By Catrin Nye and Hermeet Chadha BBC Asian Network
UK teenagers might have a reputation for binge drinking, but in reality the
number of young people consuming alcohol has declined sharply. Why?
"There is nothing that says you can't go out and have fun without a drink,"
says Liam Brooks, 18. Since November he's been old enough to buy alcohol
legally in pubs, but he's never touched a drop.
"It's the mindset the media has that every 18-year-old goes out and gets drunk.
Maybe people in the previous generation did. But nowadays, most people would go
out to hang out."
It was the sight of intoxicated older people that helped put Liam, from
Dagenham, Essex, off drinking for life. One occasion when he had to put his
parents' inebriated friends to bed convinced him that "there is no pretty
drunk".
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Start Quote
Liam Brooks
If I'm hanging out with friends and they have been out of their minds drunk,
I'm the one keeping an eye on them
Liam Brooks
Anyone familiar with regular newspaper stories about young people creating
drunken havoc in British town centres would be forgiven for finding Liam's
words surprising.
But while his strict abstinence may be atypical, all the figures suggest that
young people in the UK are becoming more like him.
Just 12% of 11-to-15-year olds said they had drunk alcohol in the previous week
in 2011 - down from 26% a decade earlier, according to National Health Service
statistics. The proportion who said they had ever drunk alcohol fell from 61%
to 45% over the same period.
Among older teenagers and young adults, the pattern was the same. In 1998 71%
of 16-to-26-year-olds said they'd had an alcoholic drink that week. By 2010
only 48% did so.
It's in sharp contrast with the middle aged who, as the Spectator's Fraser
Nelson has observed, are spending more on alcohol than ever. He calls this the
"Ab Fab" effect, after the BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous, in which daughter
Saffron watches with disgust as her mum and her friends get legless.
Absolutely Fabulous
It's a trend that defies many people's expectations of young people, and a
whole variety of theories are offered by experts to explain it.
One factor may be that alcohol is becoming more difficult for young people to
get hold of, says Jonathan Birdwell, senior researcher at the think-tank Demos
and author of two reports on UK alcohol trends.
Pubs and clubs are also getting better at challenging underage drinking, he
adds. Retailers have more of an incentive to check IDs after the government
doubled the fines for those caught selling alcohol to young people to 20,000.
Recent awareness campaigns about daily alcohol guidelines, the arrival of
"drink aware" labels on bottles and an increase in negative media stories
around binge drinking culture may have all played their part.
Straitened economic circumstances may have also played a part, Birdwell
suggests. "With the rise of tuition fees young people going to university want
to get more out of their experience to make sure they are competitive in the
labour markets."
Demographic trends also appear to have contributed, too. Britons from a Muslim
background are less likely to drink for religious and cultural reasons, and
Muslim now make up 8% of the population under 16 in England and Wales - up from
5% in 2001.
Research has also found that pupils who go to more ethnically diverse schools
are less likely to drink, whatever background they come from personally,
Birdwell says.
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Yasser Ranjha asks a group of 14 to 18 year olds why they avoid alcohol
But with Muslims making up just 5% of the resident UK population in the 2011
census, the decline is too sharp for it to be down to this one community alone.
Relevant, too, is the growth of technology allowing young people to socialise
with friends and keep themselves entertained, suggests Henry Ashworth, chief
executive of the Portman Group.
"There has been an exponential growth in social media since 2005 and this has
correlated with a steep decline in risking behaviours such as drinking - so it
seems that young people may be diverting to other activities," he says.
Whatever the reasons for its rise, new businesses have sprung up to serve this
rising non-drinking population.
In parts of London, Manchester and Bradford now you will see whole streets
lined with Shisha cafes and ice-cream parlours open late for a dry clientele.
Catherine Salway founded the alcohol-free Redemption bar in west London after
paying attention to the trends.
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'I tried alcohol - it's not for me'
Presenter Yasser Ranjha
Yasser Ranjha, 24 - BBC Asian Network and Young, British and Sober presenter
I've been DJing and working in an alcohol-fuelled environment since I was 18.
At that age I hadn't even thought about drinking - being bought up in a
Pakistani Muslim household, alcohol was always forbidden.
Working in clubs now, I see people lose control constantly - they arrive
looking great, dressed up for a night out, and often leave in a total state.
It's really put me off to be honest.
I did tried alcohol once out of curiosity but trying was enough. Although I'll
admit that it can also look like a lot of fun it wasn't for me.
Most my friends have always known me as a non-drinker so peer pressure has
never been an issue. Whenever I socialise I don't feel like I need alcohol to
have a good time. Especially when it comes to clubs and bars - I'd rather
listen to the music than get hammered.
"Lots of people thought I was mad to come up with the idea of an alcohol-free
bar but I like to think I was just at the cutting edge," she says. "It is the
young at the forefront of this movement."
It's not just alcohol use that has fallen, however. Young Britons are more
abstemious in general than in previous generations.
NHS statistics show that in 2011, 17% of pupils had ever taken drugs, compared
with 29% in 2001. Tobacco use has also dropped.
Despite these trends, alcohol abuse remains a problem among the young.
Experts have warned that liver disease is on the rise among people in their
early 30s. And in international terms, young Britons are still drinking more
than most of their neighbours, according to The European School Survey project
on Alcohol and Drugs..
"The young people who are drinking are drinking more than their European
counterparts," says Rosanna O'Connor, director of drugs and alcohol at Public
Health England. She says the drops in overall consumption represent "good news
but a partial picture".
It may be premature to say goodbye to the nation's boozy reputation. But
Birdwell argues that young people should be given credit nonetheless.
"The media headlines can be quite popular around binge drinking and some towns
and cities do have a significant problem," he says.
"But I think overall in the UK we need to have a more dominant conversation
around the fact that young people are choosing not to drink and noting the
positive development of that."
For now, young abstainers still stand out. So far Liam's friends haven't
followed his example.
For now, he says, "if I'm hanging out with friends and they have been out of
their minds drunk, I'm the one keeping an eye on them making sure they don't
make any mistakes".