What If Fewer Americans Drinking Is a Bad Thing?
Moderate drinking might be bad for you. But it's also pretty fun.
Americans may be drinking less than ever before. A recent poll from Gallup found that a record-low share of Americans say they drink alcohol, the lowest in nearly 90 years of polling. Declines in drinking since 2023 in particular have been highest among women, Republicans, and both low-income and high-income Americans.
And those who are drinking are drinking less—the average drinking respondent had only 2.8 drinks in the last seven days, down from 4.5 a decade ago, and the lowest number in 30 years.
For the first time, researchers also found that a majority of Americans believed that moderate drinking is bad for one's health. In 2018, just 28 percent of respondents reported that one or two drinks a day is unhealthy, but in 2025, 53 percent did.
This perception matches with an increase in antidrinking messaging from public health authorities. Earlier this year, then–Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for putting a cancer warning on alcoholic drink containers.
At first, this trend seems like an obviously good thing. Alcoholism is a destructive disease, and reducing tragic deaths from alcoholism, drunk driving, or alcohol-related cancer is certainly good news. And it is probably true that moderate drinking is bad for your health.
But the thing is, the decline in overall drinking hasn't actually led to a decrease in alcohol-related deaths. Problematic drinkers are still hurting themselves and others, indicating that a decline in drinking has come not from a reduction in overdrinking, but a reduction in moderate drinking.
There are reasons to want people to engage in moderate drinking, even if moderate drinking has overall negative health effects. That's because a reduction in moderate drinking probably means people are spending less time in the social environments where such drinking occurs—less time at bars, less time at parties, less time going to restaurants with friends. A decline in light drinking could indicate a rise in social isolation in the same way that a decline in cake sales could mean that fewer people are throwing birthday parties. A world where less drinking happens just might be one where people have fewer friends and spend more time alone.
Americans are lonelier than they used to be. Between 2003 and 2024, time spent attending or hosting social events decreased by 50 percent among Americans aged 15 and older. According to one survey from the American Psychiatric Association last year, one in three American adults feels lonely every week. If you mostly drink socially (like me, for example), opting out of drinking could be a sign that you're also opting out of social interaction.
"Eroding companionship can be seen in numerous odd and depressing facts of American life today," Derek Thompson wrote for The Atlantic in January. "Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home. The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species."
Another way of looking at the decline in moderate drinking is a rise in a certain level of health neuroticism, enabled by rising loneliness. If you don't have good reasons to drink—no parties to go to, no invites out—it's easy to use your free time to become hyper-focused on living with minimal risks to your health.
One obvious example is a lingering minority of healthy people who are still wearing masks in public and avoiding social gatherings for fear of disease. In a reply to a recent X post, one user provided the perfect example of how this kind of COVID risk aversion could drive down social drinking. Drinking in "crowded bars and clubs never bothered me in my 20s, but now they make me feel kinda worried about ventilation and infection risk," the user wrote. "Worth it for like… A cool annual conference, not worth it just to shoot the shit on a random Friday."
There's also the general sense that Americans are becoming more uptight and more puritanical. The "Make America Healthy Again" movement certainly seems fixated not so much on pushing Americans toward generally healthier lifestyles—laying off the full-sugar Coke and DoorDash orders, and hitting the gym a few times a week—but on eliminating a battery of "bad" ingredients, mostly individual food additives. Already, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has moved to nix synthetic dyes from processed foods. But a bowl of Froot Loops—even if it has beet juice and turmeric instead of Red 40—is still a sugar-packed bowl of Froot Loops.
The idea that health requires completely cutting out a few bad indulgences has long haunted diet messaging. Rather than making healthier choices that balance pleasure and health, it's common to find diet fads premised upon extremism. Depending on who you ask, health is yours—as long as you ditch gluten, cooked foods, or anything other than steak. In such an environment, it shouldn't be surprising that total abstinence is on the rise—not only are we lonelier, we're convinced that the road to an early grave is paved with moderation.
But my real suspicion here is that complaints about the health risks of alcohol are merely a cover for anxiety around the social risks present in places where alcohol is frequently consumed. Concerns about health provide a simple and hard-to-dismiss cover for a lifestyle choice born more from social isolation than anything else.
Ultimately, so many things worth doing pose health risks. Riding your bike on a city street, swimming in the ocean, eating hot dogs and peach cobbler at the backyard barbecue, and taking a puff of a stranger's cigarette after a concert all pose real dangers to your health. But they are also utterly delightful. A life lived without indulging in any risks is not necessarily a life optimally lived.
