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The death of partying in the USA

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Re: The death of partying in the USA

#451

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #249

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_... 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…

The old "boomer" parties were even wilder.

Some girl's parents would leave for the weekend, and she'd quietly invite a friend or two over.

Somehow, word would get out, and 400 people would show up, with multiple kegs, and the place would get trashed.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#452

Post by lapcat »

Aurornis wrote: post #280
generalizations wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should also be true of the Gen Xers replying though. So I think that effectively cancels out.

No, the legacy social media platforms are more popular with older generations. Facebook is the canonical example of a social media platform that arrived after Gen X was young, but it now heavily used by Gen X while nearly completely shunned by Gen Z, with millenials somewhere in the middle. Reddit and even Twitter are legacy social media platforms for Gen Z, especially younger Gen Z. The very oldest Gen Z people woul…

Nobody should take a Reddit thread as some kind of proof of a broad generalization. But some empirical data is given in the article, for example, Percentage of 12th graders going out with friends two or more times a week: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lQMo!,f_auto,q_auto:...

I think the Reddit thread is just a reflection of the reality rather than an argument for accepting that reality.

You can attempt to discount the Reddit thread, but the submitted article wasn't even based on that.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#453

Post by rwl4 »

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.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#454

Post by pavon »

booleanbetrayal wrote: post #195
lr4444lr wrote: post #6

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 whe…

Every family is dual income now, so every family needs to find something to do with their kids once school lets out. Growing up in the 80's most families around were single income and kept kids at home over the summers. As a result, kids ruled the neighborhoods, bouncing around between houses all day, where there could be some reasonable expectation of peripheral oversight. Now, everyone is min-maxing camp schedule t…

By BLS statistics, 50% of married couples today both work[1], which is the same as it was in 1978, and lower than it was for most of the 80's and 90's[2]. There are some caveats to those statistics. They cover all married couples, including retirees, and there are more retirees today than in the 80s. It also doesn't differentiate between full-time and part-time work.

However, it does show that the majority of families were already dual-income by the 80's. The trend away from supporting a family on a single income started much earlier than that.

Anecdotally, all my friends in the 80's and 90's had both parents working, and we still got together to play all the time, either in the neighborhood for nearby friends, or dropped off for further ones.

[1]Table 2 in https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf

[2]https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140602.htm

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#455

Post by millipede »

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.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#456

Post by thinkingtoilet »

dmix wrote: post #181
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #158

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.

That was before Uber...

I live in a rural area. Uber is not a reliable option late at night.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#457

Post by HPsquared »

Auracle wrote: post #341
Aurornis wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's true. However, I worked as a photographer for about 10 years (quit about 2 years ago) and high school senior photos were one of my specialties, so I got to know a lot of teenagers. Overscheduling is, I think, the biggest issue. Most of the teens I worked with had something going on almost every night, to the point where rescheduling due to rain or heat was an absolute nightmare. Sports were the biggest offende…

There has to be some selection bias here. Maybe a certain class of school / student?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#458

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

millipede wrote: post #455

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…

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

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#459

Post by ike2792 »

Apreche wrote: post #28

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 witho…

I'm not saying this isn't part of the problem, but my experience has been different. When I was in my 20s, my friends and I all lived in apartments and had parties fairly often. I recall that when I was a kid in the 90s my parents often went to small house parties as well. Now, in my 40s, neither I nor anyone I know ever goes to parties despite us all owning houses and cars and living fairly close to one another.

My theory is that people have fewer parties because people have gotten flakier about attending larger social events. It is much easier to cancel plans at the last minute with a text or a social media DM, and people always seem to want to keep their options open. We've moved to getting together only with one other couple/family at a time b/c any time we try to have larger group events half of the invite list will cancel the day of.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#460

Post by frollogaston »

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.

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