From April through July this year, Kate*, a 24-year-old marketing manager living on Long Island, celebrated a birthday – sometimes even two – every single weekend. There was the house party that turned into a group sleepover, followed by lunch the next day. There was the “karaoke thing”, preceded by dinner. There was the summer camp-themed blowout at a house in the suburbs which was, naturally, an all-day affair. One stormy Saturday, Kate even found herself with one birthday party during the day, another at night and a weather forecast promising torrential downpours. Defeated at last, she opted out of the daytime party, a decision tinged with guilt. “I had so much anxiety sending that cancellation text,” she says.

Kate’s jam-packed calendar – and her feelings of guilt – aren’t entirely uncommon. Though a simple cake-cutting and two-hour window once seemed like adequate celebration, birthday culture has evolved in recent years, with multi-part birthday weekends and getaways becoming increasingly common. For those with large friendship circles, celebrating loved ones can now take up a significant amount of time, not to mention money. And given the emotional weight of birthdays, they’re not exactly the kind of social obligation you feel good about skipping. But how did these celebrations become such a major part of our friendships, and has their growing presence in our social lives finally brought us to a point of peak birthday fatigue?

For Kate, the answer is yes, particularly when it comes to her own demographic. “I do feel like birthday culture among young women has gotten a little outrageous in terms of the expectations from other people,” she says, pointing to celebrations that now almost always involve multiple plans. Though Kate enjoys showing up for her friends, the frequency and scale of these festivities have become stressful. To her, it also stands in stark contrast to the low-key birthdays she remembers her mum attending growing up, which usually meant a simple house party. These days, she says, most celebrations involve dinner, followed by a pre-game, followed by bar- or club-hopping.

Kate’s theory of what’s behind the shift? Social media and the increasing pressure to perform for others online. “There have been multiple birthdays I’ve gone to where there are already certain TikToks [the birthday person] wants to make at the party,” says Kate. “And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get the perfect birthday photo, because I’ve been there. But I do think a lot of this is people wanting to have a birthday that looks really good to other people online.”

Psychotherapist Mark Vahrmeyer, who describes birthdays as “symbolic rituals of recognition”, echoes this theory. “With social media, we’re increasingly confusing the scale of the celebration with the strength of the relationship,” says Vahrmeyer. When previously speaking to Dazed about the phenomenon of “birthday blues”,, AKA feelings of sadness or anxiety surrounding one’s birthday, he noted that birthdays can prompt a confrontation between the life we imagined we’d be living and the life we are actually living – a dissonance that helps explain why they can feel so emotionally loaded. For some vulnerable people, that emotional weight can be particularly serious: studies across several countries have found suicide risk to be between six per cent to 40 per cent on birthdays than on other days. “I think often the question that people unconsciously sit with is, ‘Do I matter enough for other people to make an effort for me?’” says Vahrmeyer. “Problematically, what we are getting mirrored back from social media is the grander [the effort], the better.”

“I think often the question that people unconsciously sit with is, ‘Do I matter enough for other people to make an effort for me? Problematically, what we are getting mirrored back from social media is the grander [the effort], the better”

Of course, grander often means more expensive. Even birthday dinners, on the surface a more casual way to celebrate, can get notoriously sticky, with how to split the bill becoming a hot-button debate in itself. Madison Collins, a 23-year-old fashion assistant living in Hoboken, is pro-birthdays but staunchly anti-birthday dinners for exactly this reason. She recalls a time when she couldn’t afford to attend a friend’s celebration but was guilt-tripped into going by another friend who was organising it anyway. “I ended up going and just getting an appetiser, but still having to pay for wine and all this other stuff,” says Collins. “I was so broke.”

Then there are birthday trips, which, with their even larger financial commitment, can put further strain on friendships. That was the case for the friend group of Arissa Cervantes, a 22-year-old production assistant based in Brooklyn. Cervantes’ friends love not just a trip and blowout party, but a theme – Jersey Shore, Paris and SpongeBob-themed festivities are all ways they’ve celebrated over the years. The problem is that their birthdays fall one after another, making September through November a near-constant cycle of celebration. “As a friend group, we wouldn’t go on any trips or anything the entire beginning of the year because we would save to go at the end of the year for our birthdays,” says Cervantes.

Depending on what stage of life you’re in, these trips can create other pressures too. Anna*, a 27-year-old living in Manhattan, is at an age where many of her friends are getting married, making birthdays yet another major social expense. “The bachelorette bubble is now becoming the birthday bubble,” she says, noting that bachelorettes, unlike birthdays, are a one-time thing. “I want to celebrate and get together, and you should do what you want for your birthday. But it’s like, why am I now financially obligated to help fund your fun thing that you want to do?”

For young women, the question of how much weight we give birthdays versus wedding-related celebrations can feel particularly fraught, especially as more women are single and marry later in life. “I am seeing that brides are getting a little bit older and older,” says Emily Peralta, the owner of Project Party NYC, an event planning company in New York. “I think people are like, ‘Fuck a bridal shower or a baby shower’ – I’m gonna celebrate my 30th, and it’s gonna be the best thing ever because I don’t need to celebrate something that has to do with someone else. I can have this moment for myself.’” 

Peralta estimates that 95 per cent of her “milestone” clients – those hiring her to plan landmark birthdays like a 30th – are single. It’s an interesting stat to consider alongside writer Chanté Joseph’s recent Marie Claire article, which explored the phenomenon of women having their birthdays ruined by male partners. In a heterosexual dating culture where disappointment with male partners has become its own recurring discourse, can one really blame women for wanting to make a big deal of a day that’s entirely their own? But increased singledom may not be the only factor contributing to the expansion of birthday culture. According to Vahrmeyer, the increasingly disconnected way we socialise could play a role too. In Western societies, the psychotherapist notes, it’s increasingly common to live far from family, putting more pressure on occasions like birthdays to provide a sense of community. “It’s got to deliver this sense of belonging and hit of ‘I have recognition, I’m part of a tribe,’” says Vahrmeyer. “It’s a lot of pressure to put on one day, isn’t it?”

Though birthday fatigue is real, Vahrmeyer’s words suggest that our increasingly elaborate celebrations may also be a symptom of something much simpler: the desire to feel seen. And, so long as we don’t place unrealistic expectations on the people around us, there’s nothing wrong with that. If anything, one upside of a birthday-filled calendar is that it gives us an excuse to see friends we might otherwise lose touch with. Collins, for example, recently ran into a friend at a birthday party and, while catching up, realised the last time they had seen each other was also at a birthday party – though neither could remember which one. “Sometimes, you end up just showing up for each other on birthdays,” she says. “And is that being a villager? I don't know, but it’s still meaningful in its own way.”