Youth and drinking


In a broader framework of sustainability culture, the Simone Cesaretti Foundation focuses on a line of action favouring calls for ideas and the cultural products of the young.

Alcohol is the leading cause of death among young Europeans. Over-drinking by the young represents a destructive “potential” on a social, cultural and economic plane.

Ignorance of the risks involved in over-drinking is flanked by a “cultural” type of problem. The values reflected by society are highly contradictory, and when the weight-bearing structure of a system is fragile, and media imagery overflows with hyperbole, the social desirability of alcohol allows one to overstep the boundary between use and misuse, rule and infringement. Furthermore, different degrees of judgement can result from the fact that certain kinds of behaviour among youth seem to gain legitimacy in the light, personal spaces of social networks, far from the burden of social control by parents, schools or employers. Young people who over-drink do not feel they are becoming a danger, to themselves and to others, or in any case they think they can control it. There is, therefore, a reduced awareness of the attendant social and health issues and a downright underestimation of the risks, given by an overestimation of one’s own ability.

Unfortunately, the various media campaigns designed to tackle the consumption of alcohol among young people have so far failed to produce the desired effect, which confirms there are shortcomings in assessing the behaviour of youth and their system of values.

There is therefore an urgent need for a genuine policy of intervention that develops from the bottom – that is, from the young themselves – not with the aim of imposing rules but of suggesting a sharing of purposes. In this sense, universities have a symbolic and physical relevance as the fundamental environment of training and practice wherein to activate horizontal forms of knowledge. That is why the project aims to raise the consciousness of youth in building affirmative life paths.

Availing itself of its institutional participants and its communications network, the Simone Cesaretti Foundation intends to set up the project entitled “Youth, suspended between life and alcohol”.

Leave a Comment