It's probably more difficult for kids to throw house parties nowadays when their parents are out of town due to how accessible security cameras are.
Seems like just about everyone has a video doorbell and/or other cameras monitoring their property. Took it for granted in my youth without even knowing it.
I would actually be kind of proud of my kids if they threw a successful party with their friends when I was out of town. It seems like kids barely party anymore. As long as they clean up afterwards and don't break a bunch of stuff, I'd pretend not to notice.
Have you considered letting them party and being a cool responsible adult that sticks around to make sure everyone is safe. I had some friends growing up with parents like this. Their theory was the kids are going to party anyway so if you give them a safe space its less likely to go poorly. Anyone who got a little too sick or emotional ended up with an experienced adult to help them recover.
Problem is it looks worse to a judge if the adults were present at the party. It’s liability.
Perhaps the more disturbing thing is they lack the drive to break the rules.
We hosted parties for our daughters when they were teens (15-16). They weren't big - maybe 8 to 10 friends. No alcohol, but lots of food off the grill. On occasion, we let them drink alcohol with us after they turned 18 at home with no friends, which is legal in our state.
I'm relatively young and yeah, I barely ever party. Never did it much as a teen, and I do it even less as an adult in my 20's. It's just not all that fun to me.
As an avid fan of festivals and raves, house parties are kind of boring man. I would suggest giving a good club a try and maybe working your way up to a rave or fest.
Whole different ball game, you're there with hundreds to thousands of people in good spirits with the same mindset. I've met really cool and genuine people at these places, people you'd never hope to meet out in "the real world"
Oh no. Where I live we do party. Me and my friend groups meet up almost every week to party and almost always we randomly meet new people. It's lots of fun.
Oh yeah totally, I agree
My kids are just winding down a 'first week of school party' at our house. I'm not sure how many teens we peaked at... Around 12 14-17 yr olds. This is a semi constant around here, roughly 1-2x a month for most of the year. I'm sure at some point it'll happen without us here.
Bigger problem is mfs just spend the weekend braindead doomscrolling the internet and don't even want to have parties.
Oh. Hi. That's me, right now.
Good for them.
Staying safe indoors instead of dying prematurely from alcohol poisoning and stupidity.
Wow you sure seem fun to be around.
Do stupid stuff is part of growing up, don't miss that
If you don't want to drink, that's totally fine and entirely your choice. It's not for everyone and some people simply should not consume alcohol (eg, those with a history of substance abuse problems or anger issues).
But having fun at parties with alcohol is a pretty typical part of growing up. There's a middle ground between "staying home alone" vs "dying prematurely". You can drink enough to have fun without it being at risk of killing you. It's not healthy to bing drink, to be clear, but personally, I found it worth it every now and then to have some good times with friends. Just be mindful of your limits, hangout with people you trust, and always have a sober ride home.
Maybe, just maybe, the issue is the parents not letting go and not accessibility to cameras.
Before cameras everyone had a window granny who reported everything happening in the neighborhood. And even then, parents knew what was happening. The goal was that kids would fear that the parents would discover something is amiss and clean after themselves.
Back when I was a teen, my folks would go away for a month and a half every summer and leave us kids behind (we were teenagers and didn't want to go) and obviously we would throw parties. One year I had cleaned the house really well and thought there was no way they would know. My dad came home and that's how I learned he keeps two cold beers in the fridge for when he gets home. And they were gone.
He wasn't mad we threw parties, he wasn't mad we were underage drinking, but he was mad his two cold getting-home beers had been drank and not replaced. And that's how I found out my parents are humans who knew we were having parties and they didn't care as long as we didn't die or mess with their shit.
The point isn't that they don't have fun. Its that they clean up so good we don't have to clean shit when we get home.
That’s how it worked before the cameras.
lol, never thought of it that way
My parents knew I had had a house party because it was too clean, they said I wouldn't have cleaned if I wasnt trying to hide something. They were right tbh
That and with the parents working from home, how often are they out of the house long enough to throw a party or even raid the alcohol cabinet?
Friend of mines teen daughter did something similar. She posted on Instagram that she was at home, bored, fml, and all that. Sadly, some of her friends posted from the party. With her tagged.
"OMG SHOTS WITH #STACY!!! BFF AND JDC!!!"
Like, pictures of her and everything. Her dad made her write 100 times, "I need better friends" as part of her punishment, lol.
When I had to write sentences in elementary school I learned a pro tip from my Dad. Tape 4 pencils together and write 4 lines at a time. Works great!
turn off the wifi. boom no more ring and nest cams. problem solved.
Teenagers don't listen to this parent in disguise. Most modern cameras and record everything locally and/or viacloud. You'd physically have to go to each camera and unplug if they aren't already battery operated AND kill the wifi.
If just just turn off the wifi they'll record them just upload everything when they get internet again lol.
Good luck trying to explain that away to your parents though lol.
Unless you running an NVR, do not believe many cloud based cameras will record locally. Fewer would have batteries. I think some doorbell cameras may send still photos with motion that may get send on reconnection. The video is likely lost.
I install commercial cameras and nearly all have capability for SD cards and local storage but never had a need to utilize that.
My dad did have cameras all over the house while I was in high school. But there weren’t any in my room so we could hang out in there. There also weren’t any in the bathroom so we could stash the alcohol in there and just pour it into cups.
Both of these required a parent not that dedicated to actually stopping his kids from partying though. But a parent sufficiently dedicated was always going to be able to find out somehow.
Did you have to, like, sneak people in through a window or something? Surely there were cameras at the normal entrances. Or were the number of guests not an issue, just the alcohol?
The latter for sure. And to be fair, my experience wasn’t identical to what the post was asking. It wasn’t so much a house party as it was having ~10 friends over. And my dad was often home, just already asleep. I definitely wouldn’t have tried to have a legitimate house party with the cameras around.
Just unplug the router and no internet access. ;)
No idea why the internet goes out every time you guys are out of town. So weird!!
Lol yeah so weird.
That doesn't solve anything. Your neighbors have security cameras too. They can share then with your parents. Your parents can watch video from other cameras if the neighborhood is on the same brand/network.
This varies with location. Our nearest neighbors are just shy on a mile away. Their cameras aren't much good.
The kids actually figured out how to log in and disable the cameras or mute notifications and then delete memory 🥴
Dog you're not even getting started on how hard it is to be social as a kid/teen nowadays. Parents are spending so much more time with and around their kids too, because it's necessary when kids can't walk anywhere and have no skate parks or malls to go to anyway.
Let the kids have fun, what's wrong with these parents?
A neighbor would just tell on you. I got busted by random neighborhood parents skipping school or sneaking out.
simple solution: obstruct the view of the camera ..
You think this isn't the main use case?
Parents but this shit and trick tend into thinking it's about security from the outside. Adults know that was just a fringe possibility, it's all about curbing house parties.
Now shut up before they see this.