Ending Up Online: Interrogating Mediated Youth Drinking Cultures

Abstract

Across the Western world many young people are increasingly involved in normalised practices around heavy drinking, which they view as pleasurable, involving fun and being sociable (Lyons & Willot, 2008; McCreanor et al., 2005; Szmigin et al., 2008). Researchers have documented a range of factors that have contributed to this development, including the commodification of pleasure into commercialised packages, linked to a ‘night time economy’ increasingly central to the wealth of cities, that have been termed ‘cultures of intoxication’ (Measham, 2004) and ‘intoxigenic environments’ (McCreanor et al., 2008). The ‘unfettered expansion of alcohol marketing’ (Casswell, 2012: 483) appears to be a key contextual consideration here. While globally young people generally drink to intoxication more frequently than older drinkers (Babor et al., 2010), this is most likely in countries that have liberalised alcohol policy in ways that enhance access to alcohol (Huckle et al., 2012). Furthermore, although specific drinking practices clearly vary from nation to nation and across sociocultural contexts, the globalisation of alcohol marketing and moves towards increasingly similar legislative and regulatory regimes have contributed to a marked trend towards ‘an increasing homogenization of drinking cultures across many [Western] countries’ (Gordon et al., 2012: 3).