How the young are drinking
Statistics suggest young people worldwide are drinking less. Nikki Macdonald looks at the trends, and talks to three young Kiwis who choose not to binge drink.
Jaedan Ringrose Perez’s 18th birthday came and went and he’d still never drunk alcohol. It wasn’t until five months later that he cracked into some Korean soju, to celebrate finishing school. He felt it hit after just one glass, so that’s where he stopped.
He’ll probably have one apple cider from the box his family bought for Christmas Day. But it won’t be a summer of booze celebrating his initiation to New Zealand’s legal drinking tribe.
‘‘I only see the downsides of drinking – the behaviour after drinking a long time, the addiction of drinking, the effect on your body. So when people offer me drinks, offer me to go to parties, I kind of don’t see it as enjoyment like they do. I kind of see it as a behavioural risk towards me and others.’’
It sounds like one of those terribly wooden health promotion ads, but Ringrose Perez actually means it. And he’s not the only young person shaking off the expectations of a big boozing nation.
Surveys show fewer teens are drinking – in 2018-19, 58.3 per cent of Kiwis aged 15-17 drank in the past year, compared with 74.5 per cent in 2006-07.
Young people aged 18 to 24 are still the most likely of any age group to have drunk in the previous year, but even that has fallen, from 89 per cent in 2006-07, to 85 per cent in 2018-19.
Ringrose Perez estimates about 70 per cent of his peers drink, but only about 30 per cent binge drink. His mates mostly don’t drink – they’re ‘‘nerds and geeks’’, he jokes. Several are
Filipinos, with strict parents. They play video games and sport. They go to movies or eat at restaurants. They considered bars but decided ‘‘I don’t think that’s us’’.
He doesn’t go to parties because he feels it would be weird not to drink. ‘‘I don’t want to go to a party, they give me eight bottles, and then I can’t go home that night, or I start a fight or get arrested. So I think partying comes with huge responsibility of knowing what you can take, and when you should call it quits.’’
But he doesn’t feel he’s missing out. He sees the photos on social media – the projections of fun, relaxation, that spark of young rebellion. But he also hears the stories: ‘‘My friends tell me they have fun, they have drinks, but then another person who went to the party will say ‘This guy did this to a girl and this dude did this to a girl and there was this big fight’.’’
He’s heading to Victoria University next year, but is more worried about making the grades than the infamous culture of student drinking. He’ll stick with his non-drinking friends, or find new ones. ‘‘I think my environment is very safe.’’
You only need to watch the news to know young people still get wasted: the crate day carnage stories; the young women vomiting on their high heels; the mobs of youths bumbling through town in an alcoholinfused haze.
So are young Kiwis really drinking less? While the stats don’t lie, they tell more than one story. Otago University doctoral researcher Jude Ball has been investigating risky behaviour among young people. While the number shunning alcohol has roughly doubled, those who do drink are still just as likely to down five or six drinks in a session – the definition of binge drinking, Ball says.
‘‘Fewer are drinking, those that drink are drinking less frequently, but the proportion of drinkers who binge drink hasn’t really changed.’’
It’s a global phenomenon – compared to the hedonistic 90s, this generation smokes less, drinks less and takes fewer drugs. After three years of investigation, Ball still can’t be sure why.
One theory is that today’s parents are stricter and less likely to supply alcohol to kids. Another is that social media now fulfils the rebellion role alcohol used to occupy – young people aren’t drinking because they’re too busy checking their phones. But Ball says research shows spending a lot of time online and drinking actually go together.
Ball is also sceptical of surveys asking young people about their attitudes to drinking and smoking, as there’s no data from previous generations with which to compare it, and people often don’t really know why they make particular choices.
‘‘In the same way young people 20 years ago fell into smoking without giving it a lot of thought, young people today probably fall into not smoking
. . . There’s so much that we still don’t know, so I would really steer anyone away from simplistic answers: ‘Oh, it’s digital media’ or ‘Oh, parents are being much more protective’.’’
Setting limits
Jess Lunny is a rare creature among Kiwi drinkers – she drinks, but never to excess.
The 22-year-old tried alcohol for the first time when she was about 13, at her uncle’s wedding. Now, she sees it as a treat. She’ll have a glass of rose when eating out, a cocktail on holiday, maybe two or three at a friend’s birthday or engagement party.
But, like Ringrose Perez, she values control. ‘‘I’m not at all opposed to it, I just don’t like to drink it in excess. Part of that is religious, but probably more so is I just don’t want to put myself in a state where I don’t have any control and I hate feeling sick, so I’d hate to put that on myself.’’
Lunny decides a limit before she goes out, and sticks to it. That’s not the approach of all her peers – people she knows definitely go out to get drunk.
And while friends don’t pressure her into drinking more, being the quiet drinker can be
awkward. ‘‘It can be hard sometimes, because you feel like you’re not on that level . . . I can usually feed off other people’s energy so if people are having a really really good time, I will as well.’’
A recent study of drinking patterns and attitudes among 579 Kiwi teens aged 14-15 found the three most common reasons for drinking were to have fun, to enjoy parties, and to relax. The average age of their first drink was 12.6 years – two years younger than previously reported.
That would strike fear into the heart of neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis, who pleads with parents to delay introducing teens to alcohol.
‘‘It’s at high school that it’s going to damage your brain for the rest of your life and really inhibit your potential. It’s just because the teenage brain is under construction, that makes it particularly vulnerable.’’
Adolescents who down more than one drink an hour can cause irreversible shrinkage to the hippocampus, the brain area that lays down new memories.
The younger you start drinking, the greater the shrinkage.
Young drinking can also damage the prefrontal cortex, which deals with empathy and emotions. Wallis calls it ‘‘the brain of success’’.
‘‘The earlier you have alcohol, the more damaged that is; and the more damaged that is, the more dysfunctional your lifestyle, generally.’’
So how should parents manage teenage drinking? Wallis says his three children – now aged
27, 22 and 20 – all binge drank. He learned the hard way with his eldest that bans don’t work. She sneaked out behind his back, removing any parental control. With the other two, he negotiated, trying to persuade them to wait until university, to spare their developing brains.
The much-promoted European approach of a soft introduction – a watered-down wine with dinner – doesn’t work in the New Zealand context, Wallis says.
‘‘Giving them a shandy works really well in France, because those kids are not going to hit 13 and be exposed to a bingedrinking culture, where everyone is having yard glasses and crate day and it’s normal to have 13 drinks in an evening.’’
In fact, normalising alcohol makes them more vulnerable, Wallis says. The Dunedin Study, which followed people born in
1972, found those with more access to alcohol at 15 were more likely to drink more at 18-26.
Parents also need to model safe social drinking, and organise family functions that don’t revolve around alcohol, Wallis says. Kids are less likely to abuse alcohol if they’ve never seen their parents drunk.
‘‘It’s the kids that have seen dad completely pissed and falling asleep on the lounge floor, and mum and dad having parties and seeing them abuse alcohol is what puts kids at risk.’’
Wallis says declines in smoking and drink-driving show it is possible to change our bingedrinking culture. But it will take effort. The fact some young people can now have three beers and call it quits is progress, he says.
I want to wake up the next morning and keep my dignity
There’s no mystery to why Taylor Goggin doesn’t drink. The 24-year-old government worker had a sip of her mother’s red wine aged 10 or 11.
‘‘I never liked it and that’s always stuck with me – that real dislike of the taste.’’
She still goes to bars and parties with friends, and says peer pressure to drink is still very real. As underaged teenagers, her friends would binge when they could get hold of alcohol, never knowing where the next drink might come from.
When she worked at a supermarket she would talk as if she drank, to avoid the inevitable questions: ‘‘ ‘Why aren’t you drinking?’ ‘Are you OK?’ ’’
When she went out with coworkers, a Smirnoff bottle would appear at her head. Have a try, they would urge.
‘‘I never felt it was malicious, but I’ve always felt that they’ve found it hard to cope with someone who wasn’t drinking.’’
Drinking games are still alive and well, she says. And at university, her fellow postgraduate students used alcohol as stress-relief.
‘‘I have a very vivid memory of someone saying to me: ‘You don’t drink coffee, you don’t drink alcohol, you don’t smoke – how are you a postgrad student?’. I said, ‘I eat chocolate instead’.’’
While she’s not against alcohol, Goggin reckons even if she did like the taste, she’d restrict herself to one glass.
She’s often the first to leave parties, when things get silly. ‘‘I like to be in control, especially if I’m somewhere unfamiliar, or somewhere I can’t get back from easily. So I like to keep a clear head . . . I want to wake up the next morning and keep my dignity.’’
That dignity is usually long gone for the wasted teens who turn up at the country’s emergency departments. Wellington Hospital emergency specialist Paul Quigley says about four out of 10 weekend drunks he sees are aged 17-19.
‘‘They’re vomiting, crying, ’Where’s my mummy, the world’s ending.’ They are just outright drunk.’’
The good thing, he says, is they rarely come back.
Despite the high proportion of teen drinkers, Quigley agrees young people are drinking less. Drunken patients do spike during university orientation week, but not as much as they used to. In the last school ball season, they only had two or three young drunks.
However, he still worries about how easily bottle stores can sell teens armfuls of booze, with no consequences.
‘‘Your minimum wage dude at the off-licence, who sees this youth turn up and buy six crates of beer, the minute those six crates of beer walk out the door, he’s just got no responsibility, no issues whatsoever. And even though personally he might find it a bit strange one person buying so much beer, it’s not his position to question it, and there’s literally no onus. Why would you?’’
Quigley advocates a split drinking age – 18 to drink in bars or restaurants; 20 to buy booze from a liquor store.
And while the 2013 law requiring anyone supplying alcohol to underagers to get permission from their parents has helped, he’d like to see more police effort tracing and prosecuting those who don’t comply.
‘‘It’s the very heavy preloading at home and before going out that causes the problem. A significant amount of that young group come directly from parties, which are unsupervised, uncontrolled.’’
At least Ringrose Perez’s parents won’t be worrying about his wayward drinking this summer. ‘‘I haven’t found my limit, on how much I can drink,’’ he says. ‘‘And I probably never will.’’