Homeownership.
Golf.
Mayonnaise.
And napkins.
Millennials have been accused of
killing a lot of things.
Most recently it seems that alcohol industry is in their
crosshairs.
But is this generation actually drinking less?
I had seen a lot
of articles claiming that Millennials were getting sober in notable numbers.
When I started to dig into it I found that it wasn't really true. Millennials
aren't actually drinking less but it seems like they want to. Amanda posted a
tweet to find out more.
Within an hour I had over a hundred emails,
a bunch of dm's.
I would say I am
pretty sick of drinking mainly because it makes me sick.
Well it used to be a
much bigger part of my life.
Drinking looks expensive to me.
I think the turning point for me was when I like had to somehow be an adult at work and like
the present and focus.
I'm sick of finding meaning in alcohol.
It seemed like something that people wanted to talk about and hadn't had an outlet to talk
about yet. The idea is that it's not that people's habits are changing quite yet
but the people's attitudes are changing.
One reason Millennials might view
alcohol differently than previous generations is because their lives are so different.
The story of Millennials is the story of
a group of people trying to navigate a series of cultural obstacles that their
parents and grandparents generations did not contend with.
The friction over things like drinking is an indicator of that.
This is a generation that is less likely to have children or own a home than
their parents were at the same age. They're redefining the idea of adulting
For older generations marriage and kids and the suburbs have been sort of a
natural off-ramp from drinking habits of somebody's early 20s but when you don't
have marriage and kids and homeownership in the suburbs there's no template for
how to conduct a social life in your 30s without those things.
So you just sort of
default to what you're doing in your 20s but for people in their 30s it's a lot
harder to drink that much.
Another reason to reevaluate alcohol:
Money.
Millennials are likely to be the first group in modern history to end up worse off than their parents.
Alcohol is a potential victim of that. Alcohol is is not cheap.
But for this generation financial straits don't always equal poor taste.
Millennials have been exposed to a lot of like nice things so you've got this like tension
between what Millennials like and what Millennials can afford and that is going
to create some problems.
And in America's all-or-nothing drinking culture
moderation is rare.
Either you're sober or you rage.
What Millennials in particular are trying to do now is trying to forge like
a middle path.
In Brooklyn businesses are already capitalizing on this shifting tide.
Booze free bar, "Getaway," opened earlier this year. With a menu full of
mocktails, it could be a blueprint for businesses looking to accommodate
teetotaling trends.
Ultimately if Millennials are starting to change their
attitudes toward alcohol the change in habits could happen with Gen Z.
Gen Z is drinking less than any other generation has at their age and Gen Z are in high
school and college right now.
What's behind today's dip in teen and young
adult binge drinking? Some researchers believe decades of public health
campaigns have effectively conveyed the risks of heavy drinking.
I think that that is your first indication of a real sea change if Americans can have a more
reasonable relationship to alcohol that's good for everybody.
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