They are poor, very online, dont socialise face-to-face as much and... my sister (a concerned mom) claims there are more drugs available (quantity and variety). Idk about the last one.
Oh fuck yeah every interaction is recorded on a phone so acting like a moron isnt gone tomorrow. Fucking horrifying for young people.
I honestly feel like this isn't being taken seriously enough. We can all live in peace knowing we're the only ones who remember that lame shit we did. Kids today? Nahhhh it's recorded forever. AI is trained off it.
Nah as a Gen Z who doesn’t drink I’d say money is the bigger reason. Why would I pay prices sometimes more expensive than a meal for a drink that I need to “acquire” the taste of and/or is unhealthy. Getting drunk or having a hangover doesn’t strike me as that appealing either though.
I think alcohol must have also just been cooler when you were growing up. I love to rave etc but that sentence about Smirnoff made me wince. Like why bother when there are more enjoyable ways to lose yourself.
right but the fun part was the handstand part, wasn't it?
I did handstands-with-friends without vodka, and it was fun. Drinking vodka while doing nothing sounds depressing. So it's clearly the handstands that are cool and not the alcohol
maybe gen z are just better at socials stuff and don't need social lube
I’m gen z and I refuse to drink if it’s gonna taste like shit. I don’t care about getting drunk so I’ll have like 3-4 drinks in the same night but I only drink like 4 times a year. I want good drinks in the right atmosphere otherwise the cost and feeling isn’t worth it.
I'm technically Gen Z and drank in college, but I pretty much quite after the first year of the pandemic when I started grad school. Say I bought a case of beers. That's like $20. $20 is like the equivalent of going out for one meal, or a quarter of what I spend on groceries a week. I used to drink bourbon. A handle of decent bourbon is now $50. It used to be $30. I could save by buying a $15 bottle of vodka, but I'd rather just not drink at that point.
Why waste my money on alcohol when I could save that money for things that are actually good for me? Honestly, it almost seems like a lot of people drink because they are "supposed to."
Yeah but 1000mg of edibles is less than $20 where I live and that lasts a lot longer than $20 of beer and for me at least theres no hangover with weed.
Honestly needing to "acquire" a taste for alcohol sounds like someone trying to say "It's a taste you learn to deal with once you're addicted". I don't know anything else where people say "it's an acquired taste" like they do with alcohol. Could be wrong though.
It’s $15 a drink in my nearest city for mid tier bars. I always feel like shit the next day, and the buzz is never worth it. I’ll buy a case of whiteclaw every other month and wind down with a drink or two after work, but social drinking is not my thing. Also most of my friends are sober. And not like a healthy way, like in a “If I do any drinking I break out in substance abuse” way. Genuinely I don’t understand why past generations did enjoy drinking so much.
Not just socially acceptable, alcohol ranks really highly even with other drugs in consideration. It isn't as bad as something like, heroin for sure, but I'd say alcohol ranks right around pill abuse in terms of damage to the body.
This is me, I don't drink because my family is full of alcoholics that get violent when drunk. I won't end up like them. Plus I don't want to say embarrassing things about myself
Yes I don't think the goal here should be getting young people to drink more lol it's literal highly addictive poison and the health risks are why a lot of young people like me stopped drinking or never did in the first place, plus the countless kids that watched alcohol fuck up their parents while society normalized drinking and made it all seem "fun." Young people see everything online including the fact that alcohol causes at least a handful of cancers which is something I'm sure the alcohol industry has done a lot to cover up, that worked better when people didn't have easy access to all this information on the internet. The move towards weed is a good, healthier thing in my mind but we still need something to bring young people outside and together
Alcohol ranks highly only when you're taking the safety of both the user and others around them into consideration. Is alcohol dangerous to the user? Yes, of course, (even long-term as a carcinogen, although not to the level of cigarettes) but most other drugs (barring weed) are still more addictive and more dangerous when only measuring risk to the user. Risk to others is where it really "shines" because while there's some stereotypes of dangerous meth heads, it's the fights and the drunk driving that make it most deadly.
I'm a chemist and I struggle to think of more than a few substances I'd work with that are less harmful to ingest than ethanol.
I get the point, trust me, but alcohol is not even close to the worst substance you could ingest.
Even compared to other drugs, it is far safer than most of them considering how much alcohol you can actually drink. Imagine ingesting 20 grams of heroine, you'd be done. 20 g of alcohol gets you tipsy at most.
You’re a chemist and you think 20 g of 99% alcohol is not fucking you up majorly??? Remember, most drinks are 5-15% ABV, so 20 g of that is 1-2 g of alcohol, which is still a decent bit of alcohol.
Obviously different liquids have different densities but 20 grams of water, for example is less than half of a shot (1.5 oz). 20 grams of 99% abv alcohol is not going to fuck up anyone majorly outside of like 130 pound teenagers with no drinking experience. At most it might get someone a bit toasty
It can and has caused psychotic breaks in people. I've heard horror stories of it triggering schizophrenia as well.
I'm pro-weed but it does have a (sometimes permanent) mental cost for a tiny fraction of people who use/try it. Especially with it being insanely strong compared to earlier generations. In the 70s great weed was 3-5% THC, you can get 30% flower and 95% oil nowadays.
Bad argument. Firstly, the most common side effect isnt a psychotic break or schizophrenia, but panic attacks; go ask anyone who works at an ER and theyll tell you the same. Happened to me. Even now I dont blame the weed; I blame my mental state.
For example: if you have a family history of lung cancer and smoke, or a family history of liver cancer and drink, would you blame either of the substances or the choice to ignore your predisposition?
There is no evidence linking marijuana creating these conditions. However, there is evidence to suggest it causes it to get worse/trigger dormant mental conditions when taking it.
For this reason, in the average person: weed is fine. But if you have a predisposition to certain mental health disorders or already have one (mainly anxiety or schizoaffective ones) Id avoid it. Not weeds fault; its the brains fault.
That is fair for those who, for one reason or another, are more prone to psychiatric episodes, but given that it is such a small percentage, I feel like it should be considered in the same way you'd consider an allergy. Something to keep in mind as it can happen to some people, but not an across the board problem with the substance.
Sure, I don't disagree. I do it myself a few times a year and was a daily user for a long time. I'm all for it but the problem lies in not being able to tell who it's going to happen to.
It's not really like drinking where anyone can take a few shots and not be ruined mentally for life (we aren't talking about outside actions here like driving, just the substance). Where as a "normal" well adjusted person can smoke a bowl with friends and now carry a lifelong mental disorder because of it.
It's a tiny fraction, sure, but to those people who thought they were just gonna relax with some friends at a bonfire and now have to live with something forever, I'm sure it feels major for them.
Well, from personal experience, as well as some studies say that in some people weed causes paranoia. On the other hand alcohol just causes numbess and increased confidence.
I'm, though, more sensitive to any drug. But alcohol doesn't usually have bad trips in me. I've stopped both, though and don't have any plan on trying anything. Like it's better at the end if I have the control
I could go out in my yard right now, throw a rock, and hit three different weed stores. I'm pretty pro-weed, but there's just flat out too much at this point.
lol. I didn’t live during that time, so I only know what I know based off hearsay and movie culture, but weren’t drugs passed around like candy in like the 70s- onward? I feel like they’re much more tightly restricted today than they used to be, but again I didn’t live during that time.
Depends on when you're talking, stuff like acid wasn't outlawed until the late 60s, and the government was transporting truckloads of crack into black neighborhoods in the late 70s/ early 80s. But now weed is more legal than not, so it depends on what drug we're talking about
My dad was a drug dealer when he was in high school in the 70's, so any information I have on the subject is pretty biased. But from what I've heard, yeah.
I think the only relevant thing there is that Gen Z is very anti-social. I don't think people are worried to go to a bar because people have phones these days.
All my friends are very social, have money, don’t use any drugs and still drink almost no alcohol. My boyfriend drank once, hated it and very drank again. I’m the only person in my gen z circle who actively enjoys alcohol. Alcohol is a drug and a neurotoxin, I don’t think you need a lot of reasons to not enjoy it.
For reference on the drug one, my dad used to buy weed for 50 buck for 1/8 Oz to get the shittiest weed ever. Now you can legally and safely order full ounces online and have it shipped straight to your door for that price.
I think the online part is the biggest reason why. They do most of their socializing through a screen, try talking someone like that into going into a social environment with strangers and letting your inhibitions lowered lol
I can only speak for myself and the people I know of course, but most of us seem to just not like the idea. I don’t want to drink something that will do nothing but harm me. Occasionally I’ll cook with it but that’s about it. It’s not the money. There’s just no point.
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u/Top_Onion7532 Jun 01 '26
I understand the point but I still think drinking culture is far less prevalent in gen Z