When beginning the process of writing this article, I found myself asking: what is a youth club?
My ignorance of the term speaks volumes. These institutions, once places of community that inspired new hobbies and forged new friendships, have fallen off our radar and off our streets.
Between 2010 and 2020, youth club funding was cut by 70 per cent. The effects of this extend beyond the loss of somewhere to kick a ball around after school. Research has linked closures to a four percent performance decrease in GCSE performance, with the consequences particularly severe for children from lower-income households (12 per cent); additionally, studies have found that crime offence rates have increased by 14 per cent.
Importantly, the clubs didn’t necessarily die because young people stopped attending them. Merely keeping them alive was deemed unworthy of the cost.
The disappearance of the youth club aligns with society’s attitude towards the hopelessly snowflaked Gen Z, who must get off their phone, use a brain cells and just DO SOMETHING.
The appetite for socialising has not disappeared. The ‘youth’ are still going to clubs. It’s just that this word means something completely different now..
When somebody says they’re “going to the club” I don’t picture a peeling Snakes and Ladders board, stained by a mug of tea that was ineluctably served in an incredibly chunky Sports Direct mug. Instead, I’m torn by memories of hopelessly fiddling for my ID behind my phone case, mooching about sticky floors with my even stickier fingers clutching a neon blue VK that I will inevitably spill down the same tatty top that has seen those same four walls on too many occasions.
Previously, the youth club was somewhere you went because you weren’t an adult yet. The nightclub is somewhere you go because, (legally), you are one. The former invites new friends and new memories. The latter does all this too… except you might just not remember any of it.
There’s an obvious problem with this comparison. Thirteen-year-olds aren’t queuing outside nightclubs. But equally, in the age of technology, I’m unconvinced they’re mourning the loss of a battered chessboard. Somewhere between these two clubs lies a gap, and, in an age when we are less connected, such schemes are even more essential.
Yet, if funding was to reappear, resurrecting the youth club exactly as it was is not the answer. A 13-year-old in 2026 doesn’t need a recreation of the club of decades ago. But they might benefit from the freedom to relax without having to buy a drink or be engulfed by a screen.
The youth has changed but the need to ‘club’ hasn’t.
Young people still want somewhere to congregate, socialise and, really, just laugh. Maybe what has become obsolete isn’t the motivation behind youth clubs, but our idea of what one should look like.
We haven’t grown out of clubs. We just grew out of what a club used to be. So, to the youth clubs: it’s not you. It’s us.
Image by “Pwllheli Youth Club (1487182)” by Geoff Charles is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
