Nice to have common ground

[u/A-Helpful-Flamingo]

[u/purplereuben]

I don't really think this is generational. I think everyone is sick and tired of this!

[u/Thefrightfulgezebo → u/purplereuben]

From what I've seen, many teenagers do not mind because for them, that's just how things have been for most of their life.

[u/eXo0us → u/Thefrightfulgezebo]

Many teenagers mind very much, they are actually hyper aware about their online persona.

That's why bars and clubs are dying - the young generation is not going there anymore - they are afraid that they got posted and go viral when partying.

[u/Mr_Ignorant → u/eXo0us]

Is that really the only reason? They already put so much of their personal info online, is the fear of additional videos an issue here?

I genuinely think the cost of going to clubs AND the fact that they are almost always online plays a role in not wanting to go out.

[u/Biduleman → u/Mr_Ignorant]

Yeah it's definitely multiple things.

When I (36) was young, at like 7-8 my parents were letting me bike around alone. My friends were in the neighborhood so I'd just take my bike, ride to their place, knock on the door and ask them to come. When the street lights came on, we knew that nobody could go home to take a leak or get a glass of water, otherwise our parents wouldn't let us get back out.

When I got older and went to high school, parents were already stopping their kids from going out alone for fear of being kidnapped. Public spaces were already starting to tell us to GTFO. During lunch time, we would often go to the grocery store to get some food as it was better than the school cafeteria, and they wouldn't even let us sit in the public square to eat because they didn't want kids there. But we still pushed to see each others in real life as we were used to it. We wanted to be with each other physically.

These days, the kids who grew up with much less "IRL liberties" found these liberties online in Games, Discord, Social Media, etc. It's not a reflex to go out, the reflex is to hang out with their friends where they hung for all their life. And when they do go out, everything needs to be documented for their online friends, so you end up with people who don't want to dance, don't want to do karaoke, don't want to be shit at mini-putt because they know they'll get laughed at on the Discord the next day. And like you said, the cost of going out is becoming ridiculous, so much so it's actually killing industries like bowling.

Since Covid, I've seen the same with a lot of my friends. I'm lucky to have had the same group of friends for 15+ years. We used to hang out IRL, go to people's places, go to restaurants, bars, etc pretty much every weeks. These days, everyone is on Discord and during the summer we might do something once a month if that. But it started with Covid when we had to hang out online if we wanted to talk to each other.

[u/Safe-Historian4028 → u/Mr_Ignorant]

It's not a reason at all. The real reason is the astronomical prices and having more entertaining options that don't involve selling a kidney. People are less dependent on alcohol, and alcohol has been the nightlife industry standard and they are struggling to move past that.

[u/DoctorSpoya → u/Mr_Ignorant]

It's all of those reasons

Teenagers are not a monolith, same as every age group

most millennials don't have the hatred of smart devices that the millennials on reddit do

[u/eXo0us → u/Mr_Ignorant]

It's not the only reason, but one of the more impactful.

[u/Lailowla → u/Mr_Ignorant]

Is that really the only reason? They already put so much of their personal info online, is the fear of additional videos an issue here?

That's the thing. When you're constantly posting yourself with absolute control over every single aspect from the basics like lighting to manipulation of any and every part of your appearance, you'll get to a point where you can't even have people that might recognize you seeing you briefly irl, let alone ending up in unfiltered pictures/videos online that everyone will see.

There are a lot of factors, but in such a digitized world, that becomes a pretty big one.