What Happens When Your Gen Z Is Too Old to Trick-or-Treat?

Written by: Liza Gresko, Mom and PR Specialist at Moss Tucker Group

There comes a bittersweet moment in a parent's life when Halloween looks a little different.

The costume may be replaced by a hoodie. The candy bucket may stay in the closet. Instead of confirming what time trick-or-treating starts, you hear "Mom, I'm too old for that. Can my friends come hang out instead?"

If your tweens or teenagers have officially aged out of trick-or-treating, or have ultimately decided they're just not interested anymore, it doesn't mean the spooky, memorable magic of Halloween has to fade. It just might be time to reinvent what Halloween looks like in your family.

Enter: Halloween Game Night.

For teens, getting together with friends, connecting through game play and spending a few hours laughing around the table can be just as exciting for them as it was walking the neighborhood for candy. And for parents, it offers an equally memorable alternative. It's a chance to reconnect with kids who are becoming more independent every day, and for you to retain some of that family time.

There isn't a universal "expiration date" for trick-or-treating. Some teens will happily grab a costume and a candy bag well into high school, while others are ready to move on much earlier.

But the transition tends to happen around the early teen years.

In a 2024 FDU Poll of 806 registered U.S. voters, respondents who gave a specific age said, on average, that children should stop trick-or-treating at 13.5 years old. At the same time, 25% said kids should be able to trick-or-treat for as long as they want. In other words, there really isn't a hard-and-fast rule.

What is clear is that Halloween eventually becomes less about dressing up and going door to door and more about how teens want to spend time with their friends.

If your teens have decided they're done with trick-or-treating, don't think of it as the end of Halloween.

Think of it as an invitation to create a new tradition.

Why Board Games Are a Great Fit for Teens

Board games offer something that can be surprisingly difficult to find during the teen years: an activity where everyone is face to face and interacting together. And even if your family doesn't embrace the Halloween concept, having a game night is still a great idea to keep those teens together and having fun.

Tabletop games create a shared experience. Players need to pay attention to one another, make decisions, react to what happens and talk to each other.

A systematic review conducted by Garrido-Sánchez, A. B., & Crisol-Moya, E. (2023). "Systematic Review: Benefits of Board Games in the Field of Social Education with Children Aged 6 to 18 Years Old." examined board games and social education among children ages 6 to 18 and found evidence that board games can support social development and interpersonal skills.

That doesn't mean pulling out a board game magically transforms a quiet teenager into a social butterfly, but it does give them a reason to interact, which is the magic of game night.

Nobody must sit around a table and force a conversation, they just play.

Board Games are Having a Gen Z Moment

If you're trying to get a teenager away from a screen, "Let's play a game!" might sound like an unlikely strategy, but gaming is already a huge part of teen culture.

Gen Z grew up surrounded by smartphones, apps and algorithm-driven feeds, and many are now looking for ways to step back from the constant pull of digital life. As conversations around "brain rot" and digital overload become more common, screen-free activities are taking on new appeal. Board games offer a welcome change of pace: a face-to-face experience that asks players to slow down, pay attention, interact with one another and enjoy the moment.

Social connections are just as important. According to the U.S. Surgeon General's advisory on the loneliness epidemic, time spent with friends in person declined from about 30 hours a month in 2003 to roughly 10 hours a month in 2020, with the steepest decline among people ages 15 to 24.

As young people continue looking for meaningful ways to reconnect in person, game nights offer an easy way to bring friends together around a shared activity. What was once considered a niche hobby is increasingly becoming a natural choice for socializing, giving Gen Z another reason to gather, unplug and simply spend time together.

Rather than doomscrolling, Millennials and Gen Z have reintroduced board games as a form of entertainment and social connection. The board gaming community continues to expand, as more new players take an interest in gathering around a table with their friends to enjoy game night.

The appeal lies in the actual play component, the competition, the collaboration and the connection that happens around the board games themselves, all activities that help build resilience skills.

A teen game night with tabletop games simply brings that familiar experience into the real world with real face to face interaction.

Instead of everyone sitting silently on their phones, you can invite a handful of your teen's friends over, put snacks on the table, turn on some music and give them something to do together. The goal isn't to orchestrate every minute of the evening. It's to create an environment where socializing happens naturally.

The Secret Benefit? It Gives You a Way to Reconnect With Your Teen

There's another reason game night works particularly well during the teen years: it gives parents and teens a reason to be together in a peer format as game players and not as child to adult.

Teenagers are navigating new friendships, changing interests, increased independence, academic pressures and plenty of emotional and physical changes. Sometimes it can feel like the kid who once told you everything about themselves and their day now barely talks to you, answering your questions with brief statements or mumbles.

That's a very normal and common thread of growing up, but it doesn't mean they don't need a connection with you. It just means you should try creating a new connection with them using different methods.

Playing a game together creates a little breathing room and takes the pressure off finding things in common to talk about. You don't have to ask, "so, how are things going?" instead, during a game, you can ask, "What move are you going to make next?" You don't have to initiate or force a heart-to-heart. You can laugh when someone makes a crazy play, celebrate a win or band together over a spectacular loss.

Sometimes the best conversations happen when you're not trying to have a conversation at all.

Make It a Special Themed Game Night They'll Actually Want to Go To

The key to a successful teen game night is choosing games that feel like something they would genuinely want to play, not something designed to keep younger kids entertained.

For those interested in a Halloween theme, you can keep with the spooky, scary concept with a curated list of games. Select a visually intriguing game like Mirror Mansion, where players use mirrors, memory and spatial reasoning to uncover hidden treasures. Players explore a spooky mansion and place mirrors to help them find treasures and jewels. You gain more jewels by voting on the actions of other players, which is a really fun way to predict what other players might do and gives your teen an outlet to connect with their friends. The player with the most jewels at the end of the game wins.

For a group that loves strategy games, Amalgam adds a little Halloween magic with cauldrons, ingredients and potions. Players collect matching ingredients while planning their next moves and keeping an eye on what their opponents are doing. It's strategic enough to keep older kids engaged without feeling overly complicated.

If your teen has just one friend over or wants to play a game just one-on-one with you, Chess on the Loose is a great option. It takes traditional chess and gives it a Halloween-worthy twist with monsters, treasure and even UFOs. The familiar strategy of chess gets some unexpected surprises, giving experienced players something new to tackle while keeping the game approachable for players still learning.

And for a game that's practically made for Halloween, bring out Rolling Bones. Building a skeleton bone by bone brings a hands-on element to the evening while introducing anatomy, sequencing and probability. It's the kind of game that gives everyone something to do while adding just the right amount of spooky fun to the table. The object of the game is to rebuild a skeleton as completely as possible and then ship it off to the museum for display.

Rolling Bones teaches the fundamentals of the skeletal system using appropriate anatomical names of our bones. The game also helps teach the correct sequencing of the skeletal structure. But most importantly, the game reinforces decisions around risk and reward... a lesson in probability.

The idea isn't to create a perfectly planned itinerary. Put a few games on the table and let the teens decide what looks fun to them.

Make Halloween Feel Different, Not Over

Growing up doesn't have to mean giving up everything that made childhood fun.

Just because your teen doesn't want to knock on doors for candy while wearing a princess costume, the fun isn't over. It just looks a little different. Halloween can evolve right along with them.

Invite their friends over, stock up on their favorite snacks, let them stay up a little later, and give them a table, a few games and plenty of room to laugh.

Ultimately, a Halloween game night isn't really about the games, it's about giving teens a safe space to connect with their friends, unplug for a while and enjoy being together, while giving parents one more opportunity to be part of their rapidly changing world.

Just because your days of rushing to the store for the latest character costume are over, doesn't mean the fun has to stop for you or for your teens.