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Millennial Dating & Drinking Trends

Drinking Culture in Millennial Dating Scene

Millennial Dating & Drinking Trends

Dating has changed significantly over the last few years, especially for millennials. More and more young people are meeting potential dates through apps such as Tinder and Bumble rather than more traditional methods like setups. Making connections on dating apps often sets up millennials to meet up with strangers at restaurants and bars.  

Dating is a nerve-wracking thing in itself, whether drinks are involved are not. In many instances, you are meeting someone you’ve only exchanged casual messages with online, trying to put your best foot forward, and a lot of the time your date revolves around meeting for drinks. While we know drinking is a common part of the millennial dating scene, how prevalent is it? And how many alcoholic drinks does the average millennial have before and during a date? We surveyed hundreds of millennials and asked about their drinking habits around dating. Keep reading to see what we found.

Millennials’ Pre-Date Drinking Habits

Average Number of Drinks Millennials Consume Before a Date

 

While preparing for a first date, over 50 percent of millennials say they have 1-2 drinks. Interestingly, 39 percent of millennials say they don’t have anything to drink at all before a date. So when gearing up for the date, a millennial already has about two drinks in them and then while on the date, over 60 percent say they usually consume another 1-2 drinks resulting in a total of 4 drinks over the course of an evening.

How Much Millennials Are Drinking On a First Date

Average Number of Drinks Consumed on a first date by Millennial Men and Women

 

A small percentage (1.67%) of women say they have six or more drinks on a first date, but the average millennial thinks two to three drinks is the acceptable amount to have. When thinking about what would cause someone to drink before and during a date, we asked “what is the primary reason you feel you need to drink on a date?” The primary reason for alcohol consumption for over 60 percent of respondents is to ease anxiety and nervousness.

What Happens When You Drink Too Much on a First Date?

Negative Repercussions Resulting from Drinking Too Much on a Date

Drinking in excess can make people do and say things that they might not have while sober. 50 percent of millennials admit to having too much to drink and saying or doing things on a date that they later regretted. And 33 percent of millennials have made a sexual decision they later regretted as a result of drinking too much.

Having too much to drink can also lead to blacking out causing you to forget things that you may have done. Shockingly, nearly 11% of millennial men say they have blacked out one to two times during a date.

Number of Times Millennial Men and Women Have Blacked Out on a Date

Meeting at bars and restaurants seems to be the go-to date location for millennials. According to respondents the preferred date location for 1 in 2 millennials is a restaurant. After meeting at the restaurant, men are most likely to order a beer and women order a glass of wine for their go-to drink.

Most Popular Go-To First Date Drinks

While many millennials agree that getting a drink is a good first date option, 62% say they wouldn’t be more or less likely to go out with someone if the date involved drinking.

Percentage of Millennials More Likely to Go Out With Someone if it Involved Drinking

In addition to the above, we’ve included more interesting insights we uncovered in our survey below.

  • Less than 5% of millennials think it’s acceptable to not consume alcohol on the first date.
  • Almost 80% of millennials say whether or not someone drinks wouldn’t affect their desire to go out with someone.
  • 31.5% of millennials feel the desire to drink more on a bad date.
  • 47% of millennials have accepted a drink from a date just because they were buying or offering it, not because they wanted it.
  • Over 50% of people would be willing to go on a second date with someone even if they had too much to drink on a first date.
  • 1 in 10 millennials think binge drinking is having 9-10 drinks.

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SOURCES

  • Original survey of 400 millennials
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