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Young people are normally the first to pick up on trends, and that is certainly the case when it comes to resisting the harms of alcohol consumption. Gallup reports a record low rate of drinking across demographics in 2025. But the decline among young adults has been underway for more than a decade. Generation Z, loosely defined as those between 15 and 30, has driven much of that drop, with drinking rates falling nine percentage points since 2023 alone. Only half report drinking alcohol at all.
As someone who began binge drinking in young adulthood and is now five years sober, I find this encouraging. It also raises an obvious question: Why is Gen Z drinking less than the generations before them?
Research shows it’s due in part to public health campaigns about the dangers of drinking. Gen Z is the first generation to grow up fully immersed in the internet and social media. For all the documented downsides — chronicled in books such as Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation — constant connectivity has also meant constant exposure to research. Studies linking alcohol to cancer, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, and depression are no longer niche warnings. They circulate widely.
That kind of information changes people. As I write in Freely Sober, one of the first cracks in my own drinking habits came not from shame or social pressure, but from learning what alcohol was actually doing to my body. For many, the path away from drinking begins not with moral awakening, but with hard data.
Inspired by the rise of the modern “non-toxic” wellness movement, Americans who once shrugged at ingredient labels now lobby Congress to remove food dyes and plastics from their children’s snacks. Even those wary of the MAHA brand cannot deny that public scrutiny of harmful substances has increased.
And once you start questioning Red Dye 40, it becomes harder to ignore that Merlot is fundamentally ethanol — a chemically intoxicating substance associated with long-term health risks. Gen Z has seen the data showing that alcohol-related deaths have nearly doubled over the past 25 years. Many have watched parents and grandparents struggle with addiction or its ripple effects. The social costs are no longer abstract.
There are social shifts at play as well. Alcohol has traditionally functioned as a social lubricant. But in-person socialization has declined dramatically over the past two decades, a trend accelerated by COVID-19 in 2020. According to federal data, Americans now spend roughly 20 fewer hours per month with friends than they did in 2003. Less face-to-face interaction may mean less perceived need for “liquid courage.” Bars close earlier. Nights out are replaced with evenings at home.
Other health trends may contribute. The rise in prescription medications for anxiety and depression, many of which warn against alcohol use, likely factors in. So do financial pressures. With inflation pushing a single beer to eight or 10 dollars, alcohol can feel both unhealthy and unaffordable. Millennials rejected cigarettes in part because they were costly and toxic; Gen Z may be making a similar calculation about alcohol.
Substitution may also be occurring. Marijuana is now legal in more than half of the country. THC-infused drinks are sold in dispensaries, restaurants, liquor stores, and even non-alcoholic retailers. Edibles — particularly gummies — are popular among young people, though not without risk. Some data suggest rising marijuana use correlates with reduced alcohol consumption.
Substitution alone, however, doesn’t fully explain what’s happening.
For most of modern history, drinking was framed as a harmless pleasure, even a social necessity, largely free of moral scrutiny. But anyone personally affected by alcohol’s harms — through abuse, illness, or addiction — knows that narrative was always incomplete. Alcohol is not merely a benign, morally neutral substance. It can devastate bodies, families, and communities.
Members of Gen Z are not stepping away from alcohol because they are prudish or joyless. It may be that they are rejecting it because they see clearly what previous generations preferred not to — and because they live in a world where the health data is unavoidable. They’re also much more attuned to how mental health is affected by alcohol.
In an age that questions everything from food additives to pharmaceutical giants, alcohol may be next in line. For a generation increasingly attentive to what they consume, intoxication marketed as harmless fun no longer goes unquestioned. Many have seen through the lies of Big Alcohol marketing and no longer trust corporations that tell them it’s fine.
If historical trends hold, younger Americans often set the trajectory for those who follow. The cultural distance from alcohol may only widen from here.
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Ericka Andersen is the author of Freely Sober: Rethinking Alcohol Through the Lens of Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2026.)
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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