We were promised a sea of bikini-clad women, a thousand beach balls, and swarms of beefy young men crushing empty beer cans on their foreheads. We were told MTV would be there, that Girls Gone Wild would be filming, and that for one week every spring in our four years of college, we’d experience true hedonism.
Of course, that fantasy was never entirely true: The people who experienced the quintessential spring break of yore probably remember their sunburns and cheap tequila hangovers more than anything else. But genuine or not, that fantasy is just about dead. And it has been for quite some time now.
This year, using both my own social media and the Playboy Instagram account, I attempted to gauge what current college students are doing for spring break. Some of them surely must be off to South Padre Island or Acapulco for bass-thumping day parties, right?
Wrong. The majority of those who responded to my request said they had nothing planned. Many cited the week off of school as their chance to catch up on assignments or get a leg up on the semester. Others said they would be working at their part-time jobs, or maybe visiting their parents. One guy said he would be spending his spring break “rubbing.” Yes, rubbing.
That said, if you poke around on TikTok, you’ll still find plenty of videos of people in disgustingly over-crowded pools and beaches. Whether they’re actually having fun is… debatable. But at least they’re not just at home, uh, rubbing.
OK, so there is some evidence that young people are still doing something with their time off, even in the destinations we might associate with the spring breaks of the ’90s. According to rental data from boat rental marketplace GetMyBoat, Miami, West Palm Beach and Cabo San Lucas continue to be the most popular spots for boat rentals over the season. If you want to get drunk with your classmates in a warm climate, there are plenty of places still willing to accommodate you — they just probably won’t feature Bam Margera (well… probably) and be hosted by Carson Daly, for better or worse.
It’s been more than a decade since MTV stopped running its annual spring break coverage, whisking homebound viewers off to Daytona Beach or Panama City, Florida. MTV made their parties the place to be for the week, hosting concerts with artists like Destiny’s Child, *NSYNC, Lil Wayne, blink-182, and Kid Rock and holding notorious events like wet T-shirt contests and tug-of-war over pits of guacamole
Wither the wet T-shirt contests now? Daytona still touts itself as a spring break destination, but for— gasp! — families. As Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a Facebook video, “We are going to meet foolery with zero tolerance.”,
Miami Beach, meanwhile, has implemented strict anti-crowd policies during March over the last several years, at times closing the beach as early as 6 p.m. and establishing security checkpoints. In Cancun, many resorts prohibit groups of college-aged visitors. The Riu brand of all-inclusives, for example, only allows college students at specific properties and with prior approval.
One notable caveat comes from HBCU’s, who in recent years have forgone the salt and sand of Miami for Houston, where three weeks of parties with names like “Freaknik Pool Party” to “Wet Dreams Boat Party” to “Spring Break Gone Wild” abound.
As other TikToks suggest, people are finding some success in selecting a random destination with an extended group of friends and hoping for the best. But by and large the idea of going to one specific hot destination, where cultural tastemakers have provided the infrastructure for a party worth documenting has faded. Yes, you can all still stand around in a pool. Sadly, though, you’re unlikely to find the type of free-spirited, libidinally-driven dancing you might find in nostalgia clips on YouTube.
And for whatever type of spring break does exist, the emphasis is far less on partying and drinking—at least on paper. According to NBC Miami, “Miami Beach’s theme for spring break this year is ‘Wake up to a new March. The campaign focuses on health, wellness and public safety, with slogans like, ‘This spring, break a sweat.’”
Meanwhile, the students I spoke to who are traveling for spring break tend to be eschewing the usual party spots. “We’ve managed to save up enough to explore China for a couple weeks,” one student, James, told me. “Hopefully there will be many fun moments, but we’ll be roughing it a good deal.”
He chose this trip in specific contrast to the stereotypical spring break ideal. “I see many of my peers suffer hard consequences from the ‘spring break experience,’” he says. “It’s at least better than some worrisome trends in our generation when it comes to plummeting sex and social drinking rates due to nihilistic complacency, but it’s a hard balance.”
Travel companies far beyond the beach are reporting an upswing of college students, too, with a similarly wholesome tone.
Miguel Angel Gongora Meza, co-founder of Evolution Treks Peru, a Cusco-based tour company that coordinates guided treks to Machu Picchu and other Peruvian destinations, says that college students made up very few of their March clients in the past. Today, however, they represent about 15 percent of travelers.
“These young travelers ask questions that nobody asked me 10 years ago,” he says. “They want to know whether our porters are fairly compensated and if local communities are actually benefiting from the trip. I had a Boston boy about 21 years old join our trek last March. She explained to me why she chose Peru over Cancun because, in her exact words, ‘I don’t want my spring break to hurt anyone.’ That sentence stuck in my head for weeks.”
In some cruel twist, I found myself disembarking from my plane last night into the stickiness of Miami after a storm. I am here not to party, but for a funeral. Around me were indeed numerous groups of students, waiting to be taken away to wherever their spring break might begin. And among the rest were families, elderly retirees, and countless bored individuals of all sorts just waiting for their Uber to finally arrive. It was by far the busiest I have seen the Miami airport be. A man in a black suburban blasted “Low” by Flo Rida through the arrivals pickup zone, releasing fat clouds of vape smoke as he slowly rolled past. In another time, in another universe, he’d be there to escort us all to the beach with nothing but bikinis and Twisted Teas in our suitcases, where MTV would be waiting with white t-shirts and buckets of water to toss on them in hand.
