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The death of partying in the USA

• eplatzek 1y ago
  With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. That's a pretty hard lesson to unlearn. They carries a lot of momentum. Like with World Wars there's been a generational impact that changed how people relate to one another. The tribal momentum, of one monkey teaching the next, gets lost.
  • xeromal 1y ago
    I'm sure COVID had something to do with it but I think partying is another casualty of social media. Similar to discord for gaming, talking to your random peers has completely fell off
    • openbankerX 1y ago
      prices too, partying is expensive and should be the first line item cut in hard times.
      • parpfish 1y ago
        Partying in the article also includes “dropping by a friends house”, which is cheap/free
  • carl_dr 1y ago
    Except the graph shows this was happening way before COVID. The internet and how that has changed how people relate is much more likely the reason.
    • api 1y ago
      One of the first things I did with the net was to connect with people to go out and party with. Amazing how that morphed into zombie doom scrolling, something I would never have predicted.
    • luckydata 1y ago
      in my opinion the largest effect is how we build cities. Having to drive everywhere and the separation between commercial, residential and industrial areas of american cities is very clearly a driver of this isolation.
      • esseph 1y ago
        Maybe. But everybody hates everyone else online.
        • api 1y ago
          Hate, fear, and other very basic brain stem emotional responses maximize engagement.
  • southernplaces7 1y ago
    >With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. Given the mortality rate for people typically in the partying age group (and especially those under 30), you were more likely to die in a traffic accident on your way to or back from the party, or from alcohol poisoning, than from a case of COVID acquired there. Let's not exaggerate. From the NIH: The median IFR for COVID based on age groups: 0.0003% at 0–19 years, 0.002% at 20–29 years, 0.011% at 30–39 years. The 1918 Flu it was certainly not.
    • sltkr 1y ago
      To be pedantic, it's still possible for people to modify their behavior based on mistaken beliefs (in this case, that COVID is really dangerous, when it isn't for healthy young people). Though I don't think this explains the actual trend in this case.
      • watwut 1y ago
        Healthy young people still do not want to spread it to grandma or whoever. That is something frequent forgotten by these arguments - not everyone is sociopath and young people sometimes think about other people.
    • add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
      Some people didn't want to get it even if they were guaranteed to survive, because they could pass it to others who were more vulnerable to it.
      • southernplaces7 1y ago
        This yes and a fair worry for many who lived with older parents, grandparents etc, but the original comment mentioned an illness killing "you" assuming the partygoer, who, given the context of the article, is probably going to be a lot younger than anything close to elderly (though elderly people should party too. Socializing should never be under-estimated for helping vitality)
    • triceratops 1y ago
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• patrickthebold 1y ago
  Reminds me of the Jonathan Richman classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Pg9IGgQpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Pg9IGgQpY
  • gilbetron 1y ago
    Holy crap, I've never seen a Janathan Richman recommendation on the Internet ever ;) I listened to him like crazy in college (1988ish) and saw him play once. My favorite still remains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR6Ns3AcDco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR6Ns3AcDco I know two other people that know of Richman, four if you count my wife and son who I made listen to him! edit: had to add Richman was a big influence on the Talking Heads :)
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• lr4444lr 1y ago
  The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list where our phone numbers are listed (and where we find these other parents' contact info). Something happened with the culture of getting kids to play with each other outside of school hours, and I don't know what it was. COVID lockdowns definitely delayed it from starting for our kids, but I know these parents are mostly in my generation, and we certainly played more together. We live in the suburbs, so it's not a car creep problem - at least, no more than it was 60+ years ago when the numbers were better. When I ask the parents who stay, they tell me a vague mix of weekend junior sports leagues, visiting relatives, and just being really tired after working all week. They're lame excuses: spending time with kids constantly is _also_ really tiring. Kids having regular playdates would encourage more familiarity among the families and trust in letting kids play unsupervised with each other. Often I take them to the main playground, and it's virtually empty. I can't believe I'm the only one in the community who's unhappy enough about this to try and change it.
  • lawlessone 1y ago
    >I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents Yeah if i was a kid i'd be mortified at having to do this.
    • luckydata 1y ago
      it's the only way it works. It took me MONTHS to get a hold of the number of my son's best friend's parents so that now we can organize maybe an afternoon of play every 4-5 weeks.
      • zoomablemind 1y ago
        I thought a prime time for contacting the parents is right after school when picking up the kid. Everyone is there waiting, so it's just natural to chit chat, esp when the kids are friends.
• lawlessone 1y ago
  Partying is more expensive than watching TV or playing games.
  • vrc 1y ago
    I was going to disagree but then realized I now shell out at least $100 when two families and their kids show up for 3-4 pizzas with toppings and chips and dip and some juices. And god forbid I try and provide fresh fruit and beverages on that budget…
  • cwoolfe 1y ago
    It is if you are hosting; but if you are going to the party...hey, it's free food! I think a systematic analysis would show that it would be cheaper for all of us on the whole to share food at parties since it is cheaper to buy in bulk.
    • SoftTalker 1y ago
      A lot of parties have always been pitch-in or BYOB.
  • kjkjadksj 1y ago
    A fifth of vodka has been like $15 for at least a decade otoh
• iLoveOncall 1y ago
  This isn't a social effect at all, it's all a financial effect. Of course most of the HN population is isolated from those issues because we work in a high paying field, but nobody has any money to do anything anymore.
• burnt-resistor 1y ago
  My grandma was the head of the local Air Force wives' club. Their house was always stocked like a full bar and at least several people stopped by for a visit just about every day. They knew at least 10 of their neighbors well, and some former neighbors too. Find me community like this anywhere in America these days. Immigrant communities perhaps? Most Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.
  • kulahan 1y ago
    That’s it - immigrant communities are wonderful in this regard, as are communities with lots of old people (maybe because they’re from a different time, maybe because they’re lonely, who knows).
    • ryandrake 1y ago
      Yea, our community definitely skews "over 50" and it's a lively, social place. We have an informal rule: If your garage door is fully open, then it's an invitation for anyone to stop by to socialize or chit chat while they're out on their walk or whatever. I know there are people who live in the neighborhood who are under 40, but you almost never see them, even outside of traditional working hours!
  • helloooooooo 1y ago
    I am going to assume your grandmother probably didn’t work, and instead took made her and her husband’s social life her full time job. It’s much easier to entertain constantly when one half of the relationship has the availability to do it. If I’m mistaken, then holy heck how did your grandparents do it lmao.
  • AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    I bet that if the head of the local Air Force wives' club did exactly that today, they'd get the same results.
    • burnt-resistor 1y ago
• ryao 1y ago
  The chart labeled Percent Decline in Hours Spent Attending or Hosting Social Event by Age 2003 - 2024 seems to be a bad way of view thing the data since it assumes that there is an inherit difference on how people approach this based on arbitrary age groups. Having it be by birth year would be better, since it would reflect how the people in question’s habits are changing over time. That said, party culture had been excessive in the past and it was impoverishing to many people. I and others my age more wisely do without, which leaves us with money for things that are more important than one offs.
• rawgabbit 1y ago
  Can’t throw a party if you’re living in your parents basement.
• parpfish 1y ago
  I wonder whether housing plays a factor. Young people aren’t becoming homeowners at the same rate, so there’s a sense of transience to their living situations that make forming neighbor communities seem like a waste of time.
  • luckydata 1y ago
    nah, we partied plenty when we rented and not knowing someone for long is not a reason not to hang out. What has been eroded is the habit of hanging out because there's no easily accessible third spaces. I'll give you an example: when I lived in Spain I would just walk in the corner bar for a quick beer or a coffee or something to eat, I would very likely run into a neighbor and would chat. The chat would lead to "hey let's do something". In the USA it's almost always the case that people need to make plan, the lack of spontaneity kills most plans.
    • aaronbaugher 1y ago
      In my Midwestern US town, there are still lots of third spaces. The mall, bars, bowling alleys, an arcade, and even some new things like a trampoline place. People just aren't using them nearly as much, to the point that the mall is a tomb and the stores are going away. But the people stopped showing up first.
  • ryukoposting 1y ago
    Seems like a no-brainer to me. This is an accurate characterization of my entire adult life. My wife and I are looking at buying a house, and we've concluded that we can't despite living in Wisconsin and making far, far more than the median income around here. There's no end in sight. Our social structure isn't built around neighbors. I could name 2 people I've shared an apartment building with in the last 5 years. Incidentally, they were a couple in the same 3-flat as me, who were there for my entire time in that building. I think the lower density and shared spaces (in that case, a garage) made the difference.
  • asdff 1y ago
    I kind of see this among different friend groups. I have a number of friends out in the midwest where a mortgage might be 180k. They are most all buying homes. These places have garages, basements, front and back yards. And they are throwing parties with their space. Bit different for those in the high cost of living area. Hanging out is usually a pregame to go to bars because you can't fit very many people in the apartment. Not to say it doesn't happen just you can't exactly throw a party and have a big table of food and a bbq going and cornhole and beer pong and three available bathrooms all at the same time like you can out in the flyover states. At least not without dropping literally 10x as much on what would be a smaller property anyhow with no basement and not much of a lot. In many ways it seems like the old life of yesteryear these sorts of articles bemoan is still in fact the current year in many places if the housing prices support it. And there are many places that fly under the radar that aren't in those top 5 major metro regions.
• Apreche 1y ago
  This article isn’t wrong, but it neglects to mention real estate, transportation, and lodging. A party needs a venue, and it needs guests. And the guests need a way to get to and from the venue. If they stay a long time, they need a place to sleep. People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party without a big home, a yard, a big kitchen, etc. Small apartments are for small get-togethers that probably don’t register as parties. Likewise, the larger someone’s home is, the more likely it is to be location in an area with low population density and little to no public transportation. Congrats, you can throw a party, but who are you inviting? All your friends are far away. How can they get there? How long can they stay? Can you accommodate them sleeping there? You aren’t friends with your neighbors who can party easily. You are friends with people on the Internet who are strewn about the world. And of course, if you live in a major city with lots of friends, small apartment strikes again. This is part of the reason we have seen the rise of more public events like conventions. There’s a hotel involved. It’s a multi-day event worth traveling to. A lot of people you know will be there. It costs everyone some money, but it’s not out of the realm to go a few times a year. Best part, nobody’s home gets trashed!
  • amgutier 1y ago
    In my younger days I threw 100 person parties in a San Francisco apartment - it's standing room only for sure, but so is going to a crowded bar. And I've cooked for 15 without a dining table - you eat on the floor wherever you can find space. Now I don't disagree with your point; I'm not 22 anymore and live in the burbs and have a less full social calendar, largely due to the logistical overhead of finding my way into the city or getting friends from the city out here. But I do want to say you can have a lot of fun with a lot of friends in a small space with the right attitude :)
    • esafak 1y ago
      That's the spirit!
    • lisbbb 1y ago
      Instead of "don't disagree" please say: "I agree" it is proper English and not some stylized, holier-than-thou sounding, completely logically twisted up act.
• carabiner 1y ago
  Spending all of your time studying in high school and college is your best hope at landing in the vanishing middle class. With decreasing job security as well as hyperinflation, continuing that work ethic into your 20s and 30s is quite reasonable. Everyone is too exhausted to party.
  • kjkjadksj 1y ago
    In college we’d only study 3 or 4 days a week to make room for the drinking
    • carabiner 1y ago
      In mine, we studied 7 days a week.
• searine 1y ago
  It's cause were poor.
• LeanderK 1y ago
  Purely anecdotal, but I was recently reflecting at the current trend of people posting really extensive morning routines. Waking up, meditation, yoga, gym, shower, eating breakfast, meal-prepping,....having a whole day before your day starts. While they should impress you with their healthiness and discipline, I just thought how utterly lonely and sterile most of them look like. And you're completely done after work if this is your morning, you can just go to bed and repeat the same the next day. I found it quite sad, actually.
  • pjc50 1y ago
    I don't believe those are real. People are simply posting that because it's the kind of post that gets likes. Influencer life is a mirage.
    • Aerbil313 1y ago
      No, it's real. I have AuDHD and very strictly defined routines are how I manage to function day-to-day. It's not a productivity hack or how I'll be a billionaire in 5 years though, like scrollheads often promote. It's just how my brain works. A small fraction of those influencers might also be neurodivergent and sincerely posting what works for them.
      • noitpmeder 1y ago
        I think what OP is saying are fake are the hoards of people posting it on their social/influencer accounts. Sure, some people have very rigid and strict routines that they need to get through their day, but (I'd agree with OP) that it's likely the vast majority are "virtue-signaling".
    • Barrin92 1y ago
      It's an observation that precedes likes and modern influencers, as Baudrillard noticed in his 1989 book America: "The skateboarder with his Walkman, the intellectual working on his wordprocessor, the Bronx breakdancer whirling frantically in the Roxy, the jogger and the body-builder: everywhere, whether in regard to the body or the mental faculties, you find the same blank solitude, the same narcissistic refraction. This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary. [...] This ‘into’ is the key to everything. The point is not to be nor even to have a body, but to be into your own body. Into your sexuality, into your own desire. Into your own functions, as if they were energy differentials or video screens. The hedonism of the ‘into’ [...]" The replacement of a genuine social life with a kind of machine like, solitary optimization, the point of American Psycho basically, is very much real, common among ordinary people. This is every "second brain" note taking fanatic who never actually does anything but collect notes. "What people are contemplating on their word-processor screens is the operation of their own brains. It is not entrails that we try to interpret these days, nor even hearts or facial expressions; it is, quite simply, the brain. We want to expose to view its billions of connections and watch itoperating like a video-game. All this cerebral, electronic snobbery is hugely affected - far from being the sign of a superior knowledge of humanity, it is merely the mark of a simplified theory, since the human being is here reduced to the terminal excrescence of his or her spinal chord."
• jongjong 1y ago
  People don't party if their life is bad.
• avhception 1y ago
  I broadly agree with the article. I'm also wondering if the rising political polarization is at least in part caused by the "antisocial" phenomenon. If you're not exposed to a spectrum of political worldviews through being involved with all these people you randomly met back in the day, it becomes easier to dehumanize the people you disagree with. You also never have to listen to their talking points, because you can just block them out online.
  • strangefellow 1y ago
    It's also the opposite. People are exposed to the most extreme, unhinged, and horrifying aspects of humanity on a continuous basis through every form of media and connectivity. It shapes your unconscious risk/reward expectations around forming connections. Someone invites you over to their house for dinner? You just saw a YouTube video about a woman who mixes her urine into her cooking and feeds it to unsuspecting guests to heal what ails them. Almost every form of engaging with the world these days -- except genuinely connecting with others -- makes genuinely connecting with others feel riskier than it is.
  • pjc50 1y ago
    The talking points themselves have got much worse. So many things are now mainstream, especially in racism, that would have been kept out of "polite company" previously. It's not that social media has made people less aware of other's political views, it's made them more aware, which is why they hate each other. Entire accounts exist (libsoftiktok) for the purpose of exposing people to views which they will hate, so they can get angry and ramp up their rhetoric.
• generalenvelope 1y ago
  It feels ridiculous not to mention car dependence and the things that enabled it: restrictive zoning, parking minimums, the car lobby. In the last 50 years, the US has bulldozed dense, mixed used housing that enabled community and tight knit neighborhoods. More economically/socially viable housing (read: an apartment on top of a business) has literally been banned in much of the US. Ensuring that there's a large plot of asphalt to house personal vehicles that are ever increasing in size is baked into zoning laws (though some cities have finally banned parking minimums). Suburbia sprawls, literally requiring most of the country to own a car. I would love to see some data on this, but my intuition is that everyone is physically farther away as a result, which weakens their general connection and likelihood to party together, and makes it harder for them to get to/from a party in the first place. There's other feasible side effects too like less savings due to the cost of owning a car (I've seen estimates of the US average exceeding $10k/yr), or expensive housing exacerbated by all of the above - less space for housing due to roads/parking (and the cost rising as a direct result of a developer needing to include parking), and rising taxes to finance more and more infrastructure: suburban sprawl means more roads, pipes, electrical lines, while contributing significantly less economic value (Strong Towns has done some great graphics on how much dense urban areas subsidize their sprawling single family home filled counterparts).
  • Gigachad 1y ago
    It’s car dependence, but the impacts were delayed because people used to just drink and drive. Now that’s rightfully seen as unacceptable, but we are still left with car dependence. So people just don’t leave home now.
    • frollogaston 1y ago
      It was totally unacceptable to drink and drive in the 2000s, and the sharp decline didn't start until right after. You'd also find a similar decline in socializing among non-driving-age children.
      • 9rx 1y ago
        It was totally unacceptable in the 2000s, but there still remained a lot of "...but I can probably get away with it". That has declined in the interim.
• bravesoul2 1y ago
  Is 1 in 25 bad? I am more 1 in Inf... I mean I don't know what counts but I am happier to do things that are not a party. Examples: go to events in the city, restaurants, sunday lunch at relatives, work socials, school parent socials. Even in my 20s I went to... the pub! Mayhe a nightclub. To me parties are more school age/university thing and are a great way to have a good time on a budget. Just some drinks and a speaker required.
• thisisauserid 1y ago
  "The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species." Spurious. This has likely always been true unless you live with said friends.
  • d4nte 1y ago
    Yeah. My cat sleeps next to me, sits in my lap while I work, and follows me around the house. That’s a lot of hours every day.
  • lisathompson 1y ago
    [flagged]
• SimianSci 1y ago
  If I were to try and pinpoint one of the leading causes of this issue myself, I would personally say that Americans have an outdated and ineffective model regarding its use of addictive substances or what I like to now call "Brain Hacking" systems as they are not necessarily just physical substances anymore. Recreational drugs cause unbelievable havok within communities where they are unleashed. Its well known that such drugs have chemical compounds capable of "hacking" our physiology and causing a whole host of negative effects while ensuring the user stays addicted. I consider these "Brain Hacking" systems just the same as I consider social media like TikTok and Instagram. They both are designed specifically in ways to entice users to be addicted without any concern for the harms they cause. It baffles me that simply because it is not a physical substance it gets treated as less dangerous than the harder substances. We keep seeing these issues in America when its very clear that similar things would occur if we made recreational substances as common as water and just as accessible. Revenously addicted people, dont party, they dont socialize, they retreat from society, and stop forming deeper releationships. It is no surprise that this is creating issues for us. Americans have always been the world's leading consumer of drugs, and now that we have digital drugs, they are more accessible and in demand than ever. So much so that the cartels desinging and pedeling these products, are basically the most powerful companies in our society.
  • Liquix 1y ago
    > Recreational drugs cause unbelievable havok within communities where they are unleashed. Like.. Stable adults indulging in pot or mushrooms? IME has quite the opposite effect. Addictive drugs which devastate communities are usually not referred to as "recreational". You're spot on about the outdated threat model and people not fully grasping how damaging social media/internet addiction is.
  • pjc50 1y ago
    Socializing in most Western countries used to be built entirely around an addictive mind altering substance, alcohol. Despite its many flaws it was extremely pro-social. Other drugs had their own party scenes.
    • 1y ago
• shawndrost 1y ago
  Does anyone know why "Hours spent in childcare" started skyrocketing in the 1990s? Here is the graph from the article: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2g7_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe14a7e3a-5e21-47dc-9c8c-b8453ee78eac_892x880.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2g7_!,w_1456,c_limit...
  • tpmoney 1y ago
    Off the cuff that coincides pretty well with the rise of “helicopter parenting” and “tiger mom” trends.
    • Nicook 1y ago
      and less children per woman. I figure thats got to be the main driver. China actually a really good case study with the one child policy and rise of little kings.
  • Roguelazer 1y ago
    It does seem like there's something wrong with that data; I find it somewhat implausible that the average parent was only caring for their child for 1.7 hours a day in 1985; even if you assume that all of the tween and teens were free-range and only got an hour or two of parenting a day, little kids have always required nonstop attention to make sure that they're not actively dying. Although... the infant mortality rate in the US has dropped by more than 50% since 1985, so who knows...
    • chlodwig 1y ago
      Yeah, I've wondered if there is some sort change in how people think about and label their activities. Would a 1950s parent even think of themselves as doing a defined activity called "childcare"? Or rather, the children are just around, as the parent is doing things. If I am cooking dinner while a toddler putters around the floor and a baby is in a high-chair eating scraps I give him, am I doing "childcare"? Would a 1950s parent think of that as doing "childcare"?
• imzadi 1y ago
  > Burrowing into the appendix tables of the American Time Use Survey, she unearthed the fact that just 4.1 percent of Americans said they “attended or hosted” a party or ceremony on a typical weekend or holiday in 2023. In other words, in any given weekend, just one in 25 US households had plans to attend a social event. There's a huge difference between not hosting or attending a party and not attending a social event. "Party" has very specific connotations. If I go out bowling with my friends or have a game night, I don't call that a party, but it is certainly a social event.
  • CoastalCoder 1y ago
    I agree. I was graduated from highschool around 1990. My friend group was very active every weekend, we just didn't do "parties".
• psyclobe 1y ago
  Yeah. I haven't gone out in decades.
• Apocryphon 1y ago
  Compare to Dave Barry's "The Greatest (Party) Generation", about his parents who were of the Mad Men era: https://archive.is/Uyrys#selection-2109.17-2109.48 https://archive.is/Uyrys#selection-2109.17-2109.48
• codegrappler 1y ago
  Anecdotally a lot of families we see in my social circle can be reliably split between single income and dual income households. We see the single income folks far more than we see the dual income folks, which tracks with this article. If I come home from work and my wife says “Sarah and family are coming for dinner tonight”, I know that my wife has tidied up the house, coordinated food and all I have to do is pour some drinks and maybe cook something on the grill (that has already been purchased and prep’d). If no one has done that? Far less likely I would see that same family that night.
  • watwut 1y ago
    Being stay at home parent is extremely isolating. It is most lonely thing one can do. You spend ovwrwhelming majority of the day completely alone. No collegues to bump into you and talking with you. If the stay at home parent does not actively organizes meetups, they are completely alone until partner comes home ... after he talked with people at work.
    • xboxnolifes 1y ago
      Thats another argument. The stay at home parent created a lot of the social parties.
      • watwut 1y ago
        Some did out of mental health necessity. Some did not and were profoundly lonely and unhappy (my case). And some did indeed ended up having that period to be super happy. My point is that it is profoundly unsocial way of life for the parent at home. The party even twice a week do not really make up for being completely alone with nothing challenging to do whole day. You can easily end up loosing social skills and those parties end up unfulfilling. If you go to work and then someone else organizes a party once in a while, it is cool effortless way to keep friends. But, if the stay at home person is extroverted, there is very little social about their lifestyle.
    • kjkjadksj 1y ago
      Sounds like my wfh job
• upheaval 1y ago
  Whats there to party about
• __mharrison__ 1y ago
  Anxious Generation... Anyone with kids should read it.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• anotherevan 1y ago
  As an aside, did anyone else see the background start to darken as they scrolled down and lost interest in reading as you knew a "Please oh pretty please subscribe to my newsletter!" overlay was going to slide into view? I wish I had a ublock filter or a userscript to deal with this…
• Bradlinc 1y ago
  I’ve stopped hosting as many dinner parties because accommodating diverse food preferences has become increasingly challenging. It’s a smaller factor compared to many mentioned in the article, but I thought it was worth adding.
  • SoftTalker 1y ago
    And not just preference but allergies. I'm not sure why but it seems like the number and prevalence of food allergies has really gone up since the 1980s/1990s. Back then you didn't really worry much about food allergies when you were thinking about foods to serve at a party.
• phendrenad2 1y ago
  People are introverted and have no social skills thanks to smartphones. People have no shared interests in general, because there are so many niches. People have low self-esteem and body image issues. People are afraid that they'll get drunk and their behavior will be filmed and go viral. Previously available "soft" party drugs are too dangerous. People have no place to host a party, because they're all renters (not that it matters, the HOA has a strict no-smooth-jazz-music-after-3pm policy!)
  • pjc50 1y ago
    > People are afraid that they'll get drunk and their behavior will be filmed and go viral. I think this is an underappreciated "phones killed socialization" angle. People used to post partying pics on social media. Then employers started going through social media to screen candidates. Facial recognition and automatic tagging means that it's not sufficient to not post party photos to your own social media, you need to make sure they aren't posted anywhere. Which is a deterrent to partying as a concept once you start thinking in terms of "will this be bad for my social credit if an informant reports me to the employability police by posting me drunk?"
    • ryandrake 1y ago
      I don't know how this didn't become a serious taboo. People who post pictures and video from a private event without everyone's consent should be shunned, but somehow this became normalized. I've heard of the recent trend to hand out stickers for everyone to put over their cameras during events, and that's a really good development, but we shouldn't even need to do that. It should be socially disgusting to even take the pictures in the first place.
      • pjc50 1y ago
        It used to be fine! It used to be great, even. People like having photos of themselves having a good time. Back in the film era there would always be one person who wanted a picture at every event. It's just that connecting it to the panopticon ruined everything.
• tim333 1y ago
  Everyone's looking at their phones instead.
  • ipnon 1y ago
    As soon as the screen became marginally more interesting than the person next to you social life was pretty much doomed.
• chkaloon 1y ago
  The article mentions alcohol consumption by kids, but I think it doesn't emphasize enough the effect of efforts like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and strict DUI laws. Back in the 70s and 80s having a few drinks at a party, bar or friend's house was normal and part of the social lubrication. Even drinks during lunch was common where I worked. No more. You either need to have a designated driver, find a taxi (which doesn't exist in most rural areas), or just not drink. The first two are a pain, so people opt for the latter and that social inhibition hangs around, and folks go home early. Have to get up for work in the morning, you know.
  • dddddaviddddd 1y ago
    > You either need to have a designated driver, find a taxi (which doesn't exist in most rural areas), or just not drink. Or live in a place where you don’t drive to get around.
    • bluGill 1y ago
      Very few places on earth are like that. Even in Europe's dense cities there are a lot of cars, get outside of that and there is no hope of an alternative. Though Europe is somewhat likely to have a bar within walking distance of your house, but a lot of people in Europe drive to whatever bar they drink in at least sometime. Most of the world's public transportation sees themselves as a way to get to work and so parties which happen off hours in places hard for transport to reach get bad or no service.
      • wavemode 1y ago
        > Very few places on earth are like that I mean... there are fewer than 2 billion total vehicles on Earth, so I'm guessing it's not THAT uncommon to not own a car. Unless we're arguing that people simply didn't socialize before cars existed.
        • chimeracoder 1y ago
          > Unless we're arguing that people simply didn't socialize before cars existed. No, the argument is that cars changed how society is physically structured, to the point where society at large is designed to center car-based transportation. In many countries - including the US and most of Europe - this is transparently true.
• thinkingtoilet 1y ago
  Let's be honest. A lot of previous partying was made possible by lots and lots and lots of drinking and driving. That of course still goes on today, but nearly at the levels of the past.
  • dmix 1y ago
    That was before Uber...
    • chimeracoder 1y ago
      > That was before Uber... Get outside a major urban area and it's extremely difficult to find an Uber at the hours when you'd expect to be leaving a party to go home. Heck, this is true even in some suburbs of New York City.
    • thinkingtoilet 1y ago
      I live in a rural area. Uber is not a reliable option late at night.
  • 0_____0 1y ago
    People were drinking and driving in 1800s New England?
    • MisterTea 1y ago
      I am sure there were plenty of sauced stage coach drivers and horsemen.
      • bluGill 1y ago
        Your horse knows the way home and will be happy to get your there without help from you (hoping that when you are there you are sober enough to get the harness off so he can finally enjoy a rest at home)
    • complianceowl 1y ago
      I cannot speak for ze others, but as a creature of ze night… I must confess, I vas, I vas indeed.
• dr_dshiv 1y ago
  8bit Vibes Party in Amsterdam this Saturday, swing by! https://lu.ma/l4074pxg?locale=en-GB https://lu.ma/l4074pxg?locale=en-GB
• flerchin 1y ago
  Grouping up with the guys to play an online game wouldn't count here. Nor various other online activities that I would consider social. The drop-off in alcohol is stark, but probably good? I suppose we would see an uptick in weed in legal and probably also illegal states. The article focuses on US because that's the data they have, but I wonder if it's a similar trend for other developed countries. Anyone sharing a personal anecdote is probably not meaningful. These are broad trends and really hard to intuit by lived experience.
  • mtalantikite 1y ago
    When I was in high school in the late 90s/early 2000s, we'd go hang out somewhere with each other IRL and then when it got late and we got home we'd meet up in some online game (usually Starcraft or Diablo). So we'd still be hanging out at least two nights a week IRL. If we counted only online gaming then we'd have been hanging out every night.
  • frollogaston 1y ago
    Yeah, there are good reasons that doesn't count. Maaybe if it were in-person and not over headsets.
• MisterTea 1y ago
  Parties were where you went to meet random strangers, get intoxicated, and maybe get laid. None of this is exciting anymore. People are less motivated to go out. We have other forms of socialization. I blame a lot of the de-socialization on our constantly connected society. Since everyone is in contact with each other 24/7 via social media the idea of meeting random people is less exciting. The 24/7 news cycle also injects a lot of doom and anxiety making people more aware of dangers - intoxicated driving, overdose, violence, rape, etc. Parties might be viewed as more dangerous than exciting. Now add to that, 24/7 streaming of TV and highly addictive video games. There is plenty of distraction to fill the boredom gaps that used to motivate people to go out. And finally, I think covid drove a lot of people into a more isolationist mindset. I know a few people, including myself, who have admitted they go out far less post covid compared to pre covid.
  • efields 1y ago
    This feels right. More than anything, it's the function of the Internet.
    • orangecat 1y ago
      I'd argue that it's specifically the combination of social media and smartphones. 2000s era "social networks" of AIM and forums were fine; you had to actually be at your computer so it wasn't an all-consuming activity for most people.
    • ryandrake 1y ago
      I don't think it's right. Despite the Internet, we really aren't in a constantly connected society. In fact, I'd argue we are less connected now than we have been for a long time. Everyone's "on" Social Media, but they're not socializing on it. They're spouting into the void, promoting and advertising themselves, tunneling themselves deep into echo chambers, but it's not really social. People write and write and write, but the only things they read are what the algorithms feed to them. I guess I'm gatekeeping socialization, but this doesn't seem like socialization to me. When someone posts a clever quip to Twitter and gets 10,000 likes, this isn't socialization. It feels more like some weird performance art.
• g0db1t 1y ago
  [dead]
• Workaccount2 1y ago
  Those basement dwelling computer nerds of the early '00s were way ahead of their time. We just had to dial in the content to get everyone else addicted.
  • frollogaston 1y ago
    I remember the exact moment I saw our star football player log into Minecraft in class
• hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  This was a post on the GenX subreddit (from a Gen Zer) from just a couple days ago asking about if parties as portrayed in late 90s/early 00s "teen movies" were actually a real thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1lu102v/were_parties_like_this_ever_actually_a_thing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1lu102v/were_parties_... The responses from the Gen Xers were a mix of bewilderment and sadness, stuff like "What do you mean parties like this, it's just a normal teenage party!? I feel so ancient and also so confused by this question." The whole comment section is worth a read, especially the disconnect between how the Gen Xers experienced adolescence and how the Gen Z poster does. It's really sad to me how we have completely fucked a lot of youth with social media, smart phones, and over-scheduling/over-protection. I also disagree with some of the comments here that are bringing up things like "real estate, transportation, and lodging". Sure, those are issues, but you have families and kids in the suburbs today just like you had families and kids in the suburbs in the 90s, and the fact that kids today can't even recognize "basic teen parties" and question whether they are some sort of made up fantasy can't just be waved away by the fact that real estate is more expensive today.
  • frollogaston 1y ago
    Some people want to make everything about "walkable cities." Maybe they can come back with socialization stats for non-driving-age kids, or those in Manhattan.
    • autoexec 1y ago
      Something tells me that tightly packed populations in urban settings and their landlords are way less accepting of huge parties in an apartment playing loud music than a small number of homeowners in a suburb are about someone in the cul-de-sac having a house party playing loud music.
  • Aurornis 1y ago
    > It's really sad to me how we have completely fucked a lot of youth with social media, smart phones, You have to be careful with Gen Z threads like this on Reddit and Twitter. They are inherently biased toward Gen Z people who are chronically online and deep into social media. If you spend time with kids in the real world, you learn very rapidly that most of them aren't on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Of those who use Reddit, few of them actually post anything or even have accounts. The subset of Gen Z who actually post on Reddit is small and a lot of them fit the description of chronically online, so it's no wonder that Reddit Gen Z people speak as if their generation is not socially engaged at all.
• arkwin 1y ago
  I was a teenager in high school around 2005 and living in the Midwest. There were lots of underage drinking and parties going on during that time. That being said, most of it was "cool parents" that allowed such behavior because we didn't own anything as teens. We would have rules like, if you're drinking there, you have to stay the night or call your parents to pick you up. I think it was just a different time; it seemed more forgiving. Now, a cop will pull you over and give you a DUI and mess up your life for a while. But I heard stories back then ~ '70s, where cops would make sure a drunk person got home safely at night instead of throwing the book at them. I am sure it is harder for kids today who mostly live online in their algorithmic bubbles. And harder for parents to condone such activity, because who wants to be the parent where cops come knocking on your door and charge you with supplying alcohol to minors?
  • ProllyInfamous 1y ago
    Similar age (a bit older) but I always remember our core group of friends' parents would pass around a key-collection plate — "this is a safe environment to have a little bit of fun in" — the only time I ever remember a drunk peer driving home... he was then banned from all future private party invites. Sadly/predictably, he would later perish in a DUI, early 20s... Damn, I miss the late 90s/aughts. Damn, I'm old (and fat, too; I "made it", somehow!)
  • codingwagie 1y ago
    there are deep reasons for why society is not like this anymore
    • BeFlatXIII 1y ago
      Care to list them?
  • OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    Elaborating on this a bit, I think it's less that things are less forgiving, but that our risk tolerances have dramatically shrunk. Millennial parents are less risk tolerant with their kids' safety, and Gen Z / A kids and young adults are more careful about the rules. The root cause of this risk intolerance might be dispersed, just a cumulative result of cable news scare tactics, dropping birth rates and more investment per child, but I suspect a big aspect of it is that risk taking is no longer the only way to get a dopamine hit. Prior to the modern internet, if you avoided all the normal risk-taking behaviors associated with teenagers and young adults, you'd just be bored to death. Now the reward side of the risk-reward balance is just the difference between high-quality fun from meatspace shenanigans versus lower-quality enjoyment derived from social media and online gaming.
• SoftTalker 1y ago
  > As more women poured their weekdays into 9-to-5 work, men failed to take over the logistical labor required to fill out the social calendar LOL. The men were working too, as they always were, which is why women used to do most of the social planning. They didn't "fail to take over."
  • watwut 1y ago
    I remember seeing articles about working women doing more social managing then working men. It is one of reasons why women do not seek new partner as fast as men after divorce - they are more likely to keep friends they are content with.
• cjbgkagh 1y ago
  The inevitable side effect of the financialization of the human experience. People are in constant competition with each other and the amount of time they can spend not competing is proportionate to the amount of slack in the economic system. Keeping slack costs money, removing it makes money, it's very hard to almost impossible to stop something that makes money. It would take an Amish level of zealotry. I think the focus on short term gains by sacrificing long term viability is in part due to the inability to accurately measure future prospects, whenever there is doubt shot-termism prevails. The bird in the hand wins over the two in the bush. I think maximizing long term gains would be directly tied to human flourishing so if we could accurately measure long term externalities we could align capitalist and human interests. Convincing those who gain from short-termism to agree to use more accurate metrics is impossible when not using it makes them more money. I don't know how to fix this. A society will not allow itself to undergo 'creative destruction' in an era where we bailout corporations. And socialism certainly is not going to fix it, socialists have their own kind of rather destructive short-termism.
• NotAnOtter 1y ago
  I used to throw loads of parties. At somepoint I realized.. 1. It's expensive. I never once got a reasonable contribution from my friends. I knew this at the time, but eventually I was over it. Paying $100-250 per event just to deal with all the work and drama that comes with it.. not worth. 2. It's a lot of work. Hours of prep, hours of hosting, hours of clean up after. At the end of the day ~12 hours of effort for ~4 hours of fun is not a good ROI. 3. It frequently was an excuse to get drunk or high. Which is fun, whatever. But as I grew more health conscious, this was less and less appealing. I can drink on my own if I want. 4. There are better alternatives. I don't have to do any of the above options if I just jump on Discord for a while. Or join a rec league sport. Or spend it with my family.
  • ryandrake 1y ago
    I don't think the point of a party is "ROI" either in terms of the dimensions of time, effort, or money. When I decide to host one, this kind of "cost" is assumed. I don't worry about it because I can afford it (in all three dimensions), and the point of hosting a get-together is not to make a profit on any of those dimensions or break even. I look at it as: I'm spending time+effort+money, and the return, for myself and everyone who attends, is not any of those three. It's getting some much needed socialization and a fun experience. I guess your point is that you're not getting as much fun out of it to justify the spend?
• laszlograves 1y ago
  1991 millennial here offering some perspective. Transferred to a California state college a little late (27) and wrapped up my computer science degree @ SFSU finished in 2019 so somewhat recent anecdotal experience. I met a lot of people just like me while in college. Lot of people mid to late 20s. One of my best friends in college was in the international business club fb group and they’d always host events or pub crawls every Thursday night. I’d ping my gf (now wife) and she’d asynchronously invite all of her friends and then I’d be inviting all our college friends so by the time we arrived we’d have a merged friend group. We met so many cool folks this way and people from different majors with diverse backgrounds. It helped to be in San Francisco of course. Now as far as the housing discussion I’d say that the 7% rates that are historically normal feel oppressive after 15 years of low rates following the Great Recession. I bought a place in the edge of the Bay Area last year with 5% down at 7% because I didn’t have the income that I have now when rates were low. We were saving for the last 7 years delaying a bunch of major life milestones. The prices in our zip code already dropped ~15% before we bought so we saved about a 20% down payments worth off the up front cost. I barely qualified with 270k combined income and I’m not sure ppl understand how weird that feels until they experience it. The home wasn’t even a median priced SFH in fact it was well below at about 750k. I kept a bunch of vested stock and savings but yeah not sure how things will shake out. It’s a tough market for sure.
• tlogan 1y ago
  I have a politically sensitive but potentially insightful question. I live in San Francisco, where we have a desegregation busing policy. In practice, this means kids don’t attend their neighborhood schools. They’re assigned to schools across the city (Instead of investing in improving schools in underprivileged neighborhoods, we (voters) decided it is better (and cheaper) to bus those kids to schools in more affluent areas - but that is beside the point) One theory I’ve heard is that this setup leads to less socializing (or “partying”) among teens, since their school friends often live far away. That raises an interesting question: To what extent does busing contribute to reduced peer interaction outside school? Also, how common are these busing policies across the U.S. today? Is San Francisco an outlier, or is this a widespread approach?
  • verall 1y ago
    It is common and it is coupled with investment in improving schools in underprivileged neighborhoods. A school in a poor area gets heavy investment and then can pull ("magnet") a certain percentage of their students from a much wider area. Involved parents apply for their children to go to these schools since they have the best art or theater or robotics or whatever programs. This acknowledges that an important part of a successful school is parental involvement and a general culture of students that are interested in learning. In practice, at least in my childhood, the schools largely self-segregated by the classes they took, i.e. AP or not, more or less challenging tracks ("honors" classes). I still think it was a net positive. At least students in the underprivileged areas got access to these advanced programs, even if there were still social barriers. And as a kid from the suburbs, I got to meet kids outside of my suburban cohort - I think this was really valuable to me as a bit of a misfit.
  • skeaker 1y ago
    Had a similar situation when I was young. Living far away only really impacts your ability to host events which can suck for things like your birthday parties, as getting a large number of people to all go out of their way is pretty much impossible. Other than that it doesn't affect your ability to socialize or attend events hosted by others.
• VLM 1y ago
  Three issues that are important but nobody wants to discuss (why?): Inflation in the cost of law enforcement. As an X-er I received some truly epic paint-peeling flame-throwing "angry dad-style" lectures from cops and one time I got caught and my parents were called and I paid a municipal citation (not a misdemeanor or felony) equivalent to thirteen hours of minimum wage labor (essentially, one teenage afterschool weekly paycheck...). Now a days it would be kinder if the cops just shot the kid, as they will lose their license semi-permanently which means no job and no programmed activities and no sports, forbidden from joining the military (note the GI Bill paid for my college), lose their security clearance if they are already in the .mil, expelled from college / retract admission, suspended from school, that means no college diploma, no diploma as a job ticket to get one of the very few remaining "good jobs" etc. Seems a little inflated of a punishment over "a couple beers" People like discussing the inflation rate of real estate, lack of inflation in wages, but they should discuss inflation in the punishment for having a few drinks. A general cultural trend toward absolutism where everything thats permitted is mandatory and everything thats not permitted has no limit to the resulting punishment to prevent it. Toe the line precisely, or suffer the full weight of the law, and the line does not include partying, so you'd be crazy to do that. "In the old days" the cultural expectation was everyone works 9-5. No one is allowed that anymore, they either work 24x7 as servants on call to their feudalistic owner, or have weird hours and gig economy jobs. Most people cannot "drop by after work around 6 for a beer". Can you drink at work? I can't. Can you go to work drunk? I can't. Some people, maybe most people, are not allowed to ever be "not at work". You're not even allowed to sleep if your boss feels like texting you; you surely can't get drunk at a friends house without getting fired. Don't worry that beer (or ten) will only cost you a one year job search to get a new job. When everyone is under house arrest by their employer, nobody parties. There's a long tradition in the USA of trashing a proper name and the following generation abandons it while doing the same thing under a new name. Every generation before gen-x loved going to malls, then a long indoctrination campaign to use security forces and police to "keep those annoying teenage kids out of malls" started in the 1980s, and here I am in the 2020s and I STILL will not go to the mall because of heavy handed security, and my generation and younger is killing the malls because malls hate me because I was once a teen that hung out at the mall a lifetime ago. So, WRT parties, post "Animal House" movie era, a party means vandalism, drunk driving accidents, police arrests, visiting the ER for alcohol (or other) intoxication, etc. The marketing has been successful and my generation and younger no longer "attend parties". We "hike at the park" or "tailgate at the (kids?) sport event" or "hang out at the festival" or "board game night" doing EXACTLY what we did when people partied, but for marketing reasons we never party anymore, its a "tailgate" sporting event. This makes the article pretty weak sauce, an entire article about doing search and replace in a word processor for "party" and "board game night" is not a significant lifestyle change.
• lo_zamoyski 1y ago
  "women have long been the keepers of the family social calendar. Wives, not husbands, historically planned the quilting parties, the bridge games, and the neighborhood potlucks. But in the second half of the 20th century, many women swapped unpaid family jobs for salaried positions." This is a very good observation, and I think that somewhere in the social revolutions of the 20th century, we failed to appreciate the extremely important historical roles women played that were central to traditional societies. Even today, we believe the stock caricatures of pre-feminist societies, which in a way is unsurprising, given that most people alive today never experienced anything other than the post-revolutionary world. We just accept caricature as fact, and we view history anachronistically through the lens of our present social realities. In traditional societies, the family assumes the basic and most important social unit and social point of reference, with the married couple as the foundation for it. This already creates a network of social ties that radiate from the marriage, most conspicuously family ties which are doubled. Husbands typically gravitated toward the public sphere, securing the material well-being of the family through their participation in public life (in other words, their work was primarily for the sake of the domestic sphere). Wives typically gravitated toward the domestic sphere which was the seat of family life. So while men were heads of the family, women were heads of the household. And this was an honor, as family life was the primary business of life; the husband's career or job was primarily in service to family life. Ideally, husbands provided the means that allowed wives to be free to be mothers, unburdened by competing commitments. (Of course, this doesn't mean fathers did not participate in domestic life, nor that women did not participate in public life. It is rather a matter of emphasis and "center of gravity", so to speak.) By analogy, kings are exalted fathers, and queens are exalted mothers. And since the family is the center of social life, and women are mistresses of the domestic sphere, it is fitting that women should have a more social orientation. Indeed, it is expected that women would be the catalysts of many of the social ties with the broader community. In that sense, the careerism that women today are taught from an early age to pursue and prioritize not only deprives women of the opportunity to function as wives and mothers, most exalted and honored roles that they are, but it deprives society of much of its social glue, as women have a greater tendencies to care about cultivating social bonds than men do. What we're taught today instead is that the career, not family life, is the supreme occupation of life and the primary source of our happiness. We are therefore taught that women were historically deprived of this opportunity, chained to the bleak life of being "stay-at-home moms" (a vicious term, if there ever was one), covered in baby puke and toddler shit, under the tyrannical boot of her husband like some slave. We demean motherhood as some kind of drudgery for poor, uneducated, unattractive women instead of the privilege that it is, in fact the privilege of raising the future generation. Children are no longer a wonderful gift, but a burden and an obstacle. You might be able to turn them into sources of prestige, if you can get them into the best schools or whatever. The career is the center of life; children, the family, even the spouse - these are all secondary now. And this has downstream effects that cause a radical transformation of society and culture that affects the entire social and economic environment, like the atrophy of social ties mentioned in the article. For instance, try supporting a family on a single income today (in the 1950s, a middle class/working class man could do just that). Now women who want to live in a traditional way are constrained in that choice, as economic and social realities make that difficult. That's why I roll my eyes when someone thinks bucking demographic decline is just a matter of throwing some money at the problem. Our society and our culture has become hostile to family life. The grain and pattern of modern life, rather than supporting it, adds friction and resistance. And since family life is the foundation for the rest, the health or lack thereof of family life is a predictor of the health of the broader society.
• rwl4 1y ago
  This was a great read! I'm not a paid subscriber, so I'll post my thoughts here. One angle I think that might be missing is that when only men worked outside the home, women would be stuck at home all day with housework and childcare which I would guess was quite isolating. So I would guess these gatherings were a lifeline. When women entered the workforce, they gained the same quasi-social environment men had enjoyed all along. Work friendships might not be as deep as neighborhood ones, but they're "good enough" to take the edge off loneliness. Not only that, but now both partners would come home fatigued from a full day of work. So neither would have a strong drive to now setup these gatherings. Before, you had one exhausted partner who could be coaxed into socializing by a partner who genuinely needed it. Now you have mutual exhaustion. Even worse, planning a party starts to feel like another work project rather than something restorative. There's a multi-generational aspect to this too. Their kids learned the lesson that home is for family and screens, not for social gatherings. Computers and smartphones arrived and provided social interaction that required minimal energy. No cleaning the house, no planning food, no getting dressed. Perfect for an already exhausted population that had been socially declining for years.
  • travisb 1y ago
    Even beyond mutual exhaustion is housework. When both partners works outside the home, they still have to do the housework when they get home or on the weekend. Previously that would have been the job of the one staying at home. The 20-ish hours a week needed for domestic chores has to come from somewhere.
• millipede 1y ago
  I've been throwing moderately large parties the past 2 years (12-40 people) and the lack of partying is definitely noticeable. Most people don't reciprocate, making it disheartening to keep doing it. I wanted to build friendships out of it, and hopefully get invited to more parties myself, but so far it hasn't happened. It's a decent amount of set up (cleaning, buying food, coordinating), and a lot of clean up after too. The ROI isn't where I want it. I kind of wonder if people have just forgot what to do after the party is over. I had hoped it would be "that was so fun, we should host one", but instead it just kinda fades away in their minds.
  • ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
    going to a party is less intimidating (particularly effort-wise) than hosting one maybe co-host one with somebody who you think might enjoy hosting but is reticent to try
    • ashdksnndck 1y ago
      Also if you just want to make your own parties easier to host, you can ask the guest list if anyone will volunteer to help with specific tasks or supplies.
  • pinkmuffinere 1y ago
    If you happen to live in San Diego, I'll happily invite you to my parties! They generally involve board games, making a fire, having dinner, watching a movie, or going to the beach. Alcohol optional. Not super wild, but always a good time for me :)
    • doh 1y ago
      I am in SD and would love an invite. I am keep thinking about uniting more like minded people for a while. My email is r@seslu.com
  • ZephyrBlu 1y ago
    Very few people want to host/organize other people. The end goal of throwing parties shouldn’t be friendship or getting invited to other people parties, it’s building a large loose network of people you’re acquaintances/shallow friends with and becoming a super connector. If you ONLY want to make friends or get invited to parties I think focusing on finding specific people and spending time with them 1:1 is a much better way to do that.
• frollogaston 1y ago
  Chart goes down fast soon after 2010. There's another article about a decline in young Americans' health since 2007. And, we all know what happened around that time. "I don’t like the simplistic idea that smartphones are purely anti-social" well I do. It's in-your-face obvious any time you're in public, and especially if you were in school back when smartphones started gaining popularity. There's a longer explanation too, but same conclusion.
• gdsdfe 1y ago
  I bet you anything this is related to wage growth or lack thereof ... I mean why would you party if you have no disposable income ?!
• bagacrap 1y ago
  I feel like it would be more worrisome if partying had doubled in the last XX years.
• janalsncm 1y ago
  As with many large scale social trends there will be several contributing factors, so nuance will always be the first victim of people with an axe to grind. If you want to say that an decrease in X is the sole cause of a decrease in Y, it might be a good idea to check whether there are other places where 1) X increased but Y decreased or 2) X decreased but Y increased. Different moments in time, different countries, etc. For myself personally I have moved around a good amount, so it is naturally harder to make social connection, and even if I’m invited to social events with friends in other places it is physically hard to attend them.
• advael 1y ago
  I like that this delves into the relationship between "helicopter parenting" and this trend, and maybe I missed it, but I find that it conspicuously lacks economic precarity and the decline of real wages over this time period as an explanation. Hosting social events does cost free time and money and most people have way less of both in real terms than the period it's comparing to
  • rightbyte 1y ago
    Free time and mental energy is the limiting factor I think. Personally I observe that social events seem to be most common among students who also are quite poor. However mental energy and free time is surely correlated with wealth.
    • advael 1y ago
      The effects of wealth on outcomes meaningful to most humans look mostly like a step functions, with some continuous-lookin' bits here and there. Anecdotally my assumption is that partying x wealth is bimodal, with peaks near the top and the middle-bottom of the wealth distributions. But homeless people and people scraping by on two minimum-wage jobs, both of which comprise a larger portion of america than when I was a child, are unlikely to be able to host or even often attend parties, like I think there's a sharp step to basically zero after a certain poverty line unless you're in a really integrated community (also less common over that time period, to be fair)
• sota_pop 1y ago
  I see this cultural shift resulting from multiple contributing factors: 1. The increasingly litigious environment that is the US. Where people are becoming more risk-averse out of fear of being liable for whatever. 2. The fact that anything you did, be it something great or a faux pas, social or otherwise, was much more ephemeral. At best it would be captured in people’s memories for a couple of weeks or the occasional cell phone pic that was inevitably lost with the hardware. More recently, everything you do is recorded, indexed, and preserved with accompanying text, photos, and video - _forever_ - thanks to social media and the internet. Also, agreeing with other posts, the onus of “sports culture” for kids (and families) in k-12 schools these days is absolutely unbelievable. edit: Also, finding out the following Monday (in school) that a “party” to which you weren’t invited occurred over the weekend was unpleasant. Witnessing a middle-school-aged kid discover a “party” to which they weren’t invited in real-time as it is streaming live on social media is absolutely heart-breaking.
• sailfast 1y ago
  Shit’s expensive. Period. What teenager has $60 to spend at the movies?
• standardUser 1y ago
  A an older millennial, I have been pleasantly surprised by how vibrant my social life can be as long as I put in some effort. One key is living in a reasonably dense urban area. I have friends who make art and music, fiends who do standup comedy, friends on municipal sports teams - the ways to connect with people are expansive. And people in my age group (early 40's) seem only a little less inclined to make plans and go out compared to my friends in their 30's. Even with my oldest friends, all of whom are busy with their kids, mortgages and spouses, we still prioritize taking trips to see each other and for everyone to get to know each other's kids. So if you're anything like me (grown, mostly single, living alone in a dense urban center) I refuse to believe any social or technological developments have ruined our chances at human companionship. But that's millennials. I have absolutely no idea how Gen Z will navigate this world. The fact that they seem to be choosing the least useful, social or pleasurable vice in the world (vaping), which also happens to be among the most viciously addictive vices (for many people) does not bode well in my opinion, no matter how enlightened the anti-alcohol stance may appear.
• sirodoht 1y ago
  If anyone wants to be invited to house parties in London, UK, I'm happy to invite anyone who emails theo+hn@torchandzen.com! Number of people ranges from 10 to 50, activities from talking and eating to picnics and dancing.
• Animats 1y ago
  It's not just the US. The nightclub and bar industry is tanking in the UK and Europe, too. UK: [1][2] Berlin.[3] Paris.[4] [1] https://ntia.co.uk/nightclub-industry-struggles-with-over-100-independent-nightclubs-lost-in-last-12-months/ https://ntia.co.uk/nightclub-industry-struggles-with-over-10... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk-pub-closures-beer-taxes-business-rates-government-b2785793.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk-pub-closures-beer-taxe... [3] https://www.dw.com/en/is-berlin-in-a-club-death-spiral/a-70341859 https://www.dw.com/en/is-berlin-in-a-club-death-spiral/a-703... [4] https://www.latribunedelhotellerie.com/paris-society-cession-nightlife-laurent-de-gourcuff/ https://www.latribunedelhotellerie.com/paris-society-cession...
• tracerbulletx 1y ago
  I'd guess the biggest driver of this is a lack of boredom. There's a certain investment of time and stress to throw a party, if you're just going to be completely bored it gets you over that hurdle, if you can play games and talk in a group chat instead you might not pass the threshold for bothering a lot of the time.
• chickensong 1y ago
  I see a lot of reasons and excuses about the decline in partying, and the internet is obviously changing society and culture, as well as every generation of parents, but at some point everyone needs to take some responsibility and make their own decisions. At least people today have amazing tools to throw parties, if that's what they want to do. FWIW, I spent the holiday weekend raving under the stars in the forest and it was great, as always. Mostly old people though.
• frollogaston 1y ago
  Beware of the "Less-Social Teens" chart using a nonzero Y axis.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• ChrisArchitect 1y ago
  Searches article text for mention of the words pandemic, covid, video games or even the word concert. Nothing. This isn't a serious piece. Moving on.
• sheepybloke 1y ago
  As a zennial, there are a couple things that contribute: 1. No one has a car when you're younger unless your parents are well off. Most people I know didn't have access to a car until college. Makes it hard to get to parties when only 1 of your friends has a car that fills up instantly. 2. Most of your friends are online anyways. You're going to hang out with friends every night because they're on discord, waiting for you to get on and play your social game together. Why would you hang out in person if you can hang out online? You can't get to their house anyways. 3. Similarly to that, none of my friends live near each other anymore. We all moved to different cities for different reasons. So many people I've talked to are similar. It also makes it harder to find new friends, since everyone has their friends. They're just not near.
• FireSquid2006 1y ago
  There are definitely less in high school, but has college really changed that much? I'm a student right now, and while I'm not involved with it, it definitely seems like Greek life people always have parties going on.
• aiiizzz 1y ago
  I wouldn't ever endorse drinking, let alone underage drinking, and parties don't sound fun without drinking. Therefore, no parties. What's needed is a new class of drugs, something healthier and legal, that make people sociable like drinking does.
• coldtea 1y ago
  Because people have lost their will to live. It's evident even in their talk about how exhaustive social interaction, parties, the outside world in general is, and how they'd rather stay cozy at home - even in their early 20s.
• 6510 1y ago
  No one had cameras, if one did something strange it would be funny or embarrassing for a week or two. More usually everyone was to drunk to really take notice of "strange" behavior.
• Hypergraphe 1y ago
  Not directly related to the article, but, the way we played multiplayer games on a sofa back in the 90s was way more funnier and fullfilling than what it is now through steam/discord. The sharing was not the same.
• Projectiboga 1y ago
  The enforcement on underage drinking has really altered the equation. And I'd guess the ubiquity of cell phones is another limit. The party culture of the 50s through the 90s-early 00s wasn't the norm it was the aberration from the times before. I think dancing it self has been in decline too. I tried to get the kids (teens and middle school) dancing at a small summer community and they just wanted to stand there and take turns playing their favorites from their own Spotify lists. They seem less open to just listing to unfamiliar music and maybe using Shazam to get some leads for new listening.
• bentt 1y ago
  As a parent, what my wife and I see is that when the kids have access to the internet, they socialize on the internet. When they don't have access to the internet, they socialize in real life. Most often it's just a question of convenience. It's a pain in the ass to get together. It used to be the only way. Another thing is that parents just don't leave their kids alone any more. My sister's son is almost 20 and she's still thinking about his goings on even when he's at college. This might be nice in terms of feeling loved, but independence is almost required to bring partying back.
• khelavastr 1y ago
  There were fewer bullies. These days, if you try to get together s group of people with strong passion you're likely to be targeted by people who insist on inclusion in resource sharing or else they'll persecute the group that advantages itself.
• biohcacker84 1y ago
  Addictive tech in your hand is an evolutionary trap. Much like cars are to squirrels, squirrels have evolved to run into a straight line to the nearest tree at the hint of any danger. And for all threats other than cars that is the correct thing. But many squirrels are "trapped" by evolution to cross the path of a car when there is no need to do so. Humanity's curiosity, sociability and OCDness have all been trapped by algorithms and smart phones. And it is shortening lives and even more so reducing reproduction. A faint hope is, that with all such evolutionary pressure, we can evolve our way out of them.... eventually.
• iceKirin 1y ago
  Perhaps the ultimate form of human existence is to be physically expressionless yet intensely passionate on the internet.
• cypherg 1y ago
  Once again, they’re severely discounting socialization over the internet. Twitch, discord, et al account for massive amounts of socialization. For many kids it’s easier to chat or stream than it is to find the other 2-3 weird kids into their particular hobby. Watch the TV documentary “Social Studies” if you think Gen Z isn’t partying. “Euphoria” is definitely an exaggeration but it’s relatable to Gen Z for a reason. Anecdotally, I see Genz all the time at raves and concerts. These aren’t “animal house” style events but still.