Young people across much of the Western world are drinking considerably less alcohol than their parents and grandparents did at the same age. Yet it is occurring alongside another, less encouraging development. Young people are also spending less time with friends in person, increasingly conducting their social lives through smartphones, and participating less in the everyday activities through which earlier generations formed friendships, romantic relationships, and communities.

The evidence for falling alcohol consumption is substantial. According to the American polling organisation Gallup, the proportion of Americans aged 18 to 34 who drank alcohol fell from 72% in 2001 to 2003 to 62% in 2021 to 2023. Among the same age group, the average number of alcoholic drinks consumed weekly fell from 5.2 to 3.6. The proportion reporting that they sometimes drank more than they thought they should declined from 28% to 22% of all young adults. The pattern is particularly pronounced among teenagers. The University of Michigan’s long-running Monitoring the Future survey found that the proportion of American final-year high school students who had consumed alcohol in the previous year fell from 73% in 2000 to 41% in 2025. Among younger pupils, the decline was even greater.

Data from other parts of the Western world suggest a similar transformation. South Africa’s data are too spotty to say much although what may be happening is that young people in poorer communities continue to drink heavily, while observations from the hospitality industry are that middle-class people are following the broader Western transition away from alcohol.

Younger generations, at least in the middle classes, also appear increasingly aware of these risks. Gallup found that the proportion of Americans aged 18 to 34 who regarded moderate drinking as harmful to health rose from 30% in 2001 to 66% in 2025. Greater health consciousness, changing social attitudes, and the growing acceptability of abstinence may therefore explain a meaningful part of the change in attitudes to drinking.

But consider what has happened to social interaction over roughly the same period. The United States Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on loneliness reported that Americans’ average daily time spent socially engaging with friends fell from approximately 60 minutes in 2003 to just 20 minutes in 2020. That is a decline of two-thirds, although the final year was affected by pandemic restrictions. Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey found that only 24% of American teenagers spent time with friends in person outside school daily or almost daily, compared with 60% who interacted with friends online that frequently. A generation that can communicate with its peers almost continuously is not necessarily spending much time in their physical company.

In 2024, the World Health Organisation reported that problematic social media use among adolescents across Europe, Central Asia, and Canada had risen from 7% in 2018 to 11% in 2022. More than a third reported being in continuous online contact with friends.

This creates an interesting cultural paradox. For earlier generations, drinking was frequently incidental to socialising. Young people met in pubs, at parties, in university bars, at concerts, and in one another’s homes. Alcohol was often present, sometimes excessively so, but the underlying activity was gathering with other people. These occasions brought their own risks, but also offered opportunities to meet strangers, develop confidence, negotiate disagreements, pursue romantic relationships, and build enduring friendships.

There is therefore something potentially misleading about celebrating the decline of youth drinking in isolation. Less drunkenness, fewer alcohol-related accidents, and healthier lifestyles are unquestionably desirable outcomes. But if young people are drinking less partly because they are going out less, meeting fewer people, and spending more of their lives behind screens, the wider cultural picture becomes considerably less encouraging.