The Internet Ruined Nightlife for Gen Z
By Stella Speridon-Violet
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Nobody wants to dance at the club anymore because everyone is so fucking afraid of being filmed, and I don’t blame them.
The dance floor used to be a place for public humiliation in the best possible way. You went out to sweat through your outfit, kiss the wrong person, throw your body around badly, and maybe embarrass yourself in a way that would evaporate by the time you woke up.
Now humiliation lingers in group chats and comment sections, or some random guy's Twitch stream. Every bad move can become content.
My mom talks about nightlife in the 90s like it was genuinely heaven on earth, and I’m jealous in a way that feels spiritual. She talks about true freedom to do whatever the hell she and her degenerate friends wanted, without worrying about what people think about her online.
She has only a handful of photos from clubbing days, but she’s loaded with stories. Sure, some of them are most definitely exaggerated, but the way her face lights up when recalling details is worth the fluff.
The reason I felt so passionate about writing about the internet cultures' effect on Gen-Z nightlife was an ongoing event that has been happening to me in the past two weeks or so.
“Someone thinks you need help.”
Or at least someone on Instagram “thinks I need help” almost every time I go out and post about it. For god's sake, I had one sake bomb on a Tuesday with my boyfriend, and now Instagram is giving me the phone number to a suicide hotline.
If you’re reading this and think I need help, I promise you, I’m fine.
But that’s the point, unless it’s someone that absolutely hates my guts and is trying to get me banned (definitely a possibility,) it’s utterly parasocial and completely annoying.
It’s just someone who has no clue who I am and thinks I’m going out too much, a concept I’m used to hearing at this point, and it pisses me off. Let me post a million things on my public Instagram story while I’m drunk because I promise I know what I’m doing, and guess what, I do not care!
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I also think about a dinner I had with my close friend’s family not too long ago, where her dad asked if we got hit on every time we go out, and asked us why we were still single if we go out so much.
We both kind of laughed and shrugged, unsure of what to say. I noted that most men are on their phones or only kind of stay in their own lane with their friends, and the ones that do come up to us happen to be a bit older.
He said that it made sense that the older ones approach us because they aren’t as sheltered and chronically online. He also said that if we were born about thirty years earlier, there would be lines wrapped around the block with eligible bachelors begging us to go “steady” with them.
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It is an interesting thought, though, like what if people were forced to interact with each other on a night out without the need to check their phones every twenty seconds?
I mean, I’m guilty of this as well, but as I get older, I kind of hope my phone dies so I can live in the moment for a little while without having to check my phone often out of habit.
I don’t think people realize how much the phone has become a social crutch.
It fills the gap that used to force interaction. Waiting at the bar? Phone. Awkward silence? Phone. Eye contact that could maybe turn into something? Immediately shut down by a screen.
And the thing is, nightlife depends on friction. It depends on the possibility of something going slightly wrong. A weird conversation, a bad flirt, an unexpected moment that pulls you out of your own head.
But if everyone becomes more invested in what’s going on virtually, nothing actually happens around us.
You can feel it in the room. Everyone is there, but no one is really participating, except for a story post to make everyone else jealous, then immediately back to the screen.
People don’t dance like no one’s watching because someone literally always is. Oh, you got super drunk and started dancing on tables? Well, now you’re on your school's Barstool account with 5 million comments about how you’re a drunk mess.
It’s not that Gen Z doesn’t want connection, it’s that we’ve made connection feel high-risk and highly visible.
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Even flirting feels different now. There’s no spontaneity to it. It’s calculated, cautious, and disgustingly sterile. You don’t go up to someone unless you’re sure it’ll land. You don’t say something weird unless you’re positive it’ll be taken the right way.
Because the stakes feel weirdly permanent and out of place. Your worst moment isn’t just a memory; it lives forever in the group chat.
And that changes behavior in a way we don’t fully talk about. It makes people feel more aware, yet more bored, which is ironic, because nightlife is supposed to be the one place where you get to be a slightly worse version of yourself.
People act like you should have decorum at the least classy place of all time.
And I don’t think the solution is to pretend the internet doesn’t exist because, to be fair, it’s something I’m willing to give up either.
But I do think there’s something to be said about reclaiming a bit of that anonymity, even if it’s just mentally.
Let your phone die! Post a million videos, only if it makes you happy! Throw your body around on the dance floor! Talk to strangers with no plan on what you’re going to say!
Risk being awkward. Risk being misunderstood. Because right now, the alternative is this: a perfectly documented night out that never really existed to begin with.
And personally, that sounds like a life of performance for people who don’t even really know who you are.
