It goes without saying that every generation's coming-of-age experiences will be different from the generation before them...but just how different can they really be?
Ashley Tea, a 32-year-old millennial and content creator, recently went viral on TikTok for seeking the answer to this question for Gen Z and millennials. Ashley genuinely asked Gen Z what they like to do for fun, and the responses have been pretty illuminating.
In the video, Ashley says, "I genuinely think millennials got to have a way better time than Gen Z does."
She continues, "I got to be an emo kid in 2005. ... I got to go clubbing when clubbing was the club. ... I was 21 years old when Indie Sleaze was going on, and I was very Indie Sleaze, and it was a very good time."
"You could go to the club during the pandemic? That sucks. Literally, like, my sympathies go out to you. But I have a question for the youth, like a genuine question." Ashley says.
"What do you do for fun?" Ashley asks in the video. "What do do; where do you go? Like, it's a Friday night, a Saturday night. Do you go out? Do you go to a club, or do you go to shows, is it, like, only raves now?"
"And everything is so expensive," she continues, "I used to go to bars and restaurants because it was affordable. I worked in a restaurant, and I hung out in restaurants and bars and drank like crazy."
"What do you guys do? What do you do for fun??" Ashley concludes.
In response, thousands of Gen Z'ers chimed in with how they spend their time, and the answers paint the picture of a very different experience than Ashley describes. Some said they simply don't have any fun:
Others cited the rising cost of living as the reason they don't go out as much:
They also mentioned the pandemic, which obviously put a damper on things for Gen Z for many, many years:
Apparently, house parties have replaced the club:
And there were lots of mentions of crocheting:
As somber as some of these comments might seem, they actually make a lot of sense. According to an advisory put out by the US Surgeon General, about half of US adults report feeling lonely, with some of the highest rates among young adults. It also reported that time spent in person with friends among young people aged 15–24 has dropped 70% over the last two decades. If the comments on Ashley's video don't act as real-life proof of this data, I don't know what does.
BuzzFeed reached out to Ashley, who said that she was inspired to ask Gen Z what they like to do for fun after driving through her city's old nightlife district with her husband. "[It] used to house many clubbing venues — all but one of which have shuttered their doors in the last five or so years. It dawned on us that the nightclubs we used to go to 'just because' are now strictly for ticketed events for specific DJs, which led us to wonder what Gen Z did on a general Friday/Saturday night. ... Considering COVID lockdowns happened for teens during such a crucial time, we realized their experiences would be totally different from ours, so I figured I'd ask TikTok."
For Ashley, much of her time coming of age as a millennial was spent at these bars and clubs. "I was a teen in the late 2000s and was a moody, emo/scene, Myspace, and then Tumblr party animal who looked to media like Skins UK and music that centered around partying/binge drinking. Not everyone has the same experience, obviously — I knew many people my age that didn't partake — but it was quite common, and it was definitely my own personal experience. We teased our mullet hair and put on our eyeliner and Converse and went out to drink, first in parks late at night, and then once we were of age, in nightclubs downtown."
When asked about the response Gen Z had to her video, Ashley cited two things that surprised her: Gen Z's attitude toward drinking and the amount of surveillance they have to endure when they're out in public.
"Gen Z really does not seem to glorify binge drinking like we did. A lot of them have creative hobbies, or they talk about spending time online gaming with friends — stuff that was really considered super nerdy/not 'cool,' especially in the late 2000s."
In reference to privacy and surveillance, Ashley said, "There's always someone recording something, and a lot of Gen Z commented on parental surveillance; their parents can track their phones and know where they are at all times, which is something I can't even imagine. It feels like we had a lot more freedom than they do now. ... A big part of being a hot mess was fun because it was something that only really existed in the moment. We'd have stories to bring home or maybe a handful of photos, but we really weren't recorded to the degree that people are now."
And then, of course, there's the COVID of it all, plus the rising cost of living: "COVID was really unfair for us all, but I think it was the most unfair for teens who had to live through it during those years. I also feel for them from an economic standpoint. A lot of the responses from Gen Z focused around not being able to afford to go have fun, which is something I know I had more access to. I worked in a restaurant and still had enough money to pay for my basics while being able to enjoy 'extras' like drinks at the club or outfits to go out in, etc. With the cost of living so high and the overall economic atmosphere being so brutally crushing, it's rough to know that young people have to struggle even harder to make ends meet."
However, with all that said, Ashley told BuzzFeed she still feels lots of hope for Gen Z. "I'm glad that Gen Z seems to take their mental health more seriously, and it's cool to know creative hobbies are big right now. ... I have to also recognize that there were a ton of responses from Gen Z who also said their forms of fun were having house gatherings or kickbacks. It's not to say that they're all sitting alone in their rooms, broke and crocheting and crying — they just don't spend their time saving their money to spend on booze every Friday and Saturday. They're still having fun; it's just different. They've got a lot of endurance and creativity, even if they might not really recognize it at the moment."
In closing, Ashley told BuzzFeed, "I think positive cross-generational conversations like this are important. It's fun to knock on the generations above or below you, and I get a kick out of videos roasting millennials for our horrible fashion choices or forms of comedy, etc., and I know millennials also enjoy a good ol' boomer roast. That said, each generation does have things to learn from the other: not just older generations preaching down to younger ones, but younger generations sharing knowledge of an ever-changing world that older generations could really benefit from having."
