Gen Z skipping nightlife: 'I'm in my prime and I'm in my pyjamas'
Pop culture tells us that your 20s are for partying, making mistakes, getting messy and emerging on the other side with a rake of hair-raising stories.
Even if this sounds too Hollywood for most 20-something-year-olds, you could usually bet on them liking the odd night out, before three-day hangovers creep up on them in their 30s.
But for Gen Z, the 'wild night out' has been swapped for cosy nights in. Why is that?
Jane Cowan, Lifestyle columnist with The Irish Examiner, joined Oliver Callan to discuss why Gen Z are choosing to stay in over a night out. Listen back to the full interview above.
But before we even consider a night out, Cowan reveals that many young people like herself are calling it a night as early as 4pm.
"I actually think there's something a big psychotic about people that are coming home and like, still wearing their jeans around the house", Cowan said. "If I'm done with college for the day, the day is over, I'm home, I'm like, tucked into bed."
Gone are many house parties, Cowan said, because Gen Z can't afford to rent: "I could invite my friends over and have my mother you know, sitting watching the news in the next room but it's just not the same."
"Most people, if their parents live within commuting distance from college they are at home."
As for hopping from bar to nightclub to pub and onwards, Cowan noted how "unbelievably expensive" it is to socialise on the town.
The appeal of drinking has dipped massively among younger generations, too, with more of them prioritising wellbeing, sleep, health and their routines the next day over the negative effects of drinking alcohol.
It's not lost on Cowan that there may be an element of missing opportunities to live it up now, when the consequences are far lesser than they would be for someone at a different stage in their life.
"We're kind of at a unique point in our lives where I don't have kids, I don't have a mortgage, I don't know why I'm living the lifestyle like I do", Cowan said, adding "I can afford to just spend two days hungover in bed and no one really cares".
"Oliver, I'm in my prime, and I'm in my pyjamas, do you know what I mean?"
For Cowan, the shine has rubbed off the well-behaved lifestyle that many of her peers are championing. "I need to stop living like I'm an 87-year-old woman", she said. "I'll be 87 at some stage far into the future."
But when did this shift happen? Cowan believes it's thanks to - you guessed it - social media, like most ills of the modern world.
"I think social media has gotten to us. All the wellness influencers have, like, scared us about our protein intake, and we've just taken it too far." With a heightened focus on health comes a fixation on mortality, and vice versa, Cowan added, which Callan suggested could be traced back to the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Those months of restricted movement and limited social gatherings were Cowan's "peak lifestyle", she said,
As for whether this is a generation-wide shift, Cowan believes so. While some people are going out, she noted that it's "rare" these days. "There's always at least one person who's trying to avoid drinking and all the rest of it."
