Though often presented as a new phenomenon, Urban Exploration is an ancient pastime that has no doubt been around since we first started building (and abandoning) buildings. But it’s only in the past 20 years that it’s earned its official nickname and a cult global following. In 2016, Red Bull premiered URBEX: Enter At Your Own Risk – a documentary featuring explorers from across the world, professing ​‘The Golden Age of Urban Exploration’ was upon us. Now, 10 years on, Urbex is seeing another boom in interest from Gen Z, catapulted by a thriving digital community that is, by design, desperate to ​‘touch grass’.

But In 2025, Urbexers’ digital landscape has grown along with its member numbers. There is, for a start, the r/​Urbex subreddit, a long-time mecca for urban explorers, where dozens of its 45k members post daily about their adventures. But today, Ruby, Logan and their friends chart most of their exploits on TikTok, where they can rack up tens of thousands of views, and sometimes even more gaudy numbers. Meanwhile, on the ground, WhatsApp groups and shared maps act as digital scaffolding that mirrors their IRL adventures. ​“Everyone in the community shares around this map,” Logan says as he shows me a Google Maps covered in flags, completely obscuring London, and peppering the rest of the world.

“Obviously, that’s not all of them,” Logan says of the literal thousands of spots marked on his map. But that’s exactly the point. Urbex is an ever-changing game, one that looks different for every new generation coming into it. Indeed, the growing community isn’t only reacting to a changing digital landscape, but a fast-changing physical world, where the number of buildings that are left abandoned in the first place, is rising steeply. ​“My dad has been Urbexing all his life,” Logan tells me. ​“But it used to be just ruins and bunkers – you wouldn’t find untouched mansions like you do now.”

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He’s right, the number of long-term vacant properties has risen starkly between generations. Especially in cities like London, where the number of uninhabited homes has grown from 40,229 (1.6% of homes) in 1961, to a staggering 297,000 (8.0% of all homes) in 2021, according to Census data. ​“The houses are empty because people can’t afford to keep up with inflation,” Logan says as we walk along a residential street in a North London suburb, ​“and wars and stuff too…” He goes on to explain how several Russian-owned homes in London were seized by the British government as the war with Ukraine mounted, leaving them to rot.

Yet, unlike Ruby and Logan, who point out several such properties to me during the day, this isn’t usually something that the general public can experience first-hand. The more time I spend with these young Urbexers, the more I come to understand that their motivations aren’t solely the thrill of the chase, but an insistent curiosity in the world that surrounds them.

Social media access might have accelerated these teenagers’ involvement in Urbex, but there’s a certain irony there. As I watch Ruby and Logan roam around the streets, vaulting over fences and scaling walls, I’m struck by how comfortable they are with the physical world. They look just like teen avatars in an adventure game, except reality is their playground. ​“Most people my age just sit on their phones all day,” says Ruby, who tells me that she gets teased for her hobby, of which she’s the only person at her school to do. When I ask her if she thinks it helps with her mental health, she says: ​“It has a positive impact for me personally – it gets me out the house and moving around and just lets me explore parts of the world that have been tucked away.”

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