risk of being recorded by a stranger and lambasted online as cringe or classless because they had a little too much. It’s not very “clean girl” to be found on the floor of the club bathroom, head in the toilet.
Social media also fuels the Gen-Z obsession with health and wellness. The negative health implications of consuming alcohol are more widely accepted and understood in the internet era. Nobody wants a hangover that interferes with their weekend gym sessions. In many ways this is a positive shift; the negative effects of alcohol cannot be overstated, and cutting back can in reality only be healthy.
However, there is a more sinister side to Gen-Z’s health obsession. Many question at what point these elaborate morning routines become a detriment to our social lives. There is a perspective which suggests we are so fixated on leading healthy lives that we forget to live them.
Just because students are drinking less, it doesn’t mean they are having less fun. The cost of a night out isn’t only a financial burden. Heavy drinking makes prioritising your studies incredibly difficult because of the physical toll it takes; not everyone can sustain a “work hard, play hard” lifestyle. Some may be able to find a balance in their lives between drinking culture and their studies, while others may decide drinking isn’t worth it and make their friends elsewhere.
Students aren’t prudish teetotallers; far from it, as you will find out by walking into any first year flat. The decline in young people’s drinking is marginal, so why are we bothered? It might be about time we gave alcohol a break.
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