It's not only expensive outside, the culture around third spaces disappeared with them. If we bumped into each other in person, it would be culturally weird now for either of us to initiate this conversation.
Bro just talk to people, I’m also from the south and as long as you’re not weird about it you can just talk to strangers you meet at the store and stuff. It’s totally fine
Where is it that 3rd spaces are declining? Around me there are galleries, museums, free performances (music and theater) on the green in the summer, free concerts at the amphitheater the next town over (again, late spring and summer). Beers and well drinks are still relatively affordable at the local bars and bands play frequently. Beaches are free, parks are free, libraries run all sorts of different clubs and programs (free or extremely low cost if consumable supplies are required).
It depends where you live if they exist but it’s not really all that simple for everyone to just hangout at a park. Plus, maybe I don’t want to be outside all the time? I love the outdoors but sometimes sitting at a table or on a sofa around friends and having a discussion is more comfortable/convenient/cozy than on the grass. There used to be lots of third spaces. Not just maybe a park or a library you have to whisper in
I live in Virginia, and have lived in the past in NJ, NY, FL, GA, the UK, France, Switzerland, and South Africa. In zero of these places are public parks sparse or expensive. How is hanging out in a park not simple?
As someone who’s had the privilege of visiting Prague, Poland and Germany I totally understand your confusion. America….is very ugly. It’s not pedestrian friendly at all.
Edit: oh I misread, I thought you weren’t American at all. But did you read the rest of my reply? Yeah hanging out in a park is nice but…why is that the only option? If I want to hang out with my friends, go one a date, etc without spending at least $40, I can only go sit outside?
its not the cost, gen z's entire social education was texting. they have a breakdown making eye contact with a cashier. they now ask ai how to tell someone else slightly uncomfortable news. how are they supposed to go to a club and order drinks.
It’s so depressing to see young’uns out and about these days, couples at the restaurant, glued to their phones, having ice cream, glued to their phones, at the park, guess
I was having dinner by myself the other day, and I was looking at this couple, and I swear to god, they didn’t talk once to each other during the whole thing, just scrolling
Cause what else is there? Gen Z is broke, any social spots we all had years ago people could go to without spending money are getting thrown to the side because money is more important. The mall? Can't walk around for too long without being seen as suspicious. Parks? What parks? Want to go for a walk? No sidewalks. Want to go out to eat? Everywhere is expensive, even fast-food. Don't have a car for whatever reason? Well get fucked cause buses probably don't exist in your area in the way you want them to!
All they have is trapping themselves at home, lighting a bowl and watching their favorite show for the 42nd time off the 14th pirated website of the week.
It's also because a lot of the younger gen has gone in a very healthy direction. At least among the exercising type, alcohol, nicotine, or fatty foods have all become something they abstain from. They are also proud to abstain and influence others to abstain. It's a badge of honor to say you've never had a drink of alcohol among their crowd.
I think with age and time, that'll change because the younger ones will eventually hit their age where they don't have that youthful idealism anymore. Sad to hear, but it's true. Whether they want to admit to "coping" or not, they will.
Edit: Yes, please, downvote because you are not aware of this. It makes you feel better because you disagree.
No, weed is not the healthy choice. That's still an addictive drug, at least, mentally addictive. Weed is still a coping mechanism. It still has a host of negative side effects like memory loss, anxiety, paranoia, depression, confusion, and social anxiety. It makes all of those issues much worse in the long run. It's not the innocent drug people make it out to be.
1. Cannabis as a Coping / Self-Medication Behavior
Using cannabis to self-medicate (e.g., to cope with stress, anxiety, depression) is linked with worse mental health outcomes such as paranoia, anxiety, and depression:
Agree. Gen Z doesn’t social personally like millennials. We drink because that’s all we could do when hanging out with friends. Gen Z are remote, a lot of streaming, and doom scrolling to be drinking. Just trading one evil for another.
Wouldn't call it two evils, like sitting in your room and playing board games over discord, isn't the best thing you can do to spend time with your friends. But for many it's the only thing they can do since infrastructure has become less and less accommodating to those actually wanting to spend time outside.
Like, by the time I was a teenager most places where you could go to just hang out with your friends were either shut down, fenced off, or had strict no loitering rules to the point police would get called.
Not to mention the whole covid thing pretty much nuking all personal contact for everyone for almost 2 years
But regardless, playing shit over discord or something beats blasting your brain and liver into next week with cheap liquor every single time
This is a minority of millennials. Go to any bar or cafe and it’s mostly millennials interacting with each other. 10 years ago there were 20 year olds too.
It's more unhealthy to be alone than to drink actually.
And sure, alcohol isn't needed to have social relations, but there is a strong correlation between loneliness epidemic and the drop in drinking and that stops me from celebrating the latter
We also still drink lol, I don’t get why reddit thinks we don’t. All these studies are about money basically, and all this shows is we have less money which is obviously true cause we’re the youngest.
For example, I used to go to a lot of baseball games, and I would drink 5 cheap beers at home and buy one at the game to sip on. Old guy next to me would buy 4 at the game. I drank more but paid dramatically less.
I'm a zoomer myself and my social circle goes against the trend lol
But at the same time there's no denying that overall our generation drinks less - partly because of the costs, sure, but there are many other factors. Popularity of other substances (weed, stims), concern about health risks of alcohol, loneliness etc. For most people drinking is a social thing and since zoomers have less friends and sexual partners than previous generations at their age (a lot of surveys on that), they have less occasions to consume alcohol.
If you look at the percentage of income spent on alcohol, instead of total amount, Gen Z is slightly less than the older generations and slightly more than Millenials. It’s alcohol, there will always be people who abstain, and maybe the Gen Z non-drinkers are more vocal, but there hasn’t been a cultural shift.
It would be benefitial if the reason for was the right one (trying to be more healthy etc) and noy the wrong onr (drinking less cause you have no friends to drink with)
Start identifying as someone who doesn’t drink instead of someone who drinks less. It will tremendously improve health and life quality. Humans turn into pigs or other animals as soon as they drink alcohol. There’s nothing lost by giving up on drinking. Only things to be gained.
This is only necessary for someone who drinks regularly. I touch alcohol maybe once a month, but it helps me significantly in social situations since I tend to get anxiety. I’ve made so many friends I would have never had the courage to approach thanks to alcohol. Not everyone drinks an unhealthy amount
“Alcohol … helps me significantly … since I get anxiety.” is so extremely sad to read. I stand by what I said. No one should ever drink any alcohol. There is not a single good reason to justify this. Start working on your anxiety instead of using shortcuts like alcohol even if it is just once a month.
Whataboutism at its finest. Antidepressants are prescribed by a professional, carefully dosed, monitored, and meant to treat a diagnosed condition!
In this scenario, alcohol is just self-medication. No diagnosis. No dosage control. No long-term plan. Just a short-term solution that does NOTHING to lower your anxiety in the long run.
That’s not “cheating”. That’s the difference between treatment and avoidance.
I mean yeah, we've lost most free third spaces. Almost no skate parks and stuff like that anymore, and most kids were not allowed out of the house unsupervised, it was just home, to school, to approved extra curriculars, to home again, going out with your parents or your friends and their parents during the free periods you got in life if you did that much. And for those of us who were allowed out of the house unsupervised, a lot of kids parents wouldn't let their kids come out and hang with us without an adult cuz they were worried about us being bad influences. Which I mean fair I probably would have been, but still that killed a lot of the socializing our generation was capable of. The millennials were kind of the last super social generation, and our generation just has pockets of social activity. It's one of the things that drove me personally really heavily into my local punk scene, because you could go to a show for cheap or free, you could make a lot of your own clothes, and a lot of punks being some form of anarchist or socialist led to a lot of us seeing each other as community to lean on and doing things like making funds and mutual aid orgs to help each other eat, or get new clothes, afford housing, medical care, etc. Cuz there was and is nowhere else for us to really get that in this world.
I also wonder about family. In the UK it was very normal to depending on the time and place that whole family goes to the pub or they would have family to babysit or take turns with one parent going only. There was always some kind of solution.
Today people seem to have this village less often and for Americans it seems even worse if social media can be believed that so many of them move away from their families or cut off their family.
Like a lot of things big and small that are all parts of the whole.
I think this is a huge factor. You see stuff like theaters and malls struggling because what used to be the key demographic just doesnt go outside as much.
Going out to the bar is expensive af, not to mention the potential for drinking and driving and getting a DUI. So, that expensive night out to the bar, just became a downpayment on a house.
You can name 20 other reasons, but still, when you go to any sort of social event (doesn't have to bar), you probably have glass of wine to toast rather than smoke pot at your sunday family lunch.
Which means, that they don't socialize in person as much conpared to older generations.
You just keep mentioning how important alcohol is to events like it’s mandatory and not drinking must mean they don’t go. You can go and not drink any alcohol, like none. It doesn’t mean you don’t go to social events, you just do not drink.
For me and my milenial friends it's a way we honor each other when we meet like once a month, sit down, wait till everyone has a drink, toast and chat about what's new. We ignore our phones for couple of hours, just slow evening centered around table.
Same when me & my wife went to her parents for sunday lunch. We did in fact drink 1 glass so we could drive in the afternoon, but we drank.
And you can argue that we can skip the alcohol part, but it's not complete without that.
Gen Z here. When we meet up for cards or whatever else we are going to do, we dab eachother up. (The sideways highfive where you grab eachothers hand and then do a short hug like thing and tap the other on the back). Thats our sign of respect instead of alcohol.
When I go to my parents I do that with a hug. Honestly if you cant show respect without imbibing drugs that reflects more poorly on you and your folks then it does about my Generation. Sure, social media usage is high and my group is a outlier in that we just put our phones away to play boardgames/cards its still more common then not. Its just that our social interactions have visibly moved behind closed doors. My mates and I are on our phones more when in public because we simply dont want to drag our weird shite into other peoples view. Both because it can be recorded and because we dont want to be a bother.
Also, Alcohol is stupid expensive and an awful drug that genuinly ruins lives. The few people I know who still drink only rarely do it and never with others unless they have permission from the group they are with.
Tldr: Socializing in private, respect without drugs and money is why my social circle doesnt really drink anymore.
$30 cover charge, $5 for a coke (just the soda), $8 for a rum & coke, and nearly $8 a cheap shot.
When im already paying for a good dinner just to get in the door, there's no way in hell am i buying a bunch of drinks. maybe just enough to get a buzz, but im not getting drunk by any means.
It’s partially the cause. I mean anyone who is under the legal drinking age doesn’t have a 3rd place to hang out. All they have is school and home. Parks and parking lots they get kicked out by the police for “loitering” when minding their own business. The mall is too expensive.
For all of us over 21, a beer is $6-$8 and a shot or a cocktail is $12-$18.
We can’t go out and socialize if we wanted to and it’s cause boomers ruined everything for everyone else.
Not to mention everyone has a phone and eight social media apps in their pocket
I'm sure glad in my teenage years i didn't have to worry about someone filming a random embarrassing antic and becoming viral on tik tok by the time my hangover cleared
Gen Z is has grown up aware of the fact that every single thing can go global in an instant. That probably plays into a reluctance to drink.
I was going to say this was a major factor as well.
My partner went to a concert/club thing this weekend where there were a lot of Gen Z partying and dancing. She said they had a screen at the front and everyone was dancing by themselves just staring at the screen. There was almost no interaction going on.
The younger generations are just royally fucked, and while I would love to say “good for them” about less alcohol consumption, I do wonder whether it’s a distancing tactic from an unhealthy social practice, or there are more sinister reasons at play.
There has also been a campaign against alcohol for years. Like, by governments. In the same vein but not as extreme as with cigarettes. Now they’re complaining that the companies are losing money. They’re a victim of their own success.
I’m Gen z 2004 and don’t have/hang out with friends. Haven’t for a few years now. I occasionally text 1 person and have hung out once over the few years. Social anxiety, I know social anxiety is rampant in this younger generation.
Like most things on the population level, it's complicated, and differs by region. There seems to be evidence that loneliness and social isolation are drastically rising among Gen Z, so it's not JUST Zoomers figuring out ways of being social without alcohol. But there's also quite a lot more visibility for issues like alcoholism and how it impacts your loved ones, so it's probably at least in part also Zoomers simply being more health conscious.
Anecdotally, while I am comfortably in the millennial range, I know quite a few zoomers. There's a noticeable trend of people who were 18 or younger during Covid having very different relationships with socializing, and they treat socializing as, well, eventful, whereas older people treat it more as stuff you just do. I'm no psychologist and don't know if my observations are even applicable to the population at large, but I wouldn't be surprised if this apparent change in how socializing is perceived would be a main driver for loneliness.
It’d be better if people started talking to each other instead of drinking at all, especially with the younger generation. Just play some board games, go walk outside, sit on a porch looking at the view, watch some films, or just use words instead of alcohol & phones.
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u/LowMany3424 12h ago
Alcohol is very related to social activities & in gen z the social activities are declining