Teenage drinking: Should we teach teenagers how to drink?

For many, underage drinking conjures up images of young people drinking lots of cheap, strong alcohol in a public place getting out of control. But does this stereotype match the reality of teenage drinking cultures? A recent JRF report takes a closer look at alcohol use in groups of teenage friends.

The research found that, when drinking, young people want to get drunk, have fun with their friends and then sober up before going home. They rarely set out to drink so much that they are sick, lose control or pass out. In fact, there is considerable stigma associated with getting too drunk. And there isn’t one teenage drinking culture: what young people drink, how much they drink, where they drink and how drunk they intend to get, differs between friendship groups.

Over time, most teenagers appear to develop a degree of self control over how much they drink. This is generally through trial and error, with mistakes occurring along the way. Young people use a range of strategies to try and manage their drinking (such as buying a specific amount of alcohol at the beginning of the night, eating or drinking water) with varying degrees of success.

Many teenagers believe that their parents will turn a blind eye to their drinking as long as they are relatively sober by the time they come home. Attempts by parents to restrict their teenagers' contact with alcohol, such as limiting the time they spend with friends, don't seem to lead to teenagers drinking less – many are able to circumvent these strategies and continue to drink with their friends.

Evidence from this research and other research projects from the JRF Alcohol Programme indicates that many young people are drinking much earlier than the legal age of 18 – some to harmful levels. Whilst alcohol education and interventions designed to prevent or delay drinking have an important role to play, it is clear that for some teenagers this will come far too late. For those who are already drinking, restricting the availability of alcohol and perhaps increasing the price will have an impact on young people’s access to alcohol. Beyond this, it could be argued that we should develop interventions to teach young drinkers better strategies to regulate their own drinking. These could potentially reduce alcohol-related harm.

In practice, this feels like a 'nudge' in the right direction and there are already examples of projects (albeit at a small scale) which aim to give alcohol harm reduction advice to teenagers. There are also lessons we can learn from approaches to sex education, where attempts to teach young people under the age of 16 about healthy sexual behaviours are routine.

But this approach does not sit well with policy-makers. Rather than take a pragmatic view, it becomes a moral argument, namely, is teaching teenagers to drink the 'right thing to do'? Given the reality of some of the excessive aspects of teenage drinking culture, it might be time to try and bridge the gap between policy, practice and research.