> My observation is that we were just bored a lot. It has been a long time since young people have been as bored as we were back then.
Eh, I think it depends more on the location, than anything else. I grew up rural, we did basically exactly the same thing as you described, hosting raves in the forest, beaches and what not until we get word that police was on it's way (tiny place, everyone knew everyone, police coming was big news as we didn't have local police).
We did have cellphones, the internet and more, but still, we were bored and dancing all night in a forest was the most fun we could have :) This was between around 2008-2011 sometime.
Sure there’s always a lag between city and rural on most things, even fashion trends and whatnot. That being said, I think the lag is gone and has fully saturated most places and demographics by now. The tiktokification is a huge factor that only hit in late teens in the US.
I think things really went off a cliff after around 2012 once phones and internet got good, and social media cranked up the algo games.