The UAE “Side Quest” Lifestyle: Why Young People Are Always Looking for Something to Do
Someone sends a TikTok. Another person shares an Instagram reel. A third asks, “Who’s down?” By 9pm, the group is in a car, and the original plan has already changed three times.
In the UAE, boredom has become a problem with a built-in solution. When young residents find themselves with free time, the response is rarely to stay home. Instead, the question that echoes through group chats is simple: “Okay, where are we going?”
The answer, more often than not, is nowhere specific. What has emerged is a distinctly modern social pattern, borrowed from gaming terminology, where “side quests” have become the dominant way young people structure their leisure time. The term captures something real about how free hours are spent in Abu Dhabi and Dubai: a constant search for small adventures, spontaneous outings and reasons to leave the house, even when no plan existed beforehand.
The mechanics are straightforward. A drive to a café seen online becomes a stop for photos, a walk through a mall with no intention of shopping, and somehow ends with karak at 1am. The destination changes. The route changes. The point, it turns out, was never the destination.
What qualifies as a side quest is almost anything. Trying a new matcha spot. Driving across the city for a specific dessert. Attending an art exhibition discovered on Instagram. Taking a late-night drive. Exploring a neighbourhood never properly walked before. Even accompanying a friend to their dentist appointment counts. The activity itself often matters less than the fact of having somewhere to go, some destination that transforms an ordinary evening into something that feels like an event.
The appeal lies partly in the sheer volume of options available. Abu Dhabi and Dubai offer new cafes, restaurants, exhibitions, beaches, malls and events in constant rotation. There is always another hidden gem circulating online, another pop-up that exists only briefly, another experience waiting to be documented. In cities where new attractions appear almost continuously, boredom can feel almost self-inflicted.
Social media amplifies this dynamic considerably. Every weekend carries the possibility of another photo, another restaurant, another activity and another story to post. Everyday life has become a highlight reel, and the pressure to constantly experience something new shapes how young people spend their time. Yet beneath the reels and photos lies something more fundamental: a desire to feel alive.
For young adults juggling university, work, family expectations and increasingly packed schedules, spontaneous outings offer a small reprieve from routine. A random Tuesday night drive can feel like an event when most of your week is spent behind a desk or studying for exams. There is no pressure to make it productive, no deadline, no assignment. Just somewhere to be.
The downside is real. Constantly searching for something to do becomes exhausting and expensive. A quick coffee becomes dinner, which becomes dessert, which becomes a drive. Bank accounts suffer. There is also the pressure of feeling like everyone else is doing something more exciting, that your evening somehow falls short of what others are experiencing.
By contrast, the most memorable outings are often the ones with no plan at all. You leave the house without knowing where you are going, end up laughing in a car park at midnight, and realize you have spent four hours doing absolutely nothing important. Somehow, that was exactly what you needed.
Perhaps the solution is not to abandon the side quest lifestyle entirely, but to accept that not every outing needs to be spectacular. In the UAE, there is always somewhere to go. The harder question, and the one young residents are only beginning to ask, is whether the compulsion to always be somewhere is a feature of life here or a habit worth examining.