To quote a gangster from The Rockford Files,
We don’t have smog. We just have brown air.
I suppose this is a thing Stephen J. Cannell heard said sometime.
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Disparaging today’s teenagers for their failure to binge-drink would be absurd. Still, I’d guess the decline of booze in the lives of young Americans is both a cause of reduced socializing and a driver of it. Young Americans go out less, so they drink less, so they have less interest in creating excuses to drink, so they throw fewer parties, so they go out less, so they drink less.
Can confirm that when I was a teen, we spent much of our time meeting up with each other to hang out, trying to score some alcohol, and drinking/partying wherever we could get away with it. Early 20s, that moved to hanging out at the bars, shooting pool or throwing darts, meeting new people and talking with whoever else was playing, watching live bands and dancing together, and standing around outside talking with whoever else was in the smoker’s area.
It is great that few young people have those vices anymore, but when that was the key thing leading to in-person socializing, it leaves a big gap.
There was a reddit thread a few days ago where a GenZ was asking GenX whether or not we ever really had parties like in the movies: “Im Gen Z and have never been to anything like this. So was this a thing that just doesn’t happen anymore, or is it just Hollywood?”
Of course people said it was a real thing, and asked why they didn’t try to do one themselves, and they replied: “Dude house parties now are just everyone sitting in some kids living room on their phones. Honestly a maternity yoga class is more hype. I’ve tried. Apparently Tik Tok > Human Interaction 
I even went on a camping trip with a ton of people and everyone spent 70% of the time on the trip just trying to get service.”
Then someone said they don’t know what they’re missing out on, staying home and playing Fortnite, and the thread was funny. “It’s hard to get your 15 year old girlfriend pregnant on fortnight at least.” “Excellent point. But face to face socialization and acting rebellious is a crucial part of growing” “Socializing with who? Everyone else is playing Fortnite”.
It’s just interesting to me how quickly and dramatically it changed. Bowling Alone says the decline started gradually from the 1960s-1970s, but it seems to have really taken off in the 2010s to now.
I know some Millenials, but they hit that age just before smartphones became common. And they still did that stuff some (though maybe not quite as much as we did).
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Charles Rice, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine: ‘It’s a crime that a drug exists that could cure everyone yet not everybody has access to it’
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We used to have a fun LAN cafe where you could meet up with friends and play games like that together. It closed down even before the pandemic though and I get the impression they are very rare these days.
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Did you encounter a paywall? That’s odd.
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Well that’s weird. I wonder why?
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I was an introverted nerd in HS. Still am! And yet I spent more time partying then my millennial/Gen Z kids have. (Other than my oldest son, who has, well, some issues) But I have to say, more of my acquaintances died in sex, alcohol and drug related incidents than my kids’. Things change, and every generation thinks the current one is doing it wrong. I’m more worried about the consequences of my generations’ actions ending the possibility of their being future generations,
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Non UK resident I guess… pretty odd though.
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I’m a pretty shy nerdy millennial, but judging by how my childhood friends and college friends behave socially i’m more of a homebody. But i have had my fair share of partying, but i would say that millennials can be and are pretty outgoing social creatures but there’s probably more shy introverted folks compared to other generations
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I just get a popup asking me to create an account but I can close it and view the page.
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I run an extension for Firefox called Behind The Overlay Revival. You can just click on their icon and the box blocking your view will (in the vast majority of cases) disappear like magic.
There’s probably something similar for your phone and browser specs.
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I really like how the lyrics can be read two ways. There’s some clever subtlety there.
“Well, I’m not the world’s most masculine man, but I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola.”
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