There’s a stat that gets tossed around with a mix of admiration and confusion: young people today are drinking less, doing fewer drugs, and going out less than previous generations did in their twenties.
And on paper, that sounds like progress.
It sounds like awareness. Maturity. Maybe even evolution.
But I’m not so sure.
Because when I think back to my own twenties — the blurry nights, the questionable decisions, the inside jokes born at 2AM and still funny two decades later — I don’t remember thinking I was being “bad.”
I remember feeling alive. And that’s what worries me.
Not that today’s twenty-somethings are behaving better. But that they might be missing something essential.
Not because they’re boring. But because the world they inherited makes it really hard to just… be human in public.
You can’t learn to live if you’re too busy performing.
That’s the quiet crisis behind all this “good behaviour.”
Drinking less and staying in more might not be a sign of wisdom. It might be self-protection.
Because going out now means being seen.
And I don’t mean seen in the “felt cute, might delete later” kind of way. I mean recorded. Surveilled. Judged. Every night out is potentially content. Every stumble, a story.
So if you’re a 20-something today, it’s not just about whether you feel like dancing. It’s whether you’re ready to be filmed doing it. From three angles. And possibly stitched into someone’s joke on TikTok.
When my friends and I danced in our twenties, we danced like idiots. We didn’t know the choreography, and we weren’t trying to be hot. We were just trying to forget our jobs or our breakups or whatever else had gotten stuck in our heads that week.
We danced like no one was watching... because, for the most part, no one was.
Today? Everyone’s watching. Or worse: pretending not to while secretly recording you.
Risk and play are essential ingredients of becoming.
In your twenties, you’re supposed to mess up. Stay out too late. Say something awkward to someone cute. Fall in with a bad crowd for a month, then crawl your way back to better people. Those years aren’t just about fun — they’re about identity formation.
But when the internet keeps a record of everything, the cost of trial and error gets too high.
So you optimize instead. You curate. You turn inward.
You get really good at looking like a person... while quietly forgetting how to be one.
I get why you’re cautious. I do. But something’s being lost.
The phone in your hand makes everything easier. It also makes everything harder.
You don’t have to call your friend to make plans; but you might never learn the thrill of saying “wanna go out tonight?” and watching the night unfold into magic.
You can DM the person you’re crushing on; but you might never know how electric it feels to flirt across a dive bar.
You can scroll through a thousand faces; but you might never risk walking up to just one and saying hi.
And then there’s the pressure to present.
To be real, but only the kind of “real” that performs well online. To be vulnerable, but polished. Raw, but high-res.
When I see young people choosing to stay home, I don’t assume they’re boring. I assume they’re exhausted. Exhausted by the weight of constant awareness. The impossibility of unfiltered experience. The fear of being frozen in pixels doing something mildly uncool or unplanned.
So no, I don’t think your generation is “better.”
I think you’ve been forced into self-consciousness too early.
And while I admire the clarity, the sobriety, the thoughtful boundaries... I also mourn the chaos you might never know.
Because in the mess is where you find out who you are.
Not your handle. Not your brand. You.
To my own generation: we didn’t get everything right. But at least we got to try.
We got to stumble and recover. To laugh about it the next day without worrying someone had uploaded the footage. We got to be idiots, and it wasn’t content — it was just youth.
If I have one wish for today’s twenty-somethings, it’s that you reclaim a little of that.
Go out. Be dumb. Talk to strangers. Dance like nobody’s live-streaming you.
You deserve a life that’s lived (not just documented).
And if it makes you cringe later?
Good.
That means you were actually there.
I was too "good" to be wild and drunk in my 20s. and I was too responsible in my 30s. Now, in my 50s, I don't like noise. I just find other ways to fill my aliveness.
that said, I wonder if there will be a threshold that happens when kids don't care whether they are being filmed, stitched, or documented anymore. It is so "normal" that the lose inhibitions and just do whatever they want anyway? I hope that happens.
As I read this I was like, wow...he's right! We (the older ones) DID have some rip-roaring 20s, didn't we!? None of this online bullshit existed back then. We did actual stuff.
I wouldn't want to be raising kids in this day and age, that's for sure.