Comfort is cheap: have you ever used your phone to check your daily screen time? I float between 1.5 hours on a good day and 6 hours on a bad day. On my phone I'm reading, interacting, etc. but that's 1.5-6 hours I didn't spend playing cards or chess or talking to my friends in person, each of which requires a time and effort commitment. I don't have to commit effort or pay any money or walk anywhere to interact with the always-on stimulation box in my pocket. The same applies to streaming applications and video games. Between those three activities (browsing, social media, streaming, and video games) there are billions of lost first-world man-hours every year that could theoretically be spent interacting in person, if the people really wanted to.
Time is expensive: I am at the last few years of my life before I have children and have the most advantageous combination of free time, youthly energy, and money that I will ever have. I also have dozens of hobbies, but trying to find people to do those hobbies with is very difficult because they're all so busy with their own lives. My similarly-aged acquaintances are in graduate school (learning things that they could spread across 10 years in four years due to profit constraints), or they're working 40-60 hour workweeks in technology, or they're simply drained and don't want to do anything besides sit on the couch, which I completely understand given my own stressful 50-hour-per-week white collar job.
If you want a return to "in-person life", somehow time needs to become cheap. I don't see comfort ever becoming expensive again, but I do think that if people weren't so busy and stressed out they'd be able to meet in person more often.
I think one other reason could be the tendency to mistake having a question that could be looked up online for the desire for human interaction that the question maybe was supposed to lead to. That may sound like a small/isolated observation but I could be convinced that the behavior change has broader consequences for how we view people/interaction.
I think there are probably many other factors at play here.
I'll offer insight. As someone who attends a very traditional catholic parish, where a ten child family would be considered only slightly above average, the more children you have... the more social you're going to be.
The more kids you have, the larger your network. Your kids become friends with someone else's kid and then you become friends with their parents. If you have two kids with five friends each, then this is 10 parents. If you have ten kids with five friends each, then this is 50, and you now have friends of all different ages, since the kids are not all the same age.
As an example, the lady with one of the most kids at our parish, is also in some ways the center of the social life. She organizes a lot of events, and even if she's not around at a particular event, one of her kids and their family (some of the older ones are married) are there and you can communicate with her through them.
Also, having so many kids, you have to rely on others for help.
When we go to activities where there are smaller families, we notice how little 'help' we get with our children. This makes sense. With only two kids... that's manageable by two people. On the other hand at church, everyone will hold our newborn and toddler, take care of them for a few hours while my wife and I get some nice socializing time. Large families being the norm, everyone wants to help parents with young kids because they want that help reciprocated when they have a newborn or young children again (or in the case of older couples, they feel obligated to pay it forward).
In contrast, with just one or two, it's easy to evolve the 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' mentality that is becoming so prevalent these days. In some ways, I think the shrinking family size has a lot to do with the loneliness many experience.
I had children younger than most, and have never been starved for friends. I'll think you'll find that far from being isolating, having children will immediately start making you friends.
IME, the time before children was the most isolating part.
I think maybe I'll take the corporations instead. :-)
On the other hand I figure there needs to be a relief valve for the kinds of people that enjoy being feudal lords, and the corporations provide that right now. Perhaps something even better can be devised but it needs to be done because that type of person will always exist.
Could be. Though I wonder if this is really true. It might do to think of a counterexample; something that people once thought would always exist but has effectively been eliminated. I'll leave that as an exercise to all the readers I guess.
The truth is that your choices are determined by your options; in the past those options were determined by your feudal lord, and now they're determined by which corporate datastreams you choose to ingest.
We are freer now to create a pool of many more options, and the competitiveness of some markets forces corporations to give better options than the monopolies of the past. But you still will be left with little choice if you passively ingest the data you receive, especially as corporations invest in AI to both identify options you will like as well as funnel you into self-feeding culture bubbles in order to make you more predictable... for their profit.
I think you have to make actions which collect as many options as possible, analyzing what you receive from corporations, and choosing to also consider which non-corporate options are available to you with your surplus of money and freedom that those in the past didn't have.
You have to detach from the passive ingestion of the datastream and instead figure out a way to create as many options as possible in order to have any real choice.
What options can we create that weren't determined by corporations?
I believe GP's point is not that people aren't glad to converse or that small talk is hard, it's just that almost nobody approaches people to ask questions anymore because we have answers in our phone.
Yet here we are, talking through the magic of the internet, but we're destined to remain strangers to one another. So although the discussion may be interesting, in the end we are not actually making new friends.
Also architecture of our houses and cities does not favor that kind of social interaction. People sacrifice space for cost but that just makes the cost per area go up.
In upper middle class society, more and more people live alone and have access to everything they need without needing to rely on neighbors.
Having 24/7 access to the Internet and communication tools gives the sensation that you have all the necessary tools at your disposal, but in reality those tools do nothing and you're just sitting at home by yourself, ignoring the people who are physically around you.
There are biological factors as well, not just things like body language. You put off pheromones which I absorb and my brain analyzes for me when I am near you. You don't get the biological aspects unless you're in person.
Often, I'm the first to take initiative inviting people out... This is fine. I don't care about that. But sometimes, i'll invite someone out I don't click with 100%
And this is... okay. Even if I spent money and time on that attempt, I always have a decent enough time, and finding friends requires work.
People today don't want to do the work. They barely want to do it for dating but sexual desire provides an itch they need to satisfy so they ultimately figure it out (as well as parental pressure I presume).
Making friends is a long process requiring strategy and continued effort.
For example, we just moved to a new area. We've been going to a few events consistently (children's soccer practice, church, etc). My wife and I both make it a point to speak to as many people as possible. After a few months of doing this, we'll casually ask for a number. Usually it's something like.. "Oh, you like to do <activity X>? I love doing <activity X>... I just read a great article about <activity X>... do you want me to send it to you? CAn I have your number?"
Anyway, after a few more weeks go by with some more interactions, and hopefully a few text messages back and forth, we'll casually ask for them to come over for drinks, dinner, etc.
Does this sound contrived and 'social engineering'y? It absolutely is. My wife and I have spent a good few hours strategizing how to ask people to do various activities, and making lists of people to invite to various things. This is a lot of work that few are willing to do. Even mentioning it can make people think you've gone nuts. But ultimately, friendship, like marriage and dating, is work... it's a choice to put in the effort to be someone's friend.
But see, that’s just not the case historically speaking. Why has it become so much more effort in recent times?
This is not a new thing. In fact, it was more prominent in the past. Knights of Columbus councils like the one i'm in are smaller than ever. Growing up, our knights of columbus was huge, and the guys there again did actual work to keep the community going.
That's group friendship. My parents kept a few friends individually and again... this is also work. My mother would regularly cook large elaborate meals for the sole purpose of having people over... even friends she didn't like. She'd complain about her friend for hours and hours and hours (mainly about political differences) but still invite them over, because to her it's better to have friends than to cut someone out, and anyway... she could barely cut out her friends from her life, much less her family. These days, people cut people off because they aren't on the same page politically, don't have the same taste, etc. Some people literally won't meet up with friends because they have a better thing to do... it's so individualistic as to be toxic.
This is not to say my mother was a pushover by any means. My parents did cut out people from their lives, including family, but it had to be for egregious reasons. For example, my dad's sister and her husband were cut out because they enslaved my parents, but unless someone's going to go to that level of depravity, I don't think my parents could cut someone out of their life.
He was driven to various Indian restaurant locations in southern California. Forced to work more than eight hours a day, then driven back to sisters house.
When he married my mother and she immigrated she saw what was going on and ran away and took my dad. We don't talk about the sister any more. I didn't realize my father had two sisters until much later in life.
The scary thing is how open this was. If you're familiar with fancy Indian restaurants in orange, la and Riverside county you'll likely have eaten there. Sister and brother in law were otherwise respectable doctors (including one in public health believe it or not) and otherwise beyond reproach...
There was no hope getting the wages back. My mom and dad started from nothing after several years in the country.
Frankly this sort of slavery is very common, especially among south Asians and is rarely discussed. My parents know a few other full on slaves who were never released to their knowledge. You might ask... Shouldn't we help them... Well we could certainly help them in america, but brother in law is a high caste indian so he would punish the family in India.
There's nothing we could do. This is something the state department and ice need to solve.
Why can't we just skip to the drinks part?
Even in places like NYC where there are so many people that fear of rejection is not a factor, there is always in the back of your head the thought of "stranger danger", and the worst is the realization that the other person has that too; but the actual worst is that the both of you know that the other person knows that you know they have "stranger danger" fears.
Honestly it's draining because communities which are wealthy and in which there is no "stranger danger" are the most closed ones.
Kevin Hart summarized it perfectly on Joe Rogan:
Well if COVID didn't exist, I would have invited everyone we knew to a large baptism party, but given that we can't do that and are basically resolved to socializing in our homes, we can only invite one family over at a time. Thus, we have to prioritize, and frankly, the ones we believe are most likely to turn into friends get priority.
It's never even popped into my head that these are avenues in a conversation that you can take with intention.
I especially liked the article's details on maintaining friendships. Being a good friend is like having a marriage. We have this couple we're friends with. The husband and I get along and my wife and his wife get along (and of course, we all get along with each other). But his wife and my wife fought for a bit (And I mean really fought), and we had a 'falling out', but then I took the initiative to reach out to the husband, and for a while, we'd clandestinely go out with each other, until we both decided it was time to get the wive's to reconnect and everyone to make up (which they eventually did). It was hard emotional work... but it's all worth it. I think a lot of people drop friends they don't like. I notice a lot of people today do it over differences in politics, which I frankly find unfathomable.
I can definitely feel closer with people if we’re on the same page politically.
And it’s really jarring to have so many things in common and then discover they’re promoting the destruction of western values …
I could definitely use some advice.
On the other hand back when politics wasn’t as in your daily life I really didn’t care about disagreements.
I dunno who your friends or acquaintances are, but if your view of them is that they want to destroy western values and your way of living, then that's a problem on you, not them. Most likely, they don't want to hurt you or your way of life... they just want to be able to live theirs, so I would suggest not approaching this is a problem of 'my friend basically wants to destroy my country'.
I mean on the other hand, if you're surrounded by people who literally want to destroy your country, well then I'd suggest moving, I guess. I don't honestly believe there's many parts of america, other than certain cult compounds, that would share that view though. More likely, you are the one reading ill intent into other's politics.
True friendships just happen.