I'm a millennial (38) who never participated in the "risky behaviour" that is raving, clubbing, hooking up, etc.
What I do do though is travel for swing dance events [1], which often involves live music, bluesy late night parties, etc. I also have friends who do similar for salsa dancing and board game / anime / nerd conventions. So I wonder if part of this is that "staying up late doing fun thing with semi-strangers" has expanded to more domains than freestyle dancing to electronic music?
Swing dance is down overall compared to ten+ years ago in NA. There are way less events. The events don't go as late either. It used to be that almost every event would go to 5am. The crowd at these events is much older now too. It used to be primarily under 30 and now it's well over 30.
Losing all the campus clubs for two years really impacted things, and I think there was also a big loss in mid-sized events, but hopefully things do still continue to recover. Certainly there is still loads of enthusiasm, especially in the Balboa world, where the flow aesthetics and high skill ceiling really appeal to obsessive types.
It appealed to me as a 20 year old engineering student, eighteen years ago. And I see lots of 20s and 30s still out at big events; I wouldn't write the decline off as being about anything intrinsic to the activity.
What I do do though is travel for swing dance events [1], which often involves live music, bluesy late night parties, etc. I also have friends who do similar for salsa dancing and board game / anime / nerd conventions. So I wonder if part of this is that "staying up late doing fun thing with semi-strangers" has expanded to more domains than freestyle dancing to electronic music?
[1]: eg https://dclx.org/ https://www.instagram.com/bal_moment/ https://www.balweek.com/about