Middle-aged columnists who yomp through a bottle of red a night may be up in arms about young people soberly knitting and playing Scrabble, but there is at least a clear narrative for why today’s teens are so dull: it’s the economy, stupid. Generation Z can’t afford to have fun – both literally and metaphorically. No wonder they are ranked among the least happy and most stressed out teenagers in the West...In the aftermath of 2008’s economic crash, they’ve watched the generation above them struggle in unpaid internships, terrible flat shares, with mountains of debt and high competition for bad jobs. They don’t remember the day-glo optimism of Cool Britannia because they grew up with austerity Britain, where belts are tight and noses are permanently pressed to the grindstone.Author Chloe Combi, who has written a book entitled Generation Z: Their Voice, Their Lives, for which she interviewed thousands of British teens, concurs. "I think the 'pinch' is affecting every part of young people's lives because it is an economy stacked against them," she tells Refinery29. "University is so expensive now, it has to be geared towards maximising opportunity, like tons of work experience, which massively curtails heavy partying or drinking."It's true, young people do seem to have a more conscientious attitude today. Where skipping lectures to watch The OC with a hangover was the norm when I was at uni, I get that it’s not so cute if you're now stumping up £9,000 a year for the privilege. You even see the difference in social media: Gen Y embraced the overshare – think Lena Dunham, for a prime example – while Gen Z might be more likely to expunge social media accounts of embarrassing bong-toting pics lest they put off potential employers.If they move out of home, rents are so high there’s no spare cash to fritter on booze, drugs and club entry – as indicated by a new study suggesting young people and students spend more on coffee than clubbing. If they live with their parents, as young people increasingly do, there’s no venue for wild hedonism: having drunken sex on a sofa overlooked by a framed photograph of your folks’ wedding day – taken when they were your age! – is only ever going to be super-awkward.I’ve just hit 30, so belong to the upper end of the millennial generation who seem to be having the opposite problem to the straight-laced teenagers of today. We’re the Peter Pan generation, refusing – or unable – to grow up. We still party, even if our teenage counterparts don’t. Yet, unlike our parents, we’ve hit remarkably few traditional life goals.The average ages for having children, buying a house and getting married have all nudged into the thirties recently. And no wonder, given that – even if we do actively want such things – we also often can’t afford them: the average house price in London is over half a million, the average wedding costs £20,500 , and a child will set you back £230,000 . Ouch.But while I may not own my own sofa, or front room, I did spend my twenties earning just about enough cash to have a good time – and it hasn’t stopped yet. Dancing at a club till the morning Tube, lost weekends in fields, raucous meals out and holidays with the girls are still a regular part of life. Metropolitan millennials work hard, but play hard too (and sometimes, still, play too hard).We’ve seen plenty of these women on telly, with Girls, New Girl, Broad City, Two Broke Girls, Crashing and Drifters mining flat shares, shit jobs, awkward romantic encounters and getting smashed for comedy. But different stories of the next generation are beginning to come through. Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum centred on a naive twenty-something virgin with crap job prospects – refreshingly different to the usual raunchy telly teens. The characters in Jack Thorne’s Glue might have been very naughty indeed, but they were also unabashedly driven and ambitious. Look too at recent movie Mistress America; if Greta Gerwig is the perennial millennial mayfly, gadding between careers and a super-fun social life, it’s her younger, student, soon-to-be stepsister who has a serious, even ruthless, focus on what she wants to achieve in life.