Comment by os2warpman

But presumably we are talking about the parents of teenagers who would own the homes for these parties, so people who are 40+

Also look at the median purchase - it's incredibly bigger than 1950s.

The simple fact is that people still buy and own real estate, at pretty much the same rate for decades (a century?), and now end up owning much bigger places.

The median age of buyers has increased from 31 in 2004 to 38 in 2024.

The median age of the population of the United States has increased from 35.3 in 2000 to 38.8 in 2020. (hmmmmm)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_Uni...

As the population pyramid of the US, which is already a "population Empire State Building", further morphs into a "Population Baseball Diamond", I expect the median age of all buyers to increase and the percentage of owners by age group in the younger cohorts to decrease.

Additionally, as the median age increases, because older people tend to have more money, I expect home prices to continue to increase.

Honestly, I expect home prices to spike by 2035-2040 as the current crop of 50–60-year-olds reach retirement realizing that their only real prospect of not starving to death in retirement is the main (and often only) asset: their home.

That will further stress younger folks, but people don't seem to care and anyone who expresses concern is denigrated as a communist so what is to be done?

Regardless, with the homeownership rate for "under 35" fluctuating between ~41% in 1982 and ~37% in 2024 "nobody owns shit no mo" is still false.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

> Think about how much time goes into phones. Who has time to plan? Who has time to coordinate?

Hmm I use a group chat on my phone to coordinate with my friend group where we go out on saturday evening, if we need a reservation etc.

Phones are invaluable for fun too :)

The Smartphone Theory of Everything probably doesn't explain all of the recent social changes, nothing is that simple, but it sure does correlate really well with all kind of trends since they became widespread. Casual socializing, partying, friendships, drinking, and sex all began to plummet around the same time, while loneliness and depression increased.

Anecdotally is makes a lot of sense as well. Most of the people I know, including myself, spend an awful lot of time on their phones and the internet in general. All of those hours have to come at the expense of other activities.

When I was in my 20s I spent an unusual amount of time (for the era) alone on my computer, but since most people were still quite social it was easy to hop into various activities. Now that nearly everyone is spending a bunch of time alone on their phone the real life social networks have begun to fray.

Some of the changes are for the better (ie. fewer teen pregnancies) but I think these trends are quite bad overall, without a clear solution. It's probably not a coincidence that political polarization and extremism has also increased during this time. Banning smart phones in schools seems like a step in the right direction, albeit a tiny one. Hopefully we can come up with more.