A shocking admission from a study by Rutgers and Harvard Health. “Young adults viewing social media posts from influencers involving alcohol were more likely to desire participation in drinking”. My questions immediately is, are these young people more vulnerable to peer pressures than in previous generations, more addicted to social media and its assessment of them?

I wonder aloud at times whether we have brought up the last couple of generations to be too polite. Do we need to teach people today to be openly “rude” – My “boomer generation” were effectively brought up to mock authority and challenge arrogance, often physically. Anyone trying to tell you what to do was mocked and often abused. That has been labelled as “awful” today, but I wonder whether the alternative is not more sinister. I have never been in any danger from polite internet fraudsters or street thieves, because when they say their “script” I abuse them roundly and hang up, or raise my voice and push past them while accelerating.

What’s “cool” according to the “influencer” is what they are paid to push, so my generation simply labels them as “paid BS peddlers”, but the vulnerable catchment appears to have grown significantly – and all too many are “influenced” by people paid to lie. No change there for in the past we just called it sales, marketing and advertising… Please, let’s be ruder, if that’s what it takes to stop vulnerable people adopting behaviours that may mentally hurt them.

Another thing that research is finally demonstrating is harmful, is high-sugar-intake. We already have known for decades that diets high in sugar and the white-carbs generally will cause diabetes and cancer, but the research quoted in the Journal of Mood and Anxiety Disorders on 3 March this year noted that Intake of Sugary Drinks is tied to rising teen anxiety risk.  There is a “consistent link between high intake and increased risk” of anxiety.

Since the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1830, when the market for sugar needed expansion to feed the freed slaves then at work on their own behalf, the sugar companies have been ensuring that there is sugar in almost everything. White carbs generally are best cut back seriously for lowering of heart, cancer and diabetes risk, but the impact on mood and anxiety is understandable when we reflect upon the primal “Fight-Flight” reaction.

Sugar changes energy and mood within 20 minutes but then the “crash” will trigger the Fight-Flight control centre as its felt as a “threat” message and the addiction or anxiety cycle begins.  Just “can it”, and I don’t mean switch to canned drinks. LOL.  It is anxiety management, but also diabetes, cancer and cardio-vascular risk lowering. Drop levels of white carbs and increase level of exercise – it’s a matter of survival, not just mood.