Silent Dinner: a drinking game where social pressure needs no words

*Disclaimer: Please note that parts of this English blog were automatically translated.*

Since last year, videos of a drinking game called Silent Dinner have been popping up more and more often on social media among young people. The rules of Silent Dinner are strict. A group sits down to dinner together, everyone has a bottle of wine, and you are only allowed to speak once your bottle is empty. This drinking game is particularly popular among students and reflects how alcohol consumption can be influenced by (silent) social pressure.

Binge drinking before the conversation starts

Even before the fun begins, everyone participating in Silent Dinner has already finished a bottle of wine. This means that approximately six glasses of alcohol are consumed in a very short period of time. This means that everyone participating in the game immediately meets the binge drinking standard (≥6 drinks for men and ≥4 for women per occasion) (1). Binge drinking is particularly risky for young adults because their brains are still developing. Binge drinking can disrupt important processes in brain development. It also increases the risk of developing alcohol addiction (2). Even occasional binge drinking (less than once a month) is associated with a higher risk of alcohol addiction (3).

The Health Council of the Netherlands recommends not drinking alcohol or limiting consumption to a maximum of one glass per day to avoid long-term health risks (4). At the same time, universities and health organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), emphasise that alcohol consumption should ideally be voluntary, informed and controllable (5). The national Mental Health and Substance Use Monitor (MMMS 2023) reported that of the students in Dutch higher education who had consumed alcohol in the past year, 16% exceeded the binge drinking standard on a weekly basis (1, 6). This therefore concerns a specific subgroup within the student population.

(silent) Social influence

Research into drinking norms among students showed that participants drank more alcohol at times when their norms and attitudes towards excessive drinking were higher than their usual level (7). Students drink not only on the basis of personal preference, but mainly on the basis of what they think is “normal” within their group.

At Silent Dinner, the norm of drinking a lot is built into the structure, partly through (silent) social influence:

• drinking slowly prolongs the silence and causes social isolation,
• stopping means visibly deviating from the norm,
• talking before the end is considered “disrupting” the game.

This (silent) social influence is consistent with research showing that implicit peer pressure is often just as effective as explicit pressure because it is more difficult to identify and resist (8). No one says you have to drink, but the situation makes it socially costly not to. A meta-analysis by Watts and colleagues (9) showed that adolescents whose peers used substances to a greater or lesser extent adjusted their own substance use to that of their peers over time.

Magnifying glass

Silent Dinner is not a representative drinking game for all students and should not be interpreted as such. But it does act as a magnifying glass: it shows how thin the line is between voluntary drinking and socially driven behaviour. Not because students have no boundaries, but because those boundaries are difficult to maintain in certain subgroups among students.

This blog was written by Lise Dams (Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University) for RAD-blog, the blog about smoking, alcohol, drugs and diet.

References

1. Nuijen J, Verweij A, Dopmeijer J, van Wamel A, Schouten F, Buijs M, et al. Monitor Mental Health and Substance Use among Higher Education Students 2023. Trimbos Institute, RIVM and GGD GHOR Netherlands; 2023.
2. Cservenka A, Brumback T. The Burden of Binge and Heavy Drinking on the Brain: Effects on Adolescent and Young Adult Neural Structure and Function. Frontiers in Psychology. 2017;Volume 8 – 2017.
3. Dereux A, Poupon D, Nann S, Geoffroy P-A, Romo L, Gorwood P. Low-frequency binge drinking: associated factors and consequences. Journal of Addictive Diseases. 2025:1–11.
4. Health Council of the Netherlands. Guidelines for good nutrition 2015. The Hague: Health Council of the Netherlands, 2015; 2015.
5. World Health Organisation. No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health 2023 [Available from: https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health.
6. CBS, RIVM, Intstituut T, VeiligheidNL, Rutgers, Nederlands SA, et al. Health Survey/Lifestyle Monitor. 2014–2023.
7. DiBello AM, Miller MB, Hatch MR, Mastroleo NR, Carey KB. Longitudinal analysis for between- and within-person influences of descriptive alcohol drinking norms and attitudes on drinking outcomes. Alcohol, Clinical and Experimental Research. 2025;49(4):883–92.
8. Cialdini RB, Goldstein NJ. Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity. Annual Review of Psychology. 2004;55(Volume 55, 2004):591–621.
9. Watts LL, Hamza EA, Bedewy DA, Moustafa AA. A meta-analysis study on peer influence and adolescent substance use. Current Psychology. 2024;43(5):3866–81.