Blog: Are alcohol harms matching declines in teenage drinking?

We know that younger generations have been drinking less in recent years, but we don’t know if alcohol-related harms have also decreased.

In this blog for the Institute of Alcohol Studies, NDRI researcher Emma Vieira highlights the results of a systematic review which investigated trends in adolescent alcohol-related harms in high-income countries around the world. Researchers also explored any differences in harm trends according to sex.

"Our review brought together a variety of literature, including many types of alcohol-related harms, many ways to measure these harms, many time periods, and many portions of adolescent age groups," Emma wrote.

"Pulling these results together indicated that adolescent alcohol-related harms have decreased to a certain extent – mostly in Anglosphere countries and to a lesser degree in North America, with mixed findings for Europe.

"The declining trends in consumption reported in previous studies seem to be more dramatic than the trends we’re seeing in harms."

Click here to read the blog post

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Posted on: 22 Apr 2025

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