In Europe, I think it is more common tbh. Even in the UK my dad would let me try making cocktails etc. at the weekend when I was 17.
It meant when I got to university I knew how much I could drink (although as a student I was too poor to drink much anyway haha) whereas there were people drinking like half a bottle of vodka.
I don't drink any alcohol nowadays so it's not like it turned me into an alcoholic either.
Its usually in the UK in my experience to give teenagers wine, beer or cider with meals.
16 year olds can currently have them with a meal in a restaurant or pub. Until a few years ago it was 14.
> It meant when I got to university I knew how much I could drink (although as a student I was too poor to drink much anyway haha) whereas there were people drinking like half a bottle of vodka.
I gave my kids some alcoholic drinks for just that reason.
I think the evidence points the other way. Giving younger people a drink with their meal during adolescence leads to more drinking problems later in life.
As far as I know the evidence points to getting drunk younger leads to more drinking problems later in life. Drinking moderately younger leads to fewer.
Is that data from kids who drank without adult supervision? It's hard to tell without more context if you're proving or disproving the point that's been made, which is that maybe learning how to drink responsibly with parents could lead to better outcomes than binging with buddies at parties when there are no adults around, which is a lot more common when adult are super strict about it (I'm saying this as someone who literally never drinks and never has; I've literally not had a beer or a glass of wine in my life, so I'm about as far from an apologist as I can imagine)
IIRC its kids who drank without adult supervision or with adults who allowed them to drink excessively (e.g. people who had alcohol problems themselves).
I definitely think it is a result of learning more responsible habits from adults, with supervision of what and how much they are allowed to drink. There is a huge difference between having a glass of wine (and maybe starting with diluted wine as mine did) with a family meal and spirits with mixers with friends who themselves do not have good habits.
I think this applies to a lot of other things too: kids need to learn good habits and behaviour from adults in general. I sometimes wonder whether the worst effect on kids of phones is that they get less attention from distracted adults.
I don't think you're wrong, but I also don't think that keeping phones from kids will really make a huge impact. I have trouble imagining that the same parents who are (according to this framing) using phones as an excuse not to interact with their kids in as healthy ways wouldn't suddenly start interacting with them in healthy ways if the kids started needed more attention; they'd probably just interact with them in other unhealthy ways, which would not be possible to enumerate in order to try to legislate against.
On the other hand, I totally agree with your last point! I find it quite plausible that maybe parents having phones directly detracts from the quality of the parenting that a child receives; if we're saying these devices/apps are literally addictive, it stands to reason that a parent might get hooked to the detriment of their child, and with a modern perspective of addiction, it's not due to a character flaw as much as just a fundamental bug in our biology and psychology as humans. It would honestly make more sense to me to restrict the use of smartphones/social media for parents than children, but of course that has zero chance of happening (and there are are surely a myriad of downsides for this approach as well), so in general I'm just skeptical of this sort of thing being enforced from the top-down despite being pretty extreme in my left-wing views (and therefore not particularly adverse to government regulation in cases where I think it makes sense).
It's interesting how many conclusions are being assumed here
In many countries cultures, strict parents/laws are seen as loving and protecting. Being told "don't drink untl you're at least 20" isn't seen as "forbidden fruit" you're being denied.
What countries do you have in mind? I find it hard to believe you can tell teenagers not to do some kind of fun activity based purely on age and cause no significant feelings of forbidden fruit.
