QUOTE
Booze binges are catching
Hard-drinking culture might be down to people copying others' drunken antics.
Britain’s binge-drinking boom might be due not to moral decline or the availability of cheap drink, but just to people’s tendency to copy their friends, say two researchers.
They have shown that computer models can simulate a sudden upswing in binge drinking by using the effects of social networks alone — without taking into account, say, longer licensing hours or cut-price booze.
“Fashion is sufficient to explain the spread of binge drinking,” says economist Paul Ormerod of Volterra Consulting in London, UK. “If you don’t take account of this while trying to reverse this trend, there’ll be a high chance of failure.”
Hard-drinking culture might be down to people copying others' drunken antics.
Britain’s binge-drinking boom might be due not to moral decline or the availability of cheap drink, but just to people’s tendency to copy their friends, say two researchers.
They have shown that computer models can simulate a sudden upswing in binge drinking by using the effects of social networks alone — without taking into account, say, longer licensing hours or cut-price booze.
“Fashion is sufficient to explain the spread of binge drinking,” says economist Paul Ormerod of Volterra Consulting in London, UK. “If you don’t take account of this while trying to reverse this trend, there’ll be a high chance of failure.”
