Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults
sociologicalscience.com
sociologicalscience.com
EDIT: This [1] is the kind of neighborhood i'm talking about. Growing rapidly, cheap housing -- great, but they're setting themselves up for real heartbreak because the complexes don't connect. To walk to the park that's not even a mile away requires walking on a huge, busy road. All they need to have to make it not feel dangerous is a dirt path and a required gate between complexes. That's it. [2]
I'm honestly not sure why we think this kind of development is even normal. Roads really ought to connect. It also makes the traffic so much worse. I live two miles from downtown Portland and my street outside my house gets significantly less traffic than my parents.
I fully expect to move my parents somewhere near us as they age. It's just not possible for them to leave the house when they get older without having to drive, whereas older people in my grid-based, sidewalk neighborhood can walk for miles and achieve their entire life.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Clark+County+Fairgrounds/@...
[2] Meanwhile, our park is technically farther away (about a mile) and we walk there almost everyday and know all the neighbors down the street. We just went to a party at one of the neighbor's homes and the only relation we have is that we wave at each other as their kids play in the yard and mine ride their bikes to the park. I want to leave the house half the time because I have friends outside. That's all you need.
This reminds me of one of the best cities I’ve ever been on, Brasília. Literally every block is build to be walkable as a small condo and have its own cottage businesses like the so-called “padarias” (Brazilian bakeries), grocers, etc. And all condos/blocks have some amenities like multi-sports court. A unique feature in Brazil (perhaps in all of Latin America) is that all buildings are walkable in the ground floor, meaning that it’s all open spaces and you can actually see kids playing in their building or region. Very lovely.
New apartment complex? Maybe a pool. Co-located commercial gym if you're fancy.
Old apartment complex? Pool. Tennis and basketball courts. Rentable shared social pavilion. Parks and green space.
There's no moustache twirling. Location is the number one thing people want. If amenities made the cut and could be done, they'd be done. But after parking minimums, setbacks, and massing requirements you lose a lot of sq. ft., every bit of which you need to make the money work.
Try it with a well-known locality since the laws for those are public enough to be scraped.
You make it sound like they're barely scraping by and so the reason there's no amenities is that the local planners give them no option but to use every square foot for "maximizing value".
Old apartment complex: A pool, a small gym, maybe some clubhouse one can rent. Maybe a dilapidated basketball court that last saw fresh paint in the 90s.
New apartment complex: A pool, a large gym, multiple clubhouse/lounge spaces, golf simulators, dog wash stations, dog parks/runs, multiple grilling/picnic areas, maybe even racquet ball courts, etc.
I haven't been apartment hunting in a few years and so many new complexes go up around me all the time.
I'd definitely seen them disappear in denser, geo-limited cities.
Which is a shame... one of my favorite workouts! And a nice general-purpose court for other things too.
So basically we actively reject the lifestyle of European towns, or the life style of early 20th century of the US. I wonder why that is good for the city in any way.
Before modern Starbucks popularized a hostile environment, it was common to work for half a day in a coffee shop.
They tended to be a lot bigger, have more and more comfortable furniture, and were fine if you quietly worked away and bought a coffee / snack every now and then.
But Starbucks ~05 to now is basically a microcosm of the ways America went awry.
It was always unfair to expect a coffee shop to operate an office for the price of the profit margin on 3 coffees, a sandwich and a muffin.
sad.
someone should write a well researched book with that title: the ways America went awry.
If you want to build something and have it stay good, never expose it to the harsh light of economic min/maxing.
Not every business has to cater to everyone's preference. I suspect that they started shooing people because they found (or at least suspected) that kicking out your customers made them more money. The laptop people will just find somewhere else to get their coffee.
The best coffee shops I been to have multiple spaces set aside for people with different needs, including busy main areas and out of the way quiet areas, a mix of small and long tables plus chairs and couches, books/board games/pool tables available, conference/gaming rooms, etc.
I've seen coffee shops like that get so popular that they required a cover charge on Friday nights and weekends. You're not likely to find those kinds of spaces on every other street corner like a Starbucks but the versatility is really nice.
Bars, dancing halls, rec centers and cafes makes more sense in the walking distance rather then somewhere where you go by car.
I think it depends on zoning and mandates. I used to live in Brooklyn on 4th Ave and it is super-walkable. However, numerous 12story buildings featured a parking garage as their ground-level facade, rather than cafes, offices, etc. This leads to an empty industrial feeling that makes people run away from such spaces.
Here is are 3 examples:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6718516,-73.9875659,3a,75y,2...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6731304,-73.9863663,3a,75y,9...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6726699,-73.9865002,3a,75y,1...
To be fair, many did have clinics or dentist offices also, but -- it would be nice to have places where people want to go -- gyms, cafes, grocery stores, restaurants, etc.
In "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Jacobs pushes for a variety -- and I can now truly appreciate that having lived in the above areas. The above areas may be walkable but dont attract people to walk there. They also become ghostly at night and people feel unsafe walking there. I could imagine the entire atmosphere changing with restaurants and cafes.
My suburb growing up was grid based and you could bike to the grocery store. The part of Portland I live in is technically a suburb (started out that way, but eventually merged into the core). However, based off of historical records, the basic pattern of businesses has remained the same, so even when it was fully suburban, you could always walk to the park , coffee shop, bakery (some have even been here the full 100 years or so the neighborhood's been around).
Whereas, due to zoning and HOAs, I just can't see where those would possibly develop in the example I gave above. It's illegal.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I feel the pattern changed sometime in the 90s and aughts.
(My brother lives in a 1926 apartment that is 10 minute walk from the beach. Although that privilege does come with a 460k price tag. Nobody had a car back then unless they were millionaires so the entire area was built with trams, bicycles and walking in mind).
(OTOH there are other problems, many people live in tiny apartments)
There's also substantial differences in suburbs, and I don't think it has to do with 'car centric cities'.
The suburb I grew up in was car centric but was still much better than the kids of developments i see today. Things are not black and white and exist on a spectrum. Being skeptical of modern subdivision-based development does not mean thinking everywhere needs to be Manhattan. It just means that we should think about adding a cafe, a park, a corner store, a library, etc, and adding things to make it easier when you don't have a car.
I am not, and have never been anti-car. If you look through my post history, you'll even see me criticize attempts by various states to limit the sale of internal combustion engine cars. I own a car and drive it when I need to. I also walk and bike and scooter and wahtever
we can keep our detached homes and cars and cozy suburbs and still have a convenience store in walking distance, I'm sure of it, if local zoning laws allow it
but this subreddit, er I mean website, might as well be r/fuckcars whenever the topic arises
If you loosen zoning, what you’re going to end up with is denser development and less room for cars.
Streetcar suburbs are an example of this. You have more room than living in the core of the city, but you don’t have enough room for 3 F150s for the family.
of coures how the lot is built is different but it isn't size.
Especially on the right, but also on the left, every fringe issue is framed as a grave threat to your existence. News media's long stoked the paranoia of whites as they enter a majority minority country of catastrophic fear of minorities.
And the mobile phone was probably the tipping point of a typical human being's tolerance for digital intrusion and ubiquitous advertising.
I honestly think the mental stability of the entire nation has started to go downhill since the introduction of social networking enhanced by mobiles. The statistics of adolescence and depression certainly back that up, and I think we'd be fools to think that adults are immune to it as well.
In modern convenience-based shopping and services, coming from silicon valleys era of shut-in programmers producing apps that enable their shut-in lifestyle are the final aspect
You know it really is amazing how Japan seems to be about 10 years ahead of the US in social responses to technology. The socially withdrawn otaku is the archetype of the end digital capitalism's ideal consumer.
I wonder if this is something that needs a closer look. I enjoy spending time at home. I'd rather be at home than pretty much anywhere else. Even before the pandemic I felt this way. The pandemic itself was like a vacation.
Me! That's me! I can barely even get to a mere 24 hours at home without feeling stir-crazy, and more than that you might as well dump ants all over my skin.
But I'm very aware of other people (including family members I know) who are perfectly fine with days spent going nowhere…perhaps rarely even leaving their room. It makes no sense to me, but clearly this issue is very personality-dependent.
Hosting a BBQ dinner party with family and friends it's obviously different than sitting alone browsing Netflix or reddit
It's an important point. To use a nutrition metaphor, there are many new easily-available empty calories at home these days, that weren't previously available. The web. Online gaming. Social media. Streaming.
Yet venturing outside into a social environment delivers a higher minimum level of nutritional value. You see other breathing humans, experience empathy and nature, and move your body.
And critically... exercise being comfortable with being uncomfortable. (Aka, life)
One of the quickest paths to crazy these days is becoming too comfortable in a stable, static, self-reinforcing life. You don't get any feedback that you're drifting pretty far off the median. (I mean, has anyone actually seen the Earth's curvature...?)
Reality has a well-known bias towards reinforcing common sense and reminding you when you're wrong.
...who will cheerfully explain to you that you're unhappy, your hobbies are empty, your choices as wrong, and how much happier you'd be if you'd just value what they value and like what they like and stop being you and start being them.
I was an introvert, or thought I was, for a long time. A homebody.
But going out, and just being around other people, has legitimately improved my quality of life by an order of magnitude. It's very strange but I'm just... happier. It's like working out. You just do it, and then everything is better.
I don't get anxious anymore. I like myself a lot more. I actually look forward to tomorrow, which used to never happen.
Cash in your ticket or get some joy out of the game.
My point is that if Alice has what she wants, Bob will not convince her that she doesn't by explaining that she ought to want what Bob wants, which she doesn't have or want. Especially if what Bob wants, and Alice doesn't, is for Alice to be social with Bob.
"You don't live the way I want to" is an observation, not an argument for anyone to change their values or their life.
Which has made me suspicious of introversion as a local maximum that nonetheless leaves one depressed.
Humans don't seem to be built to self-regulate, 24x7, forever. At some point we go off the rails, and other humans (and/or nature) are a good way to kick things back to normal.
(And yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm not a secret extrovert. It can be exhausting being around strangers when I'm down, but sometimes you need to jump off the waterfall and put on that smile that becomes real)
I'm conflicted. I think I get what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to be an argument against bulatb's point, in that both can be true.
It's conceivable for me to want to feel like you don't want social interactions and pursue non-directly-social endeavors (think building something, learning an instrument, whatever) without actually being in need of social interaction.
I think the point isn't that you should self-regulate 24x7, forever, but to do the social thing on your own terms, not on other people's schedule.
Maybe it's a question of quantity. If you only ever do things alone at home and never go out in society, then perhaps there is an issue. It reminds me of alcoholism: wanting to have a drink and saying you're not an alcoholic doesn't mean you're one. It's a question of degree.
Now that things are back to normal, staying at home too much and not socializing as much as pre-pandemic, feels like wasted potential, and I can't chalk it up to everything being shut down and people not being able to get together.
Now, post-pandemic, I simply stopped caring about what other people "question." That's their problem. Thanks to WFH, I can (and do) stay at home for weeks. I've got everything I need here at home and finally feel no external pressure to go out and do social.
It's also great for costs: I put 3,000 miles on my car in the last 12 months, compared to averaging 10,000 per year prior to the pandemic.
So I can see our relative smaller boost in happiness being outweighed by the utter misery of others.
It is not that it is mildly painful for introverts to socialize when they do not want to, but rather that loneliness can be extremely painful.
As far as depression, drugs, etc. I haven't been under this pressure chronically so I can't speak from personal experience.
That said, I suspect that for introverts in even the most extreme chronic social pressures it would be more feasible for them to escape to some quiet place to recharge, than it would be for an extrovert who has no social connection living in isolation to find sufficient connection to recharge. In theory, it's far more practical to manifest solitude than it is to manifest a party.
Drugs no, although I did tend to numb myself during social interactions with alcohol (not drinking any alcohol anymore, but also have reduced social interactions).
I‘m not saying loneliness cannot be terrible, don’t get me wrong. I guess involuntary anything can be terrible.
Two out of three, yes, as a direct result of a desire not to interact with others.
While loneliness can be extremely painful, so too can anxiety.
They're less likely to be spending their time at home just watching endless TV or Instagram scrolling.
So I think you're right, it doesn't generalize to the larger population at all.
What has changed is home entertainment has gotten more diverse. People stream movies more often than they go to the theater. People download the latest video games instead of going to game store. People stream instead of going to Blockbuster video. There is also a greater variety of food delivery options (Uber Eats, etc). You can have groceries delivered. People buy more of their purchases online like on Amazon and have it overnighted to their door.
All these conveniences remove reasons to be out and about. In 2003 you still had to leave the house for most of these things.
I really don't know what could be done here. I'm starting to think that this is simply a new form of environmental pressure that homo sapiens needs to adapt to. Don't fight the change, find ways to thrive in it.
As much as feminists hate it, when mothers were at home we were all much healthier. Now we just need to let fathers or mothers stay home and we'll reap such insane benefits.
How? Idk. Single income families get a tax relief or something.
1950s America is never coming back. It was a uniquely dominant time for the US geopolitically so of course a lot of indicators looked good. That doesn’t mean mothers staying home was the cause of it any more than men wearing suits to the office was the cause of it. Single income households have never been the norm.
Second, what you’re suggesting doesn’t make practical sense. Men with college degrees tend to marry women with college degrees. So since neither is likely to make substantially more than the other, it makes sense for both to work.
And that’s how things have been for centuries. Thousands of years even, across cultures. Women and men both worked. Usually farming, but still working. Single income household was a historical aberration.
>Single income households have never been the norm.
???
Yes they have. The children worked for the family but if there were any kids or birthing going on, which there usually was, the mother stayed home and worked (managed the estate for the richer folk) at home. Way before the 1950s.
I don't think you understand that women and men working was definitely not a normal thing for the last few hundred years. I'm not sure why you think that.
It sounds like you have this agenda of women staying at home and attach it to everything else.
>It sounds like you have this agenda of women staying at home and attach it to everything else.
No, I just attach it to what it makes sense for. And single income households make sense for third places very well. That's why third places flourished in the peak of this tradition.
Dads don't only work either.
That's basically already the case because of progressive tax brackets.
For example: Two incomes of $200k in CA. You're only getting half the marginal income from one of the people.
Take home: 68% / $273k.
One income of $200k. Take home: 73% / $146k. That other $200k income would've only netted $127k.
Progressive tax brackets work against single income families? Do you mean combined tax declaring? I know the US is different to most of the world. But in most of the world income is a reflection of an individual not their family.
It is impossible to combine incomes in a single tax declaration in lots of parts of the world.
However merely using progressive rates isn't enough; people see it as a penalty for getting married, not having a dual income. You'd want something like a credit for stay-at-home childcare to directly incentivize it. Right now, we actually subsidize working parents through childcare tax credits/deductions. We could at least make this more neutral by eliminating childcare incentives and increasing the child tax credit.
Yep! There needs to be more done, but the biggest reason dual incomes work are for paying bills and luxuries.
I'm not sure why people keep harking on about walkable this and walkable that. It doesn't matter. What matters is that people can't find value in what these places offer. It doesn't make sense to spend an hours wage on a single movie ticket anymore. Or buy a round of beers for a weeks groceries.
Yes, walkable cities have more people spending time at home.
The cities where people seem to do the most are ones where costs of staying at home approach going out, such as HK, SG, KR, JP, CN, etc. These places have huge pressure on staying at home and home-body cultures and yet their third places are some of the best in the world.
- Work-Related Activities (~35 minutes more at home)
- Sleeping - Assumed at Home (~25 minutes more at home)
- Leisure - Not On Computer (~22 minutes more at home)
What I find interesting, is the key differences in total time spent. There seems to be generally more time spent sleeping actually (~25 more minutes), and that time comes from a decrease in socializing (-~15 minutes), and transportation (commuting, -~20 minutes).
Overall, less commuting and more sleep seems good, but a decrease in socialization is not great, a full 1 3/4 hours a week decrease.
[0]: https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol_11/august/SocSc...
This certainly reflects my experience. Nowadays watching a movie doesn't mean going to a movie theater; it means watching a movie at a friend's house. Similar for gaming &c.
Lately I've seen a lot of lamenting the lack of third spaces, but I haven't personally felt too sad about this? When I was younger my friends and I would regularly meet for coffee and pie at a diner that was open late, or shoot darts at a cozy neighborhood bar. Nowadays those kinds of places seem to be all but gone. They've been replaced by Dining and Entertainment Concepts™ that cost too much to frequent with any regularity, and crank the music way too loud to permit real socialization. So we just get together to play Mario Kart instead.
The gap between 1980s movie viewing and a theatre and 2024 movie viewing and a theatre has narrowed tremendously. The selection at home is far superior to the movie theatre now. Food delivery options have expanded well beyond Chinese and pizza. Sports viewing captures a better view than most seats.
Maybe it's just me, but a lot of theaters set their volumes to LOUD. I've found it better to just watch movies at home (save for that rare movie you HAVE to watch in theaters, like Mad Max) and spend the remaining $ on building out my HT.
LOUD was definitely one of the first things I thought of. I don't feel like I need to bring ear plugs to make watching a play comfortable.
Intermissions are another. It's nice to have an opportunity to stand up and stretch my legs, maybe take a bathroom break, chat with my partner about the story so far, all without missing anything or bothering other people.
I think, though, that concessions are the other big one. Stage theaters don't have sticky floors, they don't reek of popcorn, you don't have the person behind you chewing with their mouth open so loudly you can somehow hear it above the aforementioned exceptionally loud volume, etc.
Tickets aren’t much more than normal ($15 I believe). They have actual powered recliners so you can lean back most of the way to horizontal. They have trays that rotate over your waist to hold drinks and snacks (like an airplane, but bigger).
The nicest part is full food service. They have a full menu of cooked food, snacks, they run their own brewery so you can buy their beer, etc. They have an online food ordering system, and waiters bring it to your seat. They push people hard to order during the commercials so they’re mostly out of the theater during the movie.
No sticky floors, no stale popcorn smell, no 40 year old seats that smell like farts.
It is still dramatically too loud, especially that THQ intro that I can only describe as “a dick measuring contest with Klipsch”. I hate that with a passion; I’m already aware the speakers can get super loud, there’s really no reason to show me every damn time the movie starts.
OTHO, everything you've mentioned can still be closely replicated at home, just start your movie after food gets delivered to your house and buy the snacks ahead of time. I have a recliner at home and the middle arm-drawer is full of snacks.
With the socioeconomic-geographic mobility situation - people moving to get good jobs, better lifestyles, and increased quality of life may not. And there are of course regressive movers too, and probably people pursuing greener grass. They aren't going to have friends locally, workplace socializing is... Suboptimal. But in a society that increasingly verbalizes distaste for cold approach, and lacks — as you said a quiet socializing atmosphere (or even competition in such a sphere) there's little left. At least that's my experience.
A couple concrete examples: In 2005-ish, it was relatively easy to find monthly vegan potlucks in decently-sized towns. Larger ones might have many of them, with sort of a neighborhood focus. But after Meetup came out you saw a lot of consolidation where everyone would just sort of gravitate toward one of them, and the rest would die off. Chicago consolidated on one group that was organized by some friends of mine, and eventually got so big that it sort of collapsed under its own weight.
Chicago also used to have a bunch of smaller social groups for people learning various languages. That whole space eventually got absorbed by the Chicago Language Cafe, which then became so big that the venue needed to change from a reasonably-sized neighborhood pub to a large taproom in a converted industrial space. It was big, noisy, kind of inaccessible, and generally just a terrible place to get to know people - again due to Internet-fueled centralization.
By contrast, the knitting community tends to have groups organized by local yarn stores instead of through a massive centralized site like Facebook or Meetup. There are two within walking distance of my house. One of them played an essential role in rebuilding my social life when I moved to this neighborhood a few years back. The other I haven't really been to, per se, but they meet outside when the weather's nice and I'll stop and say hi if I happen to be passing by.
There are also numerous book clubs that meet at local book stores and libraries. There are probably at least ten within walking distance of my house, meeting at 3 or 4 different venues.
(edit: Unstated major premise here is that the diners and bars I was talking about in the previous post aren't actually good places to meet people in the first place, anyway. I view them more as places to spend time with friends you already have.)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-americans-are-lonelier...
The analogy that came to mind was to image advising firefighters to avoid drowning the cat when they're trying to put out a house fire.
Not everything we think we want is what our animal brain and body needs.
Was really hard to look at some people ever the same way again.
Even places that flourished because they were third spaces, like Starbucks, are dropping their seating to lower numbers to “get rid of the riff raff” or whatever.
The US is hilariously car-centric and when you’re not driving to go to work, there’s less of an urge to drive at any time; and, without walkability too, there’s even more loss in socializing.
It’s all a net loss.
I remember reading about the third place many years ago, but that idea requires a second place!
It was the place people gathered. Church, the bar, local park, etc.
I'm just remarking that the role of the second place -- the office -- has also been diminished
Obviously you don't literally need the "second place" to have the "third place" -- but my point was that in-person interaction has been reduced even further, compared to the 1990's
Probably in 1990, few people would have predicted that the second place would also go away, at least for some affluent part of the population
edit: as either needless pedantry, or an unfamiliarity with the Third [Sp/Pl]ace.
From what I understand from my parents and grandparents (I’m Gen X), they did quite a lot of stuff at home (i.e. meet friends, make music etc.)
Going out was the exception, not the norm.
Same here, I got out a lot more when I was WFH, even when I was hybrid, I would get out even on weekday afternoons/evenings and socialize a bit.
But we were just dragged in office full time again, and it's once again rare for my to step outside after work. Now I'm more likely to be mental exhausted and spend my time napping, and consuming low energy entertaining before the next day.
Unless you want to hop a fence and walk through a ditch, which I did, to get there in 3 minutes. And there's certainly no path along the highway to ride your bike.
So depressing especially once you've left the US and have seen how much better we could design our lives.
(1) less shopping because I order online
(2) more entertainment/distraction from online stuff (movies, youtube, tech news, anime, streamers, ....)
(3) less office friends IMO partly because WFH. It's not that I'm spending time at home because I working, it's that I'm not going out with co-workers after work because we aren't starting the evening together like we used to.
(3b) Same as above, I'm already at home because WFH so it's an effort to "go out". Where as when it was WFO I'd already be "out" and then stay out somewhere before coming home.
Honestly I hate WFH. I know it's not coming back but "my" life is definitely worse because of WFH. I get that that's not true for many others.
It's more convenient and cheaper but worse for you.
I know a lot of people in the US, and especially Canada, who've stopped going to restaurants for example. They now cost too much, the food is often mediocre or even outright bad, the service is often terrible, parking can be an issue in some cities, and it's generally a miserable experience. Cooking at home, even if takes more effort, ends up being comparatively more enjoyable.
That's also the case for movies, concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, and tourist venues. The tickets cost a lot relative to the enjoyment that's provided, and the pricing of food and drinks at such events can be astronomical. It has just become prohibitively expensive, especially for families, in addition to the other inconveniences (such as travel and parking) that can be associated with such events.
Even something as simple as going to a beach or a lake has become an awful experience in Canada. A problem at Canadian beaches has been foreigners defecating in the sand, rather than using the proper washroom facilities. Even when that isn't happening, such places can be quite crowded and nowhere near as fun as they were in the past when they were quieter.
I certainly can't blame people for not wanting to subject themselves to unpleasant experiences like those.
Restaurants are too expensive, so everyone eats at home. And yet it's still hard to get reservations at many places and drive through lines circle the buildings.
Its stupid expensive to go to a Disney park these days. Think those places are empty?
On the flip side, I've noticed that restaurants with great quality almost invariably have low turnover and those are the one I keep coming back to.
The options are also not cooking at home vs going to a restaurant. There is now food delivery. It used to be that the only way to get ribs was to make them yourself or go to a restaurant and order them. But now a majority of my rib consumption is via Uber Eats.
Movies used to be either in a theatre or a grainy home screen. The home screen is no longer grainy. Same with sports. You have to want the atmosphere to go to a game now.
Beaches being crowded indicates use, so I wouldn't put it into the category of restaurant visits, movies, and sports, which are all declining categories overall.
Yes, and it's actually better than going to a theater in most ways:
1) You can pause and go to the bathroom when you need to, instead of holding it and being miserable and then rushing to the crowded bathroom when the credits roll, or going during the movie and missing important plot points.
2) You can rewind it if you missed some important dialog.
3) You can turn on subtitling so you can understand all the dialog, in case your hearing isn't great, or the actors are mumbling as is common these days.
4) You can eat/drink whatever you want, and it costs only whatever your grocery store charges.
5) You can pause the movie and talk to your friend/SO about it.
6) You can put your feet all the way up with your recliner.
7) You can adjust the volume to whatever you like, so you don't have to listen to it deafeningly-loud as is common in theaters now.
8) You don't have to deal with some stupid stranger using their phone or talking loudly to their friends, or having their head block your view.
9) You don't have to worry about a retired cop shooting you.
Movie theaters are probably going the way of the dodo. That doesn’t mean all outside activities are doomed. There’s just a higher bar. Entrepreneurs will have to focus on experiences people can’t get at home and make them accessible and affordable.
Now that earns a call from CPS and the parents are arrested and the kid may end up in a foster home which are common sources of abuse. So the family just stays home if the kids won't/can't be taken.
I have relatives who work for CPS and if anything they are extremely lenient. And even if they take kids (when both parents can’t take care of the kid for example if they’re both heroin addicts) CPS will try to place with a relative, even out of state.
Also, the most common source of child abuse is a family member, which unfortunately is a common reason for CPS to get involved.
Of course the genius is the kidnappers seal most these cases so their relatives can gaslight you about what happened, which is the icing on the cake.
The plural of op-ed anecdotes is not objective data, but I can give you some jumping-off points:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2018/09/05/mom...
https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/living/feat-maryland-free-ran...
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-mom-accused-of-leaving-ki...
https://www.businessinsider.com/teen-bans-curfews-malls-them...
https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/sb0065.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/well/family/utah-passes-f...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-coddling-of-the-american-p...
By design they've made such studies effectively impossible from the outside. You don't even get a jury. So we're left with the odd anecdotes (as exemplified below in sister comment)from those who weren't successfully intimidated.
And that's the beauty. They can knowingly and willingly intimidate parents while screeching "but muh data, you can't prove it" laughing all along by design they've hidden the data in the shadows from inspection.
> That study was based on an analysis of [...] the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which provides information on removals of children from home, terminations of parental rights and adoptions.
From there with a little searching I find this graph [1] showing various metrics from 2013-2022, which don't appear to show any freakish growth over that decade.
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-child-wel...
[1] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/trends-foster-care-adoptio...
What was described there is also not far off from the other unsanitary practices and obnoxious behaviour I've personally seen arise over that period of time.
Considering what I've heard and seen over the years, I don't have any reason to doubt those latest claims. They sound quite plausible.
I know my parents used them, but I never did. My friends used them a bit in university but stopped once they could afford something different. My local community centre's calendar has dried up, despite the space still being there. New neighborhoods sometimes don't even bother to build one now where I am, as there is no demand.
Nobody demolished the churches or the libraries, but they have rapidly aging user bases. Rotary and other similar social clubs would love younger members, but younger people don't want them.
But there also isn't much reason to go there if nobody else does. A weird network-effect thing, right? Like, I didn't bother walking down to the local Chilean bakery that serves food because it's mostly empty most of the time, and there's only so much I can chat to the folks working there about as a stranger who lives down the street.
Granted I live in more expensive areas, but still
The US is building most of its new homes in anti-social car controlled environments, where you can't walk anywhere, everything has to be done by driving. Kids can't just roam the neighborhoods anymore and when they do people start asking if they should call the cops.
We are sick and it doesn't look like there is much thinking in how to fix it.
- Parks: A lot of them, every few blocks there's a large, well maintained park. Trash cans everywhere. - Many community centers, huge, filled with extremely inexpensive or free activities. Community centers all have gyms in them. - Beautiful, modern feeling libraries
It's hard to describe the difference, but it is non trivial.
Everything in your list is stuff I experienced in most of the parts of Canada I visited. Not all though, for instance it wasn't like that in the parts of Mississauga I visited. And everything in your list is stuff I experience regularly in the US, in the parts I've lived in.
- churches: not really for the non religious
- libraries: not if you want to actually talk to people
- parks: only if the weather cooperates
- certain community recreational facilities: spend money? too activity oriented
- gyms: same as aboveThen why'd you put gyms in your list? You DO have to spend a ton of money to get a gym membership. And you can't cancel it because you have to sign a ridiculous contract and basically file a lawsuit to end the membership (not really, but it seems almost this bad).
I've been off and on user of several different gyms over the years. I don't recall actually paying for a gym membership myself. It's usually been a gym at my apartment complex, or a gym at the office park where I work, or my employer covered a gym membership, or I got it through health insurance.
But there's absolutely people with big trust funds or inheritances living this way. I knew a bunch of people who basically lived like this during COVID because of relief payments and they only very reluctantly found jobs again after it became clear that COVID payments were done and UBI was not on the near horizon.
There's a similar category of people in the USA and Canada as well that I don't have a term for. They're just as checked out really, bouncing between part time minimum wage jobs. They tend to live with like 5 roommates all doing the same thing they are. They work as few hours as possible to pay for rent and food. Any money left over is going to weed/booze/both and videogames
I think it's the same person who would be a Hikikomori, just adapted to NA economic realities
The Japanese term would be "freeter". However, many artists, poets, and musicians, have lived similarly in decades past. Such a lifestyle wasn't and isn't limited to hikikomori or individuals approximately classified as one.
I don't think artists/poets/musicians/what have you were sitting around playing videogames
I think it's an important distinction that this isn't a sort of "we're living this way pursuing a dream" lifestyle that I'm trying to describe
It's more "we're living this way because we have no dreams"
I think it's different
I'm a SWE, and most other SWE I know are basically losers. They work, go home, do nothing, wake up repeat. Do that for 40 years and eventually roll over and die from complications of obesity.
Sure, they work more and have more money. Doesn't matter much. They couldn't tell you what code they wrote one year ago. All their money is going towards their various vices, be it food, nicotine, video games.
Point being, working and nothing else is the reality for a lot of people. And it is sad, and it is pathetic, and you don't get much to show for it. People, in general these days, don't really have lives. They live, but just barely.
It's certainly an appropriate description. I've lived in the suburbs for thirty something years and have never made a single friend there. Travel requires a car, and there's no place interesting you can get to without a car. The optimal strategy for life is therefore to pass the threshold of depression and insanity and become a computer-addicted robot who derives pleasure only from typing on the comments section of the internet.
I've been thinking of ways to fix the problem but there's no bandage for removing the cars and redesigning the whole thing. I've thought of structures a clever person might be able to build to attract socialization, and I'm sure almost all of them are against zoning laws.
Loneliness != being alone
But want a coffee? Check your phone, and see there's a coffee place maybe a half-mile away. Stop there after a run at The Commons, and it's a car-only place. (7-Brew)
I think the modern idea that you have to be out and about constantly is linked to our consumer culture and growth oriented economy. They want us to be out spending money we don’t have.
But, why shouldn't we be enjoying the place that is supposed to be our own? I can get a lot more work done when allowed to just be comfy working in my room without many disturbances. I can work on my hobbies and socialize with people who have the same hobbies, without any of us having to be able to come over.
Also many historical contexts had plenty of time out drinking (even if that's just in the house of someone that brews), going to religious events, off conducting raids or wars etc.
Sigh, once again, it's wasn't COVID19 itself; it was the paranoid, destructive over-reaction that forced isolation that caused this.