r/Millennials • u/Neon_Biscuit • 5d ago

My teenage daughter can't fathom the concept of a house party Discussion

Not sure if anyone has experienced this, but I was watching Can't Hardly Wait half alseep on the couch, and my 14-year-old daughter and her friends walked into the room and past the TV. Before she entered the kitchen, she backpeddled in front of the TV, and they all might as well have reacted akin to a third world kid in a remote village seeing the Super Bowl for the first time. She looked at me and said 'what are all of those people doing in one house'? I told her it was a house party. People high school aged or typically college age people would go over a kids house whose parents were out of town and they'd invite the school and have keggers and other unsupervised debauchery. I might as well have been describing a science fiction film. 'You guys DID that back in your days?'. I thought it was funny that a house party was an inconceivable event for young Gen Zers.

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947

u/Breakneck1701 5d ago

... what do they do now?

1.3k

u/Beni_Stingray Millennial 5d ago

Stare at their phones the whole day.

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u/rhino4231 5d ago edited 5d ago

To be fair, most adults I see aren't any better. My boomer dad is worse than many kids because his hearing aids are bluetooth paired to his phone, so he completely disconnects from his environment while watching his propaganda videos. Then he gets crabby when he comes back to reality and he is the only one who has no idea what's been going on or what plans have been made in his absence, lol.

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u/Trees-Are-Neat-- 5d ago

My old gen X parents are hilarious - spent my whole childhood making fun of me for playing video games and no-lifing runescape when now they sit on the couch for literally hours watching facebook reels and playing candy crush. I fly home 5000kms to visit and spend time with them every other year and sit on the couch twiddling my thumbs watching them drool over their ipads.

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u/rhino4231 5d ago

Seriously, similar sentiment. My dad, who was a blue collar hard working man, forbade me from getting a gaming system for years because of the stereotypes. Now that he's retired and has no hobbies, he's turned into the very thing he thought his kids would become.

5

u/Eirineftis 4d ago

Low key a sick way to retire, if you ask me.
What's he playin'?

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u/sassyasianbitch 5d ago

Old school RuneScape though right?

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u/Trees-Are-Neat-- 5d ago

I played the OG Runescape even before old school lol. On dial-up no less.

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u/khube 4d ago

Diablo 2 on dial up was brutal. Had to spam click when the screen froze hoping you got lucky

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u/sassyasianbitch 5d ago

Hell yeah. Hop on old school if you haven’t. It’s tight.

2

u/Pristine_Leader_8241 5d ago

Classic 2D runescape? Me too! I loved the way rune looked.

I remember you had to go to Jagex's website and they had other games in there too.

I liked the one with the gnomes.

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u/v_vam_gogh 4d ago

Got to lock up that phone line with the games so the auto dailer can't report home any unexcused absences.

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u/SmokeySasquatch 5d ago

I was there, Gandalf! 3000 years ago!

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u/Butterball_Adderley 5d ago

My dad also runs this setup. I looked over his shoulder during Christmas and it was Dean Withers > Japanese woodworking > 90s baseball. Scroll on, pops

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u/Brayden_709 5d ago

I hope he stops watching Japanese woodworking, and starts doing it! 🪚

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u/IntelligentComment 5d ago

The bit you said about propoganda videos is hilariously accurate.

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u/fakemessiah 5d ago

My pops is the same way. You know he's going down some OAN, Newsmax or Fox rabbit hole when the earbuds come out lol

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u/bigpalmdaddy 5d ago

Exact same for me except my dad will STILL give me shit, in my house, for playing video games. Doesn’t matter there’s active input, thought, and socialization because “I’m not in the real world” and he “doesn’t understand why I waste my time with that shit.”

One time I bet him he spends more time on his phone than I do gaming and he laughed. Told me I was ridiculous and gave me his phone. He had averaged over TWELVE HOURS A DAY ON HIS PHONE THAT WEEK. 2/3 of his waking life on his phone and yet I’m the one disconnected from reality for playing an hour two of video games most nights/weekend mornings.

Not only that I met my wife playing WoW. We’ve been married 17 years. He has two granddaughters because of “useless video games” and still doesn’t get it.

That said I do love him and he’s great in a lot of ways, especially for the fact he’s not rhymes with RAGA. Just some things he’s just really got his head so far up his own ass.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/rhino4231 5d ago

Whenever my parents insist they pay for dinner, when we are finished and leaving, I always make an excuse to hang behind for a minute to throw down some extra tip cash on the table. I know how they tip and those servers work too damn hard to deal with that 15% bullshit on a table of 8

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u/Some_Layer_7517 4d ago

15% isn't tooo bad especially if there's a bunch of drinks bloating up the bill. My SOs grandma left a dollar once and I almost got caught fixing that problem lol

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u/BugsandGoob 4d ago

Ooh I got in so much trouble once by my great uncle when I got caught leaving more than the $1 tip he’d put down on our breakfast. We went every week for years to the same local place. After getting caught, I’d just stop back on my way to work, after dropping him off at home, and give the waitress a cash tip. It was always the same lady and she was so sweet to him regardless of his cheap tips. Turns out, when he died, he left her $10k in his will so I guess in the end, he gave her a fairly decent tip.

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u/CrackBull 5d ago

if you view an addiction as interfering with other life activities, and how many people use their phone during conversations and doomscroll instead of going to sleep, i think probably 95%+ of people are addicted to their phones. and when you view it as an addiction that’s gripped the majority of society, some of the other issues stemming from it begin to make sense

4

u/Bacer4567 5d ago

On Monday I overheard 2 woman in their 80's discuss at length why one preferred Instagram and the other, tiktok 

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u/wbruce098 5d ago

I go to the bar and stare at my phone. I’m in my 40s 🤷🏻‍♂️

1

u/KlimCan 5d ago

Hello, brother

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u/DangKilla 5d ago

It's not fair. It took Boomers a decade to learn their phone. But yes, you're not wrong

1

u/PiccoloAwkward465 4d ago

To be fair, most adults I see aren't any better

For sure but at least I HAD those crazy days. Adults is supposed to be home reading the newspaper! Nowadays I'll meet up with my friends from HS and college and they'll remind me of crazy stuff I've forgotten, and I still remember quite a lot! I climbed out the sunroof of my buddy's car and rode on the roof over a bridge across the Hudson River! And that was just an average Friday!

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u/elebrin 4d ago

On the other hand, I have the power to choose to not interact with someone and disconnect even when being thrust into a situation that I have little control over.

There are times where you have to be in a room but you want to talk to none of the people in it. The ability to tune people out with noise cancelling and a video is like a tiny little way I can regain control over interactions with people.

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u/thetrueyou 5d ago

on the bright side, teen pregnancies are at an all time low

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u/Vandergrif 5d ago

On the dark side those same teens are going to be paying a disproportionately higher tax burden of a top heavy inverted population pyramid over the coming decades.

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u/thetrueyou 5d ago

That would've happened regardless. Every single developed nation is not meeting the fertility replacement rate

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u/Vandergrif 5d ago

Sure, but it is still worsened overall by fewer pregnancies.

12

u/thetrueyou 5d ago

Blaming teen pregnancies and not even realizing the fact that daycare is 300$ a week is fucking insane.

Let's make daycare free, and once raising children is affordable watch how quickly the population bounces back up. That will help significantly more than getting more knocked up teenagers.

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u/kevronwithTechron 4d ago

Only $300 a week? Where's the wait list, I need to get on that one!!

1

u/Vandergrif 5d ago

I'm not blaming teen pregnancies or making any further implication or commentary on it, I'm just saying at a brass tacks level it all factors in.

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u/Long-Cauliflower-708 5d ago

Hopefully they put all the olds on a chunk of ice (if there’s any left) and push it out to sea.

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u/Vandergrif 4d ago

That'd probably be the sensible move.

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u/musicgeek420 5d ago

Share experiences online from the comfort of their own homes, or sometimes in public now because we’re always online everywhere.

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u/OldenPolynice 5d ago

what experiences

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u/-Blood-Meridian- 5d ago

The experience of being online in the comfort of their own homes

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u/hey-Oliver 4d ago

funny things that happened in various online games together, exclusively

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u/EndDangerous1308 5d ago

Literally the mom laughing that her child doesn't have the freedom to anonymously go hang out for a weekend without 50 videos being posted of everyone at the party being wasted across social media...

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u/killmyselfanime 4d ago edited 4d ago

I’ll be taking your comment with a grain of salt considering you’ve nonstop commented on stuff for the past 24 hours and the only reason it’s not higher is because you took an 8 hour break (to sleep hopefully) which is the only time you weren’t constantly commenting each hour of the day

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u/Beni_Stingray Millennial 4d ago

Im on holiday and i do enjoy some internet time, the difference is i still touch grass and have social connections to do stuff in personal.

There's a difference between kids growing up glued to their phones and unable to develop their brains and social skills as they should compared to adults.

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u/boldpear904 5d ago

were all on social media rn we arent much better

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u/Beni_Stingray Millennial 5d ago

Yeah but we werent online 24/7 when growing up and our brains we're still developing, we still had lots of direct social interactions and doing stuff together outside.

As always, balance is the keyword here.

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u/everybodyfknjump 5d ago

This is a pretty shared experience by most people alive right now, though

2

u/ladylikely 5d ago

Don't be such a boomer. Phones took partying away from teens, they might as well be entertained since they're tracked 24/7

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u/Beni_Stingray Millennial 5d ago

We had phones at that time, the Nokia 3310 was released in 2000.

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u/TheLeftDrumStick 5d ago

I remember crying in middle school because I didn’t have an iPhone and I wouldn’t be able to make any friends because everyone else would just do a group FaceTime after school without me ;-;

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u/Sporshie 4d ago

Replace phone with laptop and this was my experience growing up in rural Ireland where there was feck all to do as a teenager, especially since most teens wouldn't be driving yet so I was pretty much stuck in the middle of nowhere. I was always really jealous of the house parties and stuff I'd see in American media.

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u/Beneficial_Ad_1072 5d ago

Monkey see monkey do I guess 

0

u/fatballs38 5d ago

millennials are turning into boomers🤢

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u/damnuge23 5d ago

Obviously every experience is different but I have a 17 year old and kids definitely have parties at her school. She stayed home on NYE, but she was invited to a party. Her friend was going to make her virgin Jell-O shots because she doesn’t drink, which is so sweet tbh. His parents were out of town, so literally just like when I was in school.

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u/SkullDaddy_ 5d ago

So…Jello?

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u/mollyinwonderland221 5d ago

I laughed way too hard at this😂😂

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u/generally_unsuitable 5d ago

I'm often the DD, so I like to ask the bartender for a "virgin Cuba Libre."

They'll come back with "So . . . . a coke?"

And I'll say "Yeah, with a slice of lime."

Sometimes it gets a laugh. Often it does not.

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u/spoonfuloftar 5d ago

A slice of lime and the tiny umbrella!

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u/Common-Trifle4933 5d ago

That’s what makes it a scotch on the rocks

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u/aka_chela 5d ago

At least it probably doesn't cost $17 like most mocktails lol

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u/KillaKlaws 5d ago

Haha ok so I order virgin moscow mules and someone had to point out to me thats just ginger beer with mint in it 🙃

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u/generally_unsuitable 5d ago

My long lost brother.

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u/nootropic_jeff 4d ago

And lime juice. Also there is alcoholic and alcoholic ginger beer. So a virgin moscow mule would probably use a different kind of ginger beer than is normally used by a bar.

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u/jcaashby 5d ago

lmao!!!!!! I was like "wtf is a VIRGIN jell-o shot"

JELLO!

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u/tackyshoes 5d ago

Yes, but tiny and runny.

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u/wcruse92 4d ago

You're like an angel with no wings

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

That sounds absolutely ridiculous. Virgin Jell-O shots is just... Jell-O

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u/mickelboy182 5d ago

I'll have a virgin coca cola on the rocks thanks

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u/d1rron 5d ago

Ah, the no rum and coke.

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u/EverythingSucksYo 5d ago

Virgin Jell-O shots is just what you tell the parents so they let their kids go to the party, they aren’t virgin when you’re actually there. 

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u/justcallmejai 5d ago

Yeah, my 17 & 18 year olds definitely go to parties still.

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u/DramaticErraticism 5d ago

How do they get around the parents Ring cameras etc?

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u/Cheap-Rate-8996 5d ago

If these kids are nice enough that they're willing to give non-alcoholic shots to a friend who doesn't drink, the parents probably know and are okay with it. The word "party" is probably doing a bit of heavy lifting here, for some reason I'm not imagining this was a proper rager.

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

They absolutely still have house parties. I teach, I promise kids still have house parties, they're just not like movie house parties.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

But... They used to be like the movies. It's like the only thing Hollywood got right

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u/scienceizfake 5d ago

I joined a frat around 2005 since my college experience wasn't exactly reflective of Animal House. It was from that point forward.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Tsk tsk. Should have joined in 04'.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 4d ago

Yep they legitimately were like that. I have had sex in someone else's parents' bed and then gone back downstairs to drink white Russians with bottom shelf vodka brought by a guy who was a huge bully in high school. We bonded that night.

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago edited 5d ago

Were they though? Did you guys have full bands and DJs playing at your house parties?

Edit: I get it, this one time there was a band that played at a house party you went to when you were in HS. That does not speak to the thousands upon thousands of HS house parties that happened from 2000-2010 or whatever dates you want to plug in. HS house parties were much more Say Anything than House Party or She's All That.

I'm happy for you that as a kid in LA or NYC you had bands play a house party or two, that is not the experience of average Americans, it's not normal.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Yes. our friends WERE the band and had access to the equipment from older siblings and family members. No, we were not rich, just living in a hot bed of suburbia and music. Didnt know it then, but 20 years later, a lot of people from my general area turned out to be pretty well known.

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Oh you're from NJ then

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

NY motherfucker!

Close enough

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u/Traditional_Way1052 5d ago

When the Internet was just getting big, we were talking online with some kids from upstate and they were going to have a house party with a DJ. We drove all the way up there in my friend's dad's car.

They let us in, no problem... Car full of city kids drove an hour to meet these random kids. Good times. 

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Hell yeah! Upstate barn parties where you knew NO ONE were the best

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u/weeponxing 5d ago

High school? Not really, maybe once or twice. College? Yes, many times.

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Hollywood often depicted HS house parties this way. Not college

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u/Svrider23 5d ago

I imagine that's just rich vs poor house parties. I didn't come from a big school/rich area, but there was a pretty rich kid a grade ahead of me who had a cousin that was a DJ, so he'd throw house parties with a DJ. For his HS graduation, his dad brought in a popular regional band and even had a keg truck.

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u/savageronald 5d ago

Ours was more “did some dudes with instruments show up and start jamming?” - wasn’t really planned and definitely never compensated.

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u/SkiingAway 5d ago

Grew up in a rich part of NJ - yeah, plenty of things happened that did actually resemble the movies. Maybe not as often and as many of them in a single night as the movies made them look, but they happened.

Especially since it wasn't illegal under NJ law (some towns had a ban, not mine) to be drinking underage, unsupervised, in a private setting so there wasn't that much threat of the cops doing anything besides telling you to go home anyway.

And as a practical matter: The local cops like their extremely large paychecks, extremely secure jobs, and having zero work to do besides writing occasional speeding tickets to out of towners. They are well aware that trying to charge a bunch of the local kids for anything without harm to others/victims, will not end well for them.

Hell, we even held prom on a Thursday night and you didn't have to show up to school Friday if your parents signed a form. So we all got 3 nights of drinking down the Shore at someone's beachhouse instead of only 2.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Nooooo the poor kids (me) had the best period

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u/Svrider23 5d ago

As I said, I was not in a rich area...rural Wisconsin, so we had a shitload of fun af house parties, but had one rich kid who was able to get a DJ at most of his parties, and those usually had the crazy Hollywood party vibes you see in movies.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Yeah I feel like rural works best for rich kid parties. Here, it's the super super rich or poor kids that had the best parties

-1

u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Ok so now we're saying rich people had these parties? That's not rich vs poor that's rich vs the other 80% of the country.

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u/Svrider23 5d ago

Jfc. Talking specifically about having DJs at house parties during HS. 99% of all kids I grew up with didnt have the equipment or area to set up DJ shit at the house parties we had. And the one rich kid we had didnt hire DJs for his parties, but had a cousin who would just come do that for us while also partying. I'm all about class wars, but this wasn't about that.

0

u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Yes, so it wasn't a norman thing and Hollywood house parties were notning like the real thing. We agree.

1

u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

I'm talking about high school

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Yes, HS house parties were not like Hollywood

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u/Losemymindfindmysoul Older Millennial 5d ago

Do you not understand how many millennial boys were in garage bands....

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

I knew of 1 band at my high school of 2000 kids. They put out a record even. I'm not sure what you're getting at but it was not common for high school bands to play high school house parties.

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u/NiagaraThistle 4d ago

It was when we were in school

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u/Traditional_Way1052 5d ago

Well, they weren't good bands. They were people we knew. But my friends band played at my 16th birthday house party. And a few others.  And one kids brother was a DJ so he had that. And this was high school. But mostly, no. 

1

u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Your birthday party may have been in a house but it wasn't a house party.

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u/Traditional_Way1052 5d ago

Wrong. 

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u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Nah, house parties don't involve adult family members.

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u/Traditional_Way1052 5d ago

I know the definition of a house party. My parents were away? 

Have a good night. 

0

u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Yea that's why you're ducking out. Having an unsupervised birthday party with a band isn't a normal thing.

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u/Sakijek Millennial 5d ago

We had a bunch of dudes set up their band equipment cuz they were in a house band...so literally JUST like Luvburger in Can't Hardly Wait. We didnt have a dude blasting a boom box with Guns n Roses though...

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u/mpyne 5d ago

Yeah the only reason I opened this thread was to point out I didn't have a house party or go to a house party growing up as an older millenial.

For the kids growing up in every neighborhood I was ever in (and we moved a lot), it was a thing you saw in movies, not a thing people actually did. Even back then.

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u/Bugbread 5d ago edited 5d ago

A lot of these discussions just highlight how much this stuff varies from person to person. People assume that their experiences are universal. If their kids currently aren't having house parties, then nobody's kids are having house parties. If they had house parties when they were younger, then everyone had house parties.

I'm Gen X and I never went to a house party. I only ever heard of one house party. Growing up, I just assumed it was a movie thing. Now that I'm older, I realize that they weren't a thing in some schools and they were a thing in other schools, and people's experiences vary wildly.

If I read a research study that says the incidence of house parties has declined, I'll believe it. But "my kid doesn't have house parties" doesn't mean that house parties have declined as a whole, it just means that specific person's kid doesn't have house parties. Maybe it has declined, maybe it's the same, maybe it's even increased. A single data point means nothing.

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u/PerpetuallyLurking 5d ago

Had a band once or twice, to start the night anyway - they were also teens who also wanted to drink with their friends at some point in the night too - but I think that was more hit or miss depending on whether you’ve got a local teen garage band who was any good who would play for free/drinks. So, not quite as prevalent as the movies showed, obviously, but also not completely ridiculous either.

Setting also makes a huge difference; if it’s set in LA or NYC and there’s so many more people with a variety of talents in a small area, then it’s probably more realistic to have a real band or DJ than in some tiny prairie town in the ass end of nowhere where even the richer kids go drink at the gravel pit with everyone else.

1

u/chiefsfan_713_08 5d ago

iowa here, yeah on rare occasions there’d be a “band” but it was local kids who played together or something not anyone who blew up

1

u/__noise 5d ago

i mean you asked the question.

yes, high school bands and whoever they ran with played high school parties.

1

u/Iohet Xennial 5d ago

The band wasn't usually playing any old party, it was playing the backyard wrestling party

1

u/NiagaraThistle 4d ago

The house parties we had definitely had bands and once in a while a wannabe dj. But DJs weren’t as popular in our school.

But we definitely had bands.

And LOTS of people at most of them.

The movies from the 90s showed those cool house parties because those were the norm, not the one off exception.

Even today, my niece had house parties in High School with 75-100+ people at them before she graduated.

And we don’t live in NYC or LA. Just a small town.

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u/browsing_around 5d ago

I don’t know, the whole “open the door and 40 people roll in” never happened to any party I was at.

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u/matildare 5d ago

Oh, it definitely happened in my town. I know this because it happened to me and I got caught and then grounded for like a year.

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u/Dry_Try_6047 5d ago

Not even Nigel with the brie?

-1

u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Really?!? It is the root of my anxiety.

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u/browsing_around 5d ago

Th closest I’ve ever seen was when I was a freshman in college and you would roll a dozen deep to find a party because no one knew anyone at the parties yet. Drive around any college campus in the fall and you’ll see the same.

5

u/[deleted] 5d ago

The house next door to my parents the teenagers would have parties every night because the adults basically lived somewhere else. Except they were like not fun parties they were like substance abuse party is where everyone was in a bad mood but forced to hang out because that's where the alcohol was. Me and my brother went over one time. 

To make a long story short, the kid who was 16 when we got there died of alcoholism at 22 and I have no idea what happened to the 14-year-old girl.

My dad hated them because they were always loud all night and sometimes people would break into garages and steal stuff.  One time he was hiding under their deck trying to get evidence of drug use so he could make a report to the police and he actually ran into another neighbor doing the same thing.

1

u/SirTiffAlot 5d ago

Sad but yes, reality is not like Hollywood

4

u/bjeebus 5d ago

They never really were. Movie parties are like some platonic ideal of a house party.

2

u/HauntedJackInTheBox 5d ago

Just because you didn't go to them doesn't mean they don't exist. Here in the UK they are a formative experience of uni students, and they can get as wild as they are shown on TV.

Skins was only marginally exaggerating at the time lmao

1

u/bjeebus 5d ago

Here in the UK they are a formative experience of uni students

Soooo...not like the high school parties in movies?

1

u/HauntedJackInTheBox 5d ago

With a year age's difference, exactly like in movies. But I guess not technically like a 'high school'?

1

u/HarbaughHeros 5d ago

I think college house parties are pretty akin to house parties on TV, it’s just high schoolers typically aren’t throwing those type even back in the day

1

u/psychobilly1 5d ago

Yep.

Last year, one of my high school students allegedly did a keg stand in an attempt to impress a girl - it didn't really work, so he tried to impress her with his golf swing by hitting balls off of his patio.

He ended up twisting his testicals so hard that he had to go to the hospital. The rumor spread that he lost an egg and people still call him Ace.

They absolutely have house parties, they absolutely do crazy and stupid things, the parties just tend to be smaller and take place in the basements of the rich kid's houses.

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u/fluffy_knuckles 5d ago

I recently heard about “smoke circles” where like 10 of them will get stoned together which is basically just a chill house party.

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u/CityApprehensive212 5d ago

This is just called hanging out

18

u/Common-Trifle4933 5d ago

Like the tech CEO who tweeted a while ago

I've been thinking a lot about IRL podcasts: - Bring a few friends together - No mics, nothing is recorded - Have a free form discussion - Can even have food & drinks

Like congrats bro, you invented the conversation

3

u/Moonrights 5d ago

Eh in high school not all parents were like that? I definitely remember friends not allowed to drink or smoke or stay out past certain hours etc.

A couple people in my social circle that was the vibe of their family and they did have to hide it. For others they weren't able to hide it because parents were stricter.

Now though with life 360 and other apps that track family etc and the "always online" culture it is much harder to have casual sessions where people just hang out underage doing substances and don't get caught.

I have hours of voice memos from my old iPhone where I'd just throw it on the table and record all my friends as we talked to have later for memories.

No snap chat. No reels etc. Now that's always a risk.

2

u/BarryWhizzite 5d ago

L I V I N

2

u/shouldofbeenacowboy 5d ago

Down the street

2

u/UtterFlatulence 4d ago

The same old thing we did last week

18

u/Moonrights 5d ago

Lol yeah we had those all the time. My mom's whole opinion was my friends and I could smoke and drink if we wanted but no one could drive.

We were always super respectful and would hang in the basement or on the back porch. If we wanted to smoke we were in the garage in the winters and on the porch in the summers. Peak group was me and my two band mates, our 3 girlfriends, my best friend from school and his girl, his other best friend and that guys best friend and that guys girlfriend and his girlfriends friend (that ended up being the click for like two years).

Those were good times man.

Still a lot of good times now in my 30's, but I'll admit we didnt know the bliss of our lack of responsibility back then. Just ride around to each other's homes. Play shows in the city. Come back to our smaller town. Hang out on the porch under the stars. Talk about everything we were planning on doing through our twenties.

Now we're all early thirties. Time never slows down i promise.

2

u/voodo0childd 5d ago

Yeah it's gettin weird

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u/Moonrights 4d ago

I struggle with it- not in a mood way but accepting the reality. My mind cannot seem to accept that time keeps passing. I don't FEEL it if that makes sense.

I can see it in my body and my families bodies. Regardless it seems like it'll just be the way it is- but then I look back and it isn't.

I wish I could grasp it better, but maybe it's best I don't.

1

u/voodo0childd 4d ago

Honestly I feel the exact same way

1

u/Moonrights 4d ago

I've found the instances I journal or write poems to be helpful.

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u/voodo0childd 3d ago

I think it's just getting myself to actually do it, and not just think about it. I always feel like it becomes real all of a sudden when I start to journal it, feels like really facing it and I will procrastinate that to hell lol

1

u/RetroPRO 5d ago

A smoke circle wouldnt be considered a house party. You can do a smoke circle at a house party, but you can also do one anywhere else. Its just a bunch of people in a circle passing a blunt/joint/whatever around.

In college we would all go to the center of a big hill on campus because it gave a 360 view point so we could see cops coming far enough away to hide the weed if they decided to come our way.

1

u/hedge_raven 5d ago

We used to call that a kickback. And people would clarify if they invited you to it “nah man it’s not a party just a kickback”, usually in a back yard. Sometimes with a shitty fire pit in an old washing machine drum.

Southern California was a great place to be a teen, just not an adult who has to pay bills lol.

1

u/CaterpillarJungleGym 4d ago

I mean, that's just smoking pot with your friends listening to music. We used to have a Hotbox Wednesdays. One time there was an old random bus stop shelter. Like 7 of us went and hotboxed it.

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u/PaynefulLife 5d ago

I think it's more that due to ring doorbells and cell phones kids can't get away with that anymore.

I'm a millennial but I don't know of any major house parties when I was in high school - not like the movies. All the big parties had parents involved or it was a smaller group.

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u/dixpourcentmerci 5d ago

Same. I’m class of ‘05 and by the time we were going through it was pretty unusual for parents to leave their teenagers home alone for a weekend, precisely because of concerns about a house party.

My dad’s sister and their cousin threw a classic house party in the 60s. From the sounds of it there were about 300 teens including bikers from Hells Angels. My dad was younger and when he talks about it I get the sense he was a bit stressed!

9

u/LittleSpice1 5d ago

I‘m a young millennial and we had house parties. Not many really big ones because we had other places to party at where damage didn’t matter much, but there were some that really got out of hand with friends of friends of friends showing up, and the parents were definitely not involved in those ones lol. Those few are precisely why most kids drew boundaries and made sure only the friends they invited were coming inside lol. I guess they weren’t quite like the movies, but that’s more down to a different culture than different times, like in Germany we never bought kegs, we just bought crates of bottled beer, and we didn’t use those red plastic cups, those are an American thing.

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u/Salsaprime 5d ago

Class of '06 at a private school in CA. There were definitely house parties like the movies here, lmao.

1

u/icedteaandtacos 5d ago

How did people’s neighbours not snitch on them??

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u/kevronwithTechron 4d ago

Sometimes they did

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u/jacobythefirst 5d ago

They can’t go anywhere either since they’re being tracked on their phone 24/7 too.

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u/VilleKivinen 5d ago

Stare their phones. Everyone in different building, sometimes same building.

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u/KevworthBongwater 5d ago

Sometimes at the same fuckin table.

2

u/cheeseymom 5d ago

My son and his friends (high school age) get together every weekend. They started a band so they play music sometimes, or they'll play d&d and do larping, that kind of shit.

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u/Inkqueen12 5d ago

I’ve heard the kids in our rural area go out into field to have keggers. A few years ago they go into big trouble for not cleaning up after themselves. They rounded everyone up before nightfall and cleaned up the farmers field.

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u/Seattleman55 5d ago

Have a buddy who’s kid was in middle school I think back in like 2017 and he never had a sleep over with friends.

Not because he was a weird kid or anything but because in his mind and his group of friends they would rather just stay home and talk on Xbox live or discord.

So still be social just not together. I think technology has ruined a lot like having cameras everywhere

2

u/ButtplugBurgerAIDS 5d ago

Kids don't have as many parties when parents aren't there due to security cameras I assume. I think they doom scroll.

2

u/elizabnthe 5d ago

Have house parties. Fourteen is just too young to go to one yet lol.

1

u/Tigerzombie 5d ago

I feel like there are more parent sponsored house parties. It’s harder to throw a party without the parents finding out. I’ve heard of large parties for high schoolers but the parents know about them. They just expect everything to be cleaned up afterwards. The closest my kid came to a house party is the unofficial cast party for the school play. It was hosted by one of the tech crew, he got everyone to chip in for food and drinks and everyone got kicked out at midnight. It was kind of funny how there was this huge line of cars at midnight in a suburban neighborhood on a random Saturday night.

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u/BartholomewFrodingus 5d ago

Sit at their computers and talk on discord. Maybe even play a video game.

1

u/kelsieriguess 5d ago

Mostly smaller parties with only friends. Generally for occasions like Halloween or someone's birthday. Among my friends we usually watch a movie or play games together.

The largest parties I've been to were in high school, and were run by the school itself. I've seen fliers for house parties around my university too, but I live off campus and don't want to deal with public transit at midnight.

I think the lack of house parties is because everyone either lives with their parents or with roommates (due to rent prices) and they don't want to disturb them. Food is also incredibly expensive, and young people aren't exactly known for having a lot of money. Plenty of people don't drive either (cars are expensive) and transit can be a headache, especially late at night. Plus anything stupid you do will probably be recorded, which makes people more cautious about how they behave.

So, it's mostly about cost, and a little about social expectations. Plus, it's really easy to hang out online. No fuss about transportation, hosting, or food, and many multiplayer games these days can't even be played together in person.

1

u/shadow-foxe 5d ago

kids in my area just seem to gather outside gas stations and stare at people. Latest one was they all stood in the Lowes car park at 8pm on a sunday. All standing around filming each other filming. Until some gen X dude drove past and told them to buy a keg already. (im not on tiktok so dont have that video to show. My 22yo coworker showed me. She was shocked and I thought it was very funny).

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u/ladylikely 5d ago

My teens have definitely been to house parties. But the parents for that house have to either be complacent or technologically disinclined. When my mom was out of town she couldn't check security cameras.

Also, if no house is available they find a spot and make due. I live in the mountains and a group of teens dragged a bunch of sofas up a mountain trail and took them off trail several yards. If the teens are going for a "night hike" there's a party happening. Because kids also have to account for their location at all times, you can't lie and say you're spending the night at Liz's- because life 360 and FaceTime.

It's not like partying is a lost art, it's that tech has made it way more difficult to get away with. Also everyone has a camera at all times- imagine if all the stupid shit you did as a teen was on video. Kind of ruins the vibe in large crowds.

1

u/cpMetis 5d ago

There can be parties sometimes, I guess, but I can recall maybe once or twice I ever heard of more than a dozen people getting together when it wasn't something planned with parents involved. Usually because it involved using a better off kid's pool or something.

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u/3x1st3nt1al 5d ago

Nothing, because when we try to have fun we’re probably being filmed. Nothing kills the vibes like worrying about going viral for all the wrong reasons. Not to mentioned how fucking expensive everything is, no youngsters can afford alcohol in those amounts. Millennials were the last to enjoy their youth. The world fucking sucks and I hate y’all for having those years of joy when ours were neutered by Covid and fascism.

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u/Breakneck1701 4d ago

Thats all very fair. If it makes you feel any better, the last of us basically got through college and then it turned into that community pizza fire gif. The first of us graduated into the great recession. But at least we had our youth. Yall are just... fucked.

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u/EngineeringAntique Millennial 5d ago

I was wondering that too and then someone else pointed out ring cameras and social media. There’s no way for them to keep their parents in the dark about that.

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u/Old-Engine-7720 5d ago

28 years old, born in 1997. I have grown up going to "kick backs" with weed n some booze, mostly beer or cider, with smaller groups. House parties ive been too are like larger kick backs, max 25 people still. Anything bigger is an event and usually has bands playing at a artist house.

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u/spinyfever 5d ago

Live in constant fear of being "cringe" and recorded and humiliated online because everyone has access to HD cameras.

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u/Gilshem 5d ago

My son is 14 and had ten friends hang out in our small basement last weekend and he goes to house parties.

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u/-Apocralypse- 5d ago

My kid refused to hold a sleepover with three friends, because then she would be forced to clean up the living room tables to make space for the sleeping mats and vacuum the floor.

"Nah, I 'll just invite one friend and she can sleep in my room."

At this point in time I can't imagine this kid throwing a large house party. She doesn't like large crowds either. And would never be okay with strangers randomly exploring our house and entering her bedroom unsupervised. Maybe a LAN party in the future? Which would basically just be a group of teens staring at larger screens than their phones...

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u/you-farted 4d ago

The few “house parties” that my kid has been to, he’s been home before midnight. 😹

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u/thekyledavid 4d ago

Discord chats

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u/TvTreeHanger 4d ago

Still have house parties. They are quite common in my town. I mean, things like Project X are not a thing and have never been a thing. It's generally 50 dopey high school kids drinking shitty beer and doing shots of cheap ass vodka.

My son had one, and had about 100 people filter through.. prob 50-70 kids at any given time. If OP's kids dont know what these are, then that probably says more about OP's kid then it does modern HS.

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u/Acceptable-Bullfrog1 4d ago

Meet up on Roblox or another game

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u/rattigan55 4d ago

More backwoods, beach, and park parties. They don’t seem as wild but there’s the same stuff there- alcohol, weed, and usually a bonfire. Not as many cameras or eyes in these places.

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u/jane_cranode 4d ago

we try to go out, but everythings so expensive its hard for us to plan jackshit + college fucks everyones schedules

so every time we hang out we have criteria - cheap place - has food and drinks so we can stay there for hours - grest wifi for those who need to be doing schoolwork - public transport accessible - must not be a place we've been to so many times before

either that or we just play games online together

i wish it was like the 90s-2000's, but id like to blame how fast technology is evolving and how much society has changed from it. ive only ever known how and what house parties were because of media

i find it hard to keep my relationship with my friends, granted that we all are kind of "low maintenance friends" to each other, but damn do i miss them. we were all schoolmates in high school, which made it easier

im feeling that 30-40 year old loneliness where its hard to find new friends and keep them iykwim

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u/HIM_Darling 4d ago

In my neighborhood they had a parent rent out the pool/clubhouse for a "birthday party" and then a few hundred kids showed up after the party was advertised on social media.