Are Gen Z *actually* bad at partying?

Being a wreckhead was cool when I was a teenager. As a Zillenial Brit who went to school in the 2010s, I grew up hooked on Skins, perpetually trying (and failing) to emulate the enigmatic party girl Effy Stonem. Admittedly, at the time my social life primarily consisted of gatherings of adolescent north London Jews at someone’s parents house in Edgware. And yet the reckless hedonism of Skins hung in the air, a cultural template for the type of unbridled parties we wished we were having.

Until very recently, it looked like the teens of the 2020s were behaving very differently. In 2023, more than a fifth of Gen Zers were sober and only one in 10 had tried a Class A drug, with many turning away from drink and drug-induced depravity in favour of healthier, more wholesome activities like gym dates and ‘grandma crafts’. But a new IWSR survey, released in June, indicates that famously sensible ‘generation clean’ are back on the booze. 

Over the past six months, 73 percent of Gen Zers have drunk alcohol, compared to 66 percent two years ago – the biggest increase of any generation. Gen Z have also fallen in love with BuzzBallz – the sugary, neon-coloured, 13.5-percent-alcohol cocktails that you can buy from your corner shop for £3.99 a pop. Were Gen Z ever truly boring, or was the data missing out crucial parts of the story? Time Out spoke to Londoners aged 20 to 25 about what they make of their dull reputation, and to get the real scoop on their partying habits. 

No cash to splash

‘I actually cannot afford to be a party girl right now,’ Hannah Wilder, a 20-year-old who has just completed a masters at Royal College of Arts, says. With eye-watering rents (averaging £980 per month for a room in London, according to SpareRoom) and rising TfL charges, life in the Big Smoke has become increasingly unaffordable for students who aren’t funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad. ‘Even for people who are able to get the maximum student loan, you have to work at least 20 hours [a week] to barely get enough for the cost of living in London.’

We will often stay up to five or six in the morning drinking, just chatting shit.

Over the past decade, nightclubs have shuttered en masse in the UK, dropping in number from 1,700 in 2023 to just 787 in 2024. Rising operational costs and the challenge of selling tickets amid a cost of living crisis is largely to blame. According to a 2025 UK Night Time Industries Association survey, 68 percent of 18 to 30-year-olds reported going out less because they couldn’t afford drinks costs and club entries. And waking up hungover isn’t exactly ideal if you need to spend your weekend working.

‘We don’t have the money and we don’t have the time,’ says Rosa*, a 22-year-old student who is also working part-time as a waitress to pay her bills. ‘I think [the reason why Gen Z are going out less] is less about being health conscious and more about the state of the economy right now.’ World-famous nightclubs like fabric and Ministry of Sound – once the beating heart of London’s nightlife – are no longer the go-to party destinations for many Gen Zers who are struggling to make ends meet. Tickets regularly creep beyond £25, and when you’ve ordered a couple of rounds of drinks at the bar and sorted an Uber home, you may well have parted with £70 for just one night on the tiles (if not a lot more). 

Rethinking what a party is

However, young adults who are strapped for cash are finding other ways to let loose in the capital, pioneering an eclectic mix of community-driven, DIY parties and elaborately themed house parties. Recently, recent graduate Wilder showed artwork at (and helped set up) the queer ‘art rave’ Riposte, which got them free entry. Carrying a sofa down a staircase, Wilder got talking to a DJ. The pair decided to collaborate with one another for a different party, organising a night of ‘freaky and fabulous performances’ including poetry, pole dancing and drag at The Post Bar in Tottenham, fundraising for the Trans Legal Clinic. ‘The reputation of Gen Z being lame is not recognising all of the infrastructures we use for self-expression,’ Wilder said.

Riposte has several initiatives geared to make the night more accessible to unwaged or low-earning people, including free or reduced-cost tickets and subsidised Ubers home for trans attendees who feel unsafe travelling back via public transport. The themed parties (which range from clowns, to witchcraft, and fight night) also incorporate a number of avant-garde, interactive elements that shift the focus away from inebriation, with artist-led workshops and performances, from zine making sessions to live wrestling. At one party, a performer dressed as a pig chewed on toilet roll in the bathroom.

‘The DIY approach allows for a different kind of creativity,’ Eden Topall-Rabanes, a co-organiser of Riposte, says. ‘You’re not constrained by the logic of mainstream clubs; you can rethink what a party even is.’

Financial constraints have forced many Gen Zers to reinvent and reimagine what their nightlife looks like – and for some, this means reviving the beloved house party (several Gen Zers I spoke to said that they regularly went to sprawling shindigs at someone’s gaff). ‘My main setting for a party is a house,’ Alice, a 25-year-old freelance writer who goes to one or two house parties a month, told me. ‘We will often stay up to five or six in the morning drinking, just chatting shit.’

Alice got into at-home-partying during the pandemic, when her friends were stuck in halls during lockdowns and would organise themed events like 1920s dinner parties or murder mysteries. While Alice doesn’t do drugs (she’s on SSRIs), she said most of her friends do cocaine and ketamine. There’s ‘still just as much debauchery involved’, she says, ‘just not at the club’.

Run club raves and bingo nights

In fact, drinks experts theorise that Gen Z aren’t simply turning their backs on intoxication, but that they’re being more intentional about what they consume, and when. The figures ‘don’t mean [Gen Z are] shunning alcohol altogether, but it does mean they’re much more selective of when, where and what they drink,’ Rachel Arthur, editor of BeverageDaily, told Vogue Business.

At one party, a performer dressed as a pig chewed on toilet roll in the bathroom.

Rather than just getting black-out drunk at the pub, Gen Zers are dabbling with a range of nightlife activities – from run-club raves, to bingo nights and trendy chess competitions. Wilder personally loves a mosh pit (particularly in venues like the Windmill in Brixton or the Pie House Co-Op in Deptford) and has also enjoyed evening art-history lectures. Recently, they performed at a cake-sitting party (essentially: sitting on cakes in front of an audience) at south London boozer, The Old Nun’s Head. 

Meanwhile, Tate Modern has announced that it will be staying open until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays from autumn, due to the record numbers of young people who attended Tate Late events in 2025. 

For Cora*, a 25-year-old party girl who has been sober for two and half years, the notion that Gen Z are boring is ‘unfair’. She regularly attends raves and house parties (with up to 200 guests), dancing until the early hours, then has plans the following morning, like getting brunch, going on a walk or basking in a community sauna. ‘Who is the person defining what fun means? Fun means something different for so many different people,’ she says. ‘I think it's fun to go out and have a really good time that I actually remember.’

While it’s exciting to romanticise the good old days of 2010s parties (ie drinking straight vodka from a water bottle and throwing up in someone’s garden), I think Gen Z are onto something. Sobriety wasn’t on my radar when I was a teenager – neither was going to queer parties – and going clubbing usually meant being off my face dancing to a DJ I’d never heard of at fabric. So no, I don’t think Gen Zers are all prudish party poopers, I think they’re being intentional about where they want to spend their time and money. I just hope I’m cool enough to get invited to one of their house parties.

*Names have been changed.

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