Are Young People Today Too Well Behaved?

This article is dedicated to Alex Mitchell, who wrote an 11/9/2022 article for The New York Post with the headline “Gen Z party poopers have ruined after-work drinks.” To be fair, despite the rather douchey headline, the article itself is actually fairly interesting. Specifically, it notes that many in Generation Z would rather hang out with people outside of their job, while previous generations were much more fine with being friends with co-workers. With that said, I’m not sure how refusing to engage in a habit “ruins” it for anybody else — if you want to get drunk with your co-workers after work that’s fine, this is America, a growing number of people would just prefer not to join you.

I should also note that this article has a very strange definition of “Generation Z.” The term is used in reference to the generation after Millennials, who got that nickname because they either became adults or were born around the turn of the millennia. Usually this meant somebody who was born between 1982 and 2000, but since then the term Generation Z has come to mean somebody born after around the mid-1990’s. However, this article contains an even looser definition, citing somebody who is thirty-eight — meaning they were born around (literally) 1984 — for their examples.

In truth, I imagine the main reason being Generation Z not drinking as much as previous…