The Surveillance Generation: Why Gen Z Doesn’t Party

Spoiler: AI and Big Tech Have a Lot to Do With It

I love house parties. Actually, I dig all parties but there’s something special about the casual vibe you get from an impromptu get-together. My buddies and I went to a lot of these in college. A lot.

The University of Missouri, Columbia is my alma mater. Back when I was in school, East Campus was basically “Party Central.” Composed mainly of cheap student housing and just a few minutes’ walk from campus, it was the place to be.

Remember When We Went to Parties?

What was so cool was the people you’d meet at these shindigs. Nowadays, the word “diversity” gets thrown around a lot. But what made these parties special was the diverse mix of people.

At any given house you happened upon you might find an Anthropology major chatting it up with a MU football player on scholarship. Townies, fraternity bros, and goth vampires alike hung out together—melting pot style. Even the occasional adjunct professor—or at least her T.A.—might make an appearance, further deepening the party bench.

Looking back, these were largely positive experiences for my friends and me so it was disheartening to come across this recent Reddit post in which a Gen Zer asked this shocking question: Were house parties ever really a thing?

Wait. What? Was my first response. Not only have you never been to a house party, your lack of experience with them makes you think they’re just something John Hughes stuck in his Rom-Com movies.

The Kids Aren’t All Right

Zooming out, we hear often how today’s younger generation struggles socially. Sascha Seinfeld from The Free Press just wrote a related piece titled “Why My Generation Is Bad at Partying.” And tragically, suicide is now the number two leading cause of death for this cohort, often due to debilitating loneliness and depression.

There are many reasons why young people aren’t going to house parties, much less, developing the social skills older generations once took for granted. For now, I want to zero in on one technological development that promises to worsen an already negative trend: Smart Glasses.

Here’s how Daily Eyewear Digest described the challenge threatening to make our bad situation much, worse:

Imagine walking down the street and realizing that the stranger next to you might be recording everything you do—without your knowledge. With the rise of 2025 smart glasses, this isn’t science fiction; it’s a growing privacy in wearable tech debate that’s dividing consumers, lawmakers, and tech companies.

Smart glasses promise seamless augmented reality, AI-powered personal assistants, and instant connectivity, but they also introduce serious ethical concerns. Always-on cameras, facial recognition, and constant data collection are pushing society into a new era of surveillance.

Your Next Party Might Be (Secretly) Recorded

I learned about this phenomenon by watching the YouTube channel Pop Culture Crisis. About 1:45 into the hyperlinked clip, you can see a video of a creepy guy sneakily recording people at a party. There’s another embedded clip later of an influencer getting (the wrong kind of) attention for surreptitiously filming young women with similarly invasive technology.

Why is this such a problem?

Before answering that, I want to bring up another technological development producing cultural waves. Tea recently made headlines for a data breach—but that’s not what concerns me. The app professes to “provide a community-based safety platform for dating” but that’s not at all what it seems to be. Instead, it appears to be an online platform for females to gossip and disparage the men they are dating.

Whether we are talking about smart glasses that allow you to record others without their permission or an app that dunks on potential romantic partners, the societal effects are negative. Tech is supposed to improve our lives, to give us more free time, and to enable us to better connect.

Instead, it’s ripping apart social bonds.

The Chilling Effect On Dating

Question: If you were 21 and attending Mizzou in 2025, would you attend a house party in which you might be filmed without your knowledge doing something that could come back to haunt you? (And by the way, I’m not talking about doing a keg stand or lighting up a spliff.) The simple act of singing along to karaoke could lead to public embarrassment if the video were to fall into the wrong hands.

Just ask Marnie Michaels from HBO’s Girls.

Likewise, a 21-year-old male seeking companionship must now worry anything he says or does can be vilified and shared through Tea, not just wrecking his romantic chances, but possibly costing him economically, if somehow, online trolls use (unsubstantiated) gossip to sabotage him.

You might disagree with me. You might say, “If they’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the problem?” To that, I would retort: anything can be twisted and distorted online.

That means no one is safe from social condemnation—not even the innocent.

Zooming out even further, it becomes clearer we have a real problem on our hands: a chilling effect on dating brought to us by tech. Due to AI and soon-to-be ubiquitous smart glasses, society will suffer. Already, experts tell us the world is threatened with a looming population collapse. Young people already aren’t dating, much less getting married and having kids.

Our Lonelier Future?

How much worse will it be when 20-somethings—who used to go to house parties to mingle—stop doing so for fear of being recorded and shamed? And how much worse will it be when people of all ages distrust every social interaction, not knowing if the person they are communicating with intends to disparage their reputation?

I grew up with apocalyptic AI threats broadcast in films like Terminator 2 and The Matrix. It never occurred to me one day market forces would produce a more insidious danger: a world where tech makes us wonder who is watching—and judging—us?