Woman asks if college kids still 'go out' like they used to—and millennials are reminiscing

There was a time when weekends weren’t just for relaxing—they were the pinnacle of social life. For many, going out was the highlight of the week, a routine as wild as it was predictable. But do college students today still party the same way? That’s what Jenna Barclay (@jennaabarclay on TikTok) recently questioned in a now-viral video. As a millennial who lived through the chaotic party culture of the 2000s, she couldn’t help but wonder: Do Gen Z college students still embrace the Thursday-to-Saturday night ritual?

"Like do young people even go out anymore? Because when I was young, like when I was in college in the 2000s, going out was huge," Barclay said. She said that the process started long before anyone actually left the house. Friends would gather at someone's off-campus apartment, lugging in their options from "cheap Forever 21" and helping each other decide on the perfect look. Drinks were always involved, typically something cheap like leftover beer or UV Blue mixed with soda in a plastic cup from a gas station if someone wanted to splurge. Once everyone was dressed and sufficiently hyped up, they went to the pregame.

"This was the first official stop of the night, and the object of the pregame was to get as drunk as humanly possible. For us, this usually meant some sort of drinking game involving a deck of cards," Barclay explained. She further said, "When you were all sufficiently wasted, you would all decide it was time to go to the party." Once at the party, it was all about standing in one spot, drinking the worst keg beer imaginable from a $5 plastic cup, until the keg inevitably ran out" and that "it didn't matter cause you got wasted at the pregame."

The most important part of the night, however, was not the party. It was getting food. "Taco Bell, Taco Cabana, Whataburger, Little Caesars—whatever. It didn’t matter as long as you secured the food," she said. Then, it was back to the original apartment, where the group would inhale their food and pass out immediately. But the night wasn’t over until one final step was completed the next morning. "Then, you would fish out your digital camera, which you took with you to every stop the night before. And you would hardwire that bad boy to your big, pink, clunky Dell laptop, and you would sit there for like three hours while all 465 pictures that you took the night before uploaded onto the computer," she said.

And those photos would go straight into a public album with a dramatic title such as "Nights We’ll Never Remember with People We’ll Never Forget." "You would tag all of your friends in every single one," she added. "And then we would repeat this all the next night." Barclay’s video has left millennials reminiscing over their college days. @glimic929 said, "We’d have Tour De Franzia and everyone would bring a different box!" @dksalas13 commented, "The pregame was always more fun than the actual party." @alexpizzacat added, "I got hungover just reliving this story just now." @palmer6668 wrote, "The worst was waking up and seeing that you were tagged in 76 photos, and you had to run to see the horror!" @cameraconnie chimed in, "I'm glad this was a universal millennial experience."

You can follow Jenna Barclay (@jennaabarclay) on TikTok for more content on millennial life.