From the Charleston to TikTok, dance has long defined youth culture, but a new fear of being filmed is causing people to stop dancing at live events.



If there is anything that has marked youth culture, at least from the 20th century forward, it has been dancing.

In the 1920s, it was the Charleston. During the 1930s and 1940s, it was Swing and the Jitterbug. With the dawn of the rock’ n' roll era, you had the Twist and the Mashed Potato. How can you mention the 1970s and not mention Disco? Fast forward into the 1980s, and you had the Electric Slide and Breakdancing. Enter the 1990s, and you had hip-hop moves like the Hammer dance. Okay, as a courtesy to our collective embarrassment, I won’t mention the Macarena. Oops, sorry, I guess I just did. The 2000s gave us the Cha-Cha Slide. The 2010s introduced dancing Gangnam Style, along with the Harlem Shake and Twerking.

And yes, while the 2020s have seen TikTok usher in any number of novel dance moves, from Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” to Doja Cat’s “Say So,” people have stopped doing something that other eras naturally did.

Which is joining in on the dance.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) notes that today, suddenly, everyone is scared to dance at concerts and clubs. They are worried about looking goofy on camera. Translation: video may have killed the radio star, but social media is killing dancing. The article notes that “dance like nobody’s watching” may have been sound advice in bygone eras, but not in a world where everyone has a camera in their pocket. They note the new rule: “Dance like anybody could be watching and that footage will follow you forever.”

Nobody wants to be the next meme.

Dance now resides in the realm of short-form video, meaning “slick choreographed routines” that “proliferate on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, spawning mimics and viral trends.” But at concerts? It’s suddenly time to stand still.

WSJ noted that Tyler, the Creator, the rapper who has released four straight No. 1 albums, lamented in July that the threat of constant surveillance was killing dance for his generation:

“I asked some friends why they don’t dance in public, and some said because of the fear of being filmed,” he wrote on Instagram. “I thought damn, a natural form of expression and a certain connection they have with music is now a ghost.”

I couldn’t help but take this a cultural step or two and apply it to how younger people now seem intent on living their lives. They are scared to dance. Meaning they are scared to be outliers in a world where acceptance is everything, and conformity is the pathway to that acceptance.

There used to be value in the idea of “marching to the beat of a different drum,” meaning the courage to think, live, and follow your own principles instead of bowing to the crowd of social expectations. The phrase comes from Thoreau, who wrote in Walden: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears….”

For Christ followers of all ages, this is needed now more than ever. It’s called being salt and light in a deeply fallen world.

So I leave you with the lyrics to another song—yes, a bit dated, but perhaps now prescient in its message:

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean

Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens

Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance.

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