Has Gen Z stopped raging at nightclubs?

It’s 9 pm on a f***ing Friday...” The line from German music artist Jaden Bojsen’s Let’s Go is shouted with a comic urgency and has become a familiar soundtrack to Instagram videos of people doing their makeup, changing outfits, and getting ready to go out. It captures a particular kind of Friday-night logic: it is 9 pm, you are young, so obviously you should be somewhere else. For years, pop culture has reinforced the idea, from Carrie Bradshaw’s endless nights out to the girls of Euphoria treating a house party like a life event. Going out was proof you were living.

For a generation that has been taught to optimise almost everything, partying may be one of the things Gen Z has decided to do less of. The cohort has increasingly been described as a homebody generation. A 2026 report by market research company Harris Poll found that nearly three-quarters of Gen Z stay in for at least half their weekends, while 73 per cent said staying home had become their default plan. However, the homebody label may be missing something. Gen Z has not necessarily lost its appetite for a Friday night. They’ve just stopped agreeing on what one has to look like.

“Earlier, going out for a night out felt like the best thing possible because that was what you did for fun,” says Shivangi Dutt, 28, content creator and makeup artist from Delhi. “Now my idea of fun has changed completely.” Growing up, Dutt was the kind of girl who was always in the frame. These days, she is more likely to be at a place that makes her move—and no, it’s not a club. “Fun became doing things like a sip and paint. Then, it became about going climbing or taking up dance classes,” she says. Part of the appeal, she adds, is that these activities leave less room for the kind of small talk that comes with a traditional night out—something she has grown tired of.

Rise of socialising

It is a subtle shift, but one that says something about how Gen Z is redefining what it means to go out: less about being seen in the right place and more about actually enjoying being there. There’s now an online-certified term for this: “soft socialising”, used to describe low-pressure, activity-based hangouts where conversation flows naturally (or not at all), without the pressure to perform or drink alcohol. As Robert Alexander, assistant professor of psychology and counselling at the New York Institute of Technology, told Thred. com in its article, “What is ‘soft socialising’ and why is everyone doing it?”, “Shared activities frequently draw attention away from you and onto something external.” Perhaps that is why, for some people, the new Friday night starts absurdly early—before sunrise in some cases.

At Rajot Garg’s 5AM Social Run Club in Delhi, members show up to run before the sun does. The socialising happens somewhere between the warm-up and the coffee rave that follows, a daytime gathering built around coffee, music, and conversation instead of alcohol.

If you break down what people have traditionally looked for in a night out, it is not so different from what they might find at a run club: music, new people, flirting, dancing, dressing up and, perhaps most importantly, the feeling of being part of something. The adrenaline is up, but the high is different. “A good run club can actually give you almost all of that,” says Rajot Garg, the founder. “You’re tired, sweating, struggling, and laughing at yourselves. There’s less of that polished filter you usually have when you meet someone at a club,” Garg adds. Friendships, dating, and new social circles can follow naturally. “I don’t think run clubs are only becoming an alternative to nightlife. In some ways, they’re also becoming an alternative to dating apps and traditional ways of meeting people.”

Tired of performing?

There are still plenty of people who love clubbing, and some come to a run club simply because it is the thing to try right now. But the people who keep returning tend to have found something beyond the run itself.

Some of it traces back to the pandemic. “A whole chunk of formative social years happened over Zoom instead of house parties, so for a lot of people, chaotic nightlife just never became the default,” says Dr Chandni Tugnait, psychotherapist and director of Gateway of Healing, a holistic wellness and psychotherapy centre. “You can’t miss something you never really had in the first place...it’s not that nightlife is dead now; it’s just getting a glow-down.” Some of it is simply exhaustion. After a day of work, notifications, and endless scrolling, the idea of adding a loud room and small talk to the mix can feel like one thing too many, Tugnait adds. Then, there is the quiet pressure of nightlife itself: to be out, be seen, and keep the energy going. “Choosing a smaller hangout isn’t about avoiding people,” she says. “It’s more like setting a limit on how much performing you’re willing to do.”

The new night out

And, some of it is arithmetic. “I genuinely can’t afford to be a party girl right now,” says Diksha Sharma, 25, a journalist from Delhi. Rent, bills, and the general cost of staying afloat is eating up a bigger share of her pay cheque every month. 

“If I’m already exhausted from work, I don’t want to spend my free time recovering from another kind of exhaustion,” she says. “I don’t want to spend ₹3,000 at a club, come home at 3 am and wake up feeling like I need another day to recover. Concerts are having such a moment in India, and if I want to dance with my friends, I’d honestly rather spend that money on an experience I’ll actually remember.” Not everyone has made as clean a break. 23-year-old Shivangi Sarkar, a digital marketing executive, from Kolkata, hasn’t cut clubbing out entirely, but her reasons for going have narrowed. “I still go clubbing sometimes. If my high school friend group all got together, I’d go, just for the DJ and the songs, and to dance my woes away,” she says. “But otherwise, it’s loud, drinks are expensive, and half the time people are on their phones.”

For Sarkar, the club no longer feels like the easiest place to meet people or spend time meaningfully. These days, she is more likely to be found at a coffee rave. “Honestly, that’s much more how I’d prefer to socialise,” she says. Rohan Mehta, 24, an MBA student from Bengaluru, describes something similar. “I still like going out, but clubs aren’t my default anymore,” he says. “I’d rather meet friends for dinner, play a sport, or go to someone’s house. It’s still a night out, just a different kind.” 22-year-old Anurag Vashisht, a design student from Mumbai, has landed somewhere similar, for reasons he suspects are generational. “Maybe it’s because people our age have done their share of partying,” he says. “Now, my idea of hanging out is playing FIFA with my gang rather than going to a club.” Atharv Diwan, also 22 from Delhi, is more blunt about it. “Honestly, if you really want to party, just book a bnb and invite your friends over,” he says. “Who even goes to nightclubs anymore?”

Plans over parties 

That instinct—trading noise for something more deliberate—is exactly what Ramaa, a 26-year-old tattoo artist from Delhi, has built her own version of. She recently started a book club that has already pulled in over 230 members. “I definitely still have days when I want to go out, party, stay up late and act depraved, but those days are rarer than they’ve ever been,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve necessarily become less social. If anything, I think I’m more intentional about being social. I’m choosing experiences that give me the connection I was looking for in partying, but in a way that feels more consistent with who I am now—experiences that don’t leave me feeling like I’ve borrowed energy from tomorrow just to have fun tonight.”

It looks like the money hasn’t disappeared along with the hangovers—Gen Z has just gotten more deliberate about where their discretionary income goes. Drinks, entry fees, and late-night cabs are now competing with hobbies and activities that promise something different in return. These aren’t cheap either, but they come with a return on investment clubbing rarely offered—a social life that doesn’t cost you the next morning.

All images: Getty Images 

This article originally appeared in Cosmopolitan India's September-October 2026 print issue.

Also read: Type 3 fun, sunrise views and benne dosa: a Gen Z cheat day checklist

Also read: Gen Z is choosing 'soft hermitting' over another night out