The pedagogy of regret: Facebook, binge drinking and young women

Abstract

This article introduces the idea of a ‘pedagogy of regret’ to illustrate some of the inadequacies in recent government policy initiatives which target young women's drinking practices. In the Australian context, the National Binge Drinking Campaign warned young women: ‘Don't turn a night out into a nightmare’. A similar British campaign advised individualized drinkers to ‘know their limits’. The rhetorical appeal of these campaigns hinges on the notion of regret: young women will lament the excesses of hedonistic indulgence the morning after given the inevitable consequences of risky behaviour. This paper shows the limitations of such an appeal through a ‘sympathetic online cultural studies’ approach, which we use to explore the nexus between contemporary drinking cultures and the social networking site Facebook. Ordinary and mundane uses of Facebook – status updates anticipating the weekend, mobile posts in the midst of intoxication, photo uploading and album dissemination the morning after – reveal the anticipatory pleasures, everyday preparations and retrospective bonding involved in hedonistic and risky alcohol consumption. This demonstrates the fundamentally social dimensions accompanying young women's drinking. The enjoyment derived from sharing the ‘risky’ and ‘regrettable’ experience on Facebook is part of ongoing narratives between girls. Such pleasures, which are increasingly mediated by social networking sites, confound the notion that young women are haunted by inevitable regret and remorse.