“Teen drinking is very bad,” according to a very popular song from 2004, and data shows that since that time, fewer American youth feel the urge to get “Tipsy.” That includes a new study from Keck Medicine of USC, which shows alcohol use has fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among younger people.
The data begs the question: why are younger folks in America consuming less alcohol? The answer to that is complicated.
American drinking habits
This new study found alcohol use across the board went down 2% between 2022 and 2024.
“The decline among young adults looks different from the rest of the population,” Dr. Brian P. Lee, principal investigator of the study and hepatologist and liver transplant specialist with Keck Medicine of USC, told Straight Arrow. “All age groups drank more during the pandemic, but younger adults are the age group that has reversed this trend, and on heavy drinking they’re now below where they were in 2018.”
Part of the overall downtick in the drinking numbers could also be because everyone got really talented at couch drinking during the pandemic.
Download the Straight Arrow app today to get the stories that matter free from manipulation, bias or agenda.™
Point phone camera here
“The pandemic raised drinking for almost everyone,” Dr. Lee said.
Researchers analyzed data from more than 114,000 Americans 18 and older.
Gen-Z adults showed the biggest decline in drinking, dropping by more than 5%. Meanwhile, Millennials showed the biggest drop in heavy drinking, down 17%.
Meanwhile, older adults are tipping them back more than they did before the pandemic.
“It’s the study result that worries me most,” Dr. Lee said.
Lee said that’s because the more severe health effects of alcohol use are more likely to come into play for that age group.
“Liver disease, cardio-metabolic health, and mental health concerns, including the development of having an alcohol use disorder, an alcohol addiction, so yeah, I do think it’s concerning,” Dr. Bryant Shuey, a primary care physician and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, told Straight Arrow.
The CDC lists excessive alcohol consumption as one of the leading preventable causes of death and illness in the U.S. Roughly 180,000 people die in America each year due to excessive drinking.
The study also showed that more women have set the wine bottle down than men in terms of heavy drinking, but both genders saw a downtick.
This new research backs up numbers that have been recorded for more than two decades. Recent data from the University of Michigan shows drinking by those under 18 has also been on the decline significantly.
“Since the mid-1990s, there’s been quite a decline,” Richard Miech, a co-author of that UM survey and principal investigator of Monitoring the Future, told Straight Arrow.
Why the downturn for the youth?
“That is a million-dollar question, is it?” Miech said.
“It’s hard to say,” Shuey added.
“There’s a lot of factors,” added Christopher Kahler, director of the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at the Brown University School of Public Health. “It’s hard to pin down one factor only.”
Experts Straight Arrow spoke with broke down several reasons as to why young people are drinking less.
Research shows Gen-Z and Millennials are more focused on their health than previous generations. And cutting out drinking is a good way to stay healthy.
“When I speak with my younger patients, there’s a greater emphasis on health in general, and health being diet, exercise, mental health,” Dr. Shuey said. “And I suspect alcohol is factored into those decisions.”
Other than just the unpleasant feeling of a hangover the next day, drinking can cause significant health issues even for younger folks.
“They’ve grown up hearing about the cancer and liver risks in a way earlier generations didn’t,” Dr. Lee said.
Despite the aggressive amount of beer and other alcohol commercials that flood American programming, there have been significant pushes across the country to paint alcohol as dangerous.
The CDC has a program. In schools, kids are often exposed to DARE, Project ALERT or MADD.
“Prevention messages and programs over time have been helpful,” Kahler said. “We see a lot less tobacco use also in young people in high school. We’ve seen likewise alcohol use going down in high school.”
The COVID-19 pandemic also clearly put a spotlight on health and taking care of your body. But that’s not the only way the pandemic may have impacted youth drinking habits.
First, most students had to stay home from school.
“School is really a substantial risk factor for substance use among teens because that’s where the peer pressure is,” Miech said.
Even outside of the classroom, with all the social distancing and forced isolation, teens and young adults did not get to socialize as much as they might have otherwise. That means keggers and drunken house parties are not as ingrained in their good times as they were for previous generations.
“Alcohol use was not something that maybe people were exposed to during high school, perhaps early in college,” Kahler said. “Some of those events were just happening less, so it started a generation of people for whom there might have been a year or two where there was less social contact, but also less drinking. So, when they went back to socializing, drinking just wasn’t necessarily part of the picture.”
Students weren’t the only ones staying home during the pandemic. The number of Americans working from home tripled at the height of the global health emergency.
It’s harder to steal the alcohol from the cupboard when mom and dad are around.
“A lot of young people were still in their parents’ homes,” Dr. Shuey said.
And then there’s the cost.
Pretty much everything has gotten more expensive in the U.S. over the last several decades, and alcohol is no exception.
The average price for a single malt beverage has risen 70% in the last twenty years. Meanwhile, the amount Americans spend drinking out of the house has nearly doubled in just the last several years.
“It’s expensive to go out for a night,” Dr. Shuey said.
Gen-Z and millennials also report the highest level of financial stress and anxiety compared to other generations.
Then there’s social media.
For people who grew up before camera phones were everywhere, many will express gratitude that some of the things they did while intoxicated were not caught on film.
That’s rarely the case in 2026. Ask any of these people.
“People are really aware that if they behave in a way that is embarrassing, that it’s quite possible it’s going to be captured by someone and shared online, and that that can have a really long-lasting negative impact,” Kahler said.
Gen-Z also spends the most time on social media, and that number declines the older you go. Nearly half of teens say they’re online constantly.
When it comes to staring at your phone all day, Gen-Z leads the way there as well, which could factor into the lack of drinking.
“More and more kids are using their cell phones all the time, and they’re not exposed to the same level of parties and pressure to use substances in face-to-face interactions with their peers,” Miech said.
No matter the reason why America’s youth are drinking less, everyone agreed that less alcohol consumption is not a bad thing.
“Less substance use is probably a good thing,” Dr. Shuey said, while countering that the benefits of drinking socially are “proxies or measures for social cohesion, isolation, social and mental well-being in general. I think we have to tease those apart too. If those are all positive and in the right direction, then that sounds like a win-win to me.”
Industry response
Where it’s most certainly not a win is for the alcohol industry.
Major producers like Diageo (Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker), Constellation Brands (Corona, Modelo), and more have seen profits fall in recent years, especially in North America.
Much like the local drunk attempting to sing karaoke at the bar, it’s noticeable.
“It certainly is bad news for the alcohol industry,” Miech said.
Like with any industry that deals with major shifts, they’ll need to adjust.
“They’re switching to mocktails as a way to counter some of the losses that they’re experiencing,” Miech said. “I’ve read a couple of articles saying that the alcohol industry is very aware of this trend because a lot of these are covert effects that kids who don’t drink when they’re younger, as they age and get older in future years. They are much less likely to drink too.”
Many in the industry also believe that younger people are just changing the way they drink.
“Those things tend to adapt and adjust over time,” Dr. Shuey said.
