Ending up online: Interrogating mediated youth drinking cultures

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 and Willot, 2008; Szmigin et al, 2008; McCreanor et al. 2005). Researchers have documented a range of factors that have contributed to this development, including the commodification of pleasure into commercialized 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 (Barbor et al. 2010), this is most likely in countries that have liberalized 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 globalization 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). The result is that hedonistic public displays of drinking to excess, while certainly not the norm for all young people or in all national contexts, have become much more mundane, and progressively more common in many young people’s lives (Gordon et al, 2012). Drinking heavily as a source of shared pleasure, used to facilitate social interactions and enhance nights out, has become a greater part of youth social practices in a growing range of nations across the globe.