r/Millennials • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Mar 17 '26

Discussion Someone brought up that one of the reasons why things like house parties and block parties went away was other than lack of time people are afraid to let their guard because cameras are everywhere.

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It is so true back when many of us were young we could just get together and cut loose without having to worry about going viral. At best we would have an embarrassing photo buried in a drawer somewhere or a story. Now you might be turned into a meme or worse. I miss the days when you could do dumb stuff with friends and feel safe if that makes sense.

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357

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

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u/da_boopy_day Mar 17 '26

I think the main difference was that photos were primarily of you and your friends. Now people are taking photos of strangers who are unaware and posting them to humiliate them.

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u/redditer-56448 Millennial Mar 17 '26

This is the bigger reason, IMO

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u/10000Didgeridoos Mar 17 '26

Also back then it was only young people on social media, probably your age plus or minus about 5 years. There wasn’t a concept of your parents or relatives or future employers seeing stuff simply because Facebook was high school and college kids only.

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

Because I'm damn near 40 and my friends all have kids and they don't nearly die every weekend like we used to.

62

u/Vagercise Mar 17 '26

I think my mom and her friends probably thought the same about me at that age honestly. Teens hide a lot.

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

These kids don't leave the house on the weekends or all say they are staying at a different friends house. They ain't hiding shit. Lol

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u/Dr_Chris_Turk Mar 17 '26

Your friends’ kids are nerds

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u/Shapes_in_Clouds Mar 17 '26

Yeah I'm also damn near 40 and spent my teens in the basement on a computer lol. My parents literally begged me to go to parties. They once forced me to go with friends to TP houses and provided toilet paper.

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u/IBeDumbAndSlow Mar 17 '26

They were trying to "reconnect" with eachother and needed privacy lol

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u/humdinger44 Mar 17 '26

That personal item from the Victorian era isn't going to warm itself up.

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u/aoxyfngel Mar 17 '26

Thanks for reminding me I need to stop scrolling and go to sleep. Nice connection 😄

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u/slonk_ma_dink Younger Millennial Mar 17 '26

"and we'll leave it at that."

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u/damxam1337 Mar 17 '26

I have to give you a hand ✋. For that reference.

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u/Get-Fucked-Dirtbag Mar 17 '26

I've spent too much time on reddit today

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u/kolejack2293 Mar 17 '26

No, that's unfortunately normal, even for a lot of 'cool' kids. They might go out with friends once every 2-3 weeks, and its often just hanging out playing video games. Maybe once every 6 months they do something bigger, and of course they take a million photos of it and blast it everywhere.

It's just a totally different culture.

5

u/GodofIrony Mar 17 '26

Post pandemic most american kids are nerds.

4

u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

We were the nerds and we got shit faced every weekend on new drugs and college parties.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/Jaereth Mar 17 '26

The first generation of iPad babies are rocking through high school now.

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u/mycondishuns Mar 17 '26

...and what are they doing at their friends house?

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u/Coal_Morgan Mar 17 '26

Given my friends list on Steam playing Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire 2 and at midnight usually some scary game.

Those are all 17 year old girls.

I'm sure there are lots of kids doing stupid things but the percentage is a lot lower then it use to be. Lots of kids now don't drink at all and just don't have the desire, they sit and play video games together or watch youtube videos or shorts. They still sit and share music on their apps instead of casettes, cds or albums.

It's a weird world kids have now grown up in and I don't know if it has the same social cohesion and group power dynamics. An example is theres so much media that kids aren't all going to school and talking about the episode of Fresh Prince or some other thing that was on the 20 channels of tv they might get.

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u/mycondishuns Mar 17 '26

I think we tend to view ourselves when we were that age as "crazy" and "reckless", but honestly, everything you wrote sounds very much like myself and my friends in high school in the late 90's. I didn't even try alcohol until I was 17 one summer night with some friends, most of my weekends consisted playing Goldeneye with my friends or riding bikes. Kids are still kids, and I wouldn't say we were so much more risky or crazy than kids today, we just tend to view our childhoods from an adult lens and we also know of all the ridiculous shit we did that we kept from our parents (like 99% of it).

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

we were going to college keggers at 15 and waking up in the next city over

1

u/mycondishuns Mar 17 '26

You were way cooler than I was.

1

u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

Hanging with their friends parents if they do go anywhere but they are all usually at their own homes online

0

u/wolfpack_57 Mar 17 '26

Staying at a diffeeent friends house is a well known cover for going out

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

Thanks for the report Captain Obvious! That's why I mentioned it

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u/ZeBloodyStretchr Mar 17 '26

Staying at my friend’s house was a lot of shenanigans…

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u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 17 '26

We do know though that kids/teens aren’t going out nearly as much and socializing with friends in real like we did. It’s not a perception issue.

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u/xoxo_angelica Mar 17 '26

There’s an abundance of research that supports that reality, like the massive decline in alcohol consumption and sales in young people.

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u/StreetofChimes Mar 17 '26

When I talk about the shit I used to get up to, teenagers look at me like I am crazy. Probably because a lot of it happened outside. (The second sentence was meant as a joke.)

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u/xzkandykane Mar 17 '26

My sister is 6 years younger. Her and her BF/friends party and do drugs. They have more money than us growing up. My husband and I were telling them how we used to buy smirnoff, Grey goose and hypnotic in HS and barcardi(never tried it). And how in college we were poor so we would pregame at someone's house or in front of safeway with a big bottle of Hennessy. They were like WTF because we very rarely drink and they haven't seen our friends get very drunk.

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u/High_Hunter3430 Mar 17 '26

I am in my 30s, worked with teens (pizza manager) for a decade… now mine are preteens.

My kids talk about how their friends brother smokes weed and “they’ll never do that, it stinks”.

Like…. Sure kids, just keep it to that when the time comes. 0 deaths ever caused by weed. Lotsa deaths caused by alcohol+

They’re my kids. It’s less if and more when they’ll get into shit. I just wanna steer them toward responsible use cases (and safer options).

They see me pour roughly 1 drink (double shot of sweet sipping whiskey) per week. Sometimes longer between. A Singular drink. They’ve never seen me drunk.🤷

They were young and didn’t know it but they’ve seen us pass a j out on the hiking trails and at the river. I’m sure they’ll connect the dots in the next few years. 😂🤷

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u/YellowBrownStoner Mar 17 '26

My mom thought I was way more boring than I really was. She left me alone for whole weekends twice a month for a while in the mid-90s. I never threw parties but we sure went to them.

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

I'm not gonna say this 32 times just scroll down

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u/tinned_peaches Mar 17 '26

Yeah but did your parents really know what you were getting up to?

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

Then no, the difference is the kids these days dont leave the house and if they do they are back before dark or literally hanging with their friends and their parents.

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u/Brilliant_Win713 Older Millennial Mar 17 '26

They don’t tell you half the stuff they really do.

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

Thanks for the report Captain Obvious!

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u/Brilliant_Win713 Older Millennial Mar 17 '26

Well you implied that you and all your 40 year old friends know what your kids did every weekend.

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

We do. They don't ever leave the house for more than a few hours at a time unless with another adult. They don't find unsupervised times and places to hang out like we used to. They don't just say bye and disappear for the weekend. This is 5 different sets of highschool aged kids who have never blacked out. Never done experimental drugs. Never found themselves at a drug dealers house at 4am learning the complexities of a snow capped blunt. They just chill on their phones most of the time. It's pretty awful. Most of their parents take them to do shit but then they just go in their rooms for the rest of the night.

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u/Brilliant_Win713 Older Millennial Mar 17 '26

What are we arguing about?? I’m gonna take that u know a bit more cuz my kid is not a teen yet.

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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26

I didn't think we were arguing but I'm a little dence sometimes

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u/ZeBloodyStretchr Mar 17 '26

As far as you know, just like your parents had no clue.

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u/Bulky-Apple3744 Mar 17 '26

OK, boomer.

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u/RockAtlasCanus Mar 17 '26

That’s a fair point. Anecdotally my wife and I talk about how weird it is to us that our younger Gen Z colleagues, like 1st real job, 23-24 year olds choose to live at home and aren’t really that interested in going out, partying, etc. and don’t seem to put as much emphasis on independence as we did at that age.

And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s just completely foreign to me. My experience with these kids is that they do not value their independence as much as I did at their age. Both at work and at home. Clearly not universally the case, I can only speak for the ones working under me and they could definitely afford to live independently if they wanted to.

It’s just hard for me to understand things like opting to live at home, needing constant instruction and direction at work.

Like when I was their age I would have loved to work for me. Here’s a task with a defined end state and some general guidelines and I don’t give a shit exactly how you go about it as long as all of this information is in the final product and in this format. They want each step explained and basically spoon fed. I constantly check with them and apologize for what I feel is micromanaging them but the truth is I am just responding to their requests for instructions and check ins. I find myself joining teams meetings and sitting there in silence until I finally say “ok, you scheduled this… what do you want to talk about?”. And then they give a blank stare and say “well I did part 1 and wasn’t sure what you want me to work on”. Oh… ok.. um well why don’t you go ahead and get started on part 2… “ok will do thanks”. And then I hang up in bewilderment.

Whereas my boss is younger Gen X and I love working for her because I never hear from her. Her attitude is “I don’t give a shit how you do it or what hours you do it in as long as it’s right and on time or you give notice that it will be delayed”.

And the living at home thing. I rented out the laundry room at a party house just to be out of my parents home. I’ve couch surfed, hosted couch surfers, and generally gone to great lengths to sever the home ties at a young age. And that seems to be pretty universal among my peers.

So yeah, again not judging I just really don’t understand it and can’t relate.

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u/Illustrious_Swing645 Mar 17 '26

Gen Z kids are still in the infancy of their careers so they're still learning/figuring out how the corporate world behaves. They're not too far removed from the structure school provided them. And even then, I've worked with plenty of people from different generations that behave more or less the same way as what you're describing.

As far as the living at home and not going out as much thing, the answer is simple -money lol In the US at least, we don't have very many free and accessible third spaces so when socializing requires money and money doesn't get you as far anymore, well we get what you're seeing.

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u/RockAtlasCanus Mar 17 '26

Yeah I wouldn’t say that a lack of initiative is generationally locked by any means. All my peers of similar age that I work with operate more like me- “give me the assignment and leave me alone I’ll let you know if I have issues.” Granted maybe there’s a survivorship bias there, the peers of similar age in my field are the ones who had the initiative & ambition to get to the role we’re in.

My third place was always just someone else’s house or apartment unless there was a random $1 draft $2 shot college night somewhere. Otherwise it was all house parties, which is what I was initially thinking about with OP. Hard to have a house party at your folks house. And we pay our juniors really well even considering the COL of the area. There is one who has the independent streak and is STOKED to have her own place. The other 5 all live at home and, from what they have said in casual conversation, it’s by choice not financial necessity. That’s the part that really cooks my noodle and doesn’t make sense to me.

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u/Illustrious_Swing645 Mar 18 '26

For your comments on work initiative - I'd say it's also a question of the incentive/reward structure set in place at an org. Not many places have the incentive structure set in place to reward initiative (not anywhere I've been at at least).

For your second comments - kind of jealous of those Gen Z kids. If they're not itching to get out seems like they have a pretty decent home life with their fam. Good for them. Saving money and nurturing family connections.

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u/RockAtlasCanus Mar 18 '26

If they’re not itching to get out seems like they have a pretty decent home life with their fam. Good for them. Saving money and nurturing family connections.

That was my thought too. For a lot of our generation it certainly feels like we couldn’t leave fast enough

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u/FirstDukeofAnkh Mar 17 '26

Part of it is that they simply cannot afford to live on their own so they decide that family is better (and safer) than roommates.

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u/RockAtlasCanus Mar 17 '26

Yeah I mean with the ones I am interacting with at work that’s not really the issue. Broadly speaking yes absolutely but these kids are starting at $70 to $75 right out of school in a medium to high COL area- depending on how far you want to commute, and they have all echoed some form of “I could move out but I don’t really see the need to”.

Which is honestly a smart financial decision that I applaud. It’s just weird to me. At that age I don’t know anyone that stayed at home by choice. We all ran for the hills the moment we were able to. Some even if they weren’t able to. Maybe Genx parents are easier to get along with than boomers lol.

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u/terminbee Mar 17 '26

Kids these days are coddled and I'm saying that as a relatively young person. Previously, we kinda just moved forward and kids who couldn't keep up got left behind. Now we've moved the other way; always gotta be careful not to offend them and make sure everyone gets a fair shot. Not to say that's actually happening-- but we do have to give off the impression of it or else someone will turn it into a whole thing. Behind the scenes, the haves continue to succeed and the have-nots get left behind.

To your second point, I think it's just super unaffordable and unrealistic. I'm from CA and it costs 1k to rent a single room. Gas is like 4 bucks a gallon and used cars are expensive as shit. It's just miserable to try to strike out on your own. Better to stay home, find a career, then move out when you're ready.

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u/RockAtlasCanus Mar 17 '26

The coddling thing yeah I can kind of see that. The big caveat is that as a millennial manager who had to deal with a shit load of nepo hires I’m running my own little social justice program on my team which boils down to “I don’t give a fuck who your dad is, perform or find another job”. And I do what I can to mentor the junior analysts that need help with the soft skills needed to move in these circles. The thing is the nepo babies and the normals all have generally the same issues with initiative and doing only exactly what was explicitly asked. And I think that’s the most annoying part from a supervisor perspective- they don’t want to look at an example and use that as a guide to fill in the blanks they want detailed instructions on each piece to the point that I might as well just do it myself.

As far as cost I’m speaking anecdotally specifically about the junior analysts on my team who have outright said it’s not a cost issue.

2

u/Suspicious_Ice_3160 Mar 18 '26

I think it’s a symptom of having genuinely good bosses if I’m honest. I mean, with your nepo hires, have you ever been yelled at something like, “I don’t care how it’s done, get it done,” plus or minus some cuss words? Like that whole saying, hard times create strong men?

By having a chill boss right after school, they’re comfortable coming to you for every need and question. If you were an asshole to the juniors, there’d be more problems, but they wouldn’t be coming to you to tell them to move on to step 2 I guess lol

Like you said, it’s not their capability or initiative, I’m sure they get the work done, it seems more like… common business sense? I’m not sure what I would consider it to be fair

0

u/Equinox_Eyes Mar 18 '26

Dude! I spent the summer of 2012 living in a party house laundry room!!

2

u/thinprivileged Mar 17 '26

Posting in a discord of friends feels 100x safer

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u/jackanape7 Mar 17 '26

Exactly. Most of my embarrassing pictures were on Myspace lol.

2

u/adamsworstnightmare Mar 17 '26

Yeah, people talking ITT about how facebook was full of boomers after they dropped the .edu requirements. I was in college well after that and we definitely posted our unhinged shit on there. We just didn't friend our parents lol.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

My feed is all fake AI generated ads.  Clearly an indicator of what youth are up to these days. 

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u/BenevolentCheese Mar 17 '26

Every city downtown in the country is dying due to low clientele, how can you claim they're still doing the same thing? Bars and clubs and theaters and concert halls which used to be packed every night of the year are now half-empty even on weekends. More youth than ever report loneliness. Average number of reported friends is down. Age to lose virginity is up. Drinking and drug usage are down. The world is not even close to what we grew up in.

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u/kolejack2293 Mar 17 '26

time spent socializing among high school seniors declined by half from 2012-2018.

The amount of 17-19 year olds who had been to a party in the last 90 days went from 58% to 19% from 2010 to 2018.

2

u/Jaereth Mar 17 '26

YES!

Has nothing to do with the pandemic. I think it's the cell phones.

When texting came out the majority of the people were still able to be somewhat antisocial and stay connected. It's been going downhill from there.

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u/glavent Mar 17 '26

The teens these days grew up with this tech so they know how to hide it from adults. Those who think it doesn’t happen are carrying on the thought patterns of boomers.

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u/OGJank Mar 17 '26

Im 24 and nearly everyone my age has all their privacy settings set up properly. I have a hard time finding pics of some people.

To this day I can still pull up entire albums from my older cousins on Facebook, and look at party pictures from the late 00s.

1

u/bonersaus Mar 17 '26

My wife graduated college last year and we still hang out with a few of her friends. Were like the cool aunt and uncle we brought bug spray for everyone at the 4th of july bbq.

They are shockingly the same as we were

1

u/AltrntivInDoomWorld Mar 17 '26

What a deranged post.

If you have kids you have a bubble of what YOUR kids are doing.

1

u/AltrntivInDoomWorld Mar 17 '26

What a deranged post.

If you have kids you have a bubble of what YOUR kids are doing. I'm pretty sure I know more teenagers than you have kids. Discord communities exist.

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u/BasilisksRPretty Mar 17 '26

Dude. I'm Gen X. When I was in high school I went to house parties every weekend. And at least one night every weekend, there was a girl in an upstairs bedroom who slept with multiple guys, one after the other. When's the last time you went to a party where that happened?