Gen Z spends $250 a month to maintain social relationships, making it a huge burden.
How the cost of play is straining Gen Z’s friendships and financial goals
An RSVP of “yes” had the agreed-upon meaning of “sure to come.”
However, young people these days say that this is not necessarily the case.
“We need to talk about partyful etiquette,” said Aubrey Strobel, a 33-year-old influencer, who posted 22 videos on Instagram and TikTok in June, which have since garnered a combined 100,000 views. “If you say, ‘Yes, I’m going,’ that means you’re going. It doesn’t mean you’re supporting someone.”
Strobel used Partiful, a Gen Z-led event hosting and invitation platform, to invite friends to a June 20 gathering to celebrate her 10th anniversary in New York. She invited 50 people and got 10 no’s, 3 maybe’s and 24 yes’s. She spent $1,000 on food, alcohol and decorations, and spent the morning of the event preparing speeches, delivering pizza and setting up tables on West Side Highway.
However, in the afternoon, only 8 of my friends came.
The culture of RSVP is changing. Some experts say this is part of a broader shift in how young people think about community and social obligations amid widespread loneliness. As modern invitation platforms reshape the way young people plan social gatherings, some users, like Strobel, worry that while they’ve made it easier to host, they’ve also made it easier to back out of a commitment.
“I feel like the RSVP culture is missing right now,” Strobel said. “Because in 2026 people are going to be really unstable.”
What happened to RSVP etiquette?
Strobel told USA TODAY the experience made her question her friendships. But after posting this online, I felt vindicated when I saw that so many people were experiencing the same problem.
“This is definitely a big culture change since COVID-19. People are so used to canceling,” one person commented. Another commenter said: “We also have to talk about partial invitations. Many people have gotten lazy and don’t send personal invitations anymore.”
The idea of apps like Partiful is to eliminate the need for tedious email threads and group chats with unknown numbers by bringing all your information in one place, including your guest list, event details, and photos. Organizers and vendors can reach all attendees with a single text blast. While Partiful and platforms like Apple Invites and Paperless Post are digitally savvy successors to platforms like Evite and Facebook Events, the casual nature of RSVP culture has a “real impact,” Strobel says.
“People don’t take it as seriously,” Strobel said. “How can you plan an event if you just sign up for support?”
Some organizers also control the ability for attendees to see other attendees, which the platform says “creates hype and actually attracts attendees.” But Strobel said this feature contributes to the transactional nature of people tending to see if a guest list is good for them before RSVPing. On the other hand, a fickle partygoer might see a large number of RSVPs and think it’s okay to skip because someone else will show up in their place.
“As a millennial, when I got the invitation in the mail, I had no idea how many people were going to attend or who would be attending,” Strobel said. “In 2026, peering into a party window won’t help etiquette.”
Strobel moved to New York from Arizona in 2016 as an aspiring broadcast journalist, and her first home was the YMCA on 47th Street. Living in hostels, commuting long distances, building a life with “no friends” and “no money,” she envisioned the celebration as a way to honor her progress.
But as the sun set over the West Side Highway, hundreds of dollars worth of Lindastry pizzas sat untouched in their boxes, with a spare Statue of Liberty hat still missing. In the middle of giving a speech about what the last 10 years have meant to her, a child passing by interrupts her by asking, “Where is everyone?”
“I felt pretty relieved, but I thought, ‘This is really bad. I don’t want to do that again,'” Strobel said.
Party attendee Frank Chaparro, a friend of Strobel’s for 10 years, said Strobel was the type of friend who “always tried to go the extra mile” and often invited friends over to his apartment.
He blamed the low number of participants at the event on changing social norms, noting the need for repeated follow-up to encourage people to participate in 2026.
The prevalence of loneliness among young people
Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Institute for Social Neuroscience, previously told USA TODAY that many of the former social infrastructures that people relied on are being eroded by young people.
Former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has talked a lot about loneliness. Even before the pandemic, about half of adults reported experiencing loneliness, but in spring 2023, Murthy declared America’s loneliness epidemic a public health crisis. He points out that participation in faith groups, recreational leagues and service organizations has steadily declined, and fewer people are attending school, working and raising families in the towns where they grew up.
“Many of the defaults that made social connections part of our life infrastructure are gone. This is difficult because it requires more individual effort to make it happen,” Zaki says.
Zaki says one way sociologists used to assess people’s social connections was to ask how many people they could ask to pick them up from the airport at 1 a.m. Nowadays, that’s where Uber comes in. When Joey moves out of his apartment with Chandler in Friends, everyone helps him pack, but in 2026 Joey could have used TaskRabbit. And instead of asking your neighbors for help, there are delivery services like Postmates and Instacart.
Chaparro said when she was a student at Fordham University she used to host wine and pasta nights with friends, but those casual gatherings don’t seem to happen as often anymore. He says that while Gen
“There’s more focus on, ‘What’s going to make me feel the best I can feel today?’ And that sort of thing is now at the top of any kind of etiquette or social order,” Chaparro says.
How young people can build community
Research shows that connections and friendships are good for our health and longevity.
“Doing things for others reduces stress, increases ownership and autonomy, and increases feelings of well-being. So when we are highly individualistic and pursue almost one-man happiness, we are actually depriving ourselves of one of the great sources of happiness,” Zaki told USA TODAY.
And the reality is that most people want to make more friends.
Zaki has previously likened building community to making a decision to go to the gym more – intentionally going to the gym and taking responsibility for your health.
“Statistically speaking, people want to connect with you more than you realize,” Zaki told USA TODAY. “I think we have a lot of life together.”
Rachel Hale’s role covering youth mental health for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
