Teenagers Getting Drunk

Back in the good old day kids used to drink a little here and there, you know, back when we were young, writes Jane Shilling in The Times of London.  But things are a bit different In Britain today.

[T]hese days teenage social life consists of drinking to get drunk. Not fuzzy. Throwing-up drunk — and then carrying on, like the Ancient Roman. And not occasionally, but habitually.

It’s notorious that on Saturday night the downtown entertainment areas in most British towns are no-go areas for the police and filled with rioting drunken youth. 

It is also the proper role of adults to sit in judgement on The Kids.  And of course things aren’t exactly copacetic in the United States.  So what are we to think? 

Let’s look at the issue from a materialist point of view.  People take mind-altering drugs to medicate themselves, to relieve stress.  So when you see a lot of drinking and drug-taking, you are really looking at people under a lot of stress.

The US in the 1840s was a rough and ready place.  The economy was transforming itself overnight with the railroad boom.  And people drank like fishes.

Or take the 1960s.  Maybe those kids weren’t taking drugs because they were just having fun.  Maybe all that freedom—sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll—was really too stressful for most people.

Most young people seem to need the assistance of alcohol before they can face the indignity of casual sex.

And people can be stressed out by boredom.  Remember Brideshead Revisited?  There are libraries full of books about the misadventures of idle, well-born youth.

So let us assume that young people in Britain are feeling a lot of stress these days.  What could it be?  Here are some ideas:

• “Bog-standard” schools that bore them to tears.
• Fractured families.  Kids hate that, you know.
• Infantilization of youth.  Kids don’t get to do anything without adult supervision these days.
• Not enough adventure. Kids need challenge.
• Usual culprits: TV, music, movies, video games.

Really you have to wonder.  Why aren’t kids absolutely off their rockers?  Who would want to live the way kids are forced to live today?