The phrase âyoung adult drinkingâ conjures up evocative images, at least until recently, of excess, antisocial behaviour and harm. These images linking alcohol consumption by young adults with personal and social harms remain readily available in mass media depictions of archetypal leisure time activities involving drinking and drunkenness. The dangers posed to young adults by alcohol as a substance that too readily leads to over-indulgence, over-dependence and an array of other risks such as personal injury and potentially risky sexual encounters are often closely woven into the assumptions of empirical research in the social sciences. More recently, the images of young adults on our screens have been of a more restrained and, indeed, often strained, ilk, associated with a prioritisation of health and wellness in image and deed, plant-based diets (evident in the growing popularity of vegan products marketed at young adults) and concerns about their own future and the future of the planet, with movements like Extinction Rebellion reflecting a shift from a culture of consumption to a culture of restraint and sustainability.
At the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century, research and scholarly discussion concerning young adult alcohol use increasingly recognises the myriad ways in which alcohol can be understood and studied. This more nuanced attitude towards alcohol research acknowledges alcoholâs varied role within social rituals (such as preloading and drinking games) and permits scope for increased recognition of alcoholâs valued role in initiating and maintaining friendships among young adults. Evidence now consistently points to broad demographic shifts in drinking behaviour among young adults. This is reflected in changes in expectations and stereotypes around drinking styles and behaviours among women and men and in the significant increase in the number of non-drinkers found among young adults in many developed countries. The rapid rise of social media use and mobile/smartphone technology also holds significant implications for future trends in alcohol, not just for drinkers but also for health promotion, and for alcohol industry manufacturing, marketing and retail practices. However, research on a possible association between the explosion in smartphone use, gaming and immediate, consistent internet access, and a reduction in young adult alcohol consumption is in its infancy. Such research needs to also consider how being online during drinking occasions might present new and different potential threats to young adult health and well-being.
Views on drinking behaviour and approaches to alcohol use practices among young adults continue to evolve. Accordingly, social scientists have recognised the importance of efforts to shift the emphasis of research agendas towards progressive and sometimes non-traditional models of young adult drinking behaviour. One notable characteristic of this shift is a conscious movement away from a purely âpathologicalâ model for thinking about drinking behaviour in which âproblem cognitionsâ (e.g. alcohol beliefs) or âproblem dispositionsâ (e.g. personality) are identified as key drivers of higher risk drinking among young adults. This new research climate is partly reflected in the great increase in qualitative and mixed methods research used to explore alcohol-related behaviour, experiences and practices. In addition, exploring alcohol use among young adults has been recognised as an ongoing multidisciplinary project with continued important contributions from anthropologists, epidemiologists, psychologists, criminologists and sociologists, to name but a few. This diversification of topic focus and method application in the field of alcohol research is critically important from both clinical and policy perspectives. Progressive, successful modes of promoting more moderate drinking over the life course among young adults seem likely to benefit from the âreal-worldâ emphasis of some contemporary alcohol research.
This empirical work and theoretical debate that we allude to above have helped generate greater awareness of alcohol use among young adults as something nuanced, complex, both pleasurable and problematic and, critically, tightly bound within broader social contexts and life relationships. We aim to present a sample of the breadth of this research in this collection and to explore where the emphases of progressive alcohol research concerning young adults may usefully go from here.
Who Are âYoung Adultsâ?
There is great variety in how young adults are referred to in the academic literature and in wider public discourse. We prefer the term âyoung adultsâ and have chosen this term here to refer to individuals aged approximately 18â30 years of age. This is preferable to âadolescentsâ that would span younger demographic groups, and âyouthsâ and âyoung peopleâ that are less clearly defined usually include early and mid-teenage groups and are associated with particular connotations and theoretical emphases. In approaching this book, we are mindful, however, that different terms will have particular currency in different international settings and within different disciplines.
We turn now to how the term âyoung adultsâ was reached and how this works in relation to terminology used to describe the focal group of interest for our contributors. Accounting for the life stage (or life stages) following adolescence yet before later years of adulthood has attracted theoretical interest. Most prominent here is Arnettâs (2000) theory of âemerging adulthoodâ designed to articulate an understanding of the experiences of young adults aged roughly 18â25 years. Emerging adulthood, as a theory, helped to acknowledge changes in life stage circumstances in younger adult life that have taken place in industrialised societies needing to be accommodated to replace more traditional theories of life stage transition (e.g. Erikson, 1950). The advantages of emerging adulthood as a theoretical approach is that it does draw attention to important and distinctive features that may be experienced during this period of the lifespan characterised by uncertainty and identity exploration. However, we take the position that any strong categorisation of lifespan stages in this way runs the risk of impinging on understanding among a clearly heterogeneous group who will inevitably be situated in terms of their history and culture.
Research involving young adults, as preparation for this book has borne out time and again, is frequently conflated with research involving significantly younger individuals in a life stage more like middle adolescence (e.g. 15â17-year-olds) or even early adolescence (e.g. 11â14-year-olds). In focusing on âyoung adultsâ, we have a particular editorial view and definition which we believe helps narrow focus to a group of individuals who warrant particular attention and dedicated focus in the alcohol literature. The term âyoung adultsâ helps narrow focus on individuals aged over eighteen and therefore adults, for at least some purposes, in a legal sense, in the UK and many other jurisdictions. Imposing an upper limit is more problematic of course, and this is acknowledged in long-standing theoretical discussion on emerging and established adulthood (Green, 2016; Levinson, 1986). In this edited collection, we chose to focus on âyoung adultsâ as individuals aged approximately 18â30 years. Given that different terms mean different things to different people anyway (who may, quite reasonably, have little interest or investment in particular terms to describe the age range of the sample on whom their own research focuses), but also to promote the principle of academic freedom, we have adopted an inclusive approach and you will see variations in terminology and age ranges in this book including, predominantly, the terms âyoung peopleâ and âyoung adultsâ.
What Is âDrinkingâ?
As with the other elements of our title, pinning down what is meant by drinking presents similar difficulties. The alcohol literature contains a wide-ranging (and ever-increasing) vernacular for defining the focal activities of interest and relevance to this book and to this field. To illustrate, we could refer to these activities using the following expressions: âdrinkingâ, âdrinking behaviourâ, âdrinking practicesâ and âalcohol consumptionâ. A parallel range of terms exist to define and encapsulate the behaviour (and individuals) who do not drink alcohol (either as a lifestyle choice or within a particular time/place): ânon-drinkingâ, âabstinenceâ, âalcohol abstinenceâ, âsobrietyâ, âtemporary sobrietyâ or âsocial non-drinkingâ.
Each term brings its own point of emphasis, and its own advantages and caveats. The expression âdrinking behaviourâ would be broadly accepted from a post-positivist psychology research perspective, where an understanding of alcohol use would typically prioritise an individual-level understanding of activity that can be understood in discrete and objectively definable âbehaviouralâ terms. Other social science research perspectives would be likely to problematise this starting point, noting that âdrinking behaviourâ disaggregates an understanding of alcohol use (including, for example, an understanding of motivations to initiate alcohol consumption and to drink alcohol in large quantities) from the social and environmental context to which it is intimately tied. By contrast, there are advantages to referring to âdrinking practicesâ, which blurs the individual and the social and does not imply clearly defined time frames for alcohol consumption, over more individually orientated terms such as âdrinking behaviourâ, and therefore, it is favoured in this book. No arrangement of terminology can attract or appease all audiences, however. We are ...