Thread

1. alexandre_m · 1790644533 · focus · HN ↗

   > while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns

   My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.

   It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.

   1. silisili · 1790649905 · focus · HN ↗

      That's what big tech wanted, looks like they succeeded. Hard to shove targeted ads into the eyeballs of people socializing with one another.

      1. popularonion · 1790651444 · focus · HN ↗

         US politicians have been at war against teenage drinking since the 1980s when the minimum drinking age was raised. Gen Z social trends helped it along, but this is the desired outcome of bipartisan policy going back decades.

         1. johnnyanmac · 1790657050 · focus · HN ↗

            All thanks to crashing the economy and making the act of spending $15 on a low quality beer untenable for young adults giving 60+% of their income to rent.

            Alcohol tax would have been a simpler and much less destructive means of achieving such a goal, but I guess breweries can't lobby when everything else is collapsing too.

            1. FlowingRiver · 1790657931 · focus · HN ↗

               When they introduced the higher alcohol tax here in Australia back in 2006(ish), all it did was push us to find ways to make it ourselves. Went from cheap to unbelievably cheap but completely unregulated. Who knows what the alcohol content of some of that stuff was. There are some vague fuzzy nights from that period.

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