Generational differences are evident to anyone who’s ever had to sit through a family dinner with their grandmother and the 13-year-old cousin having a discussion. Needless to say, their opinions can differ quite a bit.
But it doesn’t have to be a huge gap year-wise for them to be different; even generations that go one after the other can result in people with contrasting views.
32-year-old content creator Ashley Tea went viral on TikTok after comparing millennials and Gen Z, specifically in regards to having fun. A representative of the millennial generation herself, she briefly described how she would spend time as a youth, adding that she was genuinely curious about what representatives of the generation following hers liked to do in their free time. Scroll down to find the video and Gen Z’s answers below.
No two generations face exactly the same living conditions
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual image)
This millennial woman was curious to learn what her Gen Z counterparts do for fun
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“I genuinely think that millennials got to have a way better time than Gen Z does. I got to be an emo kid in 2005. It was as good as you think it was. It was fun. It was great. It was trashy. I had the best time.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“I got to go clubbing when clubbing was the club. Like, it was so much fun. We got blackout to top 40s which were raunchy, and R&B, and just had a great messy time. I was 20 years old, 21 years old when indie sleaze was going on, and I was very indie sleaze, and it was a very good time.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“You guys turned legal drinking age, you could go to the club during the pandemic? That sucks. Literally, my sympathies go out to you but I have a question for the youth, like a genuine question.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“What do you do for fun? Like, what do you do? Where do you go? It’s a Friday night or Saturday night, do you go out? Do you go to a club or do you just go to shows? Is it like only raves?”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“Now everything is so expensive. I used to go to bars or restaurants because it was affordable. I worked in a restaurant and I hung out in restaurants and bars and drank like crazy. Do you guys do that? What do you do for fun? It mystifies me.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
Ashley’s video was viewed more than 720 thousand times on TikTok
@ashleyteacozyim genuinely curious♬ original sound – Ashley TeaIn the comments under Ashley’s video, Gen Zers shared what it is that they do for fun
Some of the TikTokers’ answers suggested that the situation is pretty grim
Others reminisced over certain millennial experiences
Ashley summed up the responses in another TikTok video
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“Alright, so the results are in. It turns out that Gen Z actually just simply does not have any fun. If you haven’t seen that video, I asked Gen Z with all honesty, genuine curiosity, “What do you do for fun?” And the results have been really interesting. I am a millennial. I’m almost 33 years old. So the way that I spent my late teens and early 20s is just quite different than the way people are spending their teens and early 20s.
But I mean, obviously not for the same reason that, like, my parents’ youth was different from my youth, you know, and my assumption at first was that Gen Z just had a way worse deal handed to them and that they weren’t having any fun at all, which lots of people are like, “Hey, thanks for asking. I simply don’t have fun.” Okay, fair enough for Gen Z saying ‘I don’t have any fun’ all across the board tends to be because of financial reasons. It’s way more expensive to do pretty much anything now than it was before.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“And then also, surveillance reasons, you know. Young people saying that their parents can track their phones everywhere or that because phones are so in your face all the time, you’re less likely to have sort of the trash era that I got to have because we didn’t have video recording. Like, Lady Gaga and Beyonce made a song called Videophone because that was a novelty, that wasn’t a thing that was there when growing up. For Gen Z that actually discussed what they do for fun, it’s way more wholesome than things I did.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“There’s a lot of mention of crochet and y’all are crocheting up a storm. And I think that is so cute. Bringing back kickbacks. We didn’t hang out at people’s houses, I think because clubs were cheap. It used to be girls getting free entry and we drink free before 11pm or something like that. It just made more sense to go to the club because we didn’t have to clean up after ourselves. And it was really cheap. No one millennial can speak for every single millennial’s experience, right. But what I will say is that the focus on binge drinking when I was in my teens and then into my early 20s was was heavy. Heavy binge drinking was encouraged and super, super glorified like ‘shots, shots, shots, shots, shots’.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“It wasn’t just Kesha brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack, like, that’s just what was in the media. That’s what the top 40s were about. They were about drinking until you blacked out. Anyone remember, ‘I got a hangover’. The lyrics are literally ‘I can drink until I throw up’. And as you can imagine, this caused problems but it was fun. It was fun. Like, it was damaging and I’m probably going to die earlier, but it was genuinely fun. At least for me, going out on the weekends was what we did for fun.”
Image credits: ashleyteacozy
“There wasn’t a lot of variety. It’s kind of cool to hear that Gen Z has more variety that doesn’t just include drinking until you vomit. The replies are really interesting. It’s really nice to hear just honest replies from people. It’s cool to have conversations about this. And I know it kind of came across as ‘back in my day’ because, like, yes, that’s more or less what I was saying. But I was actually curious and I feel like I’ve gotten some really cool perspective.”
English (US) ·