Why My Generation Is Bad at Partying
An invite app made it easier to throw parties. It also made them worse.
Why My Generation Is Bad at Partying
An invite app made it easier to throw parties. It also made them worse.
Sascha Seinfeld
Jul 24, 2025
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Millennials use Facebook Events. Parents use Paperless Post. Boomers use email. Brides use snail mail. Pirates use bottles.
But when we’re planning something, Gen Z uses Partiful.
Launched in 2020, the party-planning app makes it easy to invite people, track RSVPs, and send text blasts—all with a sugarcoated sheen. Hosts create colorful event pages with an animated lava-lamp background, plus location, date, time, instructions, and silly cover photo. Guests RSVP with one click—which unlocks the names on the guest list, a sly little incentive. Don’t you want to know:
Who’s going to be there?
A 2020 pandemic innovation, Partiful’s goal is simple: Make America socialize again. “We want to make it easier to get to know friends-of-friends,”
the site says
—a welcome antidote to the closed off, group chat-siloed circles many of us live in today. “America is in a party deficit,” according to
Ellen Cushing of
The Atlantic
. On an average weekend, only
4.1 percent
of Americans attended or hosted a social event in 2023—a 35 percent
drop since 2004
. And this dearth has hit young people pretty hard; this
Reddit post
, in which a young person asks Gen X if parties were “ever actually a thing”—captures the fun-famine better than any stat:
Sure, the scene (
from
Clueless
) looks fun, I guess. But really, it’s a marginally above-average house party. Saying this looks “SO FUN” is like describing a lukewarm glass of water as a “crisp, ice-cold oasis,” just because you’re thirsty. Clearly, my generation is on the brink of total dehydration
.
Evolutionarily, we need parties as a padded space—a vital arena for experimentation. Like puppy kindergarten, it’s where you test limits, get bruised, play around, check your ego, and define yourself in the company of others. In that way, Partiful has helped. I’ve been to 127 events facilitated by the app. That’s a bit overboard, I’ll admit, but it’s because I’m chasing a mysterious pull—the undelivered promise of my roaring 20s. Most nights unfold exactly as advertised—decently fun and defined mostly by whichever dingy bar hosted us.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful—not just to Partiful, but to anyone who has invited me anywhere. My gripe is only the plasticky, sterilized layer the app has added to nightlife
—
like Blank Street Coffee, the
venture capital-backed chain
masquerading as an indie neighborhood café.
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The Free Press
website!
The Free Press
Why My Generation Is Bad at Partying
Millennials use Facebook Events. Parents use Paperless Post. Boomers use email. Brides use snail mail. Pirates use bottles…
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a year ago · 111 likes · 283 comments · Sascha Seinfeld
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