"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."
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.)
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.
If one actually goes outside it’s trivial to see people hanging out.
Also maybe ironic that I say this here on hacker news on Valentine’s Day but it’s true. Restaurants, bars and even the local mall were packed today.
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.
The Atlantic headline is overly broad, but read the actual piece.
> Plenty of places where I live are filled with people hanging out.
Right. What area? What demographic?
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.
Be wary of number peddlers with an agenda.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
3% is a rounding error.
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.
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.
Socializing is tangent to a lot of activities.