Are Gen Zers Skipping the Messy Years? This Millennial Mom Weighed In
Are Gen Zers boring now, or are we just nostalgic with a side of jealousy?
That question lit up the internet after Chelsea Delgado, a millennial mom of three from Phoenix, looked straight into the camera and basically begged twenty-somethings to give us something to watch again. Less “clean girl routine.” More life.
And honestly? She had a point.
Still, the replies under her video and the debates on Reddit tell a more complicated story than “kids these days.”
Chelsea Delgado said what a lot of Millennials have been thinking
Delgado did not sugarcoat it. She opened with a plea to “you young girls in your 20s” and called out the sameness she sees online.
The delivery feels funny, even theatrical. Yet the subtext lands harder: Millennials remember their twenties as messy, loud, and deeply social, and we miss it.
Gen Z heard her, then dragged the nostalgia out into the daylight
The comments under Delgado’s video read like a group chat full of elder sisters and tías reminiscing. People missed “ENTIRE camera rolls on Facebook after a night out,” missed watching everyone’s weekend unfold on Monday morning, and begged for the return of chaotic story times like “how I got home at 3 am and woke up at 5 am for work.”
Other replies framed it as a content crisis: “Give us SOMETHINGGGG,” one account wrote. Another commenter joked, “Couldn’t agree more!!! What in the mocktail is going on!!”
So yes, the vibe reads like a generational roast. But underneath the jokes, people asked a real question. Where did the public mess go?
Gen Z might not party like we did, and the data backs that up
If it feels like younger adults drink less, that is not your imagination. Gallup has tracked a decline in drinking among young adults over the past two decades, and it has also reported rising concern among young adults about alcohol’s health effects.
Meanwhile, a cultural shift has played out in public, too. Business Insider has reported on how Gen Z’s relationship to alcohol and nightlife keeps changing, including how bars and restaurants are adapting to customers who drink less and want different kinds of social spaces.
So when Millennials beg for “pregame” content and “clerrrrrbb” stories, Gen Z often responds with something closer to: we are tired, we are cautious, we are broke, and we do not want to go viral for the wrong reason.
The Gen Z fun drought might be an affordability problem
Business Insider has reported that rising costs can shape how young people define “fun,” including the idea that people feel priced out of going out. That tracks with the broader online conversation about the “gentrification of fun,” which keeps popping up whenever Millennials ask why no one goes out like they used to.
On Reddit, one commenter summed it up in a blunt line: “There’s absolutely nowhere other than church and maybe the arcade. We are all broke for the most part, which doesn’t help either with options.” Another person pushed back with a list of options like “Bar, bowling, pool halls, movie theatre, coffee shops, parks,” only for someone to reply: “Bro said “bar” Mf most of us arent going to drink.”
Lack of fun/socialising?
by u/yieldbetter in GenZ
That exchange captures the whole tension. Millennials picture a social life fueled by cheap drinks and low stakes. Gen Z points out that prices, norms, and relationships with alcohol have changed.
Gen Z also grew up under a different kind of social pressure
A lot of Millennials did dumb things and lived to tell the tale because the evidence did not live forever. That fear shows up repeatedly in this discourse, including in comments that basically say, “We had freedom because no one filmed everything.”
YourTango’s take leans hard into that argument, pointing to smartphones, social anxiety, and the feeling that a mistake can travel. You do not have to agree with every line to recognize the anxiety underneath it. Getting perceived has become a sport. Getting clipped has become a risk.
And that pressure does not exist in a vacuum. Harvard’s Making Caring Common project has published research on loneliness and mental health stressors, including findings that loneliness and mental health challenges run high among young people. It becomes harder to say “go live your life” when many people feel isolated, overstimulated, or on edge before they even leave the house.
So are Gen Zers missing life, or protecting it
Delgado’s rant hit because it sounded like a dare: “Go be young. Go be messy. Give us the stories.”
Yet the most honest answer might live in the mix. Gen Z still wants joy. They just keep recalibrating the cost of it, financially and emotionally. Meanwhile, Millennials keep looking back at the chaos we survived and calling it fun because we made it out.
Maybe the real generational divide is this: Millennials romanticize the lack of consequences. Gen Z lives in an era where consequences come with notifications.
