COMMENTARY

Gen Z Celebrates A 'Boysober' Summer

• by Aaron Paquette , Columnist, July 19, 2024

First, Gen Z got sober from alcohol, drinking 20% less than millennials at the same age. And now they're getting sober from relationships, declaring themselves "boysober" for the summer.

In some ways, being boysober is a rebranded way of staying celibate. However, Gen Z women who remain celibate by choice, choosing to focus instead on themselves and their friendships, find "celibacy" to be a loaded term, fraught with religious, political and patriarchal baggage. So boysober is a cute, viral way of saying that someone is choosing to avoid romantic and sexual relationships with men. It also offers a welcome antonym to being "boycrazy."

Why are so many women choosing boysobriety? For starters, they're frustrated over dating apps, and how much effort they put into building and maintaining their profiles, just to get a handful of responses from quality men looking for serious relationships. Many dating app users of all genders think the apps encourage users to continually swipe, always looking for someone better. In a recent "Savage Love" advice column, Dan Savage notes that there's now a shift away from online dating, and toward meeting partners "IRL" through friends, activities and bars/clubs.

Secondly, with more liberal social mores around gender and sexuality, some women and nonbinary folks are going boysober to explore their own identity and orientation, rather than just defaulting into a relationship with a man. Some people who go boysober discover that they're attracted to women, or other folks along the gender continuum. One woman who went boysober told the New York Times she realized she actually wasn't attracted to men at all, fell in love with her best friend, and married her.

Thirdly, just like being sober from alcohol makes people clear-headed and better able to see and work on themselves, so can being "sober" from relationships. This closely aligns with the self-help and -care craze. People who go boysober are better able to look at themselves and the patterns of their lives and relationships, and then draw more objective conclusions. When they begin to date again, they often set healthier boundaries, and pick more constructive partners.

And lastly, many women are realizing they don't need a man to lead a rewarding life. Now that women are attending and graduating from college more than men, many are economically and socially empowered to travel, see the world, buy a house, start a business, have a child, or pursue a passion with their best friends, or entirely on their own. With a generation of young men dropping out of school, falling out of the workforce and playing video games all day while "swiping right" on their dating apps… many women are saying "thanks, but no thanks."

What are the implications for brands during this boysober summer?

*Give thought to girl groups. If it's an activity or experience that can be marketed to a couple, try marketing it to a group of girlfriends getting together. If a woman does something with seven girlfriends rather than one man, that's quadruple the event tickets, theme-park admissions, restaurant tab, etc.

*Promote female empowerment. Don't market your product based on how it can help a woman "find or keep” her man. Instead, focus on how it can help a woman become the best she can be, as an individual, and in all the relationships and aspects of her life.

*Provide a pathway to healthy relationships. Most boysober individuals won't stay that way forever. When they're ready to re-enter the dating scene, provide tools to have healthier relationships, and representation of happy, healthy, supportive relationships, whether those are with boys, girls or other genders.

By following this playbook, brands can ensure Gen Z doesn't break up with them like they’re doing with boys.