How Gen Z Plays the Game: Alcohol, Image, and a New Approach to Life

Part II of a look at a multi-country study of Gen Z and alcohol

At the end of April, a group of academics published a lengthy report looking at why young people in high-income countries are drinking less.

Called Young People, Alcohol, and Risk: A Culture of Caution by Pennay et al, it argues that the group known as Gen Z — pronounced Gen Zed, non-Americans! — is a generation like no other.

In Part I of my summary, I looked at the staggering collapse in Gen Z drinking across Scandinavia, the UK, the US, and Australia and New Zealand, and explored the widespread shift toward risk aversion. Gen Z isn’t just drinking less — they’re doing fewer drugs, committing less crime, and having less sex.

In this section, I talk about the other major forces that are shaping drinking behaviours in this group.

1. A different approach to time

Strikingly, Gen Z is far more mentally distressed than previous generations, with high levels of anxiety and depression. They’re also delaying milestones of adulthood, like driving licenses.

But — and it’s a big but! — they’re more mature in other ways than young people were in the past.

Because they’re worried about messing up their futures, they’re adopting a much more managerial approach to time than previous generations.

To drink alcohol would mean not getting homework done or not doing well at school. Those who do drink are careful to “contain” their drinking, so it doesn’t interfere with other, more important things.

This finding surprised me. I know kids in the US face extraordinary academic pressures (they start non-profits at age 16, so they have a better chance of getting into the university they want!), but I didn’t expect these fears to be an issue elsewhere, particularly in egalitarian countries like Sweden. But this same phenomenon is appearing across all of the countries being studied.

In Australia, teenagers told researchers that the future was something that could be controlled — or damaged — by the choices they made.

Many teenagers also actively fear empty or unproductive time. Free time is much more organised and less hedonistic than in the past.

It’s bleak, to be honest.

2. A different definition of authenticity

Hands up if you’ve ever suffered through yet another talk about how young people today crave authenticity — and you should therefore present a warts-and-all version of your winery or distillery on Instagram?

Those discussions always annoy me, because they imply the rest of us are happy to swallow fake marketing bullshit.

It turns out the premise is false, anyway. While ‘authenticity’ came up a lot in the study, Gen Z mean something different by it. They see alcohol as something that gets in the way of the truth; the drunk self is inauthentic.

“Recent studies suggest the more negative view that alcohol is a barrier to friendship… They argued that sobriety afforded a more authentic form of intimacy that was based on a more honest version of their identity.”

Authenticity is therefore about expressing your real self, unaffected by alcohol. What’s also interesting is that the largest decline in drinking is taking place in English-speaking and/or Protestant countries, where self-expression is prioritised.

(If the number of articles popping up about something called ‘sober sex’ is any indication, this way of thinking about alcohol is catching on. Apparently, there are so many people out there who’ve only had sex when hammered that it needs the New York Times to write an explainer about how to do the deed without getting trashed first.)

3. Attitudes towards alcohol

Attitudes predict drinking behaviour — they’re one of the strongest predictors of whether people drink or not. And because drinking is a social activity, if your peer group disapproves of alcohol, you’re also likely to either drink less or not drink at all.

• In Australia, “there is evidence of a sharp increase in disapproval of alcohol use among the most recent cohorts, which seems to distinguish them from their predecessors.”

• In Norway, there is evidence that there has been a devaluation of alcohol. Non-drinking has become a valued way of achieving both present-day and future success.

• US survey data shows that the percentage of 12th graders who disapprove of weekend binge drinking rose from 53% in 2002, to 68% in 2022.

Overall, attitudes towards alcohol are being shaped by this need to protect the future. In the past, young people used alcohol as a “controlled loss of control”; it offered time out from normal life. It was normal, pleasurable and a key mechanism in the formation of friendships. But now, young people are more interested in protecting their futures — and see alcohol as a threat to that.

4. Mixed data on health

I remember being at Vinexpo just before the pandemic, when a French winemaker told me about his daughter going vegetarian. Someone overheard him and started talking about their vegetarian teenager, and one thing led to another, until a circle of parents had formed, all talking (somewhat sadly) about their vegetarian and vegan kids. No more steak haché et frites for family dinner.

According to Pennay et al, Gen Z is indeed eating more fruits and vegetables than previous groups, and they think about health a lot — but it doesn’t make them go out and exercise.

Overall, the evidence about the impact of health concerns is mixed:

• Gen Z is future oriented, and sees health as an enabler of future success.

• Some groups were knowledgeable about the way alcohol can hurt the brain and were keen to avoid harms. They were particularly worried about losing control.

• Many have internalised norms around self-care and physical optimisation.

• They also worried that alcohol could exacerbate mental health problems or lead to injury or violence.

• Young women identified alcohol as something that worsened anxiety.

• Gen Z worries about looking good.

For some, drinking is now seen as a high risk activity with few benefits. The researchers added that harm avoidance was one of the strongest predictors of non-drinking.

Yet the research isn’t conclusive. While health worries may be having an impact, they aren’t the prime driver of declining drinking.

5. Better relationships with parents

Gen Z is being electronically monitored by parents — and they’re happy about it.

There’s a paradox at work here. More parents are “over parenting” and digitally monitoring their children, which is leading to increased anxiety and loneliness — (how would you learn confidence if you never walked to school by yourself?) — but it’s also leading kids to develop more mature behaviours.

Parents know where their kids are, supervise their time, and prioritise open communication. They spend more time doing joint activities with them, and are more responsive to their emotional needs. They’re also more likely to talk about alcohol risks and demonstrate moderate drinking, particularly if they come from an affluent background.

As a result, where alcohol used to be a tool to rebel against parents and other authority figures, many Gen Z don’t see the need. They spend more time at home and, at least in Scandinavia, have told researchers they don’t want to disappoint their parents by drinking.

Critically, parents also don’t supply alcohol to their children. And nor do other people, which must be having an impact. When I was a teenager, it was relatively easy to get somebody’s older brother, or even a passerby, to buy alcohol, which would be unthinkable today.

(This must apply to bar and retail staff, too — I bet people working with alcohol don’t serve underage drinkers under any circumstances.)

In short, there are fewer opportunities to get hold of alcohol and Gen Z are less inclined to try it anyway, because they don’t feel the need to go through a rebellious phase. And because they’re worried it will mess them up.

What’s next?

You may have noticed that digital technologies and social media only scored a brief mention. That’s because I will examine them in more depth in Part III, along with the role of gender and class.

I’ll also explore the crucial question of what happened when the Gen Z teens being studied reached legal drinking age — and what their behaviour predicts for the future of alcohol.

You can read Part I here.

BTW the book is: Young People, Alcohol and Risk: A Culture of Caution (Routledge, 2025) by Amy Pennay, Gabriel Caluzzi, Laura Fenton, John Holmes, Michael Livingston, Jonas Raninen, and Jukka Törrönen.

It’s really, really expensive. Only buy it if you can claim it against tax.

How one founder raised $1.4 million to launch a single variety

New Drinks Insider episode just dropped! It features Daniel Rodriguez, the founder of Currently Wine Co., who recently raised $1.4 million to launch a Sauvignon Blanc — in an aluminium bottle.

Daniel, a former CMO at a cashed-up tech company, walked away from that career to acquire the assets of a failed wine brand, rebuild it from scratch, and go all-in on sustainable packaging and environmental partnerships.

In this episode, he explains how he raised the money, why he turned down wider distribution to focus on selling in just one region, and how he overcame the surprisingly difficult problem of getting screwcaps to fit aluminium bottles.

It’s a useful reminder that success isn’t always about pedigree or budget, but also about focus, research, persistence, and having the right story. A bonus is that Daniel is a great storyteller.

Available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen. And please leave a comment and a rating! It helps push it up the rankings.