Young folks haven’t ever just socialized in public spaces - the main social spots were hanging out at people’s houses.

One thing I see constantly blamed for the lack of socialization and increase in loneliness among young people is that there’s just nowhere for young people to go without spending any money, and it paints a view of the old days that just isn’t really how things actually used to be.

I’m not saying that teens or folks in their early 20s didn’t occasionally go to the mall, the movies, out to the bars or clubs, to hang out at a coffee shop, or other places that cost money - but we didn’t have a ton of extra money back then either. So we mostly just went to other people’s houses and hung out.

Half the time you didn’t even have a real plan for what you’d do - sometimes you didn’t even really “do” anything you’d just sit around talking. Or you’d do basic stuff like listen to music, watch whatever was on TV, look through the DVD collection and pick one.

Maybe someone had a ping pong table in their basement so you’d get really into ping pong for a few months because that’s where you hung out and it was there. Sometimes you’d get into stupid hijinks, some of my fondest teenage memories are things like building an igloo in the yard so we could smoke weed in it, or just playing video games with the fellas and cracking jokes in between, or badly freestyle rapping, or seeing how many times in a row we could flip the water bottle and have it land.

Usually these tended to be more gendered spots on weeknights than on weekends you’d have bigger gatherings where guys and girls mixed, or where smaller friend groups would all link up and it would turn into a house party. In high school, you’d tend to congregate at the house with the chill parents who would look the other way at drinking and smoking, as you got older you’d congregate at the central spot where your friend that liked having people over lived.

You don’t need free public spaces to socialize, you just need to invite some folks from school/work/hobbies to come over to your house