The average raver is 40 years old according to a new study released by the Montreal Institute for Urban Affairs. “Our research confirms the mounting suspicions held by many young party-goers that Montreal’s rave scene is currently dominated by older adults,” says lead researcher Jonas Kingsley. “Raving came of age during the eighties and nineties, and while many younger teenagers still enjoy EDM, the overwhelming majority of people who attend parties today have been doing so for decades. This is true not just in Montreal, but throughout North America.”

According to Jonas, your typical raver has greying hair, lots of cellulite, two teenaged children, and a mortgage. “Ravers are old,” says Jonas. “Soon, many ravers will be grandparents. The scene is growing long in the tooth, and that’s causing a lot of intergenerational conflict.”

Rave promoters and club owners are having trouble navigating this thorny issue. Many of them have even started instituting strict age limits as a result of the greying raver phenomenon. “A lot of teens and young adults don’t want to drop ecstasy with their parents,” says party promoter Alys Voisine. “So a lot of us have started throwing events aimed strictly at the under 30 set. We want to have room to breath, to enjoy ourselves without our helicopter parents hovering over us. Our parents had their shot, and now it’s our time to dance to repetitive music while stoned out of our minds.”

Some scientists feel that the war between millennial ravers and their generation X parents is just part of a larger problem. “A lot of older people refuse to go away,” says Dr. Bailey Bonhart, a sociologist who studies intergenerational interactions. “And their children are getting fed-up. It’s bad enough that they won’t retire and make way for younger workers, but now they insist on going clubbing and raving. It’s like they just don’t want to grow up. You know there’s a problem when the dance floor of a club dedicated to dubstep is dominated by balding old men with arthritis.”