Even though the direct effects of the pandemic have mostly disappeared, it still does not undo the years of staying at home that we have become accustomed and habituated to.
Rapid inflation didn’t help, either. For those lucky enough to survive layoffs, they doubled down on work either dedicating more of their time or attempted to insulate their risk by becoming overemployed. Those who have time for friend outings may not feel as if they can afford the cost and those who have money for friend outings may not feel as if they can afford the time.
The rapid rise and acceptance of a remote workforce has led to fewer face-to-face interactions among coworkers. Social circles, that would be expanded by crossing different groups of your friends and acquaintances together, are dwindling due to both natural attrition and because people just see each other less often, weakening social bonds over time.
Then when we all get together despite all odds of us actually meeting up, gatherings kind of just devolve to a bunch of loosely connected people looking at our phones. It’s tragically ironic that the device we use for instant communication ended up putting distance between all of us.
I think we need to make more of an effort to spend time that is of sufficient quality with other people, even if that means our social norms need to change, e.g. phone usage when with others, actively reaching out, etc.
All these “we” statements should be “me” statements. So many people are ready to take what they’re given, but you can opt out. Find in-person work. Throw out your phone. Live close to your friends. Drop in on your neighbors. Become a regular at the gym. Become a regular at the bar. Talk to people on the bus. Notice which flowers bloom in what order in the spring.
If all you seek is comfort you’ll find it as you sit alone eating take out in a fully furnished apartment waiting to die. If what you want is community and to be present in the only life you have, you have to work hard to find it and maintain it.
> All these “we” statements should be “me” statements.
And all of your sentences ought to have "I think that" at the beginning; while reading OPs message as a sign of victimhood instead of a statement of fact gives you the opportunity to sharpen your sense of self against it, it gives the appearance of signaling more than it gives actionable advice. otoh, if the former was your goal, I misread intent.
>If all you seek is comfort you’ll find it as you sit alone eating take out in a fully furnished apartment waiting to die. If what you want is community and to be present in the only life you have, you have to work hard to find it and maintain it.
Hard to argue with the last line though. Many people become victims of society through their own inaction.
That is the point being made, though: this shouldn’t be a “me” activity and it used to be an easy thing to maintain, not one you had to deliberately swim against the tide to make.
Are they really "tricking themselves"? It seems more likely to me that different people simply have different risk tolerances, in both degree and kind.
Seems to be a complex combination of things in my experience probing people on what they do and don't know about risks and precautions. Would be easier if capitalist media didn't lie to people to prop up its archaic consumption based economy.
People are going to look back on cellphones and the swapping from generally in person interaction to screen based interaction as one of the single most disruptive and harmful changes to society.
Everything from lost conversational ability, to decline in healthy dating, to the the proportion of consumption that is unhealthy social media, to loneliness, to internet addiction, to educational skill and reading comprehension, attention span, mental health.
Look at almost any graph of negative effect on society (10x if you look just at teenagers) and just about everything fell off a cliff beginning around 2012 or so with the rise of the smart phone. It's crazy how widespread it's effects have been.
You nailed it. I've kind of stopped having get-togethers at my house (either for friends or family) because people show up, do a brief normal-human greeting interaction, and inevitably eventually sit down and just kind of zombie out scrolling their phones. Despite efforts to strike up conversation, play a board game or whatever, people just can't put the fucking things down for even 5 minutes, let alone enough time to do some actual activity or talk. I tried to do movie night, but people are on the goddamn phones before the opening credits are even done. As a host, it's pointless--you almost have to dance around like a monkey to just get someone to look up. Same problem with going out to eat with friends at restaurants.
Maybe this is controversial but it sounds like you just don't have good friends. I can't think of any of my friends that would respond to a request to hang out and then use their phone outside of a minimal amount once they got there. And honestly if they are doing this regularly as a force of habit, I probably am not asking them to hang out again.
I have a very similar experience as you, almost all of my friends do not use their cellphones apart from a minimal amount in case a message needs a time sensitive reply.
I do have a couple of them who have an extreme habit of zoning out into their phones, sometimes in the middle of a conversation, we are close enough where I have set a boundary/game when we meet, they give me their phones and we put them face down somewhere, they can check it after stating out loud the reason for using it, it's helped them immensely to unglue from their phones during social hangouts since they noticed they were simply addicted.
There's very little that tires and bores me the fuck out more in a social hangout than people on their phones, it just feels so rude, and hollows the experience.
We (the tech community) have spent 10+ years “growth hacking” entire populations, scaling up the web backends and personal devices capable of connecting that relentless growth into “users’ attention”. All that attention has to come from somewhere. There are only so many hours in a day; more virtual = less RL, human attention is a zero sum game.
My house doesn't have service, I can only use my phone over my wifi. It is so funny when we host my wife's family and nobody can get on their phone to check their Instagram or tiktok or what not. Her nieces and nephews hate visiting because of that. But at least people we host talk to each other.
Just being facetious but maybe they didn’t like the movie you put on? I don’t know, I glance at my phone even when it’s a movie I like. Many of us doom scroll HN during the day, from a socializing perspective is that any better than social media? Unless multiple people in the group are scrolling HN and having an actual conversation about a post, I don’t think so.
The only friend that would do this around me got a rant or two from me. Basically told him I didn’t invite him over for that and he should be present if we’re together. He’s a great guy and actually changed his behavior after that.
Honestly, I wish that could become a cultural norm. As things are now it would be a kind of awkward request, but I bet it would really help if it were acceptable.
Make it understood that it's a theme party. As long as it's not a surprise on arrival. Promote it on the socials when you do the invite. It's not like you invite people individually anymore either. Its the 2020s, gamify that shit!
It seems like it's punishing to people who are responsible with it. If you have issues with people showing up and not being away from their phone, then either talk to them or don't invite them. It's not your job to "fix" them from their habits. If you like them enough to be friends with them in spite of that, then why are you excluding them because of it?
Some substances at least make people more social or more engaged and empathetic. Any drug that makes someone stare at their lap and not respond to outside stimulus is probably bad for social settings.
I don't do drugs (anymore) but I enjoy hanging out with people who can use drugs and be social.
Are you asking about this with regards to it being used socially? Depends on the environment and the people obviously, but in the places I'm exposed to it (underground electronic music events) I know many people who are still able to function socially while using it. Yes they're high, but they don't consume enough to fall into a k-hole.
Huh? Careful with those absolutes. I've been sober for seven years now and don't find this statement to be the case for me. I enjoy hanging around both sober and non-sober folk alike. Hell, I regularly have a blast on packed dancefloors surrounded by incredibly inebriated folk, both friends and strangers, very late into the night.
I’ve really taken up board games lately, and have a group of 3-5 people I play with almost weekly, and sometimes twice a week. We’re even doing a quarterly all-day thing this Saturday.
Saying this to encourage people here to try it out, even if that means you hosting. Board games are great way for hackers to get off devices, but still solve puzzles, and hang out with others in the process.
Set the example by staying off your phone. It seems to send the message in our group, and people tend to stay off.
If you’ve not played in a while, there are plenty of lighter (simpler rules, quicker play) that are still fun and require a lot of thinking and strategy.
I’ve been playing regularly since right before the pandemic, and we picked back up after things got mostly back to “normal”.
It also helps to be intentional. Try to be consistent, and find people that are open to regular games to keep it going.
I hear the excuse that people don’t have time, but it’s typically just an excuse — unless you have small(er) kids where they do require a bit more time and energy. But if you have no or older kids, make time to play.
I’ve really enjoyed it, and the connections are nice.
This feels like the "be careful what you wish for" consequence of WFH logic.
Yes, you can never leave your house and do everything via Zoom! After all, why commute to a pointless office when you could be at home meeting people online? If you start thinking this way, suddenly most interactions that can be done from home start to seem like a waste of time.
The question I always ask WFH advocates is this: when was the last time you had a meaningful in-person interaction with someone outside of your household? Most of the time, they can't even remember.
After almost 4 years of WFH, I totally despise it. I miss in-person collaboration and going to lunch with coworkers. I work for an all remote company, unfortunately. I’m thinking about renting a spot at a coworking space.
I've done that. People at the coworking space weren't especially talkative, and while there were private rooms for conversations, there wasn't any monitors or outlets in there. anything sensitive had to be done at home, anyway, and since several were projects that involved PII, I had to work at home most of the time, regardless.
$320/mo to have to walk across town and try to talk to people with whom you have nothing in common with (even the same employer) except existing in physical space. like, the people weren't bad or unfriendly, but there was no organic connection. the extra exercise was nice but otherwise wasn't worth it; coworking spaces are memes.
a morning floor hockey team at the YMCA made me more friends than any in-person office experience or coworking space.
Yes, I am hesitant, and your experience only makes me more so. I may try it for a day here and there just to see what it's like. You can get a "day pass" for the coworking space near me. It's cheaper just to get a couple coffees and sit at Starbucks all day...
Nah don't agree. I'm out all the time after work and it's great, but I used to get to talk to people during work as well. 8 hours of your day now spent sitting alone at home is a huge chunk of your time regardless of what you do on the weekend.
Remote Work advocate here, remote for the last 10 years, in tech for ~23 years. Show me a person worth putting meaningful effort into to build and cultivate a relationship outside of my household and I'd put the effort in. These people are already rare, and superficial/ephemeral relationships are the norm. I have made a few friends over >20 years in tech, but most people aren't there to be your friend; the moment you bounce on the job, are let go, or fired, you'll never hear from them again (regardless of what is said or moments shared during overlapping employment).
Jeff Bezos once said he was looking for a partner who could extract him from a third world prison. People I would do that for, or would expect of them, are who I would rather focus my energy and time on. Are you investable?
TLDR Focus on relationships that matter (family, friends outside of work with strong/lasting bonds) versus social or professional ceremony, or faux relationships. Sometimes, weak interactions are a waste of time, and time is non renewable.
(i chalk my position up to living in a low trust, high volatility society, ymmv)
Not everyone has to be a life long friend. It’s completely fine to be friends with someone for only a year and move on. Children become friends with someone they randomly meet at a park and will never see again.
I’ve found that almost everyone in the workplace is pretty open to socialising and usually has something interesting to tell you.
> and usually has something interesting to tell you.
nah. I've found that most of my coworkers were autistic video game nerds -- great, I love games too -- and that I've worked with essentially the same guy in like 4 jobs. all of their hot takes read like the same cringe posts you'd see on reddit. not bad guys, some skilled programmers, but not really interesting.
a few interesting outliers, some of whom I'm still in contact with, but after I left the org I never saw them again.
6 months after you leave the org no one there will remember your name, and I don't think it is worthwhile to restructure your work life in order to socialize with people you're only around because you need to pay your mortgage. Go to meetup.com group, or a bar, or join a sports team, book club, etc.
I’m very much an introvert but I couldn’t handle WFH long term for this reason. I work 3 days a week in my company’s office in a coworking space. My team and most regular coworkers are remote and I don’t even have a meaningful interaction every day but I think just a little small talk and change of scene is enough to break up the weeks.
Its a big deal though that my commute is not bad - I take an express bus and can work or play in my laptop the whole time. I don’t really consider it worth driving in traffic.
>when was the last time you had a meaningful in-person interaction with someone outside of your household?
I would rephrase this to "when was the last time you put effort into having a meaningful in-person interaction with someone outside of your household?"
Make some extra food and give it to some neighbors, see who reciprocates, etc. It takes a decent amount of work and sacrifice, and what I see is most people not wanting to do it.
Is anyone else bothered that the cutting edge of consumer tech seems to be focused entirely on escaping the real world, not making it better?
As an example, consider how we treat it as totally normal that the big companies are focused on VR, gaming, and other individual activities that require you to shut off the world and focus on their devices. This is just…to be expected. And the idea of an Apple device that brings you together with other people in real life is somehow entirely inconceivable. I mean that literally - I’m not sure what it would even begin to look like, because the concept goes against our model of consumer tech so much.
The most popular VR platform at the moment is VRChat, which is almost exclusively about getting together with people and hanging out. In this case, the application removes barriers to interpersonal connection (physical distance, body image-related self-consciousness, disability, etc.).
For the ways in which VR and other technologies separate people, it's because the people building that technology (an exclusive club, to be sure) make certain assumptions about what it's good for. Their primary goal is to siphon money and attention out of users, and the idea of preferring to using such technology to connect with people over in-person socializing and networking is anathema to them. So that's where we're at. Those people have to make space (or not be so filthy rich that they take up all the space) for the people who actually want to use this tech for deepening real-world experiences and meaning rather than dislocating from them.
It would be a battle, obviously. Think of all of the virtual things stood up during the pandemic, that people made meaningful connections through, that our oh-so-extraverted elite dismantled the moment mask mandates ended. That was a conscious decision.
I don't think chatting to someone in a VR program is equivalent to interpersonal connection. And I say that as someone who spent a good part of my childhood playing Everquest.
It's not reality, no matter how much people seem to think it is. VR is better described as ER: ersatz reality.
You're entitled to your opinion. However, it's misguided, if not completely wrong. Many of the aspects of in-person interaction that help to build interpersonal connections are present in body-tracked, voiced virtual reality MMOs. There is a categorical difference in embodied presence when comparing something like Everquest and VRChat.
You're overfitting the reality of what's available in VR to your preconceived notions of its inadequacy as a medium for casual or friendly interaction. Basically, you're indulging in your own little bit of escapism. I think that if you see problems on the horizon, it would be best to view what's happening in the space rationally and with clear eyes.
Uh, no? I simply don’t think interacting with people in a digital space is equivalent to interacting with them in real life, and probably never will be. Human beings are physical creatures embodied in the world.
We are coming to an inflection point where people will realise tech is not serving them and there will be a large pull back.
There is already something in the water with the realisation of what social media does to people, how unhealthy online communities like reddit are, how much emotional manipulation there is in news and entertainment etc.
Cutting edge tech is great, it's the late stage capitalism and the attention economy that has soured the meal.
Just my $0.02: I have a few friends who I meet, on a regular basis, at one of our homes or at a coffeeshop. One, a fellow programmer, also WFH and we meet up at a coffeeshop once a week to spend a few hours at the same table. True, some of the time is not actually typing on keyboards, but it is still work-related in that we discuss how programming works, doesn't work, industry trends, what should be done next, etc.
It started because my friend, on FB, just put it out there that if anyone (on his FB friends' list) wanted to meet up to work at a coffeeshop, at a table with a friend they knew, he was up for it. Someone has to speak up first. If you would be willing to do that, use that "social" network to let your whole friend group know you would be willing to do it. It's not a complete cure for excessive isolation, but it is worth doing. But somebody has to speak up first, to put that invitation out there for somebody else to respond to.
The article cites data using 2022 as the endpoint, and it's worth noting that 2022 still had some pandemic effects. Both directly in that some people were still limiting or avoiding meetups particularly earlier in the year, and indirectly in that teenagers in particular would have less of a social group when they were forbidden to see people during their peak friendship forming years. We'll never have a non-pandemic counterfactual to compare against, but there will still be at least some post-pandemic rebound beyond 2022.
One change I've seen between my parents generation and my generation:
In my parents generation, stay at home moms would primarily socialize during the day. Working dads would, in turn, socialize after work with co-workers or male friends who, generally, also worked in New York City.
In my generation, the stay at home moms socialize a lot more in the evenings and it's expected that the working dad be around to do the evening kid time. Babysitters are an option but it seems frowned upon if they are used too often.
This could also be a factor of having small children as friends who have older children seem to go out much more often given that the kids (usually 13+) can take care of themselves.
If you ask me, the lack of third space is a super underrated cause relative to phone usage.
When people talk about phone use as a cause of isolation, I think of Victorian descriptions of melancholic women and their obsession with novels that brought them to that state.
Bingo. Phones definitely don’t help, but people in all countries have phones. The death of third places is a problem in America and correlated with the decline in malls and even decreases in teen drivers license.
Almost every third place in America either costs money or (in the case of places like libraries) is noticeably impacted other social problems like homelessness. And on top of that, you have to drive to get there.
This is big for me and I didn’t realize it until recently. Right now I’ve added a local ice rink for pickup hockey and a golf course as a third space for each season.
I hadn't come across the concept of a third space until ... yesterday, I think, on another HN thread.
That said, it just seems weird that people would go about their lives without having one. For me, it's mostly the climbing gym where I both socialise with my friends and strangers.
Americans are scared of saying the wrong thing. Meanwhile I say things that would get me arrested in the uk and fired in the US, daily, and I have lots of friends and an active social life, in person, no phones, no problems.
If you can't tell your friends what you think, social places become a second workplace, of course you don't wanna go
I'm not certain what you're euphemistically alluding to but I'm fairly confident I don't say it. I have a very active social life and don't need to... do that... whatever it is, nor do I worry particularly about whether or not I am saying this "wrong thing."
I'm curious about what it is that you say that would get you arrested in the UK. Short of publicly and loudly admitting you committed a crime, or actually committing one (e.g. being a racist towards someone, plotting terrorism, etc.) I can't think of anything.
The counterpoint is people like McAffee who despite admitting and bragging of the lewdist shit continued to garner investment. Honestly you can get away with a lot in the US as long as you don't make personal insults to a coworker or customer, especially if you work in trades or non woke tech. Might even be required to be a bit loony from what I've seen in construction sites.
I think it is a multi-dimensional, complex problem, and different people are experiencing different effects.
However, one thing I've noticed about myself is that I don't seem to get as much out of social events. I'm in my 50s, so I've had lots of experience pre-cellphone and pre-internet, and I like seeing people and think we can be more isolationist, the issue is that when I do get together with people, it just isn't that much fun for the most part. I like it, but I don't have a strong desire to keep doing it.
I do tabletop RPGs once a week, and that's fun because there is a focus I like. But getting together for other social events is just kinda mid. And others feel the same way. For better or worse, there are many other intense, engaging, fun, interesting things I can be doing that tailor to my personal tastes. So getting together with some people to just chat or play some random game like we used to is a nice thing now and then, it is too dull to attract me to do it very often.
I can see it in my 15 year old son, too. He sometimes craves hanging out with his buddies laughing and having fun, but he also really likes doing the activities he really enjoys, even solo. Ideally, he'd have a fun group that likes to banter just like him, doing the exact activity that he enjoys, but that is really difficult to find.
I guess, to me, it looks more like we all have very niche activities we really enjoy and fit our personalities really well, but the overlap of all these activities results in a small population. So you have the choice of really enjoying yourself and being alone, or being mildly engaged but doing so with a group of people.
I think the ones most happy are those whose interests align with what a lot of people like to do, which is why sports is so strong these days.
Extremely noticeable in my age groups (late 20s/early 30s). That being said, I’ve realized the best thing you can do is to live very close (10-15 minute walk) away from your friends. I basically have a date night with a friend at the same bar we’ve been going for the past 4 years. Takes a minute to call and organize with “hey, dinner at 8?”, and we meet at the spot 10 minutes later. Sometimes it doesn’t pan out, but both of us are actively trying to.
I’m also a part of a 6-people friend group who live in the same neighbourhood, who tends to hang out twice a week at least. It removes the “distance” friction, where you have to drive, uber or whatsoever.
With my other friends though, inflation, lack of cheap things to do, time and etc. is always an issue. I’ve realized once they live a certain distance away, you have to schedule hangs days in advance. That’s cool, I get everyone is busy, but spontaneity of some meet ups makes them so much better.
Perhaps it's just the way the algorithm on these sites skew but it does strike me a little odd that there's often articles landing in my feeds lamenting about social connection.
Why is there not as much promotion of ways of finding happiness in solitude? It would seem at least as much a solution as any this issue of distressed caused by loneliness.
> Why is there not as much promotion of ways of finding happiness in solitude? It would seem at least as much a solution as any this issue of distressed caused by loneliness.
My guess would be because humans are inherently social animals. While there's something to be said for finding happiness in solitude, I'd argue there's no escaping biological reality in this case.
I'm reading an old book, Fifty Days of Solitude, where the author grapples with her emotions when mostly alone for awhile. It's surprisingly complicated.
Here's another version: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/the-decline-of-hanging-...
showing the graphs: "% of teens who say they go out with friends 2+ a week"
which are essentially static throughout 1976-2010, then dive 20% over 2010-2020 after social media and front-facing cameras became common (and all before Covid).
To the commenter below, the article is not "some Atlantic journalist's opinions", it's citing research by Jean Twenge, who is cited Jonathan Haidt [0] for her research on the correlation in socialization changes and heavy social-media use, esp since 2016.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...]
The phrase "...in the US" needs to be added any time someone talks about this. From what I can tell, Europeans have managed to maintain their social bonds even post-Covid and post-cell phones.
Turns out Haidt & Twenge [0] [see pdf] in 2022 said this:
"PART 1: THE SPECIFIC, GIGANTIC, SUDDEN, AND INTERNATIONAL MENTAL
HEALTH CRISIS:
1.6 The crisis has hit many countries, not just the USA.
The patterns are nearly identical in the UK and Canada, and the trends are similar though not identical in Australia and New Zealand. We do not yet see signs of similar epidemics in continental Europe or in East Asia, although I have not yet found good data from those regions."
and Figure 3. Loneliness at school increased in all regions of the world [sharply] after 2012 [through 2018].
Yes sorry, the article and paper make it clear it's referring to the US.
I usually add "in the US" myself to such HN titles, but I think HN doesn't want us to editorialize like that, even when it removes ambiguity. So next time I'll try putting it in the title and the first post body.
Also, after the 2008 crash, food doesn’t taste as good at certain places.
Chain restaurants that used to be really tasty, started using cheaper ingredients (theory) and just don’t taste as good as they used to and it’s more expensive.
Even as early as 2015 I was often shocked how few people entertained or wanted to do potlucks. I soon learned why, at least in my circles the lack of effort was mind blowing. Most people balked at the idea of chipping in to buy food, and so when I'd try a potluck everyone would aim at bringing something fully prepared like "Chips and Salsa" (and like 5 people would bring that).
I finally gave up trying to entertain folks, I'd rather go out and eat a good meal and only pay for myself rather than be the only one spending $100s on parties... It saddens me because I had a time in my life where I did have a good circle that was reasonably reciprocal. I guess it's just a gone thing?
I think a lot of people simply don’t know how to cook or are so bad at it that they’d be embarrassed. I’ve seen HN commenters admit they eat in restaurants for all their meals. Heck in my early 20s I couldn’t even cook myself eggs or spaghetti.
That's an interesting take. Perhaps that was it. Sometimes I forget that I'm pretty self-solving for these kinds of things. (youtube a few recipes, run with it)... People often ask me "How did you learn to do that?" I'm like "I watched 4 youtube videos, got a couple of things from the store, and hoped for the best?"
Okay, now compare this to the rest of the world. Surely the US isn't going to dethrone Japan as the king of introverts anytime soon, right? Are there places in the world where "hanging out" is increasing, or holding steady? This article could very well be about a global phenomenon. It would be really nice to know if it is.
EDIT: I've heard that in southern Europe (roughly, Spain, France, Greece), "hanging out" is as strong as ever. What are they doing right? Is it the population density? The social acceptance of multi-generational combined living? Weak GDP? Poor cellphone service? Something else?
- Southern Europe is culturally Catholic. Gross oversimplifaction incoming: Catholics: pray hard and get to the heaven. Protestants: work hard and get to the heaven. Obviously nowadays many people are atheistic but the underlying tone is there.
- Climate. It's actually difficult to work hard during summer when most of the day the heat is killing you. Combined with the above explains the lower GDP compared to northern Europe.
- Stronger welfare. You won't starve if you get laid off. You don't need to stress about work that much, you don't have to work overtime to prove sth to your boss. You can clock out at 5pm and go for a drink.
- Walkable cities, public transport. Easy to bump to someone or gather. You can drink alcohol since you don't need to drive. Even smaller towns have cultural life. Small villages have social life revolving around soccer, voluntary firemen and festive celebrations.
- Establishments with reasonable prices. Coffee is super cheap in Italy, Spain or Greece. Even alcohol is cheaper than UK or US. Food is much better. Small low-cost places can have great food while in USA the low-cost is dominated by fast-food chains with exception of ethnic restaurants.
- Stronger family/friend bonds. People move less for work. In USA people hop between states and lose bonds. Even if you move to a different city in Spain, it's easy to hop on a train and spend a weekend with loved ones.
Boils down to "live to work" vs "work to live".
Reporting from central Europe, we are culturally somewhere between north/south (protestant vs catholic morale) and west/east (overall development and other values).
Covid wiped out many restaurants and pubs and people hang out less than before but we still go with friends for a beer often.
One aspect of this might be economic. I know I had a little more money leeway if you go back a few years.
Another thing not mentioned is hanging out online. There are a lot of different ways to do that, and although none of them are the same as hanging out in person, they can be similar to one degree or another.
Especially over the next few years as VR and AR devices become more capable and comfortable, I think the idea of hanging out will start to include virtual options.
Also looking further out, imagine cities that are designed with good density and also integrate efficient and inexpensive public transportation using small private autonomous vehicles. You could take the hassle and most of the cost of driving out of meet ups.
Not true here in Portland. Real meetups IRL happen and people actually strike up great conversations. It's great. Heck, I chat with store clerks about TV shows or shoes.
I feel like it’s a long term trend exacerbated by COVID. And not so much by COVID itself, but by closures of establishments where people would previously congregate. Two watering holes myself and a few of my friends frequented both fell victim to lockdown insanity (blue state, smh) and lack of government support in the interim. There’s nowhere to go anymore without first driving for 20 minutes, finding parking (nearly always insufficient), and paying twice as much. Between kids, wives, and jobs, hanging out simply became a logistical impossibility.
I can't comment on the subject anymore, I just think if true this highlights all the "entertainment" spaces / features of real estate /home buying that are actually rarely if ever used to "entertain".
It's just aspirational bullshit. Huge decks, elaborate brick oven patios,home pools, dining rooms, etc.
I wonder if the aspirational value goes up with less actual usage in reality.
It's not just phones because the trends observed by Putnam preceded all of that.
The changes that occured between the 1970s and before and the 1980s and after add up to be major watershed in American and more broadly western culture. You can blame neoliberalism but I think the real change is deeper than that. It's the shift from modernity to post-modernity. And post-modernity is an apt term because the name itself is backward looking and doesn't stand *for* anything, only *against* something.
The optimism of modernity, the belief in the perfectability of society, the abolition of want, of unlimited horizons - all these whiggish things - butt up against some very hard limits. These limits had been in the zeitgeist since the second world war, but reached the mass market in the 1980s.
The US is the quintessential modern country, in the sense of the word I am describing, a child of the Enlightenment. It only follows that the end of modernity would be hard on the American psyche, harder than in older countries with pre-modern cultural DNA.
As far as I am concerned, I have not observed this. I see plenty of people hanging out at restaurants and elsewhere. Many places are packed. It seems like there has been this trend of journalists writing these finger in the wind op-eds opining about a society that never existed or about something which is not a problem for most people but is turned into 'a thing' for the sake of pageviews and virality.
The article presents actual data which you rebut with...your feelings?
"From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own."
vs.
"As far as I am concerned, I have not observed this."
You raise an interesting point. I used to be convinced by purely data-based and "science"-based points, but due to overly-confident sounding statistics over the past 5 years, I've stopped paying attention to it - particularly with regards to social sciences.
Unless we have cameras monitoring American men at all times, we do not know that they have reduced face-to-face socializing by 30%. What we do have is very intelligent people who are incentivized to produce research that makes waves; some of them are honest, others are not, and I don't really have the wherewithal to determine what the case is here. The reproduction crisis is real and simply accepting conclusions seems naive.
If a study doesn't pass the smell test, is not easily reproducible, and I have no personally trusted people who can vouch for the findings, then - yes - my feelings matter more.
So yes - it is legit for the op's feelings to be more important for op. We should applaud people for not simply accepting conclusions.
(In this case, my personal feelings, for what little they are worth,is that there are a lot of people who socialize less, and I assume it is because there are more people in cities and in circumstances where hanging out is harder.)
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. You can't attack others like this here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are.
>> If a study doesn't pass the smell test, is not easily reproducible, and I have no personally trusted people who can vouch for the findings, then - yes - my feelings matter more.
> Are you fucking stupid? They’re doing just that, but in the opposite direction
I don't think you read what I wrote in any attempt to understand.
The argument is that a person can value their own experiences more than data, and not that their experiences are convincing to other people.
It doesn't bother me that someone feels their anecdotal experience in their social circles is completely different from the data shared. The original data could be slanted, the social circle could be different, and it's an opportunity - not something that needs to be shouted down because of "the data".
Even assuming the data is correct, having a potential population in which it is different would be of far greater interest than flexing about the supposed absolute truth of the data.
I get that gut checks and feelings are what climate denialists use, and I'm aware of the inaccuracy involved. Still, it's literally all you have, unless you are going to create that "Journal of Uninteresting Results / Journal of Failed Experiments" and have it become the basis for people to keep their jobs in University.
If you want to be an open pipe to "data", that's your prerogative.
This entire comment chain is like people arguing on behalf of the government of Nineteen Eighty-Four: Don't trust your eyes and ears, they lie, trust only what we tell you.
I can't read the article in full, but my question would be if it's excluding people on video calls and such. I'm social with people on audio or video calls 2-4 nights a week, and in-person 2-3 more nights, which is less in-person time than 20 years ago, but probably about the same or more nights per week I'm spending hours doing a social activity with friends.
Is it clear that it's worse if I'm playing computer games with friends online vs. board games in person? How much is this just a panic about "but video chats are less social than sitting in a room"? In my mind, I'm more social with friends who live thousands of miles away than I would have ever been able to be before, which has allowed me to have much more lasting friendships with people now than people I was even friends with 10 years ago when video chat was far less effective.
It’s possible that these journalists are in their own bubble or echo chamber.
The journalists who write this stuff have become isolated and spend excessive amounts of time doomscrolling or arguing about random crap on Twitter. So they assume that’s what everyone is doing.
Meanwhile lots of people are just out here living life. Plenty of places where I live are filled with people hanging out. Hardly anybody glued to their phones.
It cites a social science study that claims to provide data. Are popular press articles about social science studies considered credible again somehow?
The article is paywalled, so it’s difficult to check the sources. Are there any links provided or surveys cited? The article matches my guy feeling, but I am curious about geographic and socio-economic variance. It wouldn't surprise me if higher cost of living areas have suffered the most.
See my post above: this isn't an opinion piece and the data is from research by Jean Twenge, who is cited by Jonathan Haidt for her research on the correlation in socialization changes and heavy social-media use, esp since 2016.
The Atlantic headline is overly broad, but read the actual piece.
> Plenty of places where I live are filled with people hanging out.
"Journalists" aren't journaling what is going on anymore, instead writing opinion hit pieces masquerading as journals to drive forth narratives and agendas. I despise "journalism" now, a cancer to society. Imagine if NTFS or ext4 made "journals" because it thought these bits were uglier than those other bits.
Also, before someone quips "But mah statisticz!": The interesting thing about statistics is you can twist them to mean anything you want.
For example, "reduced weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week" sounds impressive until you remember a week is composed of 7 days, and 3 hours / 7 days = ~0.43 hours a day, or approximately 26 minutes less hanging out per day on average. That's a rounding error.
We also don't know if those 26 minutes are just spent on Discord instead of face comms, which if they are means the difference in socialization amount is practically nil.
For example, "reduced weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week" sounds impressive until you remember a week is composed of 7 days, and 3 hours / 7 days = ~0.43 hours a day, or approximately 26 minutes less hanging out per day on average. That's a rounding error.
after writing this:
The interesting thing about statistics is you can twist them to mean anything you want.
That’s ironic given how bad your analysis was. It is not relevant the percent of 24 hours that 26 minutes represents. What is relevant is the percent decline in social activity that 26 minutes per day represents. For instance, if people engaged on average in 6 hours of social activity per week and then that dropped by 3 hours that would constitute a significant drop.
If anything, I demonstrated my point quite clearly: The narrative peddlers say the number is significant, I say the number is practically meaningless. If you are interested in getting an educated answer, crunch the numbers yourself along with your own life experiences and come to your own conclusions.
My own conclusion is that, no, 3 hours a week or 26 minutes a day is not significant. It's a rounding error.
>What is relevant is the percent decline in social activity that 26 minutes per day represents.
What do we define as "social activity"? Just physical interactions? No phone calls? Voice calls/chats? Video calls? Texting? Email? Instant messaging? Hell, Mysterious Twitter X or Hacker News?
My personal take, which you don't need to agree with, is that advances in communication technologies such as the internet have vastly increased my "social activity", because I understand "social activity" to mean any interactions with another human that aren't about business.
When talking about statistics one can not credibly say,
If you are interested in getting an educated answer, crunch the numbers yourself along with your own life experiences and come to your own conclusions….
Anecdotes do not constitute getting an educated answer.
If by educated you mean "Following the preachings of powers-that-be.", sure it's not an educated answer, it's a wrongthink answer.
But if by educated you mean taking the numbers and crunching them yourself together with your life experiences, values, knowledge, and wisdom you've accrued, then whatever conclusion you draw is an educated answer. See also: "Educated guess."
Personally, I've been burned far too many times far too consistently by "journalists", "experts", so-called "scientists", and whoever else with haughty titles that I don't consider them any more than cancerous wastes of my and everyone's time.
Grab the raw numbers provided by proper scientists devoid of editorial bullcrap, crunch them yourself, and draw your own educated answer. Statistics can mean anything, don't let others twist them for you.
There are 1,440 minutes or 24 hours in a day. Let's be realistic and generous and consider 16 "useful" hours by assuming 8 hours of sleep, that's 960 minutes.
26 / 960 = 0.027, or approximately 3%; 26 minutes is 3% of one's "useful" day. There is also no standard duration defined for "hanging out", it could be just a few minutes at the water cooler, hours at a restaurant, or days or even weeks on a vacation trip.
Neither realistic nor generous; you haven't accounted for working, commuting, personal hygeine, cleaning the house, laundry, grocery shopping, errands, etc. etc.
I think if I absolutely ignored the need for rest I could get in 32 hours of social time a week, and in my actual life it's around 12-14 hours, so three hours a week is a huge difference.
Aside from work and personal hygiene, why are you implying hanging out is mutually exclusive with those activities?
Inviting friends to go shopping or do errands with you is a common way of socializing, among others. Commuting is also an opportunity to socialize if you take public transport or carpool and a friend or co-worker catches the same one as you.
Trends like this don't cause all the popular places to have half as many customers. Trends like this cause the number of popular places to go down, over years and years, leaving the existing ones as full as ever, because the customers are there for the crowd, not for the virtues of that specific place.
Rapid inflation didn’t help, either. For those lucky enough to survive layoffs, they doubled down on work either dedicating more of their time or attempted to insulate their risk by becoming overemployed. Those who have time for friend outings may not feel as if they can afford the cost and those who have money for friend outings may not feel as if they can afford the time.
The rapid rise and acceptance of a remote workforce has led to fewer face-to-face interactions among coworkers. Social circles, that would be expanded by crossing different groups of your friends and acquaintances together, are dwindling due to both natural attrition and because people just see each other less often, weakening social bonds over time.
Then when we all get together despite all odds of us actually meeting up, gatherings kind of just devolve to a bunch of loosely connected people looking at our phones. It’s tragically ironic that the device we use for instant communication ended up putting distance between all of us.
I think we need to make more of an effort to spend time that is of sufficient quality with other people, even if that means our social norms need to change, e.g. phone usage when with others, actively reaching out, etc.