The final batch of feral pandemic teens turns 18 this year -- and they're coming to a dancefloor near you
Kids who were 13 at the start of the pandemic are turning 18 in 2025 -- and they're less experienced with dancefloors than any prior cohort of 18 year olds
This isn’t yet a fully-developed article, but I’m putting it out here to start a conversation. Please share comments, reactions, and criticisms.
First, a couple of caveats: (1) not all teens, of course; (2) and not all dancefloors. In this note, I’m specifically referring to dancefloors that are open to ages 18+, and I’m specifically referring to people who are turning 18 in 2025.
This year is significant because doors will open to dancefloors that are going to allow in young folks with the shakiest foundations of any generation to date. Those who are turning 18 this year were 13 in 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Picture what their life was like as 13-year-olds:
Their parents were stressed by the crisis of having to adjust to work-from-home
They were thrown into ineffective Zoom-based schooling, spending all day staring into screens that were poor substitutes for the classroom experience
They were given mobile phones and ipads at greater rates by parents desperate to keep the kids off their backs so that the parents could get some work done (2021 iPhone unit sales hit a record that Apple hasn't returned to yet; iPad revenues also peaked in 2021)
For this group, there was a near total absence of in-person socialization with peers and older students — they never experienced the transition of going from top-of-the-pecking order 8th graders leaving elementary school and going to bottom-of-the-pecking order 9th graders entering high school
They didn’t dance with peers, either — for two years, school dances (proms, homecoming dances, etc.) were also cancelled
This group also experienced a significant decrease in outdoor leisure activities
Per Jonathan Haidt, "Nearly half of all teens now say that they are online almost all the time. That means around 16 hours per day—112 hours per week .... This kind of continuous use, often involving two or three screens at the same time, was simply not possible before kids carried touch screens in their pockets."
The resulting impact has been felt on dancefloors in the post-pandemic years. Young folks who are deeply inexperienced in the ways of shared communal spaces have entered dancefloors every year since 2022 with less experience than prior cohorts, and we've seen an (admittedly anecdotal) uptick in complaints about antisocial behavior at dance music events.
The cohort of teens who turn 18 in 2025 have spent almost all of their years living a phone-based childhood, with the pandemic years kicking off for them an especially intense immersion period into phone-based childhood.
We can reasonably expect events marketed for ages 18+ to be especially likely to attract folks who haven't yet learned appropriate pro-social behavior because they're literally the least socially experienced 18-year-olds world dancefloors have seen — at least since the flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920. (This makes me wonder: is there any literature written about what happened to dancefloors as a result of the earlier pandemic?)
To be clear, the folks turning 18 this year aren't at fault -- they're victims of circumstance. But their inexperience, inadequate socialization, and obsessive relationship to their mobile devices is going to push some of our dancefloors to new lows as they work to get their dancing feet under them.
I wonder how we can better socialize and onboard these folks onto dancefloors.
Partial list of relevant sources:
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/kids-screen-time-rose-during-the-pandemic-and-stayed-high-thats-a-problem/2023/02
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10593405/
Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
On fucking point. I remember when I was the early 20’s youngling and had amazing older friends show me the ropes and induct me into everything from new artists and venues to the pre-COVID afters spots (shout out to X marks the loft). Our groups wish we could meet more of the zoomers and be able to return the favor but the behavioral differences are insane - many just don’t know how to talk to strangers or just socialize IRL in general.
I work in a pub (in England) that's mostly frequented by University students and have been since the lockdowns officially ended (after two years in more or less complete social isolation I was missing human contact and going back to bartending seemed like the healthiest way to get the maximum amount of interaction without spending every last penny hanging out in my spare time).
Already this year I've noticed our fresh crop of clientele (usually second, third and final year undergrads - due to visa laws post brexit the post grad population has shrunk as EU students cannot work to support themselves other than in exceptional circumstances) is so much less feral and better socially adjusted than our clientele from `21-24. In fact they're actually politer and more considerate than their peers from before the pandemic.
They carry themselves more like adults not kids escaping the parental gaze for the first time.
On their first or second visit to the pub they politely introduce themselves by name "Hi, I'm Sarah and this is Mike and Jane - we've just moved to the area and this will be our local for the next couple of years".
This said, they're still fun to be round, living their best lives, but I think they're just grateful to have not lost as much of this important phase of their development as their older siblings and friends.
And believe me when I say those guys were FERAL. Often argumentative and disrespectful, I was kicking people out and banning repeat offenders at a rate of three to five a night. This lot are as good as gold by comparison, and rather shamefully the only people I've had to eject or ban so far this academic year have been people aged 40 and up.
Just thought I'd put that out there as we've all noticed the difference, not just us in the pub, but my friend who runs the local corner shop and even the neighbours who normally complain about the noise from student houses next door have been reticent so far this year and not been complaining as much as normal - although as the weather lifts and we approach the end of the academic year no doubt the parties will get louder and more frenetic. But yeah, this batch of 'kids' are alright!