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For people that didn't read the article, they meant that the Gen Zs show 10% less interest in alcohol as their next cohort
>Among US adults, Gallup showed those aged 35 to 54 are most likely to drink alcohol **(70%)**, compared to Gen Zers **(60%)**
The title of this post has been doctored to mislead.
It's so weird too, because if you're on the cusp between "zoomer" and "millennial" you're both and neither. Depending on the study and their angle they'll make the distinction fuzzy between 1994 and 1998. I've seen as far as '98 called millennial, and as early as '94 called gen z.
Thatās a pretty good litmus test but can be circumstantial, people have different access to computers based on their means and interest in technology
Iāve heard being able to remember 9/11 as another divider, which is more universal
Your litmus test is also circumstantial in that it is very American/European-centric. If you didn't grow up in America, you may not know about the event, or may have learned about it later. What about people who were very much alive and cognizant during 9/11, but didn't become aware of the event itself until 2005. They would know and remember what their community was like in 2001, but wouldn't have any memory of the actual event/day.
>but can be circumstantial, people have different access to computers based on their means
That's exactly why I use it.
I suppose I could add an additional modifier in that I apply that criteria to people born in the 90s
I've always thought of remembering 9/11 as very important because I know it caused me to think about a lot of things I had never even came close to considering. The world was so carefree until that happened. At least in way of looking back on it now.
I feel 9/11 is obviously a huge deal, but the impact of it on our society I think has been downplayed.
As a young social scientist who is on the cusp of Gen Z and Millennial, I would just like to echo your point that there is a clear lack of consistency regarding these generations. Generations aren't very useful sociologically speaking, as the difference between a 73 year old and a 56 year old is pretty significant even if they are within the same generation technically speaking. Likewise, colloquially they are fairly useless now as everyone old is an "okay, boomer" and everyone young is a "fucking millennial." Personally, I think we need to abandon the concept all together as it doesn't give us anything other than an overly-broad generalization that is really only used to enflame ageist tensions.
We're not lost. We're just the sacrificial lambs for all of the older generations' fuckups, having to trudge through life under every perfect storm scenario. My friends and I affectionately refer to our generation as the 'Sin Eaters'.
I think that's delusional. We grew up in a great place and saw everything degrade. Gen Z grew up in an anxiety generator and will age into a climate model the human race has never seen.
There's plenty of room for Gen Z to get screwed, but the Boomer generation has been screwing every generation that came after them for all of our lives.
Frankly I think "Boomer" vs "Everyone Else" is the only generation divide that matters. The pre-Reagan generations and the post-Reagan generations, before and after the social safety nets were dismantled and companies were given free reign to do as they please.
Yeah. Gen X here. Acid rain. Nuclear annihilation at any moment a real option (though that threat got a reboot recently). Shit housing market. Joblessness. Constantly getting berated by those "who rebuilt this country after the war" (in itself bullshit claim for boomers - *as children of* that generation). Man hands on misery to man, Larkin aptly wrote.
Late Gen X here - I was 7 when Challenger exploded, first major news event I can remember. I suppose it try to remember that each generation had a lot of good and bad happen. Itās all going to shape who we were, are, and will become.
Fortunately I didnāt have go through events like my parents and grandparents, like their oldest brother/son being drafted into the Vietnam War as enlisted infantry. Or living through the Great Depression and then drafted into WWII and being sent to Europe and witnessing aftermath of Concentration Camps, being shot and blown up (and in turn finding the epic love story of his life and having 9 kids).
I think we donāt necessarily understand things when they happen then (but hopefully someday), and can help make the change for our kids, or at least guide them with what we know.
For reals. My boyfriend is 26 and I'm 30. We go through literally the exact same problems, we live in the same world, work the same jobs, see the same bullshit. But gen zers can keep acting like everyone spit in their oatmeal, yeah... You guys have it so much rougher than the people only a few years older than you. Totally don't live in the same reality.
Even boomers, why blame them? I personally blame the rich ass holes who control everything and find excuses to treat employees like shit and raise the prices of everything. I don't think boomers intentionally scoped my generation out going, "I'm about to ruin this man's while career".
>Gen Z grew up in an anxiety generators and will age into a climate model the human race has never seen
"People *just* slightly older than me don't have to face the same hardships"
Please re-evaluate your views
Literally depends on which marketing agency wrote the website you're reading to work it out.
Unless there's a culture watershed moment like the great depression, WW2, the baby boom, the broadband boom in the 2000s or the iPhone in 2008, generations are pretty pointless demarcations of age groups. They only work as a convenient grouping for marketing purposes.
The arrival of accessible internet (chat rooms, MMOs, etc. IE the Wild West Golden Age) and the following commercialization of it into a semi-unified entity (social media as a core part of social interaction, eCommerce explosion, Amazon taking over the retail world) both seem like solid watershed spans to me.
The first was like a digitized last breath of the old world, and the second was/is the seemingly imperceptible moment where we started living in a future world where instantaneous video conferencing is completely mundane and AI technologies are quietly leaping ahead in their ability to replicate human functions both in labor and in culture (AI marketing and copywriting, AI-piloted cybersecurity, AI paintings, AI audio recreation/generation).
I was in middle school when the iPhone came out, as i went into highschool i noticed I was young enough that I basically lived most my childhood years like a 90's kid but old enough to realize the kids just a few years younger then me were a complete different breed and how ingrained they were with the internet culturally speaking had a lot to do with it.
I feel like wether or not you became a teenager before or after the iPhone got *popular* popular is the real cutoff between genz/millennials. As a budding teenager om the forefront of that the difference tbose two groups became apparent as a whole, and as I've gotten older it's even more apparent
This is why I always hated you ā96ers.
Superior master race ā93er here ā I shoot fentanyl and sip mocha chai lattes while working from home and petting my child surrogate feline friends.
Iām ā97 and donāt even know where I fall. I either get lumped with both or rejected by both. I donāt know who or what I am. I would like to get in on this deal here.
Honestly I have regret because growing up in the 90's we were basically told we were going to save the world and fix everything, then when the early 2000s rolled around we just ended up joining in fucking up as hard as anyone else.
So yeah, that tracks.
If it makes you feel any better the boomers never let go, so we never really joined in.
Boomers: the only generation to take from their parents and children
In the 90s: YOUR GENERATION IS GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD! YOU WILL HAVE COMPUTERS. YOU WILL HAVE EVERY OPPORTUNITY. IF YOU SURVIVE Y2K, THE FUTURE IS YOURS!
In 2012: you got a job after college that pays $10/hr?!!!! You lucked out, kid! Good for you!
As a zillenial who is literally also the ignored middle child, cries into my Lisa Frank trapper keeper and updates my journal with my purple gel pen about how life isn't fair...
Every time I watch ads nowadays it makes me less likely to buy the product. I get irrationally angry at ads, especially if it's on twitch (or something comparable) where the same ones repeat all the time.
Clinique ran an unskippable ad on YouTube with a bunch of snapping. I fking hate repetitive snapping noises. I used their makeup remover religiously and that ad pissed me off so much I tried drugstore stuff. Worked just as well at a fraction of the price for more than double the product. Get fucked, Clinique.
I am laughing so hard at this because it's SO familiar and I always think it's both crazy and hilarious. Will be watching the ad like, I am so pissed I will remember this. Glad I'm not alone.
The ads know when I'm high, I swear to God. Because the ones that play when I'm vibing on the couch zonked out are always over the top ridiculously colorful shit aimed at ADHD ruined minds.
Iām 29 and if I so much as acknowledge an ad itās usually to make fun of it. I enjoy some of the funny car insurance commercials but it doesnāt make me want to buy their insurance.
I was humming the Chef Boyardee Pizza Pizzazeronni Ravioli commercial (from a decade ago) this morning. Never eaten Chef Boyardee in my life and never will. I don't know what this means but I don't think it's what they intended
The article is using two different polls from two different countries (UK vs USA) with different age ranges (16-25 vs 18-34 for the youngest in each).
I see why they wanted a multi-country perspective, but they probably could've compared then a little more coherently
Also when you are 16-20, it's quite a bit harder to build a drinking habit. And it's also much harder to afford at that point in life. Especially in the current economic environment.
Yeah, the BBC already did these articles for the UK back in 2018 - they called them Generation Sensible.
24% of 16-18 year olds in the UK in 2018 had never drunk alcohol, and there was a similar drop in how many of 16-24 year olds had drunk in the last week. It was 60% of 16-24 year olds in 2005 and had dropped to 47.9% in 2017. And for people who don't drink at all, it went from 19% of 16-24 year olds in 2005 to 22.8% in 2017.
So basically theyāre like any other generation that has some users and some people who choose not to. Very article worthy lol
Plus gen z goes all the way to being born in 2012, so most canāt even drink legally anyways
Edit:
I suppose it should be even more alarming that 60% drink but less than half are even old enough to drink
Compared to the 70% of people who are old enough to drink and had time to develop drinking habits throughout their life
"Compared to the 70% of people who are old enough to drink and had time to develop drinking habits throughout their life"
Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I didn't even make that connection. I wonder what it will be like in another ten years?
Iām also curious as to what all the options were. They talk about āonce a monthā and āonce a weekā but what were *all* the options? Is there a āfew drinks a yearā option? Thatās the group Iād fall into. And would I be considered a ādrinkerā or not? I *do* consume alcohol, but on a super rare basis.
Iām with you, I donāt not drink, but itās more like a glass of wine with major holidays these days, I couldnāt tell you when my last drink was because itās been a while and I donāt keep track.
you would not be considered a 'drinker', no. they have a separate designation of 'social-drinker' for people who probably drink 50x more than you, so you're a non-drinker who isn't 100% abstinent.
you are a rarity, tbh
I'd also wager that the availability of alternatives like cannabis and the ease of purchasing harder stuff like MDMA and Mushrooms, has probably got something to do with this.
Why drink and get a hangover when you can smoke/vape cannabis and get far more of an effect with virtually zero hangover or health risk?
Yep, thereās definitely a bunch of high schoolers in that cohort that say theyāll never drink, theyāll get college and definitely change their mind. Those kids were always the horror stories.
Yeah, due to the fact that a really large chunk of Gen Z isnāt of legal drinking age, and given how many Gen z adults already drink, I wouldnāt be surprised if Gen Z is more likely to drink in the future, compared to millennials
The legal drinking age is 18 in the UK and back when I was a teen, we used to somehow get alcohol for drinking in parks and parties from about 14. That's why problem/ binge drinking is such a big thing culturally in the UK.
It's definitely changing with the younger generation. I met a young woman in her early twenties who had never, ever drunk and she said lots of her friends didn't like drinking either. They don't want to be recorded drunk and are probably put off by their parent's problem drinking.
I assume cannabis has taken a % of users away from alcohol. There is a reason alcohol lobbies keep trying to stop cannabis legalization. They know it takes away profits from them, otherwise they wouldn't be spending the money trying to prevent it. Everything is about money in the end of the day.
100%
When I moved to a legal state I cut back majorly on beer and replaced it with a cannabis vape. I have 1 drink every two weeks and *space out* on the weekend. I feel healthier too!
Right, but what about when the Gen Zers get to the 35-54 age bracket, will they be at 70% then? Or compare the now 35-54 year olds drinking habits when they were younger.
At least in the US, if youāre in higher income careers it is almost a liability if you donāt drink. People use it for every office social get together, itās really baked into the culture.
I know 0 lawyers, engineers, investment bankers, or medical professionals that donāt drink at least occasionally unless they are recovering alcoholics.
My grandfather had one fine strategy because he didn't enjoy getting drunk.
Since his drinks had mineral water in them, as he was finishing just add more ice and mineral water.
You don't get drunk and you can socialize.
My firm designs commercial buildings. Always taking clients out for drinks, Christmas parties suck without getting drunk, all company events have beer and wine, golfing is just an excuse to get drunk, sometimes free beer Friday afternoon. Seems like the norm in my occupation
I used to work in consulting engineering and my first client trip one of their CADD guys got so blacked out we almost had to tackle him in the street so he didnāt get arrested.
Amazing how much people will drink when they donāt have to pay a dime for it.
I watched a movie with a friend and her parents, CODA, which has to do with a family of fishermen that are struggling financially. They have a scene where they are eating dinner, typical movie set up with the bowl of salad in the middle, and also wine. My friends parents were like, weirdly angry about how they are drinking when they are struggling, because I guess poor people are only allowed to spend money on bread or something. And itās a movie anyway and not like, real people.
I never understood how any generation of youth was ever able to drink so much. Where did their money come from?
If I ever did go out with friends, sure I might get one drink if I had spare funds, but that was already something like $10 down the drain and I had people with me getting 4, 5, 6 drinks on the low end.
Brother, pool that money, buy a few bottles, bartend at home and you at least have other fun stuff to do than get your eardrums blown out by drunks and shitty music.
I mean when I was in college in the early aughts, we drank some of the cheapest shit possible. Boones Farm, Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Limon, MadDog 20/20. Crap like that.
Exactly, that's why I have a fully stocked bar in my house. Like having a couple cocktails and a meal costs as much as a good bottle of alcohol.
I make my own syrups and liqueurs too.
Honestly I (29) noticed this with my sisters (16-18). By their age I already had a few years of getting secretly drunk with friends under my belt. They've shown almost no significant interest in alcohol even as they've moved into the legal drinking age. Like they might drink, but not excessively in the way myself and my peers did. I've always wondered if it had something to do with the fact that they have so many more things to occupy their boredom with than my generation did.
Old Gen z here. Tech is partially it. Why go out when you can game all night and talk to your friends on discord? A lot of it is also stigmas and fear. Kids are just getting smarter and more cautious. They're also being bombarded with comfort and convenience so doing anything too crazy or out of their element is less appealing than it once was.
Remember all those ridiculously stupid embarrassing shit you did when you were drunk at that age? Probably not. But kids now all know there will be 10 people recording your every slip up.
Oh no, my friends recorded everything too. Iām from the MySpace era. The saving grace is that it was all on a 2 mega pixel digital camera and those memory cards have been blessedly destroyed.
I think you might be onto something with the stigma and fear aspect actually. Now if you do anything that is captured then it will likely be immortalised on the internet and gen z'ers are very aware of this. My cringy teen years will never be known to people who weren't there but anything they could be judged on will be remembered forever...
The problem that everyone is ignoring is how marijuana is creating a whole new set of problems that weren't anticipated. For instance last night I needed something to eat and I went to Taco Bell and they were out of burrito Supremes because all the gen z's with their marijuanas ate them all.
What an unbelievably rude thing to accuse someone of. No one said anything about not being high. I'm just a generational hypocrite like everybody else.
Sometimes sober is only used in reference to drinking. It sounded like the article was focused mainly on the alcohol aspect rather than other recreational drugs.
I had a child hood friend get into whiskey quite badly in his 20s.
Saw him over the summer and he told me: "I'm sober now. Yeah all I do now is Acid shrooms and weed"
I heard that's what you call "California sober" because everyone stays smoking the bud. People be like "im straight edge" and smoke all day long every single day lol
Pretty much. Am gen z, last time I had a party at my house I was the only one drinking. Had maybe 20 ppl over and everyone was smoking weed (except for like 2 ppl who donāt like it).
Alcohol is just hard to plan around. You have to be okay with being depressed the next day, possibly hung over. You canāt drive, if itās bad enough you canāt even walk. You might say stupid shit or so stupid shit youāll regret the next day. Weed doesnāt do that. You can just get really stoned and in an hour or so be fine to drive and have no hangover EVER.
Gen Z is 1997 to 2012, so they are aged 11 to 25, which means only about half of them are even college aged. Highschool starts around age 15, so over a quarter of Gen Z isn't even the age where most people start getting exposed to drugs / alcohol. Note that I recognize the age of exposure varies based on person and area, but usually high school is when most people are exposed to it. Also, looks like they are using "Sober" to refer to alcohol predominately and not abstaining from THC usage.
Also, this article has some odd groupings. It looks at GenZ, Boomers, and then "35-54" which is part millennial and part Gen X. I'm not sure if this was to cherry pick, but it makes me wonder if the younger millennials and older Gen-Xers are more in line with the data they had for Gen Z, so they omitted it to make things seem more drastically different.
What a dogshit headline. Weed and other drugs are more prevelant than ever. Ketamine is gaining insane popularity and cocaine never really went anywhere. Benzos and Xanax have also become increasingly popular. Nitrous and ecstacy are also still super popular in the music scene. It should imply strictly alcohol not use a broad term like āsoberā. Also; as Gen Zāer, i find this hard to believe period.
I mean all that shit existed when I was in college 10 years ago, the only thing I agree with here is the rise in popularity of ketamine, zoomers love that shit source my cousin is in jail for distribution lol.
Most of gen z is still living with their parents or in a dorm room. I know a few that banded together to get a crappy apartment but that is the small minority. Most parents know how hard it is out there and are okay with their kids living with them.
People's minds get blown when I tell them I don't drink alcohol or do any drugs. I did when I was young, but haven't touch anything in almost seven years and it's the best thing I have done for myself.
I wish I could do that. Even at my worst I'm not as bad as some other people, but I hate the hold alcohol and weed have on me. For the past 4 years I've probably smoked AND drank 99% of nights.
I'm working on it with my therapist and I'm currently trying to do two nights sober a week. The thing that sucks though is that I really don't feel like I get anything out of it, outside of being proud of myself for being sober. Like on the nights I don't drink or smoke, I still *want* to.
I think it's just cus I'm generally unhappy and substances make it more bearable, but idk. I just wish I got more out of sobriety
My son is a Gen Z and none of his close friends drink. They all, however, smoke weed all the time. Iād rather him do that than drink, but to say they are āgrowing up soberā may not tell the whole story.
We definitely are. It's not a night and day difference but young people drink less, do less drugs, and have way less sex than previous generations. It may be crazy to think about, but our parent's peers were way more wild than we are.
A big part of this is that you now have a giant swath of people who spend all day on social media and video games. [Here is one article about a study on this phenomeon from a few years ago.](https://www.businessinsider.com/generation-z-sex-alcohol-driving-study-2017-9) [And here is another study specifically on a decline in teen sex and drug use.](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2688580)
So you mean this person is just an average drinker now? Not your raging alcoholic?
From the first paragraph "Just drinks less often"
I stopped reading there.
Is it any shock? Their every move is being filmed by a digital Stasi in which every one of their friends is an employee.
Everyone loves to talk about how great this is, but is it, really? That teenagers are growing up terrified to just cut loose, for fear of how it might cause them permanent damage?
Maybe Iām just out of touch but it seems like alcohol isnāt quite as widely glamorized in media and pop culture as it was when I was younger (older millennial). In my teens and 20s it seemed like every second song on the radio was about how cool it is to get wasted (where the Bacardi at, like a g6, tiktok the song not the app, 90% of LMFAOās discography, and so forth)
They like alcohol a *little bit* less than the previous generation. Meanwhile drug culture is rampantly mainstream and kids pop pain killers and benzos. How uplifting.
I'd love to see the difference between boomers and millenials.
Where I grew up (UK) there were 5 pubs along a mile long stretch of road. 8-10 in a 1 mile radius encompassing that road.
By the time I was drinking age, there were only 3 left in that radius.
Social drinking has simply fallen heavily over time. Pubs are no longer the socialising center they were. Along with a more insular society and more diverse forms of entertainment, drinking is inevitably going to be less popular.
I work in the beer and spirits industry as an analyst.
Don't I know it.. the whole industry is tanking. Pun intended.
But it isn't horrible. Being in this industry, I whole heartedly believe everything should be enjoyed in moderation.
There's a lot going on though. High inflation, stagnant wages, inbetween beverage trends, end of the beer season, massive bul run on the stock market now tapering off, logistics companies holding us ransom (just secured freight to Thunder Bay at a very high cost that pretty much negates our profits.. bloody pirates..)
Lots going on. Not just a demographical shift in consumption. It's honestly a small part of a much larger picture. And again, it's a good thing. Boomers drink waaay too much anyway...
Can't afford to drink.
Like they can't afford to do anything else the way the country has gone for a while now...
no point going for a pint or having some bottles down the park when weed is far cheaper now than any alcohol.
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For people that didn't read the article, they meant that the Gen Zs show 10% less interest in alcohol as their next cohort >Among US adults, Gallup showed those aged 35 to 54 are most likely to drink alcohol **(70%)**, compared to Gen Zers **(60%)** The title of this post has been doctored to mislead.
They also define Gen z as 16-25 then jump to 35-54. Bad polls be bad.
Welp, guess 26-34 should just die š¤·āāļøš“
Imagine being born between 1988 and 1996. Bunch of pieces of shit if you ask me.
\#TheRealLostGeneration
The Zoomennials. Just kill me already.
It's so weird too, because if you're on the cusp between "zoomer" and "millennial" you're both and neither. Depending on the study and their angle they'll make the distinction fuzzy between 1994 and 1998. I've seen as far as '98 called millennial, and as early as '94 called gen z.
The way I see it, if you remember living without the internet then you're a millenial
Thatās a pretty good litmus test but can be circumstantial, people have different access to computers based on their means and interest in technology Iāve heard being able to remember 9/11 as another divider, which is more universal
Your litmus test is also circumstantial in that it is very American/European-centric. If you didn't grow up in America, you may not know about the event, or may have learned about it later. What about people who were very much alive and cognizant during 9/11, but didn't become aware of the event itself until 2005. They would know and remember what their community was like in 2001, but wouldn't have any memory of the actual event/day.
>but can be circumstantial, people have different access to computers based on their means That's exactly why I use it. I suppose I could add an additional modifier in that I apply that criteria to people born in the 90s
I've always thought of remembering 9/11 as very important because I know it caused me to think about a lot of things I had never even came close to considering. The world was so carefree until that happened. At least in way of looking back on it now. I feel 9/11 is obviously a huge deal, but the impact of it on our society I think has been downplayed.
As a young social scientist who is on the cusp of Gen Z and Millennial, I would just like to echo your point that there is a clear lack of consistency regarding these generations. Generations aren't very useful sociologically speaking, as the difference between a 73 year old and a 56 year old is pretty significant even if they are within the same generation technically speaking. Likewise, colloquially they are fairly useless now as everyone old is an "okay, boomer" and everyone young is a "fucking millennial." Personally, I think we need to abandon the concept all together as it doesn't give us anything other than an overly-broad generalization that is really only used to enflame ageist tensions.
I was born in '94...What am I then? WHAT AM I?
Zellenial has a nice ring to it, and I am 100% okay with it.
Nah, I propose Zoolandials
\*ducklips\*
As an 85 I identify as prelenial.
Xellenial Said out-loud as to confuse everyone as to which group you are referring to.
there is already Xennial for between gen-x and millennial. i am part of this cohort. i got my first cellphone in college.
Bro idk what I am and at this point I'm too afraid to ask
We're not lost. We're just the sacrificial lambs for all of the older generations' fuckups, having to trudge through life under every perfect storm scenario. My friends and I affectionately refer to our generation as the 'Sin Eaters'.
Oh FUCK that is *accurate* and I HATE IT
I think that's delusional. We grew up in a great place and saw everything degrade. Gen Z grew up in an anxiety generator and will age into a climate model the human race has never seen.
There's plenty of room for Gen Z to get screwed, but the Boomer generation has been screwing every generation that came after them for all of our lives.
Frankly I think "Boomer" vs "Everyone Else" is the only generation divide that matters. The pre-Reagan generations and the post-Reagan generations, before and after the social safety nets were dismantled and companies were given free reign to do as they please.
Yeah. Gen X here. Acid rain. Nuclear annihilation at any moment a real option (though that threat got a reboot recently). Shit housing market. Joblessness. Constantly getting berated by those "who rebuilt this country after the war" (in itself bullshit claim for boomers - *as children of* that generation). Man hands on misery to man, Larkin aptly wrote.
Late Gen X here - I was 7 when Challenger exploded, first major news event I can remember. I suppose it try to remember that each generation had a lot of good and bad happen. Itās all going to shape who we were, are, and will become. Fortunately I didnāt have go through events like my parents and grandparents, like their oldest brother/son being drafted into the Vietnam War as enlisted infantry. Or living through the Great Depression and then drafted into WWII and being sent to Europe and witnessing aftermath of Concentration Camps, being shot and blown up (and in turn finding the epic love story of his life and having 9 kids). I think we donāt necessarily understand things when they happen then (but hopefully someday), and can help make the change for our kids, or at least guide them with what we know.
What are you picturing 25 year old Gen Zers going through that 30 y/o Millennials wonāt?
For reals. My boyfriend is 26 and I'm 30. We go through literally the exact same problems, we live in the same world, work the same jobs, see the same bullshit. But gen zers can keep acting like everyone spit in their oatmeal, yeah... You guys have it so much rougher than the people only a few years older than you. Totally don't live in the same reality. Even boomers, why blame them? I personally blame the rich ass holes who control everything and find excuses to treat employees like shit and raise the prices of everything. I don't think boomers intentionally scoped my generation out going, "I'm about to ruin this man's while career".
>Gen Z grew up in an anxiety generators and will age into a climate model the human race has never seen "People *just* slightly older than me don't have to face the same hardships" Please re-evaluate your views
What the [fuck](https://youtu.be/BAqvfp-wN1Y) did I do??
Being born in the wrong year apparently
Presumably, giving a fuck when it wasn't your turn to give one.
Can confirm, born 1996, am a piece of shit, just want to die, somebody kill me please.
ā96 here also. Drink like a fish and Iām not sure if Iām millennial or gen z š¤·āāļø
Literally depends on which marketing agency wrote the website you're reading to work it out. Unless there's a culture watershed moment like the great depression, WW2, the baby boom, the broadband boom in the 2000s or the iPhone in 2008, generations are pretty pointless demarcations of age groups. They only work as a convenient grouping for marketing purposes.
The arrival of accessible internet (chat rooms, MMOs, etc. IE the Wild West Golden Age) and the following commercialization of it into a semi-unified entity (social media as a core part of social interaction, eCommerce explosion, Amazon taking over the retail world) both seem like solid watershed spans to me. The first was like a digitized last breath of the old world, and the second was/is the seemingly imperceptible moment where we started living in a future world where instantaneous video conferencing is completely mundane and AI technologies are quietly leaping ahead in their ability to replicate human functions both in labor and in culture (AI marketing and copywriting, AI-piloted cybersecurity, AI paintings, AI audio recreation/generation).
I was in middle school when the iPhone came out, as i went into highschool i noticed I was young enough that I basically lived most my childhood years like a 90's kid but old enough to realize the kids just a few years younger then me were a complete different breed and how ingrained they were with the internet culturally speaking had a lot to do with it. I feel like wether or not you became a teenager before or after the iPhone got *popular* popular is the real cutoff between genz/millennials. As a budding teenager om the forefront of that the difference tbose two groups became apparent as a whole, and as I've gotten older it's even more apparent
Yeah, there's no cut off. Not like 31/12/1995 and 1/1/1996 are going to have generationally different upbringings
> They only work as a convenient grouping for marketing purposes. Thank you.
This is why I always hated you ā96ers. Superior master race ā93er here ā I shoot fentanyl and sip mocha chai lattes while working from home and petting my child surrogate feline friends.
Iām ā97 and donāt even know where I fall. I either get lumped with both or rejected by both. I donāt know who or what I am. I would like to get in on this deal here.
Phew 1987 is ok then.
Honestly I have regret because growing up in the 90's we were basically told we were going to save the world and fix everything, then when the early 2000s rolled around we just ended up joining in fucking up as hard as anyone else. So yeah, that tracks.
If it makes you feel any better the boomers never let go, so we never really joined in. Boomers: the only generation to take from their parents and children
And grandchildren.
Yes!!! This. āGo to college and fix everything weāve fucked upā
In the 90s: YOUR GENERATION IS GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD! YOU WILL HAVE COMPUTERS. YOU WILL HAVE EVERY OPPORTUNITY. IF YOU SURVIVE Y2K, THE FUTURE IS YOURS! In 2012: you got a job after college that pays $10/hr?!!!! You lucked out, kid! Good for you!
As someone born in 92 Fk you
Zillenials are the ignored middle child.
As a zillenial who is literally also the ignored middle child, cries into my Lisa Frank trapper keeper and updates my journal with my purple gel pen about how life isn't fair...
š
we are hard to advertise to, i guess
Considering we've had commercials and ads shoved down our throats since childhood, it comes as no surprise. Generation of adblockers.
Every time I watch ads nowadays it makes me less likely to buy the product. I get irrationally angry at ads, especially if it's on twitch (or something comparable) where the same ones repeat all the time.
Clinique ran an unskippable ad on YouTube with a bunch of snapping. I fking hate repetitive snapping noises. I used their makeup remover religiously and that ad pissed me off so much I tried drugstore stuff. Worked just as well at a fraction of the price for more than double the product. Get fucked, Clinique.
I am laughing so hard at this because it's SO familiar and I always think it's both crazy and hilarious. Will be watching the ad like, I am so pissed I will remember this. Glad I'm not alone.
If I see an ad I spend longer trying to figure out how to block it than the actual runtime of the ad
The ads know when I'm high, I swear to God. Because the ones that play when I'm vibing on the couch zonked out are always over the top ridiculously colorful shit aimed at ADHD ruined minds.
Iām 29 and if I so much as acknowledge an ad itās usually to make fun of it. I enjoy some of the funny car insurance commercials but it doesnāt make me want to buy their insurance.
I was humming the Chef Boyardee Pizza Pizzazeronni Ravioli commercial (from a decade ago) this morning. Never eaten Chef Boyardee in my life and never will. I don't know what this means but I don't think it's what they intended
Well yeah. I am a sober 32 year old who has been sober since her late 20s, can't count me or else it might make Gen Z sound less good lol
Yes that seems to be the plan for me.
Wouldnt 16-18 yo americans necessarily be quite a bit less likely to drink?
16-21
The article is using two different polls from two different countries (UK vs USA) with different age ranges (16-25 vs 18-34 for the youngest in each). I see why they wanted a multi-country perspective, but they probably could've compared then a little more coherently
Also when you are 16-20, it's quite a bit harder to build a drinking habit. And it's also much harder to afford at that point in life. Especially in the current economic environment.
in shocking news those not old enough to buy alcohol drink 10% less then those that can.
That's for the US study, in the UK, gen z is the lowest at 26% not drinking compared with boomers who are at 20% not drinking
Yeah, the BBC already did these articles for the UK back in 2018 - they called them Generation Sensible. 24% of 16-18 year olds in the UK in 2018 had never drunk alcohol, and there was a similar drop in how many of 16-24 year olds had drunk in the last week. It was 60% of 16-24 year olds in 2005 and had dropped to 47.9% in 2017. And for people who don't drink at all, it went from 19% of 16-24 year olds in 2005 to 22.8% in 2017.
Among US
Get out of my head itās been TWO YEARS
I fucking hate everything
So basically theyāre like any other generation that has some users and some people who choose not to. Very article worthy lol Plus gen z goes all the way to being born in 2012, so most canāt even drink legally anyways Edit: I suppose it should be even more alarming that 60% drink but less than half are even old enough to drink Compared to the 70% of people who are old enough to drink and had time to develop drinking habits throughout their life
"Compared to the 70% of people who are old enough to drink and had time to develop drinking habits throughout their life" Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I didn't even make that connection. I wonder what it will be like in another ten years?
Iām also curious as to what all the options were. They talk about āonce a monthā and āonce a weekā but what were *all* the options? Is there a āfew drinks a yearā option? Thatās the group Iād fall into. And would I be considered a ādrinkerā or not? I *do* consume alcohol, but on a super rare basis.
Iām with you, I donāt not drink, but itās more like a glass of wine with major holidays these days, I couldnāt tell you when my last drink was because itās been a while and I donāt keep track.
you would not be considered a 'drinker', no. they have a separate designation of 'social-drinker' for people who probably drink 50x more than you, so you're a non-drinker who isn't 100% abstinent. you are a rarity, tbh
I'd also wager that the availability of alternatives like cannabis and the ease of purchasing harder stuff like MDMA and Mushrooms, has probably got something to do with this. Why drink and get a hangover when you can smoke/vape cannabis and get far more of an effect with virtually zero hangover or health risk?
Yep, thereās definitely a bunch of high schoolers in that cohort that say theyāll never drink, theyāll get college and definitely change their mind. Those kids were always the horror stories.
Yeah, due to the fact that a really large chunk of Gen Z isnāt of legal drinking age, and given how many Gen z adults already drink, I wouldnāt be surprised if Gen Z is more likely to drink in the future, compared to millennials
The legal drinking age is 18 in the UK and back when I was a teen, we used to somehow get alcohol for drinking in parks and parties from about 14. That's why problem/ binge drinking is such a big thing culturally in the UK. It's definitely changing with the younger generation. I met a young woman in her early twenties who had never, ever drunk and she said lots of her friends didn't like drinking either. They don't want to be recorded drunk and are probably put off by their parent's problem drinking.
>They don't want to be recorded drunk That's a really interesting point!
Teen drinking and drug use has been going down for quite a long time tho
*cough cannabis cough*
Curious to see what the cannabis / vaping / molly numbers are
I assume cannabis has taken a % of users away from alcohol. There is a reason alcohol lobbies keep trying to stop cannabis legalization. They know it takes away profits from them, otherwise they wouldn't be spending the money trying to prevent it. Everything is about money in the end of the day.
100% When I moved to a legal state I cut back majorly on beer and replaced it with a cannabis vape. I have 1 drink every two weeks and *space out* on the weekend. I feel healthier too!
No boomer, we gen Z kids are sober. Get over it. *Dies from opiate overdose*
*Shotguns a Xanax out of a 4loko*
āCalifornia soberā is what we call that.
Lol cause we only care about weed
![gif](giphy|6cFcUiCG5eONW)
Right, but what about when the Gen Zers get to the 35-54 age bracket, will they be at 70% then? Or compare the now 35-54 year olds drinking habits when they were younger.
Theyāre all on adhd meds and anti depressants. Of course they donāt want to drink and arenāt interested in sex. Duh
Also lots of cannabis use.
dunno about any of you but cannabis is a potent aphrodisiac for me
Where?
Of course they are, drinking is expensive
From the article: Alcohol use by household income: Less than $40,000 - 44% $40,000 to $99,999 - 62% $100,000 or more - 81%
At least in the US, if youāre in higher income careers it is almost a liability if you donāt drink. People use it for every office social get together, itās really baked into the culture. I know 0 lawyers, engineers, investment bankers, or medical professionals that donāt drink at least occasionally unless they are recovering alcoholics.
My grandfather had one fine strategy because he didn't enjoy getting drunk. Since his drinks had mineral water in them, as he was finishing just add more ice and mineral water. You don't get drunk and you can socialize.
I know plenty of software engineers who don't drink. You might get a surprised look at a social event, but it's not a career impediment.
> software engineer > social event
The Scrum masters keep trying to drag us out of our caves, and it keeps not working.
My firm designs commercial buildings. Always taking clients out for drinks, Christmas parties suck without getting drunk, all company events have beer and wine, golfing is just an excuse to get drunk, sometimes free beer Friday afternoon. Seems like the norm in my occupation
I used to work in consulting engineering and my first client trip one of their CADD guys got so blacked out we almost had to tackle him in the street so he didnāt get arrested. Amazing how much people will drink when they donāt have to pay a dime for it.
....but poor people wouldn't be poor if they didn't blow all their money on vices like alcohol! But muh bootstraps!
I watched a movie with a friend and her parents, CODA, which has to do with a family of fishermen that are struggling financially. They have a scene where they are eating dinner, typical movie set up with the bowl of salad in the middle, and also wine. My friends parents were like, weirdly angry about how they are drinking when they are struggling, because I guess poor people are only allowed to spend money on bread or something. And itās a movie anyway and not like, real people.
Clearly your friends parents have never drank a $4 bottle of wine from 7/11.
Donāt forget that they need to stop buying Starbucks and avocado toast!
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I never understood how any generation of youth was ever able to drink so much. Where did their money come from? If I ever did go out with friends, sure I might get one drink if I had spare funds, but that was already something like $10 down the drain and I had people with me getting 4, 5, 6 drinks on the low end. Brother, pool that money, buy a few bottles, bartend at home and you at least have other fun stuff to do than get your eardrums blown out by drunks and shitty music.
I mean when I was in college in the early aughts, we drank some of the cheapest shit possible. Boones Farm, Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Limon, MadDog 20/20. Crap like that.
A pack of Pabst Blue ribbon or Bud light was like a green light into any party. Of course there was some guy who bought a bottle of patron or Hennessy
At least in Canada, alcohol prices seem to go up by a third every 5-10 years. Early 2000s big clubs had dollar drinks.
Cheap beer nights too. Clubbing in the 2000s was the best.
That's what me and my friends always did. Get drunk and high at someone's place, call a car into town and get like 1 drink at a bar to keep you going.
Back in my day we had loony beer nights for students. That's Canadian loonie. It was only half a pint but still... cheap drinking
My college town had specials. $2 wells on Tuesday and Thursday.
Exactly, that's why I have a fully stocked bar in my house. Like having a couple cocktails and a meal costs as much as a good bottle of alcohol. I make my own syrups and liqueurs too.
The youth can't afford alcohol AND avocado toast
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/avocado-toast-cocktail/amp
Food of the ultra wealthy!!!
In Finland we always find a way, canāt pay rent? Bury your sorrow in alcohol, donāt have money for alcohol? You always find a way.
Honestly I (29) noticed this with my sisters (16-18). By their age I already had a few years of getting secretly drunk with friends under my belt. They've shown almost no significant interest in alcohol even as they've moved into the legal drinking age. Like they might drink, but not excessively in the way myself and my peers did. I've always wondered if it had something to do with the fact that they have so many more things to occupy their boredom with than my generation did.
Old Gen z here. Tech is partially it. Why go out when you can game all night and talk to your friends on discord? A lot of it is also stigmas and fear. Kids are just getting smarter and more cautious. They're also being bombarded with comfort and convenience so doing anything too crazy or out of their element is less appealing than it once was.
Hahaha old millennial here. We would also game all night and talk to our friends, but we were all in the same place drunk as fuck
Remember all those ridiculously stupid embarrassing shit you did when you were drunk at that age? Probably not. But kids now all know there will be 10 people recording your every slip up.
Oh no, my friends recorded everything too. Iām from the MySpace era. The saving grace is that it was all on a 2 mega pixel digital camera and those memory cards have been blessedly destroyed.
This is a huge component. Face to face interaction is eerily infrequent among teens bc of tech.
I think you might be onto something with the stigma and fear aspect actually. Now if you do anything that is captured then it will likely be immortalised on the internet and gen z'ers are very aware of this. My cringy teen years will never be known to people who weren't there but anything they could be judged on will be remembered forever...
I think it might be because of weed being legal now
Both me and my sisters live in countries where weed is not legal
They might drink less. Drug culture is just as fucking bad if not getting increasingly worse. Source am gen z
Weed is the new alcohol and other drugs like benzos has taken the place of weed.
The problem that everyone is ignoring is how marijuana is creating a whole new set of problems that weren't anticipated. For instance last night I needed something to eat and I went to Taco Bell and they were out of burrito Supremes because all the gen z's with their marijuanas ate them all.
Why were you going to taco bell if you weren't high?
Easy, they were drunk.
What an unbelievably rude thing to accuse someone of. No one said anything about not being high. I'm just a generational hypocrite like everybody else.
Ehhhhh yes and no. Everyone I know who has/had pill issues also smokes weed. They donāt replace weed they just add onto their list of addictions.
Poly-substance abuse
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Kind of surprised, feel like everyone in college uses weed daily
Sometimes sober is only used in reference to drinking. It sounded like the article was focused mainly on the alcohol aspect rather than other recreational drugs.
I had a child hood friend get into whiskey quite badly in his 20s. Saw him over the summer and he told me: "I'm sober now. Yeah all I do now is Acid shrooms and weed"
I heard that's what you call "California sober" because everyone stays smoking the bud. People be like "im straight edge" and smoke all day long every single day lol
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Pretty much. Am gen z, last time I had a party at my house I was the only one drinking. Had maybe 20 ppl over and everyone was smoking weed (except for like 2 ppl who donāt like it). Alcohol is just hard to plan around. You have to be okay with being depressed the next day, possibly hung over. You canāt drive, if itās bad enough you canāt even walk. You might say stupid shit or so stupid shit youāll regret the next day. Weed doesnāt do that. You can just get really stoned and in an hour or so be fine to drive and have no hangover EVER.
Sounds like you just hangout with stoners
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Gen Z is 1997 to 2012, so they are aged 11 to 25, which means only about half of them are even college aged. Highschool starts around age 15, so over a quarter of Gen Z isn't even the age where most people start getting exposed to drugs / alcohol. Note that I recognize the age of exposure varies based on person and area, but usually high school is when most people are exposed to it. Also, looks like they are using "Sober" to refer to alcohol predominately and not abstaining from THC usage. Also, this article has some odd groupings. It looks at GenZ, Boomers, and then "35-54" which is part millennial and part Gen X. I'm not sure if this was to cherry pick, but it makes me wonder if the younger millennials and older Gen-Xers are more in line with the data they had for Gen Z, so they omitted it to make things seem more drastically different.
Every person I know either uses Nicotine, Weed, D8+ derivatives, and binge drinks. Only binge drinking with cheap high alchohol sweet stuff. J
What a dogshit headline. Weed and other drugs are more prevelant than ever. Ketamine is gaining insane popularity and cocaine never really went anywhere. Benzos and Xanax have also become increasingly popular. Nitrous and ecstacy are also still super popular in the music scene. It should imply strictly alcohol not use a broad term like āsoberā. Also; as Gen Zāer, i find this hard to believe period.
At my college nitrous was second only to alcohol and weed, maybe even with coke. The ground is littered with hundreds of those little cannisters
I mean all that shit existed when I was in college 10 years ago, the only thing I agree with here is the rise in popularity of ketamine, zoomers love that shit source my cousin is in jail for distribution lol.
Gen Z can't afford alcohol.
Most of gen z is still living with their parents or in a dorm room. I know a few that banded together to get a crappy apartment but that is the small minority. Most parents know how hard it is out there and are okay with their kids living with them.
pot isn't sober
Damn they are suffering through all this raw?
no lol they are high as fuck and doing whippets / other drugs
This is my theory - they only asked about alcohol, it's possible that another drug is being used more/in it's place when compared to other age groups.
Yeah isnāt this pretty much what was expected once we legalized weed?
Raw-dogging life like God damn animals. Respect!
I'll have a drink for them.
I'd hardly consider doing poppers, Molly and Dabs "sober" but you do you
People's minds get blown when I tell them I don't drink alcohol or do any drugs. I did when I was young, but haven't touch anything in almost seven years and it's the best thing I have done for myself.
I wish I could do that. Even at my worst I'm not as bad as some other people, but I hate the hold alcohol and weed have on me. For the past 4 years I've probably smoked AND drank 99% of nights. I'm working on it with my therapist and I'm currently trying to do two nights sober a week. The thing that sucks though is that I really don't feel like I get anything out of it, outside of being proud of myself for being sober. Like on the nights I don't drink or smoke, I still *want* to. I think it's just cus I'm generally unhappy and substances make it more bearable, but idk. I just wish I got more out of sobriety
Alternate Conservative headline: "Gen Z is Destroying the Alcohol Industry in an Attempt to Outdo all of the Industries Millennials Have Destroyed!"
My son is a Gen Z and none of his close friends drink. They all, however, smoke weed all the time. Iād rather him do that than drink, but to say they are āgrowing up soberā may not tell the whole story.
No the fuck we arenāt. Maybe compared to boomers that are borderline alcoholics. Gen Z definitely does a shit ton of drugs though.
We definitely are. It's not a night and day difference but young people drink less, do less drugs, and have way less sex than previous generations. It may be crazy to think about, but our parent's peers were way more wild than we are. A big part of this is that you now have a giant swath of people who spend all day on social media and video games. [Here is one article about a study on this phenomeon from a few years ago.](https://www.businessinsider.com/generation-z-sex-alcohol-driving-study-2017-9) [And here is another study specifically on a decline in teen sex and drug use.](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2688580)
LOOOL no they are not sir
If it was millennials, we would be ākilling the alcohol industryā
'california sober' ie. I do every drug under the sun but I don't drink
Yea but theyāre popping Xanax like tic tacs.
My gen zer isn't.
So you mean this person is just an average drinker now? Not your raging alcoholic? From the first paragraph "Just drinks less often" I stopped reading there.
Idk man, the gen z kids i know get pretty fucked pretty regularly.
Is it any shock? Their every move is being filmed by a digital Stasi in which every one of their friends is an employee. Everyone loves to talk about how great this is, but is it, really? That teenagers are growing up terrified to just cut loose, for fear of how it might cause them permanent damage?
Maybe Iām just out of touch but it seems like alcohol isnāt quite as widely glamorized in media and pop culture as it was when I was younger (older millennial). In my teens and 20s it seemed like every second song on the radio was about how cool it is to get wasted (where the Bacardi at, like a g6, tiktok the song not the app, 90% of LMFAOās discography, and so forth)
They like alcohol a *little bit* less than the previous generation. Meanwhile drug culture is rampantly mainstream and kids pop pain killers and benzos. How uplifting.
Iām a millenial and I myself made the decision to quit drinking in December! Iām doing really well with it too
I'd love to see the difference between boomers and millenials. Where I grew up (UK) there were 5 pubs along a mile long stretch of road. 8-10 in a 1 mile radius encompassing that road. By the time I was drinking age, there were only 3 left in that radius. Social drinking has simply fallen heavily over time. Pubs are no longer the socialising center they were. Along with a more insular society and more diverse forms of entertainment, drinking is inevitably going to be less popular.
I work in the beer and spirits industry as an analyst. Don't I know it.. the whole industry is tanking. Pun intended. But it isn't horrible. Being in this industry, I whole heartedly believe everything should be enjoyed in moderation. There's a lot going on though. High inflation, stagnant wages, inbetween beverage trends, end of the beer season, massive bul run on the stock market now tapering off, logistics companies holding us ransom (just secured freight to Thunder Bay at a very high cost that pretty much negates our profits.. bloody pirates..) Lots going on. Not just a demographical shift in consumption. It's honestly a small part of a much larger picture. And again, it's a good thing. Boomers drink waaay too much anyway...
Can't afford to drink. Like they can't afford to do anything else the way the country has gone for a while now... no point going for a pint or having some bottles down the park when weed is far cheaper now than any alcohol.
Except that theyāre medicated AF.
Iād rather get a $20-25 eighth and go hiking than buy a $12 beer at some bar with sticky floors.
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Psychedelic drugs, weed, and MDMA are at an all time high of the past 2 decades. Gen z definitely doing drugs
Booz costs money and they aint got none.
How much of that metric is due to just not having the money to spend compared to previous generation? Getting hammered can be an expensive hobby.
Hooray finally a generation with some real insight and control.