The death of partying in the USA

> 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.

No. The “new generation” now knows what the outcasts and the undesirables of the “old generation” felt like. The more I speak to the younger crowd the more parallels I find which just means the “default” shifted towards a society of people who don’t know a different way, but are unaware of what goes on around them. The undesirables of the old knew, but couldn’t do anything about it.

It’s like people who are bewildered when newspapers say bankers got caught having a massive orgy of some 50+ attendees in a hotel in Switzerland. There is always a party, but you’re not invited. Simple as.

The type of people posting these questions on reddit today wouldn't have been at those parties yesterday, so I don't think we can extrapolate some overarching theme here

My anecdotal experience with two children who are young adults is that there are still house-parties (nearly) every weekend at high-school, but that there's a lot less drinking, and they're a lot more open and mature (i'm not sure i would have enjoyed being a trans kid in a 90s high school)

Over protection and coddling are definitely a cause of lower social skills. When I was a kid, parents with leave children with a babysitter who was essentially an older child, sometimes just by a couple of years. Other times the kids would just be wandering around by themselves while parents didn’t care until it was dinner time. “Parties” weren’t just alcohol induced sex fests like they show on TV. Often it was 10 kids bunched around a single computer with $5 worth of chips and soda trying to beat a boss fight. A lot of those things are not only frowned upon now, but as a parent, could land you in jail.

If you wonder why children no longer grow up with a different outlook to life, then that’s probably it.

"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 honestly believe social media, smart phones, and over-scheduling/over-protection does a lot less damage to the current generation than partying did to my generation. I can recommend the 1995 Larry Clark movie "kids" for a more balanced view how parties often looked like and which negative side effects they could have. Real life was not like in "American Pie" at all and that is where I guess Gen Z is getting their impression from.

Digital socialization has replaced many functions of physical parties - Discord hangouts, gaming sessions, and video calls offer connection without the logistics burden or social risks. The question isn't whether socializing has died, but whether its digital evolution provides the same developmental benefits as in-person gatherings.

I grew up in the 90s-2000s in a place were people were very serious about school. Very few kids were getting drunk etc, there were very few couples and 0 teen pregnancies, but there was still a healthy amount of socializing. That chart showing going out with 2+ friends was still a high % then, and it matched my experience.

This completely changed after iPhones and Facebook became popular enough. It ruined even the regular socializing. Even the few boy bullies started doing this lame-ass cyberbullying instead. Sometimes I wondered where the cool kids were on weekdays, then I checked my Minecraft server logs.

I think this article was way overdone, based on what I see with my teenage kids. They don't go to any "parties", but during the summer they are at the beach around 4x per week with bonfires at night. Almost 1/3 of their class (at a somewhat small school) is there.

And with Snapchat they know where everyone is. It's typical on a Friday school night they are scanning their map to see, "this group is at the mall. this group is at the football. this group went to her house." And then pick where to go.

Honestly, the current method of social gathering seems so much better than what I did in the 80s.

> 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!?

Well, it's a normal teenage party /in the US/.

I think in Europe, partying always looked a lot different (also different from country to country, here). I also mostly was bewildered by parties in teen movies from the early 00s.

The economic realities shouldn't be discounted. With more competitive conditions, the youth have to work much harder to secure the same opportunities relative to previous generation. With this comes the decline of partying or other high risk or non-productive activities. It's also true of adults - nightclubs are not as much of a thing as they were in decades prior.

> the fact that kids today can't even recognize "basic teen parties" and question whether they are some sort of made up fantasy

While I agree there is a technology-driven loneliness epidemic, what is so sacred about those "basic teen parties"?

People from any time before the 70s wouldn't recognize them either. Also, they were fictional caricatures written for movies, not real life, where teen parties were considerably less interesting.

Hold up. GenX'er here, graduated college in the mid 90s. Are you telling me that college keg parties in the basements of off-campus housing is no longer a thing?

As a millennial - I'm also amazed by these parties. Some of my peers had this kind of experience, but for me this is something from parallel universe.

Mostly because I never really understood the fun part.

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.

One aspect to consider is that the vast proportion of content in automated feeds isn't even sincere - it's just engagement farming.

I never saw the point of those. People, alcohol, what's fun about any of that? Tripping over your own legs with a bunch of similarly incapable humans while drowning in noise and fine particulates is toddler level fun. But with potential of acquiring adult level damage.

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.

Ya I'm shocked by it too, said as a Gen Xer born in the late 1970s, occasionally a Xennial.

I partied for 4 years of college which is something like 30 years in sober adult terms. Our ragers were reminiscent of Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, all of those old party movies that didn't age well. Scenes from Hackers, Fight Club, The Matrix, Trainspotting, Go, Swingers, Made, 200 Cigarettes, SLC Punk, Dazed and Confused, PCU, even Undergrads (a cartoon) were so spot-on for campus life, living for the weekend. Can't Hardly Wait, American Pie, Varsity Blues, Waiting, Superbad, etc came later, and I almost consider those watered down versions of the feral partying that happened earlier just as the internet went mainstream, but still canon.

A Friday night at my city's bar scene today looks like what our Sunday or Monday was. People half tipsy on 2 drinks, even though they're Ubering home later. The faint scent of ganja now instead of basements filled with smoke and first timers trying laughing gas. Nobody puking or disappearing around a corner to relieve themselves. No sound of bottles shattering. I feel like a curator of a museum now, a derelict from a forgotten time.

In fairness, I went to college in the midwest, where there was nothing else to do. Now the West Coast has effectively legalized drugs, awakening much of the country to the full human experience, and people have done the trips and plant medicine and maybe realize at a young age that alcohol and tobacco are rough drugs that tear you up. Which is admirable, but they also prepare you for getting torn up as an adult. To miss out on learning how to make your way home on drunk logic before you black out seems like a crucial rite of passage has been lost.

And it shows. In our country's embrace of puritanical politics like we saw in the jingoist 2000s, regentrified for the antivax era. In the worship of unspoiled beauty, idolizing of influencers, pursuit of financial security over visceral experience. In the fanboyism, bootlicking and drinking the kool-aid for every new evolutionary tech that cements the status quo instead of freeing the human spirit in a revolutionary manner. I gotta be honest, most of what's happening today is laughable to my generation. Blah I sound like a Boomer. Ok cryable then. We're in mourning. We worry about the kids today. All work and no play and all that. It's killing our souls, and theirs.

I guess my final thought after writing this is that partying is one of the most powerful reality-shifting tools in our arsenal. All of this can't be it. This can't be how America ends. You know what to do.

Another day, another well-meaning internet community falling victim to the creative writing major testing water on Reddit before trying to make it in Hollywood.

I mean normal teen parties when I was a teenager were places for teens to get blackout drunk and make bad decisions. I empathize with your position somewhat, but it wasn't all good.

I grew up very sheltered, my mom had anxiety and I was a single child.

I remember being unable to comprehend how in media, people could just go somewhere without issues to met with people or even go for a walk. I knew that was a thing, but I could not imagine what it's actually like and if it's real.

I feel like this article was spawned by that reddit post and subsequent related tweets.

Yeah and in 30 years a thought post on brainnit will appear in everyone's head and they'll ask Gen-Zer's did you really have a brain that was isolated from everyone elses?

And someone will respond:

It's really sad to me how we fucked you guys up and you didn't even have phones...

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> 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.

This is baffling to me. Most of the parties I went to in high school, college, and my 20s were in people's tiny apartments, small rented houses, and small yards.

Maybe expectations changed? Now it seems more like people feel the need to get ready before going out, to bring something, to pre-coordinate to arrive with a group of friends, to have a lot of space, to have everything pre-cleaned and ready to be the background in photos, and maybe even to have a meat and cheese platter that gets posted to social media. It seems there's much less willingness to just go places, be cramped, and just hang out.

>People these days don’t own real estate.

The home ownership rate has been 64%, plus or minus about 1%, for the last 45 years.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S

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 :)

> People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes.

If you look at a graph of home ownership in the US by cohort at various points in time (see, e.g., https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership...), while the rates are somewhat lower, between the highest point and the lowest point the difference is at worst 10 percentage points.

This sentiment strikes me a lot more as people in their 20's complaining that they're poor because they don't have the financial resources of someone in their 40's, despite having more resources than the latter did at their age.

I'm not convinced. I live in Berlin and everyone is living in a flat, yet I've had my fair share of home parties, even in small two room apartments where half the party spilled out to the stairwell.

> Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes.

About 2/3 of households in the US own the home they live in. Renting is the minority, not the majority.

My sister and her husband throw a pretty great annual Halloween party at the house they rent which is 1-2 hours from the nearest city and a good 15-20 minutes from the nearest town.

I don't think the real estate situation helps but I think there's a deeper social problem driving both of those effects.

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.

Homeownership rates in the US fluctuate, but are basically flat over the past ~45 years.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S

"People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. "

This is only true in some HCOL places ands big cities. Plenty of people own homes.

>People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all.

The article says a similar decline is seen among the wealthy.

No, owning a house does not give you more license to throw a party. Not owning a car never stopped anyone determined to go to a party. A place to sleep? What kind of party are you imagining in your head? One where people travel hundreds of miles and need a hotel? Your take is ridiculous. People party in small apartments all the time, I've been to hundreds. I took the bus there many times, or got rides from other friends going to the party, and now ride-sharing is a thing. Sleep?? That was never, ever part of the equation. I know it's a tired cliche, and usually used as a troll, but I can confidently say that you obviously don't get invited to many parties.

US suburbs have not changed. I grew up in US suburbs (in the 70's and early 80's) and there was partying.

My own personal theory? Music sucks now, ha ha.

This is such weird reasoning. When you're young and throwing parties where you're implicitly inviting a whole lot of people who you don't know, they will be bringing random chaos and you want to appear judgement proof and have it be someone else's property getting accelerated wear and tear. By the time you own a house with a yard, you're only inviting people you already know, with maybe one layer of transitive trust. Perhaps this focus on owning a house as the first step to doing anything points to the real problem though?

You need a home to party? News to my younger self. Parties in crowded shitty apartments, outdoors, or even in cars were the norm when we were young.

This complaint - we don’t have nice houses so we can’t party - is unintentionally emblematic of the root issue in misaligned expectations and excuses for realigned priorities. Nobody Inknew when young had houses either.

Look, it’s not obviously bad to me that young people party less. Blame gaming, blame some resurgent conservative cultural values, blame the internet or even laziness. Maybe the youth today just have better things to do, and that okay. Binge drinking, drugs, and stupid decisions aren’t necessary good investments in time, and many, many, friends from back in the day didn’t survive it. Like less kids smoking cigarettes, maybe this is a good thing (for them and all of us).

But it’s ridiculous to try and turn this behavioral trend into some manifesto on housing inequality. Give me a break.

Eh, I feel like my (and most peoples) main exposure to house parties was in HS and college when basically no one owns their own home. Rented apartments, houses and family homes seemed to work fine then, I can't really think why that wouldn't be the case now.

Note the age-group with the biggest drop is 15-24, its not like the average 18 year old owned their own home circa 1995.

Jeez, youngish people feeling left out on investing into real estate see it as root of most of problems this world is facing now.

Sorry but can't agree, as do most folks here backing up with some hard data. That 'glass is half-empty' approach to daily life ain't healthy long term, ever thought about that?

This is just absolute total nonsense. Normal people do own real estate. Lots of people rented back then and do now. Friends were “far away” back then too, they took their cars, bummed rides, took buses, whatever. Where do they sleep? Where do you think they slept back then? The floor, the couch, the lawn, or they didn’t sleep at all and just went home in the morning.

That reminds me of an article I can't find anymore on the plight of the American poor couple trying to raise a child in a gasp 900sqft. Uh, check real estate sqft averages around the world?

I never was much of a partier as a teen but I've been to a few, and they were all in flats ranging from much smaller than an American house to literally one room sometimes with 15 people in it. Had no problem falling asleep drunk on somebody's kitchen floor or on a couch in a room with a bunch of other people.

Even in the US a dorm room (a tiny, rented place) is a stereotyped party location.

Oh and ofc numbers are wrong. The houses in the US are bigger than ever and homeownership rate is smth like 60%.

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more importantly imo: maids and housewives.

good riddance btw. but we need to adjust because partying is nice. we are still working ad if we have a free employee taking care of half our lives.

welp, it's always a class issue.

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 to ensure there is child oversight during working hours, and the neighborhoods are empty.

We decided to break from the trend and return our kids to more of a free-range kid paradigm, risking the disruption to our working schedules, this year. It sounds good in theory, but you are left with the realities of every other child friend being wrapped in camp schedules, as well. It took a lot of proactive discussions with other parents to convince them to keep their kids at home and accessible. But you're still left with the dual income problem, so you find yourself hiring a sitter to oversee and shuttle.

The result is an improvement over the 100% booked compartmentalized camp situation, but without the same level of independence that I experienced and have come to credit with really advancing my own personal development as a child.

Often the kids like to play together, but the parents are the ones that are just... weird and asocial. I hate to bring agism into this, but there definitely seems to be a generational gap with the adults.

Some of my kid's friends are raised by their parents, and others are (apparently) raised primarily by grandparents.

When my kid wants to get together with friends whose (50-60 year old) grandparents bring them by, the grandparents come up to the door, socialize for a bit while the kid runs inside, and then we talk about when the playtime will be over and they can come over to pick the kid up. If it's an event where we both bring the kids, I find it easy to shoot the breeze with the grandparents, have small talk about how the week went, and so on.

When the parents are, say, 25-35 year old range, it's a totally different vibe. They'll drive up, let the kid out of the car, and then race away without even getting out of their car. When playtime is at a local park or something, they sometimes hang around, but they go off into a corner, engrossed on their phone, totally ignoring the other parents (who, depending on their own ages are either chit chatting or locked into their Instagram).

I remember when I was a kid in the 80s, and not only would we love to get together at someone's house, but the parents would also be happy to get together for a little socialization, maybe throw some steaks on the grill, put on some Sportsball, or whatever. This practice seems to be dead now that I'm a parent!

What happened is that everything turned into playdates? When we were kids, the general direction was GTFO, and don't be late for dinner. Who did you go play with? Whoever was at the park. When you got older, you hopefully had access to the skating rink. Or maybe a bowling alley. Before that, kickball at the park. Pretty much every day. Maybe see if you can over shoot the swing again.

>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.

One factor may have to do with birth rates and construction. I grew up in a neighborhood that was all built up within the span of a few years, and populated by young families, in the early 60s. There were kids all over the place. Anybody who wanted to play would just go out and holler, and they'd have a few other kids almost instantly.

Where my wife and I raised our kids, there was one neighbor with kids, and that's it.

Also, kids are more occupied now. "Back in my day" elementary school kids didn't have homework, and it was pretty minimal even through high school. My kids had homework starting in first grade. Naturally you want it to get done early while the kids are still awake, but this cuts into the prime hours for play. We should simply have revolted against it. But that's hindsight.

Parents just want to watch their Internet content and it's easier to just stick their kids in front of a video game or computer vs having an event that requires parenting.

At least when parents are addicted to alcohol they can still be social and function as parents. Not so with Instagram/tiktok.

I wonder how much of this comes down to wage stagnation and the need for not only both parents to work, but to work more hours and sometimes multiple jobs, just to keep from drowning. Especially when childcare is so expensive, it's a situation that can compound and spiral.

Parties and kids aren't mutually exclusive. In fact some of my best memories growing up were from the times my parents took me to some house party where all the parents were talking and drinking and having their own adult fun, while us kids were running wild over the property and neighborhood until real late. Adults are excited, kids are excited, it just works, see you next weekend.

A lot of Millennial parents are -- paranoid. We have had neighbors exclaim that they don't want their children saying hi to us or they'll learn to talk to "strangers". Or a neighbor whose little boy played with my daughters for months, but when they moved the mother scowlingly rejected the idea of playdates because part of her goal in getting a bigger house was -- to put it in my words -- insulating him from other children. These tend to be the same parents who micromanage their children in other ways, like very limited diets and excessive summertime clothing, so, again, it seems like some form of paranoia.

Kids used to just go outside, find one another, and play. I see that you are attempting to solve the problem with organizing playdates. However, I think that playdates and structured EVERYTHING for kids is a contributing factor to how we got here.

I think at some point, we need to acknowledge media sensationalism (traditional and social media varieties) have not only poisoned politics and bolstered conspiracy theory popularity, but have vastly overstated the dangers of every day life, making childhood and parenting much worse than a generation or two ago.

Take away all those kid's iPads and on-demand cartoons and I bet the parents start begging for more playdates

> 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.

Kids were not driven to playdates 60+ years ago. They would play with other kids living nearby. Parents would not organize their playdates either.

> 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.

I do not seen how these are "lame excuses". Seems like valid things that lower your availability and also valid reasons to want to you remaining time for own rest.

> 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.

60+ years ago, 6 years old kids would go to main playground on their own. Partly it is that kids are much less independent these days ... and partly it is that their own rooms are much more fun. So, kids want to stay at home because it is good enough and parents do not want to sit bored on playground.

It was already happening before COVID. All these trends were. That just made it worse.

A major issue is the death of independent child play. In a lot of places if a kid — and we are talking up to early teens — is unsupervised police will be called. It’s entirely the result of daytime TV and true crime making people think there are pedophile nuts hiding in every bush when in reality abductions by strangers are incredibly rare. If a kid is abused or worse it’s almost always someone they know.

One of the things I love about where we live is that kids do still play outside. It’s a safe Midwestern suburb. We moved from SoCal and there you would definitely have some busybody call the cops. Of course it was perhaps more dangerous — not because of crime but cars. All the suburban streets have like 60mph speed limits in SoCal.

During COVID, every kid in the neighborhood was at my house. School was short maybe 1-3 hours then it was play time. I didn’t know all those kids lived in my neighborhood! Kids had no issue coming over.

I don’t know what the reason is for this phenomenon

Some good answers but also American parents are stretched thin but also perhaps want to be a larger part of their kids lives?

During the week I get maybe 10-30 minutes of quality time with them outside of the routine of weekly life. Maybe?

So if I want to do something with my children and have a relationship with them, the weekends are all I have.

Aaaand of course,quality of life in America is generally in decline and parents usually have no support structure (family etc) so no one has interest in the extra work of doing playdates.

That’s interesting to hear, because I feel like all of my friends who have kids have a very conscientious approach towards socializing their kids, setting up play dates, (plus finding other parents they get along with to make new friends with!)

I really wonder what the less involved, less intentional approach would be - hope your kid figures it all out for themselves?

There is a coordinated action problem here, I think. (I have three young kids).

When I was a kid, I could be relatively sure that if I went outside on a random day, there would be other kids playing outside. So, all the kids went outside most days to play.

I _could_ send my kid out to play and there _are_ other kids in the neighborhood, but almost all of them are inside playing video games. At best there might be some kids going on a walk with their parents.

If my oldest kid wants to interact with with his friends, his best bet is to get on fortnite, which he does most days _and he doesn't even like fortnite_.

Why do the kids need play dates? When I was a 7, you’d just talk to the kids down the street. I knew several kids within a few blocks of where I lived.

It seemed like a really far distance that I went to see people but now I realize I never went more than a quarter mile from home to see someone. There were just a lot of families in my area that had kids.

Of course, that’s not true in a lot of the areas I’m in now. My friends experience the same where it’s hard to meet people who have kids of similar age. There might be 50 homes and only 1-2 will have kids near the same age. Many won’t have any kids at all.

Thinking back on it, it was surprising how many kids there were near me near my age growing up compared to now.

Same, it’s really disappointing how few parents have reached out to play compared to how often I am trying to find one of my kids’ friends who is around to play.

I see this SO MUCH, I wonder if you're also in California. I find this state particularly difficult to have a social life in. Everyone is "friendly" but nobody wants to be your friend, always chasing something else and never making time (exceptions apply). It's been exhausting to live here and I can't wait to go back to Europe where social life was not nearly as difficult.

As a father of 2 in Canada, I feel the same. Loving the discussion here.

Seems like an opening to build a SaaS to encourage kids to socialize.

/s

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There’s no way to say this without coming across as extremely rude, but…

> I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents

If this isn’t the only thing you/your kids do that’s well outside typical social norms, that’s probably the reason nobody else is inviting them. This is almost on the level of parents accompanying their adult kids to job interviews and then wondering why their kid didn’t get an offer.

> The ROI isn't where I want it.

I know this is HN, but sometimes - maybe, hopefully, sometimes - neither R nor I is involved in an action.

If you aren't enjoying doing it then by all means stop doing it. But throwing a party isn't supposed to have deliverables or action items.

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.

That's about the right size for a potluck. Set a rough guide for the main and have people post what they're bringing. If they're good friends they'll put their dishes in the washer/sink and some will help clean before they leave. If they aren't good guests (bring something + fun + clean up) they don't get invited back. Have it once a month on the same day. Plan to rotate it and talk about it at the party.

Of course people have all sorts of different ideas of what a party should be, what to bring, and what to do while you're there, but doing it all yourself is really hard. If you're getting it catered with cleaning staff, it's very different than having mostly the same close friends, month after month year after year.

> I wanted to build friendships out of it, and hopefully get invited to more parties myself, but so far it hasn't happened.

From this and other comments, it seems you think you didn't make friends, because you're not invited to other parties. There seems a leap here.

If the others are holding big parties and not inviting you - sure.

If they just don't throw parties, then they likely are still your friends :-)

But as another commenter said: Going to parties is not necessarily the best way to make friends. Whenever I go to a big party, the host is way too busy to spend a meaningful amount of time with me. Of course he's not going to become my friend that way! Going to big parties is for guests to make friends with other guests - not with the host.

I have some good friends who throw only big parties - I've stopped going to them. What's the point if I can't interact with them?

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 :)

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

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.

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!)

there are deep reasons for why society is not like this anymore

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.

I feel like while there were laws against furnishing alcohol to minors and the like, I never really heard of some one's parents getting charged because some kid crashed his car after boozing it up at a party back then. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention but it seems like the enforcement of that really stepped up.

> 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.

0.08 allows for a few drinks

>Find me community like this anywhere in America these days.

The only reason I have become a staple member of my little dead-end, working-class street is because I don't email/text, and last summer I spent outdoors building a tinyhome (that all the passersby watched/asked about).

"How do I get ahold of you?" they used to ask... "Simple," I'd say, "just knock on my door between noon through sunset" [my calling hours, to use the historic term, posted by my doorbell]. Haven't even used my phone but a handful of times this 2025 — turned off entirely since early May — & my social life is what I want it to be, I am not alone any more than I wish to be.

I moved here two years ago, and already know everybody on my street (24 dwellings, total); it's primarily rentals, so when there is a new U-Haul I make sure to bring over a beer/conversation (typically a week after moving in — so they can settle/adjust/remember).

Before living in this working-class neighborhood, I lived in the nicer parts of towns... and honestly, these working-class people are nicer and more giving/understanding/decent than anywhere else I've ever lived (e.g. Westlake Hills [near Austin]; West End [Nashville]; Barton Hills [ATX]; Lookout Mountain [Tenn]).

Stop doing everything on your phone. Start being neighborly.

Example: multiple neighbors and I have jointly-purchased a nicer lawnmower, instead of each buying our own simpler pusher.

¢¢

My Southern California neighborhood used to be like this. It was a diverse neighborhood of white, Filipino, Viet and Mexicans and it felt alive. Then covid hit and the demographics changed. Prices went up. Now the neighborhood is as quiet at night as where I lived in the bay area a few years ago. No open garages. No music.

People are generally unfriendly now and keep to themselves more. Sad what we've lost. We're still an immigrant community but the immigrants are from different places. I'm sure they paid too much for their houses and feel the stress. There are also some obvious cultural differences with respect to socializing and partying.

> Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.

It certainly depends. I had great neighbors when I lived on the river in a non-HOA community... many parties were had with sunset beer hangouts on the dock or beach. Military communities are also notably close-knit so what you say makes sense.

> Most Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.

My family moved into a small cul-de-sac with 5 houses total. I wanted to introduce myself, so I wrote a short letter with a little about ourselves and our contact info, and then dropped it into each neighbors mailbox. Only 1 neighbor wrote back, and 1 neighbor literally _returned the letter_ to our mailbox. So yea, that's the neighborhood I live in.

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).

Social networks have moved online and have been drowned in ads and TikTok dances. No time for in-person meetups unless you're going to that fancy instagrammable place to take pictures of yourself.

You got this immigrant. We have a group of a few families. Each hosts at least one large event per year on occasions like Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years and our own festivals. Everyone and their kids, and other friends / relatives join. Three families ended up on the same street by chance. We regularly cook or get takeout and get together at short notice. Alcohol and food play a big role.

That said, being an immigrant poses other kinds of challenges. So it's not all like the 1970s in the US, or where we came from.

I bet that if the head of the local Air Force wives' club did exactly that today, they'd get the same results.

I bet military service-members still socialize and get hammered.

lol!!!

“ It seems that the original modern American swingers were crew-cut World War II air force pilots and their wives. Like elite warriors everywhere, these “top guns” often developed strong bonds with one another, perhaps because they suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military. According to journalist Terry Gould, “key parties,” like those later dramatized in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, originated on these military bases in the 1940s, where elite pilots and their wives intermingled sexually with one another before the men flew off toward Japanese antiaircraft fire.“

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-at-dawn/201211/n...

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.

Or walkable neighbourhoods, or public transportation.

That was before Uber...

The chart still shows a good amount of partying around 2009.

I would say prices and economy play as large of a role.

When I was in university we thrived on nickel drafts and dive bars.

These days it's $10/cocktail + cover charge.

People were drinking and driving in 1800s New England?

Well, the loneliness coming through on those posts might just be from the fact that the people that are posting on social media like that are, in fact, lonely and looking for connection. I have a pretty extensive morning routine of practicing music, sitting for meditation/pranayama, food, shower all before work, and then Muay Thai or yoga or strength training in the evening. I just don't post it on social media because I don't have social media. I still go out to see music/art and friends etc, but I also live in NYC where it's easy to do that.

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.

Sounds like a lonely cockatoo that overly preens itself to the point that it pulls out it's feathers.

What are they supposed to do instead? If you can't get together to drink with friends in the evening, this is a very good option.

I mean everything you listed there could be done within 2 hours if you do it all at home. Not sure what the big deal is, you wake up at 7 and you’re ready for the day by 9.

But oh yea maybe laying in bed for an hour doom scrolling on your phone before you finally get up is a more efficient use of time.

I remember the exact moment I saw our star football player log into Minecraft in class

> 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?"

> People have no place to host a party, because they're all renters

I've seen this repeated in several comments and I just don't get it -- renting a place, be it a college apartment or a full house as an adult, has never stopped me from throwing a party. Maybe if there was a "no parties" rule in the lease (which I've never seen, and I've rented at least a dozen different places) and the landlord lived in the building, but otherwise rentals are fair game.

The no shared interests / too many niches thing doesn't go mentioned enough.

It feels ridiculous to bring up car dependence in an article about 1980-2020 social trends, when the US was car-dependent the entire time, and the big drop was in the 2010s in particular.

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.

But that hasn't changed much between the 80s and now. It was bad then and it is bad now. So I don't see it being a significant factor for change in socialization on that timescale.

The sprawl of suburbia isn't so much outside the top 5-10ish cities. Even "growing" places like Columbus OH in the midwest, you can go from cornfield to cornfield across the built environment in probably 25 miles and about as many minutes on the freeway network that is entirely uncongested since it is so overbuilt for the population (unlike in those top 5 places where it may be underbuilt). By and large that is how the bulk of the country looks and operates. The idea that you'd drive an hour and still be in the same metro region is this big exception that people living in that exception assume must be the norm, but really isn't.

According to the US Census Bureau, the median house age in the usa is 1980. I live in a 1960 house of the type that is supposedly illegal, although every house in my suburb built since then has had building codes and planning regulations forcing walkability. Cars are forced for specialization. I had a 20 mile each way commute to an absolutely horrible neighborhood but a very high paying job. I am in walking distance of some minimum wage manual labor jobs. I can't afford to work at those minimum wage manual labor jobs and live here, and a car is incredibly cheap compared to my higher income. No one can explain why an architectural movement peaking in 1950s-1970s had no effect on socialization for decades until the smartphone era. Multiple entire generations lived in "soulless car filled suburbs" and socialized wildly according to the data in the article... until smartphones... There's an entire mythology built around the idea that any new problem that occurs began coincidentally with the construction of suburbs in the 1950s, even if the new problem didn't appear for the first 75 years of suburban living.

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.

Yeah, there are good reasons that doesn't count. Maaybe if it were in-person and not over headsets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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I agree. I was graduated from highschool around 1990. My friend group was very active every weekend, we just didn't do "parties".

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.

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.

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.

People aren't even constantly connected via social media anymore. That was a thing in Facebook's earlier years, now most stuff is algorithmically fed from randos.

This feels right. More than anything, it's the function of the Internet.

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...

Off the cuff that coincides pretty well with the rise of “helicopter parenting” and “tiger mom” trends.

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

A fifth of vodka has been like $15 for at least a decade otoh

As soon as the screen became marginally more interesting than the person next to you social life was pretty much doomed.

In college we’d only study 3 or 4 days a week to make room for the drinking

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.

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

>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.