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.
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.