The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting
happiness.hks.harvard.edu
happiness.hks.harvard.edu
The article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships
I’m grappling with this myself, it requires a lot of energy to form adult friendships. I keep seeing my neighbors out at the playground, I reach out and say hey and hi and ask them how they are doing but stop short of investing the time necessary to form real friendships with them and I know deep down that it’s perpetuating late stage individualism
Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available.
Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there’s no plan, Netflix is just a button press away.
We need moments of boredom and reflection to push us into action, the attention economy is robbing us from that.
I’d even say the increase in anxiety related symptoms is due to this lack of idleness. The mind feels as if it’s super busy moving from active task to active task when in reality there were hours of just defaulting to reels.
FWIW, my friend recently built a summer home. I went over about four weekends to help drywall, put in flooring, build stud walls, etc. He's had other friends over other weekends. Sometimes it's just one friend, sometimes a few of us go up together. It's a great time, and definitely strengthens our social bonds.
I'm also friends with my kids' parents (one of whom is the one with the house). Playdates turn into dinner invites.
I think we're lucky that we're on the older end -- mid-40s -- so maybe we had time to work our social muscles before social media and Netflix, and have socialization as an expectation.
I'm also personally lucky I have a wife who does a lot of the social reaching-out. For whatever reason, this seems like it's more and more a gendered role, and I'm definitely worse at it -- if I were a bachelor I'd probably be happy staying home alone much more, to my long-term detriment.
You won’t do social stuff in those micropauses anyway, that’s true, but I think those moments are where you’d normally “mentally review”. Wondering how a friend is, feeling like you miss a connection, etc.
Without that, I think we mentally drift away from social connections.
My stepbrother has declined hang out invitations for decades but the minute I need the most minor house or car repair he’ll drop everything and be there all day.
https://x.com/matt_vanswol/status/1915121027820159414
Your project house was an individual pursuit when it should be a collective one.
I can now (probably, not sure if this exists) don my Apple VR set and walk around Machu Picchu or the Sistine Chapel.
But this would be a vicar experience. Just like reading lots of Wikipedia pages on, I dunno, Brutalism will not make an architect out of me.
While I enjoy listening to podcasts I recognize how much its reduced the amount I'm idle. Particularly while commuting.
I started texting my acquaintances and old friends at random just to ask what’s up every once a week or two. I also started calling some people instead. Almost everyone responded really well to that. When I go out to eat, I often check with a few people if they want to go if I swung by and picked them up.
This is how things used to be for me before the pandemic. But it was difficult to get back to it. What I found though is that most people are lonely but they don’t want to put much effort into building friendships. And that’s ok, I can be the one who initiates the outings and chats.
It’s okay to be the one who initiates. It seems like not everyone can, somehow the level of social anxiety has gone up in the world. In the end, I get my socialization full and so do they. So I’d recommend to whoever feels a bit lonely — reach out to your past friends and current acquaintances.
The only issue with always being the initiator is that no reciprocation is a bit of an… issue to our social brains. Validation, trust, confidence, and friendship itself forms better when there is reciprocation. It’s best not to overthink it, the world is different and what it means to have friends has changed. This is the new normal. It’s better to be the one who leads all the friend groups and activities all the time than to be lonely.
That's the impression I got at first as well. However, then I realized a really big proportion of people I'd contact this way would say they'd love to meet up but either repeatedly decline suggestions to meet up or even ghost me. I feel like the positive response is just out of general politeness, not willingness to reconnect.
> It’s okay to be the one who initiates...The only issue with always being the initiator is that no reciprocation is a bit of an… issue to our social brains.
It's also about gauging whether the other person cares about you. I carried out the experiment where I stopped texting people with whom I was always the contact initiator. Years later, they still haven't written a single message to me. To me, it's clear that those people never cared about me, I was just their plan B for a saturday hangout in case their real plans fell through.
Agreed. Before Covid I used to have a pretty vibrant social life but I was the initiator and back then I could easily set up physical events. Covid obviously added a lot of friction to that. Now that we are half-way through the 2020s I have enough perspective to say the bad habits that a lot of folks developed during Covid have stuck and it's a shame.
> The only issue with always being the initiator is that no reciprocation is a bit of an… issue to our social brains. Validation, trust, confidence, and friendship itself forms better when there is reciprocation. It’s best not to overthink it, the world is different and what it means to have friends has changed. This is the new normal. It’s better to be the one who leads all the friend groups and activities all the time than to be lonely.
How do you set boundaries?
It would be great if I could go back to how things were, but unfortunately I've changed. I was a lot more naive back then, and usually leaned into giving people the benefit of the doubt. It didn't help that the friendships / acquantainces I'd developed weren't exactly high quality.
In retrospect none of it was sustainable. All this happened when (1) I had lots of free time (2) Could physically meet with friends and (3) Hadn't suffered through betrayals from people I thought I was close to.
As much as it pains me to admit, I just don't have the emotional reserves to deal with one-sided interactions anymore. I would really love to hear from folks who have been in such a situation and have gotten over the hump.
I don’t, I just naturally hang out with the people who are most reciprocating and being the most good vibes.
Ultimately, it’s about me first. I function better and am happier when I have recently socialized. I’m not doing this for others, so it’s all good and I don’t feel like anyone particularly pushes me in a way where I’d need to maintain boundaries for myself in this particular context.
Regarding your three points, I hear them. But you probably have enough free time to text a friend, and sometimes physically meet up with them. I’d say, if you really don’t have time for that (and I was there myself), then probably you’re neglecting your social needs (basic socialising, safety net) for something else. Consider if that something else is worth it. Regarding point 3, I used to expect something reciprocal from friendships, but now I just expect to spend time with/among people. Yeah, most won’t help you in a time of need, and some will speak ill of you behind your back. But you’ll also meet many great people that legitimately will be great friends. So I’d say don’t worry about it — “trust the process”.
Overall, I hear some social anxiety in the 3rd point. Social interactions aren’t always ideal but don’t catastrophize them. Just do what’s good for you yourself first. Make sure your social needs are met. Let all other things and friendships develop or not as they would.
I'm in agreement. I do think it would be a nice thing for friendship to work out, but I've been burned one too many times and the motivation just isn't there any longer.
I sometimes view this as a positive. I used to very much be a people-pleaser and thought that I was going to suffer and die if I didn't come out of one of my social outings with an acquaintance at some point. I was always told humans are tribal, we have a need to feel listened to, and not having friends leads to premature death. In practice I was just forcing myself to socialize based on that doomerism and that rubbed off onto the people I met, so it wouldn't have helped anyone.
When I turned inward and chose to put my own needs in front of those of others, I did become more comfortable with being myself. That's a prerequisite to having healthy relationships anyway (though I still wouldn't say I have any). Since then I've had lots of great conversations with people I've met at outings and large gatherings. I sometimes have conversations that go on for hours about all sorts of topics I may or may not know about and they're satisfying in hindsight.
...But I don't feel like being friends with any of those people anymore. I just let them pass and cherish the moments we did have together. I decided that the only person I have the capacity to fight for is myself from now on.
Nobody said you had to have friends in order to have a source of socialization to stave off bad health outcomes. "Having friends" and "being a bit social occasionally" are two different beasts.
Another thing that maybe people don't like to talk about so much: COVID outed a lot of really mentally unwell people who had prior to it managed to keep that part of their personality to themselves. COVID and stay-at-home brought out so much anti-social nastiness: Selfishness, anger, belligerence, rudeness, conspiracy theories, defiance, and just this sense of contrariness for the sake of contrariness. I got a text during the height of the pandemic from a (now former) friend saying "Dude, did you know there's a bar downtown that's ignoring stay-at-home and letting people in the back door? We should go!" Like, what the fuck, man, don't you see there's a deadly disease going around? What the hell is wrong with you? I think during that time we really saw a lot of "true selves" that we now can't unsee.
I think many people don’t make the effort anymore, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you if you do — nothing to be anxious about, I’d say. Besides, leading and organizing things has its advantages.
Then the monetization enshittification happened, both at the overarching corporate level of facebook and internet advertising in general, and with people becoming exhaustingly self-promoting, which devalued trust between friends and degraded new connections.
The weird thing about the world is seeing everyone turn into me when I was in my teens and twenties ... and I was a product of extreme social bullying that really only alleviated in my 40s.
Which scares me because it means there is some either low-key or high similarity to the trauma / rejection / betrayal I felt from society being exerted on a massive scale.
I used to go around errands trying to engage with people as little as possible, but now, maybe it is projection, I see the effects of isolation on so many people in public, that I get great joy in having a quick exchange with someone. Granted I am now far better at making smalltalk, strangely I slingshotted from being absolutely abysmal at it to well above average.
Smalltalk almost seems like rebellion against the oppressive antisocial time-stealing inferiority-inducing powers that have gatewayed using the mobile phone into all parts of people's lives.
An _illusion_ that 'everyone you know' (and might want to know) is in a single place; while ignoring the razor wire fence surrounding the compound that keeps others out.
Yea, this tracks my observations. A lot of adults make connections in their community through their kids and kids' friends. Kids pick their friends and their parents and guardians just go along for the ride, so when the kids play together, it kind of forces the parents to meet and interact.
Without exception, the parents I meet in the 25-40 age range are what I'd charitably call totally anti-social. Not actively mean (although some are), but just not interested at all in even saying a word to you to pass the time when the children are playing together. They just sit there on their phones trying to get through the experience. In general, these parents project outward an attitude of vague grumpiness and annoyance.
A few of the kid-friends are evidently raised by the 50-70 year old grandparents (never even seen the parents), and these folks tend to be much more social and will shoot the shit with you while the kids play. Much more pleasant and willing to interact while we're forced together. My relationships with them have been civil at worst and friendly at best.
Of course, this is just one person's observations, and yea they are a crude generalization. I'm in my mid-40s so don't have that much in common with either of these groups, but the attitude and behavior difference has been stark!
Also as somebody said, if you are male which from your username I guess you are, then that will change the dynamic - it will be easier for an older person to make conversation without there being any worries of sending the wrong message.
If there are lots of children playing together then parents aren't always social but at a play date I would definitely expect them to be. Also looking after young children is intensive and it might be the only break they get.
I mostly went to toddler groups when mine were young so that I could socialise not them!
- Public park, where kid just spontaneously starts playing with other kids, and parents are temporarily, and more or less randomly associating: In this case, I can sorta see that maybe people just doesn't want to talk to a total random person in a park. Fine. Not my style but it's forgivable--they don't know if I'm deranged or dangerous.
- Public park, or commercial indoor play place where the kids pre-arranged to play together with known friends: This is where it starts getting weird. We all deliberately bring the kids, the kids find each other and go off to play, and at that point, some parents will just totally ignore the other parents, and other parents slink away over to a corner with their phones where they won't have to interact. In these cases I end up just chilling with the grandparents.
- Private setting, kids pre-arranged to come over to our house to play together: This is to me the wildest case, and where the different generations of parents behave totally differently. The youngest parents will just drop the kid off at the end of the driveway and speed away in their car, not even entering our property. The semi-young parents will drive the kid up to our house and drop them off, but leave without coming up to the door or anything. The older generation (grandparents) typically drives up, exits their car, comes up to the door with the kid, and we say hi, exchange pleasantries, and then off they go. It really does seem like socialization norms are changing generation to generation.
You can argue that, in gyms and on the bike path, people are more focused on their goal, but I still find in those situations that oldies are happy to chat for a bit, but younger people just want to block you out.
TBH I hate saying "young people" in this way. I feel like I'm running them down for what is their choice, and that feels bad. But it is something I have noticed in general i.e. not just 1 or 2 individuals.
I recently went back to studying, and it's almost the opposite there. Lots of people need "tutorial/lab friends," and so the barriers to conversation are really low. You literally stand next to someone and bam, instant friend (at least during the lab).
Yea, I also hesitated to post because I feel bad and don't want to be the stereotypical "grumpy old man complaining about young people" but the generational differences in attitudes towards IRL socializing are so stark and clear. It's hard to ignore.
Which leads to social paranoia of judgment and withdrawal.
This is of course by design. Because while people like this are less social, they consume more.
This is a really cynical and negative way to view basic human interaction, the cornerstone of our species and civilization. I've been seeing it a lot lately online, and it doesn't surprise me that people are lonely and aren't making friends if they adopt an attitude like that.
Many of us still can't afford housing anywhere near where the jobs are. How could we possibly put down roots and be a real part of a lasting community worth investing time, effort, and possibly savings in?
Look at the communities that form in dorms
It's not like you're in an apartment or house where you don't know if it'll be next year, 4-5 years, or 10 years when you move; only that someone's going to raise the rent, or you'll get a different job somewhere far enough away and have to endure the hardship of moving everything yet again.
My experience corroborates this. Reminded me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43473618
Identify your hobbies/interests and figure out which ones have budding local groups. E.g. sports, bird watching, hiking, camping, volunteering, etc.
It takes a ton of energy to form and grow new friendships, but once you pass the critical phase, it's much easier to keep them.
I don't think what we're seeing is late stage individualism. It's more like forced/bred isolationism invoked by modern technology. Newer gens are more trapped since they were bred to be on a screen. It's pretty evil, albeit unintentionally (by their parents, at least). Tech giants absolutely love it.
A helpful corollary (from writer Shasta Nelson author of "Frientimacy") is that we all understand that working out requires some amount of pain and struggle (also fun, enjoyment, accomplishment, etc...) in order to get a great bod. We would do well to expect the same experience in friendship. It's not a question of access to people, like Facebook, or even Bumble BFF would have us believe. Again from Shasta "We don't need better friends, we need better friendships."
Even if we accept that as the primary cause (which I don't) that would mean cowardice and racism are the root cause. An irrational fear of people who don't look and talk like us.
The reality is that the groups are distinct, and immediately changes the dynamic from "a facility used and maintained by the group who established it", to "a facility maintained by a third party, to be shared". These do not have equal value to an individual.
I live in place where this is still true. The rec centers are barely solvent and it's mostly retirees and summer camps (cheap daycare) that keeps them afloat.
All of that is still true of everywhere I have lived in the US, except for the free ambulances. And I think the cost of ambulances has more to do with the evolution of health insurance in the US than desegregation.
Unfortunately in reality there is a huge difference between a facility used by one group, and one shared between several. Many community facilities become unpleasant when they are anonymous.
Further confirming the joke, many of those either apreach own or look to buy a bunch of power tools.
Today’s grown-up counter culture seems to be building sheds and growing wide variety of tomatoes.
And it's getting worse. Decline of the local church or equivalent religious community, decline of even the workplace especially after Covid, etc. And of course, social media giving people a way to consume time and feel some (fake) version of being connected.
My wife and I moved our kids from the US back to our country of origin last year. Partly because we wanted to be closer to family. But partly because we didn't want them growing up in a society that lacks community and social fabric.
And are more depressed, sexless, purposeless, and lonelier than before...
I often ask myself, why some people, who are closest to what I would call friends, do not initiate any shared activity at all and how they can always be "busy". Do they not realize, that they are squandering the time they could have with friends?
Specifically it relates to what putting your ability to communicate with others into malicious hands represents. If you allow third-parties to dictate what you see, you'll never be able to make correct decisions based on reality. This distorted reality, or more aptly called distorted reflective appraisal. Reflected appraisal is inherent in our ability to form culture, society, and personal identity. The distortion takes advantage of that, and it happens at a pre-awareness level. Our internal psychology warps to it without us recognizing it, to retain internal consistency.
When you are raised to believe something is impossible, you discard anything to the contrary unless you've experienced direct and extreme personal loss associated to it.
Most people today earnestly believe that they make their own minds up about things and nothing external can change that, which is untrue, but places perceptual blinders so they can't see it no matter how much you may point it out.
Most dependents are unable to adapt after being tortured (which occurs during indoctrination).
The social environment has been shifting towards isolation because that's one of the main elements needed for torture, which is the imposition of psychological stress to induce involuntary hypnotic states.
Yes.
One good counter-force against this wave is dependence. If you depend on someone for something, or you owe them a lot(I don't mean monetarily), you will not cut ties with them even if you have a temporary fallout. You'll push through it. Yes, this has negative effects (abuse) but at the system level you need to optimize for the majority case not the minority case. One of the things an overly financialised society does is to commoditise/securitize every dependency. Homes, food, care, groceries, maintenance, health, everything is attached a value. It is now possible for someone to live entirely on their own, with fully commoditised dependencies. Even when they start a family, the kids go to day care, and eventually the parents go to an old age home - more things commoditised. In fact, the number of old age homes is the best sign of a failing society. Like a nail in the coffin, these commoditized fractures increase the perceived wealth of everyone, rally the stock market and the variety of casinos around us, and people celebrate it.
Great insight.
For example, during covid I believe the anti vaccination movement was largely about community and only tangentially about political goals. Especially because it was an otherwise hard time for people to interact.
It's probably largely the same for the maga movement, the rationalism movement, etc.
It feels nice to be a part of something and to be able to identify with something and such movements tend to easily accept new members as long as they at least aesthetically support the same cause.
Yes. Great writing on this from Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind), Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Ezra Klein (Why We're Polarized) and Vivek Murthy (Together). Haven't read these, but I've read about them. One of their main ideas is that when people lose trust in institutions and feel disconnected, they’re more likely to embrace extreme ideologies or groups that promise belonging.
Look at a specific microcosm: dating. Dating is "awful" now (according to people both young and old), in a particular way that it wasn't even ten years ago. And sure, this is in part because we do everything online these days, and online dating has a few inherent problems with it. But not as many as you'd think; online dating used to "work" at least alright, in a way that it very much doesn't today / with none of the particular pathologies that it has today.
Dating sites and apps used to do things that actually helped people meet — vaguely optimizing for relationships. So people increasingly gravitated toward using dating apps. And for a while (peaking, I'd say, around the early 2010s), this actually increased the number of people meeting and getting into relationships.
And then one company, Match Group, came along and gradually bought up every "good" dating site, and enshittified them all, in a particular way that maximizes user retention + profit margins (and thereby minimizes the chance of a successful, happy relationship being formed.) They made dating apps bad at being dating apps. But there are no good dating apps — so people now feel stuck/confused, flailing around trying to make "online dating" work when there are only bad options for doing so.
I posit that online social networking in general went through the same evolution. Not because of one asshole company buying up and enshittifying everything, mind you; more because of market consolidation under a few companies who were all willing to copy one-another's homework in advancing the frontier of enshittified social experiences.
Facebook (and Facebook-like experiences) used to be a place you'd turn in the expectation of seeing updates from your actual literal friends, and engaging with those updates. Now it's radioactive for that purpose — and so is abandoned to being a sea of advertisements (and memes from boomers too inattentive to realize when the people they're talking at have left the table.)
And Instagram and even Snapchat have just copied TikTok's enshittified-from-the-start model of "personalized TV but all programs are 10 seconds long."
I have many friends I met in the 2000s and 2010s, where I recall heavily relying on social media as a fit-to-purpose tool to maintain and deepen those friendships. But I can't imagine what social network I could lean on to serve as that kind of tool for me today.
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Yes, IM and group-chat apps always existed and still exist today. But that's not what traditional social networks got you.
It's funny that I even feel the need to explain this, but here's what social-networks-as-tools had to offer:
1. profile pages — like dating profiles or LinkedIn profiles, but from a lens of "this is what I want potential friends to know about me"!
2. "walls" — a specific semi-public place, attached to a person's profile, to leave a message "performatively" for not only that person, but also anyone else who looked at that person's wall, to see (think: birthday wishes.) Critically, walls are owned and therefore moderated by the profile they're attached to — so, unlike a feed, you can't really (successfully) cyberbully someone on their own wall. They can just delete your message; block you (which will block you from posting to their wall); or disable non-friends from posting to their wall entirely.
3. a home page view, that is simply a dumb chronological view of anything your direct friends have posted to their own walls. Not including friends-of-friends content. It was a social norm, back in the heyday of social networking, that you'd always be caught up on on everything your friends have posted — because it shouldn't add up to much. Nobody could "share" anything out of its originally intended broadcast audience (the poster's friends), and thus there was no benefit to "posting performatively, as if for a mass audience" — and therefore, posts were sparse and personal, making it practical to truly inbox-zero your feed in maybe 20 minutes per day.
Modern social networks don't have profile pages (at least, not that anyone populates with anything — Facebook has vestigial ones nobody uses), owner-moderated public walls, or non-re-shareable "just for mutuals" posts. They have none of the tools that we originally associated with the category of "a tool that makes it easier to network socially." And yet these apps that do not successfully accomplish social networking, are what we today refer to as "social networking apps." And are what everyone therefore thinks to turn to when trying to network socially online.
No wonder, I think, that people find it hard.
The examples you gave of grocery delivery and overnight prime delivery are things that city people have, who generally vote against individualism and for collectivist policies.
Even in some socialist utopia where the community provides everything and individualism has been snuffed out entirely, that wouldn’t force more or less human interaction to create friends.
Maybe it's movies and TV, where a "close friend" is more or less a non judgemental therapist that will throw down in a fight for you.
What is a close friend? Before we can start asking people if they have any we should probably agree on a definition. If you use the Hollywood standard, then probably none of us have close friends.
In my experience, most friends come and go. That's OK. People change. Circumstances change. One person is always putting in more effort than the other. Some friends will always be aloof. Some friends will pretend they are independent and don't need friendship "like everyone else does," but they're generally full of it. Some friends will seem clingy.
Just roll with it.
The other challenge is finding people, especially as you get older. I've posted this before, but as you get older you really need to seek out established communities. Sports, trivia nights, things of that nature. Something where you can hop in and immediately meet 5+ people. Then you need to show up, over and over. That's how friendships form.
At that point, it's on you. People are out there and in my experience they are excited to meet new folks.
We can write a huge dissertation on why we think The Friendship Recession has happened, but it's quite simple. Inertia is human nature. It takes effort to learn something new and join a community where people are practicing that thing. It takes vulnerability and effort. It's kinda scary.
It's a lot harder than turning on YouTube or flipping through TikTok. And most people understandably don't want to do hard things, especially after the stresses of work and life.
I've come to this same conclusion, but rarely express it because it's possible I'm just different. And I'd even go one step further, I think what a lot of people say friendship is, isn't actually what human friendship is in practice. I think these unrealistic expectations undermine real-world friendships because they always fall short.
Theoretical friendship:
- Completely perfect and devoid of all realities of life
- No jealousy, no competition, no negative feelings
- Timeless and immortal
- No effort involved
- Completely balanced and healthy for everybody at all times
- Able to talk about every topic
Realistic friendship:
- Temporary at first, may or may not build into something more
- Often starts with a simple exchange of banter on common interests
- Multiple opinions/topics that are mutually avoided
- One person often tries harder, one person often values the relationship more
- The relationship may or may not even be mutually healthy
- Many will hit a point where they become more effort than they're worth and end (e.g. moving)
- Some will never grow out of one or two common things to bitch about
> - Completely perfect and devoid of all realities of life
Friendships are relationships that stand the test of time and hardship. You work through problems, illnesses including mental health struggles, deaths, employment and money problems, family and relationship problems, legal problems, all sorts.
> - No jealousy, no competition, no negative feelings
There are obviously always mixed emotions, but generally you won't harbour serious ill will towards your friends. This is something you can work on, though, as jealousy and envy are personality traits that can be controlled. Healthy competition is a positive, though.
> - Timeless and immortal
Friendships change and sometimes have to be ended, even when you like the other person. I think this is quite common and almost a trope of Hollywood movies.
> - No effort involved
Short of family and maybe employment, friendships require the most work in life. This one is particularly baffling from a Hollywood perspective, as going a friend in need is like the all-time Hollywood trope.
> - Completely balanced and healthy for everybody at all times
Obviously this isn't true, but this isn't portrayed either. Flawed characters are the only compelling characters in Hollywood.
> - Able to talk about every topic
Again, changing the uncomfortable topic trope is an ultra-trope.
Your "realistic friendship" section fits acquaintances rather than friends.
>I think these unrealistic expectations undermine real-world friendships because they always fall short.
I think some self-reflection is in order here, as this is projection.
Is the idea that friendship might be transactional too scary a thought to consider head on?
Here's some science on the topic that is food for thought: https://www.thecut.com/2016/05/half-of-your-friends-probably...
Rather than be defensive, it was designed to shock you out of your current thought patterns on friendship, because they are almost delusional. Neither movie idealised friends nor real-life friendships have any of the characteristics you describe, and that is distorting your view of the world.
Pretending real friendship is a Hollywood myth is self-selecting yourself out of one of the most rewarding aspects of life. Don't do it to yourself.
> The study authors gave a survey to 84 college students in the same class,
Come on, time to get offline and go make some friends.
At the end of the day though? Yeah, maybe just a good reminder for us all to get outside and meet people.
Oof, I really struck a nerve huh?
I'm sure you're smart enough to know you shouldn't try to hurt people's feelings just because they believe and idea that you don't believe.
No, you're misreading the tone here. It's more gentle paternal nudging.
Don't let confirmation bias mislead you into a lonely life, especially not based on a study on somecollege students.
I know it's more comforting to believe real friendships exist only in fiction rather than admit you haven't experienced it, but in the long run, this belief only hurts you.
Based on your comments, maybe some paternal advice wouldn't go astray.
My best friend of 30 years now met me because I distributed warez in Junior High. He hung around because I had something useful and wanted to maintain a relationship with me. This grew into something more meaningful
Friendships in movies are neither effortless nor healthy. They have conflicts and personality issues to create drama and comedy.
Like, I don't know what it is that you watch in TV ... but what I watch is much different.
when you reach age 40, will have families to look after and a lot more to lose than they used to have, like a nice house and a good job
or they'll be at the far end of a skype link / international flight
or they'll have discovered a new chill side to themselves now they don't have 19-year-old energy and hormone levels
and you'll realise you don't want your boy to fuck up his custody arrangements by getting sent to jail over some dumb brawl
They'll still support you in the face of life's challenges, but it'll be support of a very different kind.
Some friends are closer than family. That’s luck, but also intention.
Now, that's a Friend.
Obviously I don't want a friend who will literally run the risk of getting sent to jail over some dumb brawl. And I didn't when I was 19 either.
The article follows similar lines, but I feel "forcing friendships" just leads to shallow "friendships" with little meaning. In fact so many modern friendships are sustained by small talk, which Carl Jung derides as meaningless..
I’m probably bottom quintile for social skills and I have done some extremely unwise things for one of my friends who was there for me when I needed a hand. The Hollywood idea of “close friend” is a great deal nearer to my own life experience than its representation of many other important relationships.
I doubt even popular school / university kids manage to sustain that many actually *close* friends for long !
I think what everyone wants to do with all this postulating and explaining is avoid the fact that it is hard and takes time and is awkward and there's no clear metric of success. But still worth it, somehow. Like life.
That's pathetic thinking. It's inoffensive until someone turns the keys.
Plane accidents often occur by sabotage or failure of multiple systems.
There has been an interplay and "intellectual curiosity" from both movie studios and internet giants on online personas and social groups. They even married recently!
This bait and switch of blaming the other will backfire.
The nation concept now drains out the need and viability of communities, families and friendships. It's like a whale swallowing animals. Animals can no longer keep their own structure and identity once they are inside the whale. They will be disintegrated into individual molecules and become citizens of the whale. Nations do the same. The existence and strength of a nation requires disintegration of internal structures and autonomous bodies. Communities, families and friendships all go against the individualistic nation concept. The best citizens are individual workers with no connections and no opinions and maybe no gender.
We lend PHYSICAL copies of albums, video games and books to one another. This increases trust, knowledge and love for one another. We share stories about all sorts of things. We create stories by doing things together.
This is how friendships are formed and maintained. This is humanity. This is who we are and how we behave.
Poverty is the digital world.
See you out there!
But the metal pub is really just an example. Any activity where people regularly come together just to chew the fat is better than online for creating friendships.
Take care.
My anecdotal impression is that people don't really use those that are available very much and the drop in investment is because of that.
I have organized a few events in community halls over the past few years and I have been struck by just how available the event spaces we looked at were. No conflicts, no competing priorities, nobody using any of the other rooms at the same time, etc. Some communities are no longer bothering to have community halls at all, as nobody really uses them.
Where I live, the local community centres are not heavily used. Community social events have dwindled due to being poorly attended. The coffee shops, bars, and pubs have cut seating and replaced it with dedicated pickup areas for those who send in orders or are buying it through a delivery app. Schools have cut all manner of parent activities as the parents don't participate.
Same thing for anything that isn't a flagship park or flagship sports facility. Sure, the top city parks are crowded, but most are pretty empty even on sunny days.
So I have to ask, is there actually much demand for more social interaction? As it seems that the drop is mostly in demand, not supply.
I’ve personally become aware of the fact that I need more social contact. I want to attend events, but never really built the habit of organizing. My ex was always the social instigator, and I didn’t realize how much I relied on that (we were together for most of my adult life).
The more people I talk to about this, the more I hear them lamenting the lack of in-person gatherings.
I think social media has kind of filled the need poorly, and this has changed habits. It’s not what people want, but it has them hooked, and IRL gatherings have suffered as a result.
It reminds me of some of the comments from the younger crowd about TikTok. “I hate it, but I can’t stop using it, because everyone else is on it”.
I really think people want real social interaction but have gotten caught in this social media habit that just barely meets the need. Junk food vs. a nutritious meal.
I suppose at the end of the day you could still say this means demand is down, but I think there are more layers than that.
On a workday, there isn't much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat dinner, policing screen time and homework. Then bedtimes and such, following up on the zillion school emails, PTA newsletters, scheduling. If I have 45 min of downtime, typically in the 10-11pm range, if I'm lucky.
On weekends, there's all the deferred housework, like cleaning and laundry. Kids have swim and sports. Visits to grandparents, from grandparents. Every now and then we have someone over for a games afternoon, or someone is visiting from out of town, but I really doubt that adds up to 4 hr / wk.
The problem we have as a parenting culture is that we're not comfortable ignoring our kids. We need to teach kids that ignoring them is not the same as not caring for them. In fact, they need to feel the sensation of not being the most important thing for once. It's better to get some attention from a happy parent than all of the attention of a sad parent.
If anything the opposite - the other men respected her more, because they knew she was her father's daughter. They would also have fatherly protective instincts towards her.
Now she plays bowling professionally herself.
On the contrary, it sometimes was okay if that friend had children. I think the issue in the modern day however, is that less people are having children, so there simply isn't the opportunity. For example, I'm the only person in my friend group who has children.
My best friend comes over once a weekend and we watch the TV that my wife doesn’t want to.
I participate in a sport (powerlifting) where I’ve made friends and there’s room to socialise while exercising.
I chose to move back to my home town and also go to college there.
I go to metal gigs with friends when the kids are asleep.
I’m happily married, my wife is training for a marathon and sees friends too.
We pay for a cleaner.
Don’t know that this is 6.5 hours in person with friends every week but I’d say it’s at least a couple of hours each.
It’s doable, it just might require not doing some stuff you already do and enjoy. There’s a bunch of stuff I did pre-kids that I don’t any more and would like to find time for again one day.
Because otherwise, as the father of a 1 and 5 year old, I completely agree with OP and find your story unbelievable. Like OP I work/exercise/do chores from 6 am to 10 pm. I'm on HN right now only because it's Saturday and I'm relaxing.
Buried lede.
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu...
A tip I got from a friend in his 60s was that even when you lose friends, life is great because you constantly have the opportunity to find new ones. I am in a new close friends renaissance in my 40s, just be vulnerable and don’t take rejection personally.
But if not shouldn't your spouse be doing some of this? Why are you getting the kids ready and making dinner and doing all the homework/school stuff and working full time?
Why not have grandparents watch the kids when they visit (or you drop them off)? Why do you need to be there at all? Great time to go meet a friend for lunch. Or grandparents can take the kids to sports. Or you make friends with other parents at those sports activities so you can interact while the kids are there.
It still may be possible now but that will require reducing your standard of living to what was common then. Think no stone counter-tops. Not driving a 0-3 year old car with $10,000 just in electronics. Having linoleum floors instead of high-end tile. Eating Hamburger Helper, spaghetti, not ordering door dash 5x a week. Resisting the constant stream of social media, influencers, advertisements that are telling you everyone else lives better than you and making you feel bad about it, which causes you to spend money on things you don't need but raise the aesthetic of your life and make you feel like you're living better.
I'd bet that if someone was happy to live in the standard of living that was 20-30 years ago, it could still be done on a single middle class income which would allow for the leisure time required to spend 6.5hrs+ with friends [citation needed]
Money and locality.
Money: You pay people to do things that take up time.
We have a house cleaner. That's a few hours right there. When the kids were little, we had a nanny. But the nanny didn't just watch the kids. She also washed and folded the laundry, tidied the house daily, and sometimes cooked dinner. In fact, now that they are in school, I'm thinking of hiring a home helper to do those things because those chores get neglected right now (although the kids can almost do it now instead).
Locality: Visit people who live nearby.
Most of my friends that I see regularly are either my wife's brothers and their families, since they all live locally, or the parents of our kids friends, who all live nearby since we go to the local school, or the neighbors who we like. We have family dinner a few times a week, either at someone's house or out to eat (see point one about money), and especially on weekends and summer break, we hang out a lot with the neighbors.
I don't however see my college friends or work buddies much anymore. That is what I had to give up when I had kids. We have some group chats and will occasionally get together, but that requires arranging babysitting, or one of us going on a trip with those friends (see the point about money again). But both my wife and I try to do that at least once a year (go on a friends trip).
It’s one of the problems with birth rate collapse. The fewer people have kids, the harder it is in very hard to measure ways.
The work parent tended to socialise in the evening and the home parent during the day.
The home parent was essentially self-employed, working directly for themselves and the family. A real "hustler" lifestyle.
Nowadays we've got everyone working full time for someone else leaving only evenings and weekends to work for ourselves. Or you spend a huge chunk of that salary on childcare, cleaners and dog walkers. We're addicted to work.
This is all feeding wealth directly to the owning class. People used to own a lot more themselves. They used to own clothes that could be repaired; furniture that could be polished, restored and lasted for generations; machines that could be serviced etc. Now nobody has time for any of that stuff. What you "own" is just worthless commodities like IKEA or Zara. Things that used to be assets are just another expense now.
The problem is there's no real way out for individuals. House prices are driven up by couples who both work. Tax systems benefits such couples too. So you're doubly screwed if you want to opt out of building billionaire wealth and instead work for yourself like they used to. Then you've got factors like settlements being built around cars, so now you need two cars, another huge expense (not an asset) or the stay at home parent is basically trapped at home all day. So now you're triply screwed.
What we really need AI for is a way out of these ridiculous local optima we get ourselves into. We desperately need to solve inequality. Unfortunately we also like to feel like we're in control, so any AI has its work cut out: guide humanity to happiness but trick them into thinking it was their idea. I have no idea why an AI would bother to do this for a species that themselves chooses not to do this for other animals and even each other, though.
My wife had a good friend via our oldest being best friends with her oldest. We would do family get togethers and I would hang out with the husband but I had zero desire to hang out with him 1:1 despite both wives pushing for it. Our kids stopped being friends and we stopped being friends with the family. Honestly it was a relief. Having to pretend to be interested in what they were saying was exhausting.
I get up at 7am to get kids ready for school and start work at 9. Work until 4ish and then go get the kids. Everyone is home by 4:30 or so but then we have sports 4 nights a week until about 7. Then dinner. Wife is not remote so generally gets home around 6pm. Weekends is sports on Saturdays. We have Sundays to ourselves right now which is great. I'm writing this in the 2 hour break between kids sports games. I took the youngest to football, came home, the wife took him to a birthday party and now I have to take the oldest to his game in an hour.
I hit the gym for an hour or so 4x a week sometime between 7 and 9 during the week depending on if I am having dinner with the family (sometimes I'll go during work). Then I go again on Sunday. Gym is pretty much the only me time I have and I will not miss it.
Gotten to the point where I struggle to think of people I meet as real. I feign interest until we can part ways. I don't even know people's names at work. They are all offshore as well so our hours don't really overlap. Can't even pretend to be interested in my siblings anymore. I have to see my wife's dad once a week and its a struggle. I dread him passing away as I am going to have to try and pretend to be upset. He is a great guy, I have nothing against him, just no connection.
It just is what it is, I love my wife and kids but just have zero attachment or empathy for anyone else.
Instead of doom scrolling on social media we called a friend.
Instead of binge watching another meh show, we had friends over to play cards or a board game.
Instead of over scheduling kids with constant activities, parents had a regular night out with friends while kids spent quality time at home with the other parent.
The time is there. It was in the past. We just have a finite amount of time and use it differently.
These conversations are difficult online because people who fall into routines without friend or personal time often refuse to believe that anything else is possible. Even in this comment thread there are accusations that other people are lying about spending time with friends because they just can’t believe it’s possible.
The common thread I see in discussions is the claim that every day is filled from start to finish with every activity. Now realistically we know you’re not exercising every single day, not doing laundry all weekend start to finish, and not reading a zillion PTA newsletters every night because those are just examples. Yet those lists are always given as reasons why people can never have free time even though they aren’t always happening.
It’s much harder for single parents, obviously, but for a household with two parents it shouldn’t be hard for one parent to go out with friends after the kids are down one night each week and/or for a couple hours on the weekend. This alone would get to 4hrs/week or beyond. I’m not exaggerating when I say every set of parent friends I know does some variation of this. Friend groups will sync up their nights away to get together.
Second, playing with kids is an easy opportunity to meet up with parent friends. We take the kids to a local park with local parents a couple days a week in the afternoon briefly before dinner. Really easy way to catch up while the friends are playing.
Third, once the kids are old enough to not require extreme supervision at dinner time we like to have friends over for dinner. Obviously this isn’t a fancy 3-course meal with wine afterward, but we don’t care. Friends like to stop by for a quick dinner.
Fourth, if you’re cramming your schedule so full of kids activities and cleaning tasks to keep the house constantly clean that you have zero wiggle room for finding a couple hours with friends each week, that’s a choice. Saying this makes a lot of people angry, but the truth is you have to prioritize and compromise. Some times we decide we don’t have time for another activity commitment. Other times we decide the house can stay messy for an extra day to catch an opportunity to meet up with someone. Most of the time we trade off parent to parent.
Like I said, it’s different if you’re a single parent. However every parent friend I know does some variation of this and we spend time with each other. If finding a measly 4 hours per week feels completely impossible, I would suggest stepping back and looking at priorities and how your splitting time between parents.
I should also mention that paying attention to things like screen time and distractions is important. I’ve had a few friends who were exasperated at how impossible it felt to do anything, until they checked their screen time tracker and realized that 3-4+ hours of every day was disappearing into their phone. For others this could be TV or computer Internet browsing. Some of this is always okay, but you have to realize it’s a choice you’re making about where the time goes.
I had a TV in my room since I was 8 (1988) and my parents didn't police anything. Maybe this is a newer concern due to a greater understanding of tech dangers
I recently moved back from Asia to Northern Europe, famous for being a place hard to make friends. I made a new friend, when I one day went to the local swimming pool and just started to talk with an old, pensioner guy.
He reached out to me later, we set up a coffe chat and now it's a biweekly routine.
It was a fun story so I told it to friend & partner/families. All of my women friends first reaction was caution. "what does he want? Be careful with your drink!". My guy friends were more perplexed on why I'd even bother befriending someone almost 50+ year older than me. What's there to be gained.
I realized a few years back that meeting people with absolute zero expectations is the most fun way. It even worked good on online dating. As long as I enjoy taking to the person (a low bar) it's not time wasted.
Time is not to be wasted. Everything needs a goal/reason. Most people cultivate this mindset and the added expectations on new connections, to me seems like a cultural shift that happened as a result of what the article describes. One can remove that sentiment even with the work/nuclear family stuff. (not sure about the physical constraints)
It's pretty sad and telling that people's first reaction to something as wholesome and positive as making a new friend is suspicion and selfish apathy. Illustrative of the widespread anti-social mental illness that we somehow have managed to normalize.
This is what we are judging potential friends against. They have to be both perfect and beautiful to get even close to matching what we see everyday on the internet.
In the same way porn can make your real sexual partners feel lacking, these perfect people on reddit/Instagram/TikTok will make any potential real friends seem lacking and worthless. Not worth the effort.
Meanwhile the fact that we are also less than perfect is kept bottled up, we avoid looking at ourselves in the mirror too closely, all of that gets shunted into the subconscious and bubbles back up as depression, lack of self worth, workaholism, addiction, and other mental health issues.
What are you gaining then? It must be something right?
But in my experience, friendship quality is much more important than quantity.
I’m only truly friends with people I admire and am interested in, and grow to care about. Some of these friendships happen fast and others are slow burners - they aren’t all alike. But they are definitely hard to come across, particularly in middle age.
I believe those friendships give me the kind of benefits that experts suggests we lose in isolation. These are the kinds of friendships you carry with you wherever you are - often wondering what those friends would or do think about the things you are experiencing.
On the other hand, I have many acquaintances, some quite longstanding, where the friendship switch never got flipped. Perhaps I am viewed as a bit stand-offish. I am never not gracious but I just don’t have the small talk gene.
Oh, and you can absolutely have friends AND children. I have both.
Everybody has the reaction you described. They all seeemed to be unhappily stuck in the same mindset I was, and nobody went ahead and tested the hypothesis.
It just takes one.
I live in a building with 25 apartments. Nobody really knew their neighbours. After I had been living there for almost five years, one tenant decided that everybody should meet for a barbecue in the yard and get to know each other. Now, we all know the people living next to us, we meet regularly for dinners or barbecues and chat. We have a WhatsApp group where we exchange news and favours. I'm almost sure that without this one person's initiative, most of us would still be strangers. Apparently, everybody thought it was a pity that we don't know each other better, but nobody else kicked things off until that one guy did and showed us that we all felt the same way.
I feel the same way. you are our hero!
Honestly, I feel that a lot of people do not appreciate this kind of behavior as much as they should
IMO this is the biggest challenge ahead of us. What’s the point of all this amazing life enhancing technology if we’re lonely, sad, and severed from our tribes.
Where I live there were long covid lockdowns and most people expressed relief about not having to go to parties and make painful small-talk with strangers. They were already forcing themselves to go to social engagements because they didn't want to be seen as a loser, but they weren't enjoying it. This is historically unusual, people didn't see socialising as a chore necessary to maintain one's mental health a century ago.
Every article on the issue though takes as its starting point that socialising is obviously great and there must just be small obstacle which prevents people doing more of it. IMO there wouldn't be an epidemic of self-diagnosed social anxiety / high-functioning autism / 'introverts who get drained by social interactions' if people were actually enjoying their social engagements.
Unless you first diagnose why people dislike socialising nowadays you're unlikely to fix the problem. Enjoining people to 'invest' in relationships is entirely missing the point, people used to hang out with their friends because they enjoyed it not because they thought it was an investment.
It reads very Ivory Tower, an overly scientific and analytic essay on something that simply doesn't work unless it happens naturally. I appreciate where the author is coming from, and their intentions, but I think it ironically ends up arguing against its own premises. It mentions that people are forgetting how to form natural connections and deal with the messiness of personal interactions, before going on to suggest approaches that feel mostly like following a recipe or checklist.
I have a friend who on one hand believes all of the anti-vax, evil illegal immigrate stuff and might even believe that Trump’s tariffs are okay. But on the other hand, I have never heard him say anything negative about other people, cultures, sexualities etc.
I consider him a good friend. On the other hand, there was this other guy I was friends with for awhile. He became full MAGA. It got to the point where I just couldn’t deal with him anymore.
I guess the people I won’t deal with or Trump conservatives (ie populists). I’m good with traditional conservatives we can usually even have polite intellectual conversations about politics.
I'm not sure how anyone could believe immigrants are intrinsically bad without racism tbh.
It’s relatively easy for someone to understand just by taking a slight step back out of their world view why a man may be attracted to another man or a woman may be a attracted to another woman or someone may be attracted to both sexes.
But trans goes against everything they know about science. And even for those who are very much “let you do you” thinks it’s a bridge too far to have biological men in women’s sports.
This is a bridge too far for even me (yes I know it’s an unpopular opinion) and I’m a “f*! the police”,BLM, universal healthcare, free college education, religious skeptical, increase the safety net and lean liberal
I'm (apparently, or so I'm told) a flaming lefty lib, who recently moved out of the Bay Area to a very "red" part of California. If I limited my friends to only people like me politically, I'd have to be a hermit. I basically take it as given that any new person I strike up a conversation with will not agree with my politics, so I just don't bring it up. Most of my friends got the hint clearly when they brought some of their Trump shit up and I immediately steered the conversation away. We have a good understanding--let's talk about positive things we have in common: hobbies, beer, cars, whatever. Don't bring up politics or religion, and you can make friends with anyone!
Some of them just can't bear to live even a few minutes without talking about their politics at every possible moment, and they're just not friends anymore.
I genuinely think it's not possible to maintain close friendship with this many people, especially if they're not in the same group. Or perhaps my definition of a "close friend" differs from an average american, both now and back then.
One thing I’m considering is that maybe it’s ok if friends don’t reciprocate. I think some people just have to be the inviters or relationships fall apart.
Now I'm 40, divorced, and have an atrophied social network. Forcing myself to become an inviter is the only path out of loneliness.
As annoying as it is, this is definitely true. I've only recently become an inviter, and it's made all the difference. It helps to recognize that not everybody is an inviter/organizer.
[1] Overwhelmingly it’s one guy and if they leave the nights out and trips just stop.
Of course that’s an over generalization but for the most part it’s true.
Make an effort, make the calls, maintain the relationship by giving it your time, in person. Or the friendship will wither and die.
i recently reconnected to a bunch of people that i haven't spoken to in 20 years. i figured i am not going to find a better opportunity, and if i don't reconnect soon i'll probably never do it.
2. A few bad apples can spoil a group.
3. Maintaining a group is a thankless job.
4. Third places are money making establishments now rather than community focused. So people save up to go to the ones that they'll remember. So there's competing money for these attractions, and the experience undergoes enshitification.
Solutions?
- lower the cost of community space so more people can enjoy them.
- social etiquette needs be enforced through culture. Conformity has its benefits. We don't need planes to land because Johnny had too much to drink.
Anyway, I feel like people think they can let friendships develop by osmosis. I don't think ANY deeply fulfilling relationship can just happen without real relationship work.
where are wages stagnating and for whom?
Other than that, every minute I don't have to spend with my family is precious. And every such a minute with enough energy to do something productive is even more precious. So yeah, for me solitude is absolutely a preference.
But being able to live your life alone without dying is a privilege that we should be thankful for.
My friends have been there at my low lows, and knowing that I can theoretically call them at any point of my day just makes me feel good about myself. Conversely, I’d like to think that my friends can call me at any point of the day for no reason at all. Stupid stuff like having a small joke group chat of “rags to riches” where we just share stupid ideas is just liberating. Meeting them in person and doing stuff together, even if some of them (or me) hates it, is still objectively a nice feeling.
If I lived in Afghanistan for example, I would rather stay at home playing video games instead of interacting with my neighbors. In the past, this would be impossible because video games didn't exist. That's why I'm saying that we live in amazing times where people can "choose" to not have friends instead of being forced into communities.
That is a spectacular change. I put it down to the amount of time he had to pursue his hobbies and interests (most of these friends were a part of that) vs me who is at work all the time.
this… feels a bit off. I would have to look at that article to see what they are saying.
We see the rise of online dating apps being the number one way (by a large margin) for urban educated singles to meet their future partners. If you’re in a place like SF or NYC, you can completely forget about meeting your future spouse at some hobby, the gym, or even in a friend group. I think a lot of this has to do with entitlement - a strong belief that a person deserves a match that is unwaveringly perfect/better-than-themselves. This Disney-ification of romance is very strong among certain crowds.
In my view, this has a strong effect on social circles. People won’t introduce anyone anymore. You might have a party and people might end up together but the idea of specifically inviting people or introducing friends to each other for romantic purposes is, practically speaking for yuppie circles, gone. The main reason I’ve seen is that certain people have gotten increasingly hostile to anyone even suggesting a person to them that is less than perfect/godly. To the point where many people are afraid of suggesting anything and therefore will not risk their own reputation and friendship because they really feel they’ll lose their friend if they even suggest a potential romantic connection.
So, anyway, my belief is romance within social circles is quickly dying due to entitlement and this has a strong pusher for people to not put as much effort into them. Once that is established, it carries over into the rest of your life because you didn’t ever prioritize it. Therefore, even if you’re partnered, you have learned to live without.
It’s shocking how few relationships I’ve seen are from social circles. If anyone ever studies how people 25-35, educated, and living in major cities dates… being single will be more common than any non-app method.
I come to HN for insightful comments, and of course there is one in the 335 posted here: that socializing is no longer necessary for survival. In 2025 your crises are for your therapist and your financial issues are for a fintech and you move house with Dolly and your career is for LinkedIn and your Ikea assembly is for Angi. In 2001 nearly everyone would use their friends or family for those things; in 2025 you don't need them.
And so we are left with a world where you don't strike up a conversation anymore; it's too hard and too dangerous and too risky. You don't go to church (too problematic) or the bar (bad for you.) You don't hit on people (there's Tinder.) You don't go to the store (Amazon) and if you do go to a restaurant you don't talk to anyone (pickup.) You don't see your friends and family; you don't need them to move (use an app) or put together a sofa (use an app) or talk about your feelings (go to therapy.) As it turns out, you can replace love and touch and hugs and hate and bus conversations and bank tellers and racist neighbors and unprotected sex and and and and all of the things in all of the people with one little screen just a few inches square.
Technology is destroying our society and our lives.
- - -
Found it:
I can understand that people want to have 100% privacy and not exist near people they don't get along with, but not sharing a kitchen and living room seems a bit too far.
Also I am sad that apps like the defunct foursquare or social network are not actively trying to make neighbors connect with each others. I fail to understand why.
I suspect that in the 70s, sexual liberation, despite its advantages, caused an epidemic maternal deprivation, where people are now unable to feel comfortable near others.
I have seen, over the ,last ten years, a great depression, as in mood. People are getting more depressed, and that leads them inward, and it is driven by anxiety. Most people are "flight" when they are faced with anxiety.
And the capitalism and online world has made isolation much easier and way more "enjoyable". Movies, porn, food, all of it acquired without a single human contact. Now people are clamoring they want to work from home as well, making loneliness even more available.
This is the outcome of hypercapitalism[1]. Extracting labor from the humans while feeding it all its' needs through the tubes of the internet.
I am writing this in a Starbucks right now. Ten years ago I would find couches and comfy chairs in every store. Now? stiff Uncomfortable chairs in a cold industrial setting, the store and counter set up for rushed to go orders.
This is not about something being wrong with people, it is a system that is tearing us apart.
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978047067059...
Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail.
Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by.
We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship groups. This is possible thanks to globe-spanning networks of communication and trade.
Kinship groups are great, but many of them have painful costs. Some 60 percent of Americans, for example, suffered an adverse childhood experience in kinship groups. Some of these could not be avoided - like a loved one's untimely death. Most of these negative experiences were intent or neglect by kinship group members.
If your early experiences of kinship groups are negative, you are less likely to seek out other human connection. You have learned that your kinship group is not reliable. If people genetically close to you cannot be relied on, then why should it be different for strangers?
The connections you do find tend to be focused on your interests, and those people don't need to be nearby for you to have a strong connection. But you still have your prior experiences keeping you skeptical of human reliability.
Personally, I sympathize with everyone who is sad about communities becoming fragmented.
I think, though, that if these communities were as supportive, inclusive, or beneficial as they imagine themselves to be this would not be a problem.
Bad communities should be allowed to fail. That is probably what is happening here.
The psychological argument is that it is necessary for survival — that a society that has long taken underlying healthy behaviours for granted is discovering that it's losing what defines society itself.
Trust, cooperation, sustainable development, sound policy-making, education, child-care...
Heck, cooperation is a survival strategy that came out of evolution. It exists outside of humans. It doesn’t need to come from human intent.
It feels weird to me that people think they can intelligently design cooperative societies and groups. You can try, but there’s always going to be trade offs between individuals and the group.
In this moment, individuals are in a place where they can avoid many of those trade offs and costs. I think this is generally positive considering my own experience of costly kinship groups. But I can see why others disagree.
This sounds like what some call the Libertarian Housecat position. "My needs are met, and I am unaware of complex externalities that make meeting my needs possible."
This is wishful thinking. The resilience of communities is orthogonal to their moral worth, which is inherently subjective. Many communities which have horrific traits survive and thrive for centuries and even millennia. Many which I'm sure you would consider morally good are perilously close to failure.
When a mountain falls out of the sky, it’s no one’s fault (not even the bad people) that the community failed.
Are there circumstances under which nation states could/should be seen as 'communities', I wonder. And, what would be some sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale.
If your local elites are generally better than the alternative people tend to stick around
War and revolution. 'Burn it down and start from scratch' is an extreme path to fix a failing country. Historically, the people that rebuild are rarely the same people that burned it down.
No. Imagined communities are fake communities with none of the feedback mechanisms that make real communities resilient to elements that have extremely different priorities to the median member. See how the Swedish Social Democrats imported over 1% of the Swedish population in one year from Syria.
"I against my brother. I and my brother against my cousin. I, my brother, and my cousin against the world" -Arab Proverb
In kinship group days, and especially before vaccines, children simply didn’t survive. They died by the millions.
Today, a child has a viable alternative to the abusive or neglectful kinship group. Very often it is The State, but still. An alternative!
I am afraid that the child is still pretty screwed... especially if you try to generalise this to 60% of children !
Are you not assuming something is not killing these communities from the outside?
Should all people who get an infection be allowed to die?
People are being squeezed to death by hypercapitalism and you blame the communities?
People fight for communities they want to preserve. There’s no guarantees that fight will be successful.
But when they don’t fight? Maybe it’s because they can’t. Or don’t want to. No one should ask them or force them to.
So, "no one should ask" a suicidal person to not kill themselves "or force them" not to.
It is when people cannot fight for themselves that those of us who can fight have to fight even harder. I am saying this as someone who has attempted suicide twice.
You are literally arguing in favor for shrugging your shoulders to things like slavery.
In American culture, hyper-individualism has become a virtue somehow but this too is just a symptom of capitalism. Why? Because people who act collectively are a threat to capitalist power structures.
The whole "gig economy" is nothing more than needing a 2nd and 3rd job just to survive as real wages continue to stagnate or decline and costs keeping going up. That's less free time.
The Internet is a negative here too. Physical proximity has historically had huge power in creating freindships. But capitalism rears its ugly head here too in the destruction of so-called "third places".
High housing prices hurt everybody. It destroys community spaces. Hobbies that were once cheap escapes become way too expensive. Housing costs are an input into everything. Take spiraling childcare costs. You need physical space. That's now way more expensive.
Lastly, there is a natural trend for people who marry and have children to replace friends with family. There is an issue of shared life experiences. 50+ years ago pretty much everyone is in the same boat. Now? By choice or necessity, people are opting out of this "traditional" life and this naturally creates a divide.
It was desegregation. Read about the decline of public pools, municipal trash service and free ambulances.
"I think they are saying that they want lasagna."
C'mon, don't be assholes.
There is plenty of evidence that teenagers were encouraged to ostracize certain personas (other teenagers!), and that behavior spread out of control to more age groups and unforseen interactions.
The hubris of trying to generate little soldiers destroyed our cultural inheritance.
"The lens of rejection", great.
I heard pagliaci is in town, you should go see him, he can cheer you up. I mean, I heard psychology is in vogue, maybe you should all see one.
Please, stop this shit. Let the internet die in peace instead of juicing the last drops of it to try and make yourselves look good.
This may also tie in to work, as more mentally taxing office work I believe is much easier to do while on a mild stimulant such as caffeine. I could let go of cafeeine, but I think I'd struggle to make money.
It is indeed a hot take, an argument you don't hear often.
Smaller contributing factors are 1) Slow economy, where people don't have the money for social activities or even dating like the boomer generation did for example, and 2) Rise of Autism rates, which makes people disinterested in social activities and even fearful of them.
What on earth does this word salad mean? Fallen by 300%? 200%? 75%? 2/3? All are reasonable interpretations of this incoherent math.
> to tolerate the messy work of forming friendships
If it's true that people are becoming worse at maintaining friendships and losing some skill or tendency they require, then people are ipso facto also worse at being friends. (And even if there's no ipso facto corollary, the following seems just as valid an explanation for the decline in friendship as the author's expnarion: not that anybody is worse at maintaining friendships but rather that there are fewer friendships worth maintaining, fewer people worth the effort.)
I have no idea whether this is actually happening. I'm just stunned by the article's poor, predictable reasoning and odious, sanctimonious, middle-brow, TED-talk moralism: the author takes it as a given that we "manifest" our social lives, that somehow (magically?) our intention and dedication create the desired reality. The author doesn't consider an alternative hypothesis.
But if I tell you that someone is a bad, tedious, or insufferable friend, you won't expect, let alone (I hope) encourage, me to "tolerate the messy work," demonstrate the "courage" this author has decided is missing, or "show up" and be "vulnerable." You'll encourage me, rather, to save my energy for those who deserve it.
If social skills have withered in some portion of a person's pool of available, possible friends, then that person not only cannot be blamed for ending friendships; doing so is actually the best outcome, short of "manifesting" more tolerable people.
Edit:
> embedded myself in existing social structures and prioritized in-person social activities —ecstatic dance gatherings at the Harvard Divinity School, morning prayers at Memorial Church
Uh huh. If you're the kind of person who decides, I don't know, to seek friendship through daemonic possession, speaking in tongues, or, I don't know, shaman-guided spirit journeys, you're not someone whose advice I particularly want.
threefold = three times = 3x
fallen by 3x means now it is 3x lower, so if the old value was x now the value is x/3
The HN majority "work from home" advocates disagree with this
The work me is the “looking at things from a 1000 foot view”, “taking things to the parking lot”, “and adding on to what Becky said”.
When I talk to them about what concert I went to, it’s limited to Maroon 5, Stevie Wonder and my friend who is in a punk band. I don’t discuss the concert where my wife and I were at lil Jon screaming “bia bia” or Ice Cube was rapping “F** the Police”.
Code switching is a real thing. I’m in a customer facing role (cloud consulting) and I always have to filter everything I say through the corporate lens. At home and with my friends, I can be the real me.
> It’s often said that if you ask an American what they do, they’ll tell you about their job, whereas a European might talk about their hobbies or passions. Data backs this up;
> But the role of work in shaping identity and social life in the United States has perhaps never been stronger. For example, 77% of Americans work more than 40 hours per week, and few take their full paid leave.
I guess people aren’t making friends at work the way they thought they were?
Yeah. In real life there's no karma value next to your name and no string of reactions next to every statement you utter.
Imagine a VR-based dystopia which displayed such information to everyone you encounter.
For a more modern alternative, discord in a relatively small server should work well. Especially if you connect over a shared interest.
I always assumed reactions were meant to be analogous to people making facial expressions as you spoke.