Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I think we've been through 3 pages without anyone mentioning demographic changes and their impact on declining alcohol consumption.
Obviously many people from teetotalling religions and cultures "cheat" and do drink, but still there are rapidly growing segments of the population where drinking is verboten so it can't not have an effect and push alcohol downwards in its societal ubiquity.
When I was a teen and young adult almost no one didn't drink at least a bit.
Now there are more young people who don't and it's mostly for religious and cultural reasons. Even though some cheat on occasion.
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Religion - or more specifically, the growth of the Muslim population - no doubt plays a role, but I think you're overstating it. They still only amount to 5% of the population (up from 2% in 2001), and certainly not all of them are strictly halal. Most of the nominally Muslim folks I've known have been of the drinking variety at least (though obviously there's some confirmation bias there as I'm not hanging out with hardcore religious zealots).
There are lots of other factors playing a role in the decline of alcohol consumption, eg:
-Growing health-consciousness, risk aversion, and awareness of the potential harms of drinking amongst all demographics. This is probably the biggest one.
-Aging population. People generally drink less as they age.
-Legalization of cannabis & mushrooms and growing tolerance/availability of other drugs (though, apparently drug use is down amongst Gen Z too, albeit at a lower rate of decline than alcohol).
-Drinking has gotten expensive.
-This is conjecture, but I'd hypothesize that a big part of why young people in particular drink & party less now is due to the ubiquitousness of camera phones, social media, helicopter parenting, and the general socially-imposed surveillance state that they live in. The prospect of "letting loose" has a lot more potential repercussions now, if someone catches you saying or doing something inappropriate or embarrassing.