Binge drinking among adults under 35 has fallen steadily since 2016. That's the headline most people would expect. What the data actually shows is more complicated: younger adults are still the heaviest binge drinkers by a wide margin, but the gap between age groups is narrowing in ways that have little to do with young people getting sober.

Young Adults Still Lead on Binge Drinking, But Their Rates Are Sliding

In 2014, 25.1% of 18-to-24-year-olds reported binge drinking. By 2024, that figure had dropped to 20.6%, a decline of 4.5 percentage points over a decade. The 25-to-34 group followed the same arc: 25.7% in 2014, down to 22.7% in 2024.

The steepest drop came after 2017. Both younger cohorts peaked around 2016-2017 (25.2% for 18-24, 27.2% for 25-34) and then fell through 2020 and into the most recent survey years. The 2020 figures, 22.0% for 18-24 and 24.8% for 25-34, held through the pandemic period and kept declining through 2023 and 2024.

So younger adults are still binge drinking at roughly five times the rate of adults 65 and older (4.4% in 2014, and the oldest cohort has remained the lowest throughout). But the direction of travel is clearly downward for the youngest groups.

Middle-Aged Adults Are Closing the Gap

Here's where the story gets less comfortable. While 18-to-34-year-olds were pulling back, the 35-to-54 cohorts were moving in the opposite direction. Adults aged 35-44 went from 18.4% binge drinking prevalence in 2014 to 20.2% by 2016. The 45-to-54 group climbed from 15.4% to 16.7% over the same stretch.

That convergence matters. By 2016, the gap between 18-24-year-olds (25.2%) and 35-44-year-olds (20.2%) had narrowed to 5 points. In 2014, it was nearly 7 points. The youngest adults are still the top binge-drinking cohort, but the distance between them and middle-aged adults has compressed.

Heavy Drinking Tells a Different Story by Sex

Binge drinking and heavy drinking aren't the same measure, and the heavy drinking data for 2023-2024 complicates the age narrative further.

Among men, the 35-44 age group actually posts the highest heavy drinking rate in both 2023 (7.9%) and 2024 (7.1%), higher than any younger cohort. Among women, 18-to-24-year-olds and 35-to-44-year-olds are essentially tied at 6.3% and 6.4% respectively in 2024.

The female heavy drinking numbers carry a specific signal: 18-to-24-year-old women reported higher heavy drinking rates than their male peers in both 2023 (6.3% vs. 5.1%) and 2024 (5.9% vs. 5.0%). That's a reversal of the pattern seen in older cohorts, where men consistently outpace women. For every age group 25 and older, men's heavy drinking rates exceed women's. Only among the youngest adults does that flip.

The answer to the title question is: not quite, but closer than it used to be. Younger adults still binge drink more than any other age group. But heavy drinking peaks in the 35-44 cohort, not the 18-24 one, and the youngest women are now outpacing the youngest men on that measure. A decade ago, that combination of findings would have seemed unlikely.