I'm really fortunate to be in a very outdoors and offline community that values our personal ties above most things. We spend a lot time playing music around campfires, backpacking in the mountains, and cooking up good food together. We spend the hard times together too. Sometimes you drop everything to go winch a buddy's truck out of the mud, help someone move, or take five hours of your day to go on a hike long enough to really talk about what a breakup means.
I'm back in a city for a bit, hanging out with a more mainstream crowd, and the difference has been jarring. Dinner means an hour or two in a busy restaurant. Playing music is a planned event with low priority amongst busy schedules. Nobody helps eachother move, there's an app for that.
I'm shocked to see how quickly those norms have changed how I interact with people! I'm ashamed that I drove past a guy who clearly needed a hand changing his tire when I had my impact in my truck earlier. I don't know who I would call in this group for more than an hour over a beer to talk through heavy stuff without feeling I was imposing. I'm spending time with far more people, and on paper I'm doing so many things, but we're all a lot lonelier in this crowded place than my group and I were out in the woods.
Luckily it's a simple fix. I'll get back to focusing on my people soon, and will give them the effort and time that keeps us all thriving amidst the social wasteland. I don't necessarily need to leave the city to do that, but it's a lot easier to see what's important out past the pavement.
>A nation that lacks interpersonal relationships is a lower-trust society, more prone to crime and unrest.
That seems to unfortunately track. No bonds, less to lose by lashing out. A Mexican idiom comes to mind:
El Que Tranza, No Avanza ("he who doesn't cheat, doesn't get ahead")
So when you dehumanize your fellow man, life is just a rat race and you don't care who you step over to succeed. Not really a nation make.
>The reasons aren’t clear, but it may be that colleges have become more of a social experience than an educational one over the last few decades
Well I guess that's the part that reminds me this is still the NY post. It's an odd conclusion to come to when they report that friendships merely declined less than Hgih School students, not remained steady. It's not surprising that an environment of young adults with newfound freedom would form closer bonds than those on high school forced together with a rigid 5 class schedule that has much less control. College students can schedule entire days off, or no morning classes, skip a class with minumum fuss. That means more potential time to socialize outside of the weekends or 4-7pm on weekends.
>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”
Well that's just depressing. Are a significant portion of the population really going to try to replace human bonds with AI too? We were supposed to reject the notion of Her (2018) and realize the human element can't be automated. Not follow it like a blueprint.
It's easier than ever to make friends. When you switch from a demand mindset to a supply mindset, the opportunities present themselves.
Think of it this way, all those lonely people out there are just waiting for someone to reach out and do something with? It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
I'm able to get out on average 10hrs/week just socializing without much effort by just putting myself out there and making events happen when and how I want them. If there's no existing group that interests you, chances are that if you make what you want, other people will be interested too.
100% I've had great success inviting people to dinner parties and such. This works great for people I already know.
I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there?
I've tried posting events on local Facebook groups, mostly. But my experience is that very few people are actually active online and willing to physically do something.
> I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there?
It is way easier if you give away free food. Like, it could be coffee or donuts. It just have to be some token value, such that people don't feel that they only go there for the nominal reason if the event sucks.
When my local party has like booths talking with voters we have like cookies and coffee such that there is an indirect reason to stand there talking to us. Some sort of plausible denialability.
Also, there is the automatic social aspect of food.
Success really depends on the pool you're drawing from. A public open invite on FB is one of the hardest approaches. Kudos to the people who can pull it off.
The easiest for me was using my city's discord server as a launch pad for running book clubs, coffee meetups, and hikes. After a few successes, it's easy to gain a reputation for making things happen and it sort of snowballs from there.
It is also important to not become bitter when you fail. Starting up community activities is hard. It is somewhat like seeding servers in classic multiplayer games like CS1.6.
It’s not because friendships are largely made from shared suffering.
In a time of further independence, over choice, and tech to hold onto previous friends, making friends who actually will physically meet up with you frequently is definitely harder.
I wouldn't put it in the same league as dating, but it still has that element where effort doesn't correlate with success, or at least you personally perceive it as so. You can try to schedule plenty of get together and still feel like loose colleagues. Or sometimes you randomly invite someone at the 11th hour and now you're best friends who meet every week. That can be a bit frustrating for someone perhaps someonhwre on the neuro divergent spectrum.
But in a way, yes. Shared moments of triumph or suffering can accelerate that process. Those aren't necessarily moments you can always replicate, though.
Not surprised. Every relationship in America is transactional. Work is cut throat especially at stacked ranking companies. This country is basically a social Darwinian hellhole. Friendships here seem try and extract the most value from others.
I have an incredibly close circle of friends thankfully.
The article in the New York Post, appears to be referencing this article by Daniel Cox of the "Survey Center on American Life". [1] The article itself on americansurveycenter website is far more extensive with a much larger discussion.
Much of the article that is the source is actually devoted to the discussion about working class vs educated divides and lack of access to communal public places then resulting in diminished possibilities for socializing and friendship. Quite a bit actually focuses mostly on public parks, libraries, public gardens, restaurants, bars, libraries, and community centers.
Parks and libraries have some of the most significant shift as far as the educational divide. Half with 4 years visit, while only a quarter without.
Restaurants being the most popular among the "third places" (not public parks or libraries)
"Americans report that people in their community can gather in restaurants or diners (46 percent), coffee shops or cafés (41 percent), gyms or fitness centers (37 percent), and local markets or corner stores (35 percent). Relatively few Americans report they can spend time with their neighbors in bookstores or other retail spaces (20 percent) and barbershops or hair salons (22 percent)."
Across the board, 4 year degree respondents also respond more positively towards almost every single public social location as an area where they go to meet and socialize with others. High School or less appear simply appear to have less "access" to these locations. And thereby less friendships that develop.
Restaurants, grocers/markets, and barbershops appear to be the most egalitarian, parks and gyms appear to be the furthest separated based on educational divides.
Even "no access" to "minimal access" has a fairly significant shift in friendship numbers reported. 32% "no access -> no friends", vs 17% "minimal access -> no friends" The "3-5 friends" category also jumps from 23% to 36%, and the "10 or more" jumps from 6% to 13%.
Educated people also tend to walk their neighborhood a larger amount, thereby resulting in greater amount of "chance encounters" or "friendly chats", and thereby more friendships.
The best opportunities that the "high school or less" members seem to feel they often have is religious society membership and communities.
There's also some discussion on divides on hobbies and freetime with education, and that part was actually kind of saddening from a certain perspective, as the numbers really look like "high school or less" feel little ability to engage with hobby, activity, community, workout, or sports related groups in their communities. Rather stark divide. 5-10% vs 15-20% in almost every category. Slight variation with ethnicity (African Americans seem more comfortable with community groups) yet lack of college education really seems to impose a harsh sensation of isolation in America.
Notably though, the project does appear to mostly be a one person show doing their own surveys, and writing every article (this survey notes Sam Pressler as supporting).
The article's appear to be well written, and methodology appears to be sufficiently explained. Appear to be notes, sources, and citations on supporting material (some self referential to their own articles). However, simply, a note that it also appears to be a one person website doing their own independent surveying, publishing, and research.
Methodology: "AEI’s Survey Center on American Life designed and conducted the survey. Interviews were conducted among a random sample of 6,597 adults (age 18 and up). All interviews were conducted among participants in the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the US general population, not just the online population. Interviews were conducted in Spanish and English between March 29 and April 15, 2024."
I think the extreme political hardlining makes this happen too.
I've never been to the US but this extreme-right stuff has made its way to Holland too. They already gained 30% of votes in the last election. Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life.
At first I used to try to reason with them. I thought sure, it's just a misunderstanding. I'll just explain it and give some official links and we can move past this. I explained countless times that no, kids aren't given gender surgery. No there's no deep state trying to make people gay (as if you even could!). No, nobody would ever go through a whole transition just so they can perv in the women's bathroom. The very idea is just insane if you know what it entails.
But there was no point. These guys just want to be so angry they're foaming at the mouth. They actually enjoy their hate, there's no way they let something as trivial as facts get in the way. They wave official statistics and reports away as 'deep state propaganda' or 'the woke agenda'. It doesn't matter that what they're angry about isn't true and makes no sense. They just want to be angry and 'stick it to the man'.
One of my ex-'friends' even asked me seriously if I had plans to transition. I said no, why would you even think that? I'm very happy with my gender and identity and always have been. Well, he said, several of your friends are trans and they spread it around. I quizzed him on it thinking he was just trolling but no, he really believes this. Heard it in some podcast. Just... WTF. This is exactly why we need education on these subjects in schools.
But anyway, so I have no time anymore for that kind of negativity in my life and I'm sick of arguing about this. And listening to all this hate. So I'm done. Note that I'm not disrespecting them or calling them names. I'm not even angry at them, if anything I'm just sad. But I just don't want to interact with them anymore.
The good thing though is that I did get closer to my progressive and LGBT friends. We never talk about this because we all hate negativity, we just roll our eyes at the news. But we realize we need to stick together to defend ourselves when the time comes.
As far as the cause I'm basically blaming social media for it. They strive for engagement to maximise their eyeball time and hate is a very powerful driver of engagement. It might not even have been a conscious choice by these companies. But I am getting very worried now where this is heading.
> Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life.
This is somewhat unfortunate. People like this need to go to a political meating and see what is talked about. There might be exceptions but the media and thus public conception about what parties talk about and think are prioritised question seems more or less made up.
I agree feed based social media is to blame. But I would say the problem is bilateral and need mutual understanding in the communication.
It is very difficult to deprogram people who fall down the internet conspiracy reinforcement machine. Anecdotally the most recently aired episode of the This American Life podcast has an adult son try to talk with his conspiracy addled father and making a bet about ten of them - the father loses all of them and still refuses to acknowledge the truth. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/854/ten-things-i-dont-want-...
> We’ve long pondered why the marriage rate, and the corresponding birth rate, has plummeted in America. Answers often focus on financial stressors: Young Americans can’t afford a home like their parents could at their age, some speculate; others blame limited parental leave or poor day-care options.
> Perhaps — but the corresponding slump in close friendships doesn’t add up. People can still afford to make friends, can’t they?
Again, this is some ivory tower kind of nonsense. Of course if you can't afford to host people (no space), if you can't bond with other parents because you cannot be a parent, if you can't afford to leave your kids (with daycare or a carer) to socialize, how the hell are you supposed to invest the time in close friendships? And also, not being able to afford to invest in friendship makes total sense to affect the working class.
Agreed. Friendship kinda costs money. I had a friend loose a job like a year ago. I used to see them every other week but it became like twice a year while they were broke.
Friendship can also be an economic net positive, it mostly depends on how you’re interacting. Watching each other's kids at home creates extra free time. Having an extra hand and different set of tools when working on home projects is a net gain which means you can be better off while helping each other etc.
However, so much of how people spend their free is consumptive that hanging out has become increasingly expensive.
> Watching each other's kids at home creates extra free time.
Not a thing if no one has free time because everyone has to work.
> Having an extra hand and different set of tools when working on home projects is a net gain which means you can be better off while helping each other etc.
Again, who has the money to have tools? Who has the money to work on home projects? Have you seen the cost of construction materials lately?
Not having any tools is far more expensive because now you’re always paying for labor and parts not just parts.
As to things being more expensive that’s in part an illusion. Things where more affordable in the 1950’s when homes where 1,000sf, there was no cable bill, no cellphones, no internet, and no PC etc and that still represented a far higher standard of living than what came before.
I’m not advocating for giving up modern convince, just recognizing the slow shift from luxury to expected has real costs.
The article may be a bunch of slop but there is something deeply cultural in the US that is contributing to this. Not being able to afford things or social media or pretty much anything that gets the blame for the “loneliness pandemic” isn’t unique to the US.
My personal experience has been that the same individualistic culture that allows people to do whatever they want and become whoever they want, that yields great results in a lot of aspects of life, also results in weaker relationships with others. At some point prioritizing oneself over everything else starts taking a toll on relationships. Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places? Or do you stop seeing them because you are not willing to change your wants and not meet them somewhere that they can afford to go?
It's not unique to the US but there are factors that accelerate the lack of ability to freely be around people.Some a unique-ish societal problem (declines of US malls while EU is fine)
. And part of that is indeed cultural attitude.
>Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places?
On a personal level, it's because I was traditionally the one planning get togethers, and then life got rough and I just planned less with no one to step up. Maybe they are also on hard times, maybe they had other groups they prioritized. Hard to tell.
I still try to at least check up once and a while remotely, but I do miss those times.
> Not being able to afford things or social media or pretty much anything that gets the blame for the “loneliness pandemic” isn’t unique to the US.
No, I think not being able to afford things contributing to a loneliness pandemic is also visible in other cultures where people are expected to work a ton for not enough money like South Korea.
"if you can't afford to leave your kids (with daycare or a carer) "
- some lawnmower parents won't even their kids with close relatives
- many apparently bought into the "nuclear family" (parent[s] + kids) and not the extended family. About the extended family, or the replacement by a close neighborhood group, parents are on their own - - and that's a recipe for disaster.
"Close friends" is not a good metric anyone. A better metric is the count of token output of personal life. This includes all online chats, including with AI, on apps, and all social sites. I am pretty sure this metric has been trending very high.
>In 2018, a Pew Research Poll found that teenagers who were connected with their friends online were more likely to also hang out in person. By 2022, in-person outings for teens had collapsed.
>Can their online friends fill the role that real-life ones once did? Maybe — if those “friends” even exist.
>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”
Those are factors, but it's pretty clear the pandemic accelerated such things as such that these cause isolation rather than a conduit to meet up.
And AI romance is on the rise. Is this healthy? I wouldn't think so; and I'm mostly saying that because I hate the idea of a corporate server having such a dangerously intimate connection with a human. Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.
I'll begrudgingly stay open to the more general theory of a personal AI you fall in love with otherwise. Very fearful, but I'd feel like a hypocrite as a game dev who has technically done tiny contributions to this if I suddenly say "you can't care about fictional characters".
I'm really fortunate to be in a very outdoors and offline community that values our personal ties above most things. We spend a lot time playing music around campfires, backpacking in the mountains, and cooking up good food together. We spend the hard times together too. Sometimes you drop everything to go winch a buddy's truck out of the mud, help someone move, or take five hours of your day to go on a hike long enough to really talk about what a breakup means.
I'm back in a city for a bit, hanging out with a more mainstream crowd, and the difference has been jarring. Dinner means an hour or two in a busy restaurant. Playing music is a planned event with low priority amongst busy schedules. Nobody helps eachother move, there's an app for that.
I'm shocked to see how quickly those norms have changed how I interact with people! I'm ashamed that I drove past a guy who clearly needed a hand changing his tire when I had my impact in my truck earlier. I don't know who I would call in this group for more than an hour over a beer to talk through heavy stuff without feeling I was imposing. I'm spending time with far more people, and on paper I'm doing so many things, but we're all a lot lonelier in this crowded place than my group and I were out in the woods.
Luckily it's a simple fix. I'll get back to focusing on my people soon, and will give them the effort and time that keeps us all thriving amidst the social wasteland. I don't necessarily need to leave the city to do that, but it's a lot easier to see what's important out past the pavement.
L. Kohr (who was the inspiration of "small is beautiful"), shows how and why it is of paramount importance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#The_Breakdown_of_...
>A nation that lacks interpersonal relationships is a lower-trust society, more prone to crime and unrest.
That seems to unfortunately track. No bonds, less to lose by lashing out. A Mexican idiom comes to mind:
El Que Tranza, No Avanza ("he who doesn't cheat, doesn't get ahead")
So when you dehumanize your fellow man, life is just a rat race and you don't care who you step over to succeed. Not really a nation make.
>The reasons aren’t clear, but it may be that colleges have become more of a social experience than an educational one over the last few decades
Well I guess that's the part that reminds me this is still the NY post. It's an odd conclusion to come to when they report that friendships merely declined less than Hgih School students, not remained steady. It's not surprising that an environment of young adults with newfound freedom would form closer bonds than those on high school forced together with a rigid 5 class schedule that has much less control. College students can schedule entire days off, or no morning classes, skip a class with minumum fuss. That means more potential time to socialize outside of the weekends or 4-7pm on weekends.
>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”
Well that's just depressing. Are a significant portion of the population really going to try to replace human bonds with AI too? We were supposed to reject the notion of Her (2018) and realize the human element can't be automated. Not follow it like a blueprint.
"El Que Tranza, No Avanza"
You got the exact opposite of what that means. Unless you forgot to negate Tranza.
"El que NO Tranza, NO avanza"
Source: Native Spanish Speaker.
I'm not native but had some family-esque members tell it to me. And I tried to copy the quote from a search precisely to prevent this.
How embarrassing. But yes, I'm sure I missed the first no.
It's easier than ever to make friends. When you switch from a demand mindset to a supply mindset, the opportunities present themselves.
Think of it this way, all those lonely people out there are just waiting for someone to reach out and do something with? It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
I'm able to get out on average 10hrs/week just socializing without much effort by just putting myself out there and making events happen when and how I want them. If there's no existing group that interests you, chances are that if you make what you want, other people will be interested too.
100% I've had great success inviting people to dinner parties and such. This works great for people I already know.
I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there?
I've tried posting events on local Facebook groups, mostly. But my experience is that very few people are actually active online and willing to physically do something.
> I've tried hosting public groups, with partial success. Have you got any ideas there?
It is way easier if you give away free food. Like, it could be coffee or donuts. It just have to be some token value, such that people don't feel that they only go there for the nominal reason if the event sucks.
When my local party has like booths talking with voters we have like cookies and coffee such that there is an indirect reason to stand there talking to us. Some sort of plausible denialability.
Also, there is the automatic social aspect of food.
Success really depends on the pool you're drawing from. A public open invite on FB is one of the hardest approaches. Kudos to the people who can pull it off.
The easiest for me was using my city's discord server as a launch pad for running book clubs, coffee meetups, and hikes. After a few successes, it's easy to gain a reputation for making things happen and it sort of snowballs from there.
It is also important to not become bitter when you fail. Starting up community activities is hard. It is somewhat like seeding servers in classic multiplayer games like CS1.6.
It’s not because friendships are largely made from shared suffering.
In a time of further independence, over choice, and tech to hold onto previous friends, making friends who actually will physically meet up with you frequently is definitely harder.
I wouldn't put it in the same league as dating, but it still has that element where effort doesn't correlate with success, or at least you personally perceive it as so. You can try to schedule plenty of get together and still feel like loose colleagues. Or sometimes you randomly invite someone at the 11th hour and now you're best friends who meet every week. That can be a bit frustrating for someone perhaps someonhwre on the neuro divergent spectrum.
But in a way, yes. Shared moments of triumph or suffering can accelerate that process. Those aren't necessarily moments you can always replicate, though.
Not surprised. Every relationship in America is transactional. Work is cut throat especially at stacked ranking companies. This country is basically a social Darwinian hellhole. Friendships here seem try and extract the most value from others. I have an incredibly close circle of friends thankfully.
You're surprised at everyone but yourself?
And in the past weeks, America as a country has clearly signaled it didn't want friends anymore.
Isolationism at every level of society. From friends, neighbours, people with a different background, other nations.
Future looks really depressing.
The article in the New York Post, appears to be referencing this article by Daniel Cox of the "Survey Center on American Life". [1] The article itself on americansurveycenter website is far more extensive with a much larger discussion.
[1] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/disconnected-p...
Much of the article that is the source is actually devoted to the discussion about working class vs educated divides and lack of access to communal public places then resulting in diminished possibilities for socializing and friendship. Quite a bit actually focuses mostly on public parks, libraries, public gardens, restaurants, bars, libraries, and community centers.
Parks and libraries have some of the most significant shift as far as the educational divide. Half with 4 years visit, while only a quarter without.
Restaurants being the most popular among the "third places" (not public parks or libraries)
Across the board, 4 year degree respondents also respond more positively towards almost every single public social location as an area where they go to meet and socialize with others. High School or less appear simply appear to have less "access" to these locations. And thereby less friendships that develop.Restaurants, grocers/markets, and barbershops appear to be the most egalitarian, parks and gyms appear to be the furthest separated based on educational divides.
Even "no access" to "minimal access" has a fairly significant shift in friendship numbers reported. 32% "no access -> no friends", vs 17% "minimal access -> no friends" The "3-5 friends" category also jumps from 23% to 36%, and the "10 or more" jumps from 6% to 13%.
Educated people also tend to walk their neighborhood a larger amount, thereby resulting in greater amount of "chance encounters" or "friendly chats", and thereby more friendships.
The best opportunities that the "high school or less" members seem to feel they often have is religious society membership and communities.
There's also some discussion on divides on hobbies and freetime with education, and that part was actually kind of saddening from a certain perspective, as the numbers really look like "high school or less" feel little ability to engage with hobby, activity, community, workout, or sports related groups in their communities. Rather stark divide. 5-10% vs 15-20% in almost every category. Slight variation with ethnicity (African Americans seem more comfortable with community groups) yet lack of college education really seems to impose a harsh sensation of isolation in America.
Notably though, the project does appear to mostly be a one person show doing their own surveys, and writing every article (this survey notes Sam Pressler as supporting).
The article's appear to be well written, and methodology appears to be sufficiently explained. Appear to be notes, sources, and citations on supporting material (some self referential to their own articles). However, simply, a note that it also appears to be a one person website doing their own independent surveying, publishing, and research.
The sad part here is that the 4-year degree vs high-school also feels like it's probably more of a class divide than anything else.
I think the extreme political hardlining makes this happen too.
I've never been to the US but this extreme-right stuff has made its way to Holland too. They already gained 30% of votes in the last election. Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life.
At first I used to try to reason with them. I thought sure, it's just a misunderstanding. I'll just explain it and give some official links and we can move past this. I explained countless times that no, kids aren't given gender surgery. No there's no deep state trying to make people gay (as if you even could!). No, nobody would ever go through a whole transition just so they can perv in the women's bathroom. The very idea is just insane if you know what it entails.
But there was no point. These guys just want to be so angry they're foaming at the mouth. They actually enjoy their hate, there's no way they let something as trivial as facts get in the way. They wave official statistics and reports away as 'deep state propaganda' or 'the woke agenda'. It doesn't matter that what they're angry about isn't true and makes no sense. They just want to be angry and 'stick it to the man'.
One of my ex-'friends' even asked me seriously if I had plans to transition. I said no, why would you even think that? I'm very happy with my gender and identity and always have been. Well, he said, several of your friends are trans and they spread it around. I quizzed him on it thinking he was just trolling but no, he really believes this. Heard it in some podcast. Just... WTF. This is exactly why we need education on these subjects in schools.
But anyway, so I have no time anymore for that kind of negativity in my life and I'm sick of arguing about this. And listening to all this hate. So I'm done. Note that I'm not disrespecting them or calling them names. I'm not even angry at them, if anything I'm just sad. But I just don't want to interact with them anymore.
The good thing though is that I did get closer to my progressive and LGBT friends. We never talk about this because we all hate negativity, we just roll our eyes at the news. But we realize we need to stick together to defend ourselves when the time comes.
As far as the cause I'm basically blaming social media for it. They strive for engagement to maximise their eyeball time and hate is a very powerful driver of engagement. It might not even have been a conscious choice by these companies. But I am getting very worried now where this is heading.
> Meaning I had to drop a lot of friends. Once they start screaming about "woke" or bitching about trans people they are forever out of my life.
This is somewhat unfortunate. People like this need to go to a political meating and see what is talked about. There might be exceptions but the media and thus public conception about what parties talk about and think are prioritised question seems more or less made up.
I agree feed based social media is to blame. But I would say the problem is bilateral and need mutual understanding in the communication.
It is very difficult to deprogram people who fall down the internet conspiracy reinforcement machine. Anecdotally the most recently aired episode of the This American Life podcast has an adult son try to talk with his conspiracy addled father and making a bet about ten of them - the father loses all of them and still refuses to acknowledge the truth. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/854/ten-things-i-dont-want-...
--I cut a misinterpretation here.--
> We’ve long pondered why the marriage rate, and the corresponding birth rate, has plummeted in America. Answers often focus on financial stressors: Young Americans can’t afford a home like their parents could at their age, some speculate; others blame limited parental leave or poor day-care options.
> Perhaps — but the corresponding slump in close friendships doesn’t add up. People can still afford to make friends, can’t they?
Again, this is some ivory tower kind of nonsense. Of course if you can't afford to host people (no space), if you can't bond with other parents because you cannot be a parent, if you can't afford to leave your kids (with daycare or a carer) to socialize, how the hell are you supposed to invest the time in close friendships? And also, not being able to afford to invest in friendship makes total sense to affect the working class.
This article is a bunch of illogical slop.
It's bad writing. But in between your first two quotes, you clipped out a paragraph that ends with this:
> Americans with college degrees experienced a similar but less steep drop.
They are saying the same thing as you on that point.
Point taken, thanks for pointing that out.
Agreed. Friendship kinda costs money. I had a friend loose a job like a year ago. I used to see them every other week but it became like twice a year while they were broke.
Friendship can also be an economic net positive, it mostly depends on how you’re interacting. Watching each other's kids at home creates extra free time. Having an extra hand and different set of tools when working on home projects is a net gain which means you can be better off while helping each other etc.
However, so much of how people spend their free is consumptive that hanging out has become increasingly expensive.
> Watching each other's kids at home creates extra free time.
Not a thing if no one has free time because everyone has to work.
> Having an extra hand and different set of tools when working on home projects is a net gain which means you can be better off while helping each other etc.
Again, who has the money to have tools? Who has the money to work on home projects? Have you seen the cost of construction materials lately?
Not having any tools is far more expensive because now you’re always paying for labor and parts not just parts.
As to things being more expensive that’s in part an illusion. Things where more affordable in the 1950’s when homes where 1,000sf, there was no cable bill, no cellphones, no internet, and no PC etc and that still represented a far higher standard of living than what came before.
I’m not advocating for giving up modern convince, just recognizing the slow shift from luxury to expected has real costs.
Is that because y'all couldn't think of ways to spend time with one another that didn't cost money? Seems like a fairly tenuous friendship...
The article may be a bunch of slop but there is something deeply cultural in the US that is contributing to this. Not being able to afford things or social media or pretty much anything that gets the blame for the “loneliness pandemic” isn’t unique to the US.
My personal experience has been that the same individualistic culture that allows people to do whatever they want and become whoever they want, that yields great results in a lot of aspects of life, also results in weaker relationships with others. At some point prioritizing oneself over everything else starts taking a toll on relationships. Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places? Or do you stop seeing them because you are not willing to change your wants and not meet them somewhere that they can afford to go?
It's not unique to the US but there are factors that accelerate the lack of ability to freely be around people.Some a unique-ish societal problem (declines of US malls while EU is fine) . And part of that is indeed cultural attitude.
>Do you really stop seeing a friend because they can’t afford to go places?
On a personal level, it's because I was traditionally the one planning get togethers, and then life got rough and I just planned less with no one to step up. Maybe they are also on hard times, maybe they had other groups they prioritized. Hard to tell.
I still try to at least check up once and a while remotely, but I do miss those times.
> Not being able to afford things or social media or pretty much anything that gets the blame for the “loneliness pandemic” isn’t unique to the US.
No, I think not being able to afford things contributing to a loneliness pandemic is also visible in other cultures where people are expected to work a ton for not enough money like South Korea.
People gotta touch grass. I want to say it's cars too: it's easy to be on your phone and hard to meet up with friends.
"if you can't afford to leave your kids (with daycare or a carer) "
- some lawnmower parents won't even their kids with close relatives
- many apparently bought into the "nuclear family" (parent[s] + kids) and not the extended family. About the extended family, or the replacement by a close neighborhood group, parents are on their own - - and that's a recipe for disaster.
> This article is a bunch of illogical slop.
Well, yeah, its the NY Post. Slop is all they ever publish.
"Close friends" is not a good metric anyone. A better metric is the count of token output of personal life. This includes all online chats, including with AI, on apps, and all social sites. I am pretty sure this metric has been trending very high.
You're somewhat correct, and a bit off:
>In 2018, a Pew Research Poll found that teenagers who were connected with their friends online were more likely to also hang out in person. By 2022, in-person outings for teens had collapsed.
>Can their online friends fill the role that real-life ones once did? Maybe — if those “friends” even exist.
>Last year one study found a full 25% of young adults “believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.”
Those are factors, but it's pretty clear the pandemic accelerated such things as such that these cause isolation rather than a conduit to meet up.
And AI romance is on the rise. Is this healthy? I wouldn't think so; and I'm mostly saying that because I hate the idea of a corporate server having such a dangerously intimate connection with a human. Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.
I'll begrudgingly stay open to the more general theory of a personal AI you fall in love with otherwise. Very fearful, but I'd feel like a hypocrite as a game dev who has technically done tiny contributions to this if I suddenly say "you can't care about fictional characters".
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