Is Clubbing Dead?
Picking up the mantle of killing industries from their millennial siblings, Generation Z stands accused of murdering the dance floor. Stereotypes of undergrad students drinking Jägerbombs in fancy dress are breaking as the 16-24 cohort were reported to be the least likely to drink in the UK—what’s changed?
Available via IG @glewthequeen via @revengebrighton © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
As with the accusations levied against millennials back in the 2010s, the main motivator cited for the increasing numbers of young people not making the trip to the club is financial. Gone are the days where entry was free, or basically such, no more £1 drinks or free drinks for those who rock up dressed up; the going rate for entry is at least £5, with some performance-based venues such as Powerhouse in Newcastle or Heaven in Charing Cross asking patrons for up to £15 on the weekend. In the examples above, the cost of paying resident drag queens and performers fairly must be factored in; this factor does not mean that disposable income appears in the pockets of the under 25s.
Looking at students specifically, the conversations around their costs of living have been floating around since 2013 and have only increased above inflation since then, while maintenance loans and grants have not increased substantially since 2008. The BBC reported in 2013 that the average student in London would pay £23,187 over the course of their three-year degree including tuition fees—in 2023, a student in London could expect to pay £14,532 for just a year of study (£43,596 over three years) monthly costs according to a survey by Save the Student representing a 53% increase in costs over the course of a degree in 10 years. These massive jumps in living costs have not been matched with maintenance loan and grant increases with even the projected at-inflation increases for the next academic year still not covering the shortfall from the lack of inflation-aligned rises, meaning that the real-terms cut to student income still sits at around 9.8%. Simply, the proportion of money that was once spent on trips to the club or a bar now must go on rent, and any money left over doesn’t stretch far enough.
The cracks were beginning to show in the 2010s, but the pandemic seemed to break the dam. Again focusing on the UK, the former Conservative government infamously did not follow through on grants for hospitality and nightlife over the pandemic while continually closing and reopening venues due to restrictions. A lack of business grants while businesses were closed, ever-changing rules that meant businesses were losing money on stock and staff, and a lack of protections around pandemic-based bankruptcy that changed the nighttime landscape from the declining-but-stable ecosystem it was in 2019. The small local nightclubs and venues began to shut—The NITA reported that almost 400 nightclubs shut down between March of 2020 and December of 2023, representing a decrease of 31% of the market, with the closures impacting independently run venues more than most. The lack of independent venues corners the market for those looking for niche nights, such as rock or emo nights and more rave-style music, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth for a generation that enjoys supporting grassroots efforts over chains where we can. This is not to mention the closure of these smaller clubs consequently causing young people to need to head into bigger—and more expensive—towns and cities late at night either on a disparate public transport network or trying to split taxi fares that can rack up to £20-30 alone, which the NITA consumer report from 2024 cites as the other of the two main inhibitors of young people’s night-out habits.
A pre-pandemic price list for a local nightclub which shut over the COVID-19 pandemic, via Passion Nightclub on Facebook, August 2019 © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
However, it’s the cultural shift that may define the impact of COVID on nightlife. In England, the lockdown easing rules were based on the number of people that could gather in a group at one time: first bubbles of households, then groups of six, then groups of 30 when the clubs were allowed to open the first time. The shift in both live music and clubbing was palpable after that—no more were people mingling and making friends, bonding over shared interests or cigarettes in a smoking area (a habit now replaced with vaping, which can be concealed and permissible inside), but distinct groups at first not allowed to mingle then not adept in it like generations before. Getting drunk on a tenner and being packed into a venue with your new friends from the smoking area or bathroom has been replaced with a £40-60 commitment where you’re pressed up against strangers in a room filled with a mix of smoke machine smoke and vape smoke listening to the same songs the venue played when that tenner would’ve been enough.
This is intertwined with the new university experience—the NUS reports that 69% of students are working on top of their studies as that 1 in 5 of those upwards of 20 hours a week on top of their university studies to afford the cost of living which we already covered, leaving little time for a middle-of-the-week trip to a nightclub or late-night venue. This may be a driver for the lack of drunkenness that is reported in gen Z when drinking habits are studied, as for many their days stay long either with full-day shifts or catching up on study time missed because of those shifts. Hangovers are unprofessional, and with fresh 18-year-olds needing to work longer hours as soon as they leave home, it is no surprise that these values are expanding outside of their workplaces.
Writing about this phenomenon does remind me that the lack of club culture is a first world problem, that young people no longer binge drinking at the same rates is healthier for the population overall, and that the tastes of young people change, but this decline feels like part of a trend started in the wake of the financial crisis when it came to earmarking spaces for young people. Western Gen Z were the children who had council funded youth programmes, leisure centres, and arts funding taken away from them in the wake of austerity, and a large chunk were coming of or just of age when the pandemic hit and hospitality venues were shut down for over a year. Gen Z are a whole generation of people who have had their third spaces taken away from them at every point that they became accessible to them, promised they’d be better off in terms of wealth because of these revocations, then emerge into adulthood not only needing to wave goodbye to the leisure time outside the home to afford to study to gain the wealth promised. Values of self-improvement and concerns of health that have recently been connoted with Gen Z have roots in the work-first culture and the expectation of overqualification that has been around since the financial crisis then materialized in the cocktail of a pandemic and a cost of living crisis ignored (or profiteered upon, as it could be argued with student rentals…). All of the traditional avenues for unwinding have been systematically ridiculed or priced out of a young person’s pay range, while access to meaningful work at any level is restricted by the need for higher and higher level qualification and experience, creating an environment where young person’s frame of reference for adult life has been focused on their economic prospects then not becoming sick.
All that said, is the lack of club culture really a bad thing? There has been some adaptation to nightlife in the wake of these changes, particularly after the pandemic. Themed experiences are the current trend, be that the increase in arcade or gaming spaces such as NQ64 and hidden bars and speakeasies that can be promoted easily on social media. On a smaller scale, many regular bars and pubs are opting for pub quizzes, bingo, and Karaoke along with pool tables and dart boards to bring in younger people who want to spend time with friends over going out to get intoxicated. Even the rise of the bottomless brunch could be in this category—usually during the day, a set price to drink what you like with a meal, and the option to be intoxicated while there is daylight, regular public transport and the possibility of being sober by the evening ready for work the next day. The decline of club culture may be an objective good even—what could the British be if not a liability stumbling between the bars and clubs of the tourist areas they frequent?
The bad feeling cultivated by this research is a point touched on earlier about a lack of third spaces and leisure time; it is not what a lack of clubs mean, it's what it represents. Venues, specifically late night venues, are places of cultural production even when aspects of that culture seem undesirable. Live music will be the main casualty of the death of club culture due to these spaces’ usual dual purpose, and with it goes one of the best drivers of grassroots and local community that the first world has. It feels like the silver lining of life events being pushed further and further back since the turn of the century is disappearing: the prospect of not owning your own home, progressing to a senior level in your career or having children may be growing, but the payoff was that young adults could live more carefree into their 20s, able to spend a little more staying out late and focusing on their social lives knowing that it wasn’t sacrificing their future savings too much. Now this delay of milestones is still very real, but that extra time to let one’s hair down seems to have disappeared in favor of more school to place young people into debt and more hours on top to pay it off. The aforementioned adaptations still come with that inflated price tag for the extra activities on top, both fitting into the habit of less frequent excursions and exacerbating it by charging the price of what may have bought 2 or 3 excursions in years past.
The club is a simple pleasure: a room with lights and music where patrons can dance, drink if they like, and mingle if they want. It offers space for young people to connect with one another regardless of why or how they’ve ended up in these venues. But to enjoy a club, one must first enjoy a level of brashness and togetherness that feels to have been trained out of Gen Z then sold back to us for a profit. Maybe it is good that heavy drinking may be a thing of the past, but a focus should be put on ensuring young people have spaces to relax in the future.
