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Comment by dexwiz | Hacker News Reader

Notice the age range is 65 or older. There is a large cohort of Boomers/GenX/Millenial drinkers who are aging up. The overall downtrend is that younger people are not starting to drink. But those who contributed to the initial rise are getting older.

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I imagine that would be one positive effect of endless entertainment being ubiquitous- since people can zone out in front of a screen with any entertainment medium of their choosing, they are less likely to opt for alcohol.

Though interestingly, drunk driving fatalities are rising despite lowering alcohol consumption[1], even discounting the pandemic contriting large jumps up. So of the people that do drink, they're more likely to drive after doing so? It seems like an interesting topic to study.

[1] https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/

Anecdotally the drinking culture that existed for me in my youth has completely disappeared. House parties, a staple of my college years, are nonexistent. Talking to recent grads from the same school, their social life looks very different.

I think this is connected to social media but in a different way. Young people are very aware that any deviant behavior will be recorded and posted. Also they are deathly afraid of being "cringe."

Is this really true? College kids are not making drinking parties anymore?? I can’t even fathom that.

Talking to some recent grads (last few years) last summer, parties were pretty much confined to frat parties. The school had a very vibrant house party scene circa 2010, but it sounded dead even pre-Covid. The people I talked to were at a music festival, so high cross over with those who would have attended the parties, not those who spent college locked in a dorm. I was very shocked to hear the difference in experience with within a decade.

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