Teens Are Choosing Social Media Over Partying

iGen teens — born in 1995 and later — grew up with cell phones.

Kids online
There's a wave of kids being "Sad Online." (Getty)
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Teens just aren’t partying like they used to. iGen teens — those born in 1995 and later — grew up with cell phones. They had an Instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time where the Internet did not exist. They are also the generation who spends less time at parties than any previous generation. This isn’t necessarily a good thing though, because they aren’t replacing partying with studying, but instead, they are online. According to Wired, in 2016, college students said they spent two hours a week at parties during their senior year in high school. That is only a third of the time GenX students spent at parties in 1987. Kevin, 17, said that parties are less popular because people party when they’re bored, but his generation is never bored.

“Now we have Netflix—you can watch series nonstop. There’s so many things to do on the web,” he told Wired. And he is right: Teens always have a way to connect and communicate, through social media. They also aren’t just hanging out at home with friends. Wired writes that the number of teens who get together with their friends every day has been cut in half in just 15 years, with steep declines recently.

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