International | Gen ZZZ

Young people are having less fun

Youthful excess continues to decline

Teen girl using social meadia with phone and glass with lemonade
Sober thoughtsPhotograph: Getty Images

IN SEPTEMBER the Night Time Industries Association, a British trade group, issued a sobering press release. Since 2020, it revealed, 37% of Britain’s nightclubs had closed. Many shut during the pandemic and never reopened, but closures continue. If clubs do not stop closing, the NTIA predicted, by the end of the decade there will be almost nowhere left for Britons to get drunk, belt out “Mr Brightside” and then vomit in a gutter on the walk home at 2am.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Straighter edge”

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