Every generation has some product/ingredient that they didn’t know was dangerous at the time: tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc. What is that item for this generation?
Plastic. Its in your blood ffs
This may be true but I hate the practice of referring to "plastic" as if it's a single substance. It's a bunch of different materials that don't really have that much in common with each other, especially from a health/toxicity standpoint.
For example, people treat it as common sense that "you shouldn't burn plastic" because the smoke is "toxic". For PVC this is totally true, it makes very nasty stuff like dioxin that will poison you. But on the other hand you can burn polyethylene (think milk jug) and it's no more toxic than burning a candle. Definitely way healthier to breath than wood campfire smoke, for example.
There's also such a silly pattern where people learn some chemical might have some effect on the body and suddenly everyone is up in arms about it. For example Bisphenol A in many applications was replaced by the very similar Bisphenol S just so things could be labeled "BPA Free". BPS probably has similar estrogenic effects to BPA.
I'd say the moral of the story is be wary of received wisdom about chemical toxicity from people who aren't chemists.
Not only BPAs but many chemicals like BPAs can cause birth defects because our bodies think they are estrogen.
If this worries you, read the books It Starts With the Egg and Grain Brain.
They both suggest that not only what you eat, but how it's prepared can affect the health of a child.
For instance it's a big no-no, according to It Starts With the Egg, to heat most plastics in the microwave. The heat breaks the plastic down, it can get in your blood, your body will think it's estrogen, and they don't even know the full effects of this yet.
So think about
These chemicals are not just in food:
Also be wary of people that say they are chemists on the internet when oil, plastics, and guns have mostly only been researched by their manufacturers. All totally safe.
Social media. It wasn't until very recently that people started to realize just how harmful it actually is.
Less social media IMO, more the weaponization of techniques first researched in the 60s-80s made real and pushed via automaton to all corners of the public internet.
The reason you become vulnerable is because you abdicate control (most had no idea) of your feed to providers that own domain names.
This was a co-option of how the internet worked previously.
I agree, and I think it's even more broader: Anxiety and stress. These are extremely dangerous and underrated, and even exploited by many (e.g. news, politicians, workplace, social media, marketing). It's like sticking a cigarette into your mouth without you able to immediately take it out.
Sugar. People don't realize how bad it is for you and how addictive it is.
Sugar is not bad. Abuse of sugar is bad. Sugar is absolutely fine, as long as one doesn't exceed. Problem is that in American-inspired diets sugar is everywhere at gigantic doses
I'd go with high fructose corn syrup
Fructose is typically fine when it's paired with equal amounts of glucose, like in fruit. Your body has a really hard time processing high concentrations of fructose alone, which is how most sugary food is produced now a days since high fructose is a much cheaper method of sweetening food than a balanced mix of sugars.
It all turns into glucagon in the body. It does the same shit in the end.
Totally. Sugar should be seen similarly like alcohol or cigarettes regarding the addictiveness. But we are consuming it everyday and feed our children with it.
This will be the next big class action suit similar to tobacco. Big sugar has been operating just like tobacco, denying negative side effects and lobbying at state and federal levels to stifle bans and regulatory actions.
America is on the verge of a sytemeic failure when it comes to health care, and a lot of that is due to the prevalence of diabetes in our aging population.
Right now one in every three medicare dollars goes towards treating diabetes, a perfectly preventable disease. It's not sustainable, and it's literally siphoning off our ability to treat other ailments.
I get withdrawal symptoms on a regular basis. Cold sweat, ravenous appetite, weak limbs, shaky hands. It's horrible, really.
Micro plastics. We were advertising them in facial scrubs ffs.
This right here. We are undoubtedly the plastic generation. And it's not letting up any time soon; our kids will be included in this cohort as well. Banning plastic bags in cities is next to useless when everything we eat, everything we drink, and everything we buy is wrapped in plastic.
My country is exceptionally bad about this.
Buy a plastic package of crackers? It will be filled with smaller packages of crackers all wrapped in plastic with a plastic freshener pack for each one. I am not exaggerating. I am not sure I have ever bought something that didn't have at least two degrees of plastic wrap.
We did stop giving plastic bags out at cashiers unless requested, but that means shitall when everything you buy is triple-wrapped to begin with.
It's mostly from polyester and cotton/poly blends. They dredged the ocean floor and looked at the microplastics it dug up. Sourced it from clothing mostly.
Plastic in general, except that we know and just keep doing it. I'm trying to use less plastic if I can but it's frickin everywhere. If you want to buy an ear of corn it's wrapped in plastic as if it isn't already wrapped in nature's protection. Seriously people.
This, big time. Pretty much every product or package contains some plastics, including so many one-time use disposable ones. Plastics are infesting the Earth from pole to pole, they are everywhere. Clothes are made of plastic, do laundry and a bunch of microplastics go down the drain. Car tires drop microplastics as they wear. And then there's all the large ones we can see like plastic bags, bottles, etc.
Memory unlocked: "smooth, round microscrubbers" https://youtu.be/Hn15dtxL00A
So, the movie The Graduate was prophetic.
Perfluoroalkyls aka PFAS appear to screw with all manner of body functions.
Since you mention tobacco: It's worth noting that the smoking/cancer connection was noticed long before peak cigarette smoking in the population. Prior to WWII, lung cancer was considered a rare disease. That changed with the mass marketing of cigarettes.
Zembla, a Dutch independent journalism TV program, made a video regarding a big PFAS cover-up in The Netherlands: https://youtu.be/y3kzHc-eV88. If you ask me, PFAS is worse the plastic.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/y3kzHc-eV88
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
While what you say is generally true, I would add that many diseases were "rare" in pre-modern times because they were not easily diagnosis at the time or because people were killed earlier by something else that is now treatable.
Sure, but incidence of lung cancer went way up as tobacco consumption rose heavily in the early 20th century.
There's a couple studies showing that even though your body can't process and remove PFAS and it just keeps accumulating, if you donate blood regularly you reduce the amount in your body by a bit each time. There are other slight health benefits to donating blood and lots of places will pay you for it. So if you can reduce your PFAS intake and donate blood you can slowly get rid of it. I use arch linux btw.
I also use Arch btw
How do I avoid these?
Starbright boat polish contains and advertises that it has PTEF. Think about that , a product designed to be rubbed all over l boats until it "wears off" in waterways. I used to use it ( it is a good polish) until I realized how messed up that is.
A lot of good lubricants and dry lubricants and anti-sieze bolt coatings have PFAs. Most waterproof fabrics like tents, goretex jackets and boots, waterproofing sprays, etc also contain them. Atleast waxed canvas and wool is making a big comeback in the outdoors communities.
Non stick cookware. Water repellent and stain resistant items and coatings. Stuff like that.
Social media.
Agreed. Feels weird how normalied addictive social media behavior has become.
I think it's because we're social, we find it more normal to do parasocial activities than some other addictive behaviors which are often antisocial. But the reality is parasocial is just 3x antisocial in a trench coat.
Also how impossible the thought of a social media free future already is
Sadly I can't foresee a future where social media isn't a dominant force. Like what could possibly displace it at this point? Only dismantling GAFAM could make it work.
Yes I am aware of the irony of posting this comment on social media.
Microplastics are the new lead, and screens are the new tobacco, in my opinion. Overuse of sugar in processed foods is the new version of how they'd cut food with inedible stuff like sawdust back in the day.
My mom become an avid anti-plastic person after watching videos and reading things about the damages that microplastics do to the health, nature and the planet. She does everything she can to avoid using plastic things!
When plastics were first introduced to consumers it was sold as indestructible, it will never wear out, never degrade! People were actually concerned at the time, why anyone buy disposable products that never break down, won't they just pile up forever?
After much lobbying the concept of recycling plastics was introduced to help consumers stop worrying about all this indestructible waste and help push the sales of cheap plastic products. Your mom has the right idea, not buying it in the first place is the only way to drive demand down.
I'm not at the point in life where I can really avoid plastic, but I aspire to get there eventually.
Social Media
Microplastics
I think we all know that ones bad.
sure, but no one's doing anything about it
Plastics.
Yes, all plastics. Even bpa free plastics leak estrogenic chemicals into food, and fpod is often stored in plastic containers. Even milk cartons are lined with plastic.
Teflon(nonstick coated pans and pots) arr similarly terrible
Shoes with a raised heel is bad for your knees. (Easily measurably bad. Especially for running)
Vapes.
What will happen is one or another of the flavorings used will be safe to eat because of stomach acid and digestion, but inhaling it into delicate lungs will cause disease long term. Look up popcorn workers lung to see how a common butter flavoring in the past that was meant for eating on popcorn harmed factory workers breathing it in daily.
One of the existing vape flavors... or a new one... will eventually be shown to cause simular lung disease due to daily breathing it in never truly being studied. Someone with a favorite flavor will use it for years, like any smoker with a favorite brand of cigs, then probably get sick from constant long term exposure.
As somebody who vaped for a long time, I kind of disagree with this one. Of every method for quitting smoking, vaping was the easiest and most effective. It let me titrate down to eventually 0 nicotine juice, which let me stop altogether. I only very rarely vape anymore, I keep my mod around in case I am ever out drinking and get an urge, but it is definitely the reason I was able to quit smoking.
The popcorn lung thing is kind of an urban legend, there is no case of any vaper ever getting it from vaping, but diacetyl (the additive in question) has been discontinued in basically all juice just in case anyway.
The usual mantra in vaping communities was always to tell people that if you weren't a smoker already, don't start vaping. Is it better than smoking? Almost assuredly, but it's still not going to be better than just breathing cleaning air. The recommendation was always as a transition away from smoking. It's one of the few hobbies we would congratulate each other over leaving.
If you don't vape or smoke already, don't start though.
If it's so effective at helping people quit, why do you still vape?
I quit smoking a decade ago. I don't occasionally have a cigarette. I don't EVER have a cigarette. Or vape, because I'm an adult.
I've never thought vapes were not-dangerous. Do people really think that? I assume they're safer than cigarettes but less-bad doesn't mean good.
Yeah the sentiment surrounding vapes generally is that they're better than cigarettes. Most people still want to entirely quit vaping, quit nicotine altogether.
Unfortunately, vapes are super enticing to younger people. Even ignoring the underage market entirely, young people love vaping. I'm in the army, so maybe my demographics are skewed, but EVERYBODY is vaping super high nicotine disposable vapes these days.
When I first started vaping, nicotine concrentations were commonly 3 or 6 mg/ml, now 50mg/ml is common.
I think it depends on the vape (and ingredients) in question. Cannabis vapes from dispensaries are required to not have additives. They're all tested thoroughly. So those would be "safer" than things with added oils or flavoring. I'm not sure if they're better than vaporizing the actual plant flower instead of concentrate.
Nicotine based vapes, I can only assume use some interesting ingredients since it's not just a compressed/heated/iced tobacco plant. I've never used one, but I've also never seen someone ask for test results of a nicotine vape (or have them provided).
Tremedous amount of lung damage in the near future. At the most common sense level it makes zero sense to inhale shit into your lungs.
Microplastics and plastic related byproducts, like phtalates (which are connected with a decreased fertility in mammals)
I'm positive that the long term effects of these substances, that can be found in every link of the food chain nowadays, will be discussed a lot in the future
Automobiles. Especially in the USA they are causing a public health crisis, environmental crisis, qualify of life crisis. I grew up loving them and they have uses but I'm fully convinced in the future they should be a luxury used for specific tasks or trips rather than the only form of transportation available.
Plastic and sugar are good answers, but cars are right there in terms of harm and way more acceptable despite that.
Tiktok.
You said product, and I mean this legitimately. Not because of meme hate or hating on what is trendy, but because it is and has been a tool of the CCP. This isn't really in question, and it was one of the first large platforms to entirely erase the idea of a timeline and fully devote itself only to a algorithm feed. One that bytedance has put their finger on the scales of many times.
The effect this has is hard to quantify, but the postmortem on it is going to be incredible as we unpack exactly how much this influenced the trends and politics among zoomers, and to what extent.
Billionaires
Not only, but especially if you participate in a ride in their own-built water vehicles
Vapes. The less regulated and underground production, which is easily finding its way to the high street, is building to be a repeat of the tobacco issues with cigarettes.
Surprised this isn't higher tbh.
My mom switched from chain smoking regular cigs to vaping. While I'm glad she's significantly reduced her lung cancer risk, who knows what it's really doing?
It's better than smoking but definitely still unhealthy, especially chain vaping like many do. You should talk to her, let her know you're worried about her health, and see if she might try reducing intake. I quit smoking cold turkey three years ago. It wasn't easy, I was extremely irritable for a month, but the cravings became bearable after that. An easy trade for higher quality of life and longer life expectancy with less wasted money.
While with tabbaco, as @fubo@lemmy.world said
the smoking/cancer connection was noticed long before peak cigarette smoking in the population. Prior to WWII, lung cancer was considered a rare disease. That changed with the mass marketing of cigarettes.
With vaping, lots of studies on pg/vg vaping was done and not much has been found. The UK gov supports it for years now. Most of the bad name of vaping caused by people who didn't bother to research or people who confused it with the EVALI cases,which bought their products illegally and contained vitamin E
Yeah, the 2019-2020 vaping lung illness outbreak had nothing whatsoever to do with nicotine vaping.
It was specifically caused by black-market THC vape cartridges containing vitamin E acetate as a filler. This chemical was marketed to black-market vape makers as "Honey Cut", intended to dilute or "cut" cannabis extracts while keeping the mixture thick so it looked good to customers.
Legit cannabis vapes don't include fillers; a typical California dispensary vape cartridge contains ~90% cannabinoids by weight. Nicotine vapes are water-based rather than oil-based, so vitamin E acetate would not mix with them.
Vitamin E acetate sounds like a healthy thing — it's a vitamin, right? — but it's not. When it's heated in a vape, it produces a variety of chemicals that would be entertaining to the organic chemist — but no good for your lungs. You don't need to be inhaling alkenes or ketenes, to say nothing of carcinogenic benzene.
(Hey stoners! Don't use black-market carts, just like you wouldn't smoke "synthetic cannabis" aka "spice". If you want to vape instead of smoking, and you're not in a place with good dispensaries with lab-tested vape products, use a dry-herb vape and plain ol' herb.)
I said this in the other comment, but vaping is the one thing that helped me successfully quit smoking.
Is it healthy? No, at the absolute best it would be neutral. You shouldn't be breathing anything other than clean air. However, I have little doubt that it is better than smoking. My lungs are in great shape now, and I feel just generally much better. If people want to continue to do research on longterm effects of vaping, great!
Are there issues about underage vaping? Sure, but that is a regulation/enforcement issue and shouldn't be used to punish adults with. I have friends that went back to smoking because of vaping being made illegal where they lived, and you cannot convince me that is better for their health.
A lot of the issues we have had about vaping are regulatory issues with stuff like the Vitamin E incident, not a problem with the underlying concept.
Endocrine disrupters - mainly from plastics
Vaping fluid, hydrophobic coatings
Not sure why people keep saying microplastics. That's been known for a long time now.
Vaping "fluid" actually is not 100% safe which is proven, but it is 95% safer than smoking cigarettes as proven by the UK Royal college of physicians and is useful as a smoking cessation tool. I do not condone anyone to start vaping if you do not smoke, but would recommend going to a local vape shop and look at using it as a path to quit smoking if you do so already, and lower your nicotine level over time, and then quit vaping when your down to 0mg of nicotine. Disposable vapes are waste waste waste. I hate that convenience stores sell them.
Source: worked in the industry for a decade and consider myself quite knowledgeable on ecigarettes ("vapes") and the Eliquid ("vape fluid") they use.
I mean, idk about vaping. I think we all knew that was dangerous lol.
The way that it has been positioned by the smoking industry as being better/healthier than traditional smoking.
Wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be worse.
The way that it has been positioned by the smoking industry as being better/healthier than traditional smoking.
Wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be worse.
Sugar, especially in the US where it's literally added into everything. What's worse is the alternative (substitutes like aspartame) might also be a candidate and we just don't know it yet because enough time hasn't passed to study the long term effects. I try to take stevia as much as possible because it's more "natural", but only a few sugar-free products use it over aspartame. I read recently the WHO still considers aspartame as a carcinogen, but only in excessive amounts, like several glasses of soda a day.
I don't understand why everything has to be so sickly sweet. Give me a soda with real sugar, but like 1/16 the amount
I like excessive sweetness in all of my beverages since I've been drinking excessively sweet beverages all my life. I got the taste buds of a toddler. Still, give me aspartame over sugar, even on the off chance that the meager amount I consume gives me cancer some day that's probably better than what too much sugar would do to me.
Ive been buying no added sugar cranberry juice (5 cal/serving so low sugar even including the natural sugars) I pour it into a massive dispenser and water it down, basically 6 parts water to 1 part juice with the intent being it make slightly fruit flavored water - it still taste like juice! I can't imagine drinking it straight, we as a society are addicted to sweetness.
Isn't aspartame one of the most closely studied ingredients?
An analysis on a recent study puts it in the Group 2b category and you need to be consuming around 14 cans per day to exceed the recommended intake.
I stopped eating/drinking fake sugar because I felt like it desensitized my sense of taste. I felt like I was dulling my senses to what actually sugar was, thus making me eat more. Idk if that's actually true but it felt like it.
Marketing. We put a person on the moon because we were scared of the space race, and then we spent the next 50 years figuring out how to make rich people richer by manipulating human behavior and gamifying everything so you buy into the buy more stuff you don't need and click more stuff you don't care about. We've gotten so good at it, we only need a 10 second short to advertise stuff to you.
This affects everything we do down to its core and will likely be the cause of astronomical ADHD rates in the future.
you're grasping at something deeper here. humans have an underlying tendency to be gullible and easily manipulateable. we need to pour funds and funds into the education system and move more focus onto critical thinking, logical fallacies and self-esteem / self-image, as it plays a large role in calling out injustices and building an accurate world view
imo its the no. 1 reason the world is so fucked. we believe evrything we're told because it appeals to a sense of self-empowerment (our tribe over theirs). hunter gatherer tribes would sometimes literally slaughter each other to survive. it is in our instincts to be able to be convinced that other groups of people are our enemies, when really everyone thinking the exact opposite would be heaven on earth, except for the ultra greedy
So true. The only way that the human race is to survive and prosper into the far future is for us to move to a mindset of the whole world's population being one big tribe, as far as I am concerned. We will eventually destroy ourselves if we keep with the 'us vs them' mindset.
Star Trek was definitely on to something.
we need to pour funds and funds into the education system and move more focus onto critical thinking, logical fallacies and self-esteem / self-image, as it plays a large role in calling out injustices and building an accurate world view
Nope. Education is our own responsibility. Leave it to the state or organisations and get brain-raped. Teach yourself, teach your kids, teach your friends etc. For the most part we need to purify our own knowledge and learn to learn on our own.
You are right about critical thinking and such.
Please, please, please, don’t be caffeine! 🤞
Coffee has been around for thousands of years but I'm pretty sure %100 pure caffeine could kill if you ingested enough at once
It's not the purity, it's the dose, like any chemical the dose makes the poison.
The FDA recommends staying under 5 cups (400 mg) a day to avoid negative effects with an average person.
It says toxic effects can be observed with rapid consumption of 12 cups, or 0.15 tablespoons of pure caffeine.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/spilling-beans-how-much-caffeine-too-much
This mystery can be resolved by googling 'ld50 caffeine.' ~750mg is toxic and 10,000mg can kill people
The median lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine is estimated between 150 to 200 mg per kilogram but reports of lethal intoxications have been made with doses as low as 57 mg per kilogram. Personally, 300mg is pretty much as far as I want to go.
Yes, caffeine can kill. https://www.livescience.com/caffeine-overdose-200-cups-of-coffee
Same as cocaine
Caffeine isn't terrible for you in moderate amounts, and coffee is actually a decent source or antioxidants especially if you don't get them elsewhere in your diet, but this is independent of caffeine itself (decaf has antioxidants). Daily high doses of caffeine is definitely bad for your health, and can negatively impact other health issues you may have such as anxiety, depression, etc. Do your research, talk to your doctor, and consider decreasing your daily intake.
Corn. It is a fact that the number of autoimmune diseases are rising. I read a NHS study comparing the data of the last 30 or so years and of right now 1 of 10 people in the UK will get an autoimmune disease at some point in their live such as diabetes, MS, Parkinson,... 30 years ago it was like 1 out of 50. And one common thing in countries with a higher autoimmune disease rate is a lot of corn products, like corn starch, corn sirup,... Right now the final proof is missing cause the studies just started. And maybe it is not corn and something completely different, but the stakes are high it is corn.
I feel like with what you've stated it is far too early to point to corn itself as the cause. Their are so many things that have grown in usage these past 30 years I'm not sure how they could confidently say it is corn itself doing it.
Not only could it be almost anything that's increased in our general environment, but better means to identify specific diseases. Diagnostics and knowledge have advanced in the 30 or so years this study apparently covers, and can account for an "increase" in the prevalence of auto-immune diseases.
In theory, there's still some diseases that while well understood, HCPs still take excruciatingly long to diagnose and prefer to explore routes like mental health and exclusionary diagnoses first, which could suggest prevalence is higher still.
Nah, sugar and plastics.
Corn has a lot of sugar and is put into everything, so it's closely related - but I'm almost 100% it's just sugar in general
This is correlation. Corn (or high fructose corn syrup) is a common ingredient in ultra processed foods, which we already know are the cause of the obesity epidemic. Pre-Colombian societies ate plenty of corn.
It’s also not just about sugar as some other comments have suggested. Humans are built to eats carbs and some tribal people even today get a huge amount of calories from honey without any obesity.
The problem is the way sugar (and fat and other ingredients) are processed in industrial food production. Studies have shown that if you give people food that contains the exact same proportion of fats and sugars, in whole food and junk food form, people will eat more of the junk food. This is the problem. Whole foods are generally all fine.
It's wild to me how much stuff has corn in it. A few years ago SwiftonSecurity did a big thread on Twitter all about corn and its frightening.
https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2020/02/19/disturbing-corn-fact-everything-is-made-from-corn/
That sounds a lot like correlation not causation. Countries that use a lot of corn syrup also use a lot of every other food industry chemical, and somewhere in that chemical soup could be something real, but it's probably not the corn
If it's not known wether it's dangerous, how would anyone reply? With their guts?
This question can only get non proven answers and risks getting answered the top health infox of the moment.
"smart" devices aka Internet asbestos
It was only 13 years ago that the FDA changed its stance on BPA from "safe" to "some concern".
Social media. All forms. Including this one.
Absolutely. As a parent I feel like the time is coming when our kids will basically tell us that unfettered access to technology has left them traumatized. Snapchat connects them to all their friends and also connects to their insecurities and loneliness. It’s a poison that you can’t avoid. An addiction that you can’t overcome because it holds all of your joy and pain at once.
Personally, I feel like I have a balance in my 40’s but I feel really bad for kids right now. They are fucked.
I hope someday they stop listening to their parents, overthrow the corporations and billionaires in power and get rid of all the phony fucks in politics. We have not prepared a good world for them. We failed them.
This, this and this. Remember this? That's what we'll look like to future generations when they look back at our Metagram Tweet Toks
*I think it's about to be the weather
Plastics
Microplastics and PFAS
No, seriously, these two will kill Earth, and us
Getting really speculative, but maybe Infinite Scrolling and similar UX design patterns. I think we learned it was dangerous pretty early in, but I have a feeling there isn't currently a widespread understanding of just how badly things like infinite scrolling shortcircuit parts of the brain and cause issues with attention and time regulation in large populations.
If I was more researched on it, I might include infinite short-form content feeds of almost any type to be honest, which may just be another way of saying social media.
By your definition we don't know yet. Ask again in 10 years.
Except the sad fact is in every one of those examples, they did know. It's just nobody cared because it would hurt the bottom line.
Or they didn’t care because they succumbed to the arguments made by the people who were protecting their own bottom line.
Technicallythetruth
Yes we do. It's silica sand.
Don't forget teflon...
ToS for digital products
Probably digital screen exposure. The impact of the digital age on mental health, especially due to increased screen time, is an area of active study. Some early research suggests potential risks, including impacts on sleep, attention, and mental well-being.
I would probably say either alcohol or microplastics. Both are carcinogenic. At least alcohol is avoidable, but microplastics pretty much saturate all of our environments. It reminds me of when they were doing experiments to figure out the impact of lead, they couldn't even open the door to the lab, because the airborne concentration of lead would throw off the readings. We might not ever know what real health is like without walking around with grams of microplastics inside us.
I am confused as what the prompt is supposed to be, by your answer. Alcohol is well known to be awful, it's one of the most destructive things you can put in your body. It's a literal poison that can kill you by acute excessive consumption, and destroys almost literally every part of your body over time with excessive consumption... which is easy to do, because it's also highly addictive. In fact it's so addictive, it's one of the few things that you can actually die from withdrawing from. What else is there to learn?
They probably mean that young people now is drinking less that previous generations. Sure, we have known for a while that alcohol is bad, but only recently it has been seen as "why would you drink it?", And it's falling out as social engager.
Saying that, I still drink, I know it's not great for my health, but I usually have a good time with it, and it helps with my introvert Ness.