These days I must make a real effort to be social on a regular basis. Personally I've found satisfaction in going to meetups to find like minds. I also go with my gut and in the moment ask to swap Instagram usernames with interesting people and promptly schedule with them to get coffee. If they prove to be as interesting and kind as I had sensed, then I invite them to a potluck dinner party which I throw every other month. In this way, I invite people under my umbrella, keep them in my life by regularly seeing them, slowly build a friendship, and hopefully they make friends with the regulars at dinner party. I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons.
> I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator
Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with, it made things a lot easier. Went from making up all kinds of stories in my head about myself and others to thinking about each interaction as practice and realized lot more people were like me, thinking I'll be invited somewhere or talked to if I was liked or was interesting enough; waiting for someone else to do the inviting or talking first. I just remind myself that a lot of others also want to be invited or talked to, and that reminder greatly reduced my fear of rejection.
Indeed I've had a similar realization and it's a very helpful reminder. Also every time I go to a meetup, I remind myself: to be interesting, you must be interested.
>Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with
I agree that it is a skill, but like any skill it helps immensely to start learning it as a child. It took me until my 30s to realize that my parents were essentially... antisocial. And that most of the social skill lessons I took from them, if any, were probably wrong and unproductive. I spent a lot of time (and money) trying to learn to overcome that, but never made any progress.
>Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with,
Agreed, but I'm not so sure this was previously true. Or at least not _as_ true. There used to be a lot of more socializing by default. People who were poor in this skill set still had relatively regular social opportunities.
This seems to be gone today, and now it's purely manual.
+1 for the potluck dinners. I find much satisfaction in seeing my social circles merging.
Another lost art is keeping a contacts list and contacting them regularly. People used to have these lists on paper and then send cards at least once per year on birthdays/christmas/independence. With this being relegated to social media, your contacts often fall in the cracks of the quirks of tech companies.
Every year I make some (handmade) digital art and write a letter with it about our year, and then I email it (bcc’d) to all our friends, family, and other people we want to stay in touch with.
It’s not as tangible as a paper card but by being an email, people can just hit reply and answer. Every year a few dozen people write back to our card (out of maybe 350 recipients), and a lot of people have said that this is one of their favorite messages to get all year.
I think people can tell when you actually put time into something instead of just making a quick conventional card with platitudes. It’s helped us keep in touch with people from all over the place, across different continents, etc, who we might not stay in touch with so much otherwise.
Yep, I used to merge my circles often in the past, usually at restaurants and bars. I did not think about it otherwise though than optimizing my available time to target as many friends from different groups as possible.
But this also created a group of its own that I was coining together for regular Thursday craft beer night or occasionally having wine and beef together.
I stopped though, many years ago as when I started my own family, family and work consumed me too much to have regular night life and meetup exercising and my home was always my sanctum, I rarely invite people to my home. this is where i rest and only some inner circle has entrance there.
that inner circle was developed during last 20+ years and I don't find much space to expand this circle unless somebody new spends with me 20+ years having random access to my limited time.
And that's ok. having up to 5 close friends who you see and talk to regularly if you're 45+ is already enough. Random folk... can stay online. like here to share ideas and then bring them back home.
I actually stopped looking for new friends based on the interests.. I have enough in that gang to cover already. sharing interest related insights is where I use internet mostly.
one of the reasons why place like HN started becoming attractive again as after ditching FB, Discord and many other places with just noise instead of valuable insight and content only HN, lobsters and telnet/ssh BBSes become legitimate sources of idea sharing and tech progress.
other topics are covered fine for decades and when I'm randomly at bar sometimes (usually work delegations outside my own town) then I'm open for one evening conversation about any nonsense just to stay connected with the city folk, but no huge expectactions about phone sharing or another meeting.
I never share my social accounts connection with strangers. I stopped doing that.. it's just spam after all and like collecting f* pokemon cards instead of having meaningful relationship. One can't maintain relationship with 1000+ people so I dropped all that and keep online activities either socially anonymous or narrowed to under 100 people whom I at least remember I had a drink with, once.
This mirrors my experience quite a bit. Hobbies that involve creative thinking and leaning on each others' skills are incredible at creating lasting social bonds which go beyond the hobby itself. For me that's music (creating it) and tabletop gaming (especially D&D or any similar RPG).
Meeting others through those activities and then gradually building upon the relationships via other social outings, dinner parties, weekend trips etc.
I'm also introverted but learned early on in life that it often just takes one person instigating things to rally a whole group.
You're doing good work, not just for yourself, but for others.
Sometimes, it may be just the knowledge that you're contributing positively to other peoples lives that makes it worth sacrificing some of your own comfort.
And like really all stopped; via digital comms everyone from the social group has said they realized after the plans I pulled together was their extent of their social life.
American culture fuckin' sucks. And it's Americans propping it up. It isn't Russia or the other usual boogeymen.
Well, here is the real truth - everyone’s culture sucks in the right circumstances.
We’re going through the aftermath of the old social paradigm collapsing, while dealing with the hangover from the COVID response (including massive inflation), and the robber barons are feasting on the corpse while manipulating the public because of course they are.
We’ll find a new one eventually, and people will adapt (eventually) and they won’t feel the suck in the same way everyone used to the old way does right now.
It will just be normal to them.
Of course it’s going to suck in the meantime.
You could ask anyone who grew up in the USSR, India (who wasn’t top .001% anyway), China would lived through the Great Leap Forward, etc.
I took the CBT approach. First to change how I thought about things (as a skill to practice) and then that allowed me to do a form of exposure therapy. Mostly finding something small to start with, a single relevant question or comment that is genuine. Saying something nice to someone, like a stressed out cashier at the grocery store goes a long way, or commenting on something like someone reading the packaging of a item and you know it and can give a brief review.
I didn't start trying to have deep conversations or expectations of ever seeing that person again. Only simple interaction for social skill improvement and over time this small talk started to come more naturally. Then that snowball into this lighter feeling around people (so anything would have been perceived as rejection before became not personal and moved on) and that, in gaming terms, was a level-up to more meaningful interaction, then another level-up and another etc. This is a decades long practice that is still going. Like many skills some pick up faster than others.
Overall yes. When I attend a meetup then I have a mindset of putting myself out there and should I meet an interesting and kind person, then just ask to get coffee with them sometime and talk shop. Also I remind myself that the current conversation went well from my perspective, so probably from theirs too.
It does. It eventually sinks in that no one is watching nearly as much as you think, and are for the most part disinterested in what you’re doing. Not in a judgey way, but in the sense that nobody saw you do that slightly weird thing, and even if they did they’re still more interested in how fat the pigeon outside is than anything you do.
YMMV but I find people who want to exchange socials like insta far less likely to meet up again then just old fashioned phone numbers. To such an extent that I exchange socials and not waste the time.
> being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons
It depends on the personality. Some people are very open. Some are not. I find social open-ness much harder than closed-ness. The open-ness approach, though, is most likely the better strategy indeed. It just helps little when people are naturally closed off mentally already.
I'm worried that although you might build up a big group of acquaintances that you hang out with on a regular basis this way, none of those would quite fit the definition of "friends".
A friend to me is someone with whom you can drop the mask of social propriety near-completely - share unpopular opinions, make racist jokes (directed at them or others), talk about the opposite sex (assuming hetero), gossip about other people, talk about your own relationships, give honest feedback, do borderline illegal stuff like smoke weed etc. Because this is what intimacy means.
If I meet my friend after a bad haircut and he doesn't immediately go "what the fuck is wrong with your hair?", he's not a true friend, just someone I hang out with.
I think most people stop having friendships like this after grade school or university. I suspect some people have never had a friendship like this.
I think the cool thing about this, especially as an older person (40's), is that it creates a low-stress, high-interactivity scenario. So while some of the people may just be acquaintances that come to one or two potlucks, some will inevitably click and become more than just once a month dinner guests.
Forming friendships after schooling isn't hard, but it takes work. That said, I've had a good number of small social interactions that usually don't even lead to an acquaintance over the last decade, and even those feel good just to get out of my shell. Then there's the people I'd recognize if I saw them again and maybe remember their names. And a small but close group of about 12 and counting have become incredibly close friends that have recently begun mingling with my prior set of really close friends (different states, so we have a couple yearly gatherings).
To me, being close with someone does not involve being insulted, insulting them or making racist jokes. I also dont particularly care about other peoples haircuts, one way or the other. I do have friends I spend 1 on 1 with who I am completely open with.
> I think most people stop having friendships like this after grade school or university.
When I was younger, I was never open with people who would be insulting to me or found it important to make racist jokes. I would simply not tell them what I think to avoid conflict or insult. They were assymetrically open, I was not.
But I genuinely did not cared about their haircuts either.
I hear you but maybe not everyone wants this. It sounds great but it's also high investment/high effort and sometimes hurts and disappoints. I think some people are fine with having shallower relationships than that.
There's a post-Covid dynamic in large cities where people often report that meetups are not as social as they once were, that one isn't isn't likely to meet anyone outside the meetup (or perhaps ever again even inside it). It can even be cringe to some when someone like yourself acts as instigator, because there is a gnawing feeling the world has changed utterly and your approach is a futile attempt to go back to the past.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think it is general social meetups, or hobby meetups, or religions of the lax and casual type (someone posted on a previous HN thread that the Haredim and a comparable Muslim sect seem to be doing alright).
My experience is that meetups have largely the same dynamic, but the attendees very rarely reach out to get coffee. I can't think of a single instance in recent memory where someone has asked me, and yet I have many experiences where people later thank me for instigating. That used to bother me until I spoke with some people about it and realized it seemingly doesn't happen much these days outside of business pitches.
But personally I cannot afford to worry if they think it's cringe. For a long time I was lonely, even in a healthy marriage, but having friends that I see regularly is something that I have found to be a vital aspect of having good mental health and avoiding stagnation. So I continually take the risk and put myself out there when I meet an interesting and kind person.
Who is reporting this? That has not been my experience at all. Social hobbies are how I make almost all of my friends as an adult (specifically: music and tabletop gaming). It's been very consistent through my entire adult life. I often have to be the instigator at first, but it has led to lasting friendships where everyone contributes. To the degree of traveling overseas together and attending each others' weddings.
EDIT: The only "cringe" meetups I've attended were "singles meetups" in my city. Mild desperation and no common interests aren't exactly a social lubricant. Hobby meetups are great because if you're truly interested in the subject matter it's an easy/exciting conversation starter.
Also many people simply aged out of it. When I moved to a major city I'd attend every programming meetup (had something to go to 3 nights/week for a solid 3 years), after covid I found more worthwhile hobbies with others.
What COVID broke is that there was no one to take over from the previous club leaders so they mostly just died with nothing to replace them and now the new generation doesn't really know how to rebuild it because they never experienced it.
> It can even be cringe to some when someone like yourself acts as instigator
Yes it can feel cringe but I would argue we need to just accept it as prosocial and not cringe. We are cringe for thinking normal social things are cringe.
Like, I would probably have thought OP was after my money like 5 years ago. But now I would just assume good faith.
> that one isn't isn't likely to meet anyone outside the meetup (or perhaps ever again even inside it).
I don't think that's a post-COVID dynamic as much as a pre-COVID one that got accelerated. When I moved to a new city in 2018, I spent a lot of time at meetups and had exactly that issue. No one would want to meetup outside the group (to be fair, most of it was that some people seemed to be willing to travel really far for a meetup group but not for other things), and you wouldn't see the same people often enough to really be friends within the group.
> I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person
Ironically, the potluck style events strike me as the most introverted way to socialize. Not to denigrate the initiative at all, I have two Canadian friendsgivings this month, and they're fun, but I really wouldn't see the hosts frequently otherwise, because they're the ones packing their schedules in advance, moving to the distant suburbs, or just don't get out much. I don't feel like I can hit them up for something more casual, whether it's always true or not, it's more of a calendar event style relationship I have with them.
The reason I don't take it upon myself to host these myself is primarily because the substance of my social life comes largely from common interests outside the house that I invest deeply into, some of which are non-event hangouts just to watch movies at theirs, hiking, climbing, billiards bar, coffee and a walk etc... I don't try to find like-minded people as much as I do people that I have enough chemistry with, and build on that.
That said, in general it is important to try to take any kind of initiative you can. Friendships don't build themselves, and everyone's scared to stick their neck out.
The simple answer is media. First television, then internet, then smartphones.
People used to actively seek the company of others - if for no other reason than out of boredom. Entertainment and parasocial relationships have filled that hole.
Another reason I might posit is declining birth rates and an aging population. Entire neighborhoods used to be filled with young families of roughly the same age. Now on any given city block in the US, there may only be 1 or 2 houses that have kids of any age in them. Smaller concentration of kids -> thinner market for playdates and sleepovers -> less interactions between families.
> Entertainment and parasocial relationships have filled that hole.
I would also add the suburbanization of American society. A neat little home in a neat little sub-division with a neat little patch of grass. You can sit on your grass in your own little kingdom, and be completely unbothered by the world around you.
It turns out, being completely unbothered is also unchallenging, and challenge drives us. And being alone and bored is enabled by television and scrolling.
Honestly, I view the suburbs as the worst of both worlds (urban and rural), with few benefits.
BTW: As an aside, this is why i think the suburbs-class loves tesla self driving so much. The one downside is the long monotony of transitting to the place where people gather to do your work. I'm not against self driving cars, but they enable suburban self-imposed isolation.
When I rented an apartment in central part of large city for 2 years, I literally haven’t never seen people from 2 other apartments on same floor as me and maybe had one chat with last one.
I rent house in suburbs, at nice cul de sac, I know names of neighbors in 2 houses and had chats with 2 more. So your mileage may vary A LOT. Although large city offers many more chances to randomly step up. Reaching literal center of city and it’s life in 30 minutes on subway is much different from reaching another burbs on car.
I’m from Germany so I can’t comment on the exact dynamics of American suburbia but I grew up in a medium to small town in a single family House and we were regularly in contact with the neighbors. Eventually I moved out into the next big city and in the apartment complex that I moved into it’s completely anonymous and no contact between neighbors except the occasional head nod.
Interesting experience I supposed. Mine is the exact opposite. Neighbors in the suburbs are a community , whereas in the city, it’s common for neighbors to remain strangers.
Another problem with the suburbs is car-dependency. When you're in a car you're not interacting in a positive way with other people. In the best case scenario you're just isolating yourself and in the worst case scenario you're angry and frustrated at other people on the road.
This stands in stark contrast to my car-free life. Every time I go out of the house to travel somewhere, I run into people I know. I say hi to strangers. I nod to pedestrians crossing the street. I have a brief conversation with somebody on the bus. I didn't expect that traveling by transit or bike would have such a positive impact on my well-being.
Knowing what I know now, it's not possible for me to go back to a suburban car-dependent life. It would be a major step backwards
> I would also add the suburbanization of American society. A neat little home in a neat little sub-division with a neat little patch of grass. You can sit on your grass in your own little kingdom, and be completely unbothered by the world around you.
What are you talking man? Atomic family from 50s with their suburb is literally the utopia for American and whatnot family. Kids running around in droves, BBQ with neighbors, helping around with a house, etc. Good luck having that in New York rat cages.
It's common of Internet discourse to reduce an extremely wide range of experiences down to either the one you personally had or a stereotype. Suburbs are kind of like that. You can see it in the existing responses, with some people saying they experienced tremendous community in a suburb but not in a city and some saying the opposite.
The truth is there is no archetype of an "American suburb." They can be wildly different from each other. I grew up in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, famous for car culture. You can find videos today all over the place of lowriders on hydraulics cruising Whittier Blvd. It's referenced in rap songs from the 90s. But you could also walk or ride a bike. Whittier Blvd itself is two lanes each way for much of its length and is the biggest street in the city. I lived two blocks from this street and walked places all the time. I knew all my neighbors. Kids played in the streets. We walked to parks and played there, too. Whittier even has a really nice wilderness park thanks to Turnbull Canyon, where you're not really remote but you can feel that way. In high school when we were assigned to read Walden Pond and produce similar journals, I found isolated creekbeds where you couldn't hear or see anything except the woods and kept a paper journal I wrote in.
On the other hand, my sisters have moved out to Murrieta, CA and are raising their children there. It's a radically different experience. My wife asked if we could walk to a convenience store when we first visited and my sister was almost laughing at us. It's miles away, some streets have no sidewalks, the streets are a hundred feet wide with 50 mph+ speed limits. It's also hot as hell because it's out in the desert.
Both suburbs, even both in Southern California, but very different experiences with very different communities.
Hacker News talks past each other a lot by not acknowledging this and reducing everything down to "suburbs" or "American" and assuming that kind of shorthand has a clear, universal meaning.
Even television and media consumption in general are not the automatic atomizers they're being characterized as. Aside from the old watercooler monoculture of having something to talk about when everyone watched the same five primetime shows, for sports fans and especially when pay-per-view first took off, gathering at one person's house to collectively watch together was almost ubiqitous. That's not even considering cinema in theaters, which were always a group event. I grew up with that. We almost never watched anything alone in the 80s. If people are now primarily watching video media on their phones from their beds while alone, that is a lot different than how we grew up 40 years ago. Reading was more characteristic of alone-time media consumption.
Are you kidding? Suburbs used to have thriving social circles around churches, golf clubs, schools, etc. Trust can be easier too because of greater cultural uniformity.
This hating on suburbs has got to stop. It's fine if you don't like it, but I have way more friends in suburbia than I ever had in the faceless city where people just walked right on past out of fear.
I don’t think being unbothered is unchallenging/stagnating? You can have solo hobbies that push you.
I hate suburbs and car-based societies as much as the next person, but being left alone doesn’t feel like the underlying problem.
The urban lifestyle is also to blame when it demands a lot of time for work and commute, leaving the individual with little time for self improvement and free time. It deteriorates the third place by not allowing time to dedicate to it.
These however are all effects of a larger mentality of hyper-individualism and hyper-productivity, symptoms of late-stage capitalism.
My cultural anthropology professor used to study remote villages in Nepal. Once he told the class a story about this one village where a group of people used to socialize each night, with each family taking turns hosting dinner at their home.
Then one family got a TV, and they stopped rotating because everyone wanted to spend the evening watching TV at that one family's house.
Then the other families got TVs, and they stopped the socializing tradition altogether, preferring to watch TV at home.
Media in general is probably the real answer. We lack boredom at home. Earlier you were bored, so you signed up for sports, went on cheap trips, camping, pretty much anything to get out. Talking to older people 60 - 70+, some of them spent three or four days at the clubhouse of their chosen sport, they where constantly out of the house, because that's were you weren't bored.
"playdates" is in itself a tell. That didn't used to be a thing. Kids would just... go out and find their friends and play. No parental scheduling or coordination required.
We use this term when little kids aren't old enough to just go out and find their friends and play. E.g., 2-5 year olds definitely aren't going to be let to go wander around the street.
People form communities when they have shared stressors that they work together to manage, but what remnants of that lifestyle remain today is little more than a skeuomorphic throwback to more vulnerable times.
Everything about modern life is designed so you do not have to directly depend on anyone for anything. You can instead be entirely dependent on a series of distant and unaccountable corporations to get through the day.
my 94 yo gpa is calling his homies ALL DAY LONG. ill see my best friends between once a week to once a month and texting comes and goes. if i got a phone call i assume its an emergency
> First television, then internet, then smartphones
i like vr so i sometimes wonder if itll catch on and if were in the "we know one or two people with a tv" era of the early 40s. theres certainly seems to be a financial incentive since it seems like tvs and phones have gone about as far as we can take them. its also certainly seems like a another leap down the isolation path as well
luckily i think most people reject vr bc it sucks to wear something on your face
Older people grew up socializing constantly so they can just start talking to strangers like they've known each other for years, especially if they are from the same town.
It's a negative feedback loop too. There used to be people out doing things so when folks got bored they'd go find them.
Now entertainment and social media sort of fill that gap (not really) but enough that there's less people out. Less people out mean it's less entertaining, so less people go out etc.
And when you do find people out, they're wearing headphones and/or their nose is in a screen, and if you try to talk to them they look startled and annoyed like how dare you speak to me in a public place. The culture is just gone.
I think the media influence went far beyond just pacifying or entertaining.
The relentless satire is what really did it. It was all written by some of the smartest yet depraved and depressed people who found a home in comedy. What did we think was going to happen?
Satire is all well and good, but what are we doing when we no longer take anything seriously anymore? Social media, but particularly reddit, continues to be an echo chamber for these mentally castrated and bitter people who couldn't challenge the comedy with a life that was actually any better than what was being mocked.
It’s not quite that simple, though. Various studies show that people are feeling increasingly lonely. It is not so much that media replace social activities, but rather that they tend to simply inhibit them.
Yeah, I don't think the age disparity is talked about enough. Admitedly I'm in this weird "youngest millenial" bracket where, growing up, I was always much older than my parent's friend's kids. But even in general with young adult life: once you leave college, everyone around you feels "older".
There's maybe 1-2 other people around your age at work, unless you actively chose the massive internship to employment pipeline of MAANG, Big 4, or your industry equivalent that was still actively training employees. Not really for me; my first gig was pretty young, but going to a large corporation for much higher pay: it was a satellite office with 2-3 other people my age than a bunch of seasoned veterans.
Neighborhoods are the same way too. Even today, I can make small talk with my neighbors. But they are some 15+ years ahead of life with two young kids. Different vibe from a single dude in his 30's.
It's not just smartphones - it's any connected device. Before the pandemic, I'd arrange Peloton rides with my friends and colleagues with bikes, and we'd ride "together" from our houses, high-fiving as we went. I'd meet up with college friends in other cities on Xbox or PlayStation from the luxury of my couch. Social moved, but made us sedentary at the same time.
It feels strange to assign all the blame to media, like theoretically it should be a number of factors, but that's what I got from reading Bowling Alone (fwiw I read the 1995 essay and not the 2000 book).
Even on the TFR point, the birth rate in 1976 in USA was 1.74, 2025 it was 1.6. So it's not like a China situation where it went from over 3 to less than 1 in 50 years.
For some time every new form of isolation had limits causing people to keep finding friends. Early on, one family or shop had a TV set, so people flocked there. Video games were made to play 2 or 4 in the same room. Near free tech and networking was an inflection point.
I think Bowling Alone did a great job of describing the phenomena. I don't think it did a great job of explaining why it was happening.
It doesn't, for example, cover the privatization of public spaces, it doesn't mention mass white flight from cities to suburban sprawl due to people wanting to preserve apartheid, nor does it cover the rise in wealth inequality or the weakening of labor laws or the obliteration of pedestrian friendly infrastructure.
Instead, it pins it all on 'television' which, sure, but there's a reason why people gravitate towards entertainment that is served to them much more cheaply per-hour than not. It's a little like saying the problem with small pox is that the boils are painful, not the underlying virus systematically destroying your body.
In my personal experience in community organizing, the main pain points people have are 1) that they have day jobs that exhaust them, 2) the traffic sucks and they don't want to drive to our meetings, or 3) they need to pick up a second shift or another job to cover their basic needs. And even to those points, it's hard to get a public space where you can regularly meet that doesn't charge a lot of money, to provide food/refreshment, to maintain an ongoing potluck which requires a lot of coordination especially when it comes to preferences/dietary restrictions, etc. It's almost never out of a lack of interest. People desperately want community but there are so many barriers in place.
> It doesn't, for example, cover the privatization of public spaces, it doesn't mention mass white flight from cities to suburban sprawl due to people wanting to preserve apartheid
That's because, contrary to the way it's often depicted, the 20th century was overwhelmingly a flight from rural areas to cities. Suburbs were an outgrowth of that, but the reality is that rural areas were hollowed out the most. (Also, community engagement in rural areas with lots of sprawl was even higher than in cities).
> that they have day jobs that exhaust them
The median adult is spending 5+ hours on their phone a day. This is what is exhausting people. Everyone is essentially working a second job that involves lots of reading and attention and social engagement. It's a parasitic draw on our lives.
> they need to pick up a second shift or another job to cover their basic needs.
Maybe that's true for some people, but the data usually shows that income and free time is inversely related to community time. Poorer people are making more time for friends and family.
I can see what you're trying to do - reframe this problem as another outgrowth of class struggle. But it doesn't really explain the reality. A steelworker in the 1920s coming off of a 10-hour shift would still find the time and energy to go out dancing. A software engineer in 2026 is going to get off of work at 5pm and watch 3.4 more hours of screen time in a day.
My controversial idea for urban planning: age and demographic based zoning.
There is lots of urban planning in the US that is poorly optimized. Walkable neighborhoods close to parks and schools are often filled with retirees, whereas young families are often crowded into newer neighborhoods at the edge of town with little infrastructure nearby.
You wouldn't even have to do much pressure to move the needle. Cities are already putting in millions of dollars to place their parks and schools, and etc. Offer tax incentives that encourage young families to move into family areas, singles into single areas, and retirees into retiree areas.
It sounds kind of crazy, but we more or less do this for student areas around colleges.
> The simple answer is media. First television, then internet, then smartphones.
And, as is often the case, the simple answer is incomplete/oversimplified. Because there are cultures which have absorbed those technologies while remaining much more social than Western cultures. And they are ones that are less individualistic and stress more of a group, family or clan mentality.
The issue with fertility rates is similar/correlated. Most of the developed world is seeing rates far below replacement, but some cultures are far more resistant to the influences of technology than others. Many developed countries have tried to address their low birth rates from a policy standpoint, essentially paying people a small percentage of what it costs to raise a child to incentivize parenthood. But I’d argue it’s far more important to address their low birth rate as a cultural issue, which is basically a semi-narcissistic focus on maximizing our own lives rather than doing what’s best for our (for lack of a better word) tribe. Because the less individualistic a society is, the less it’s struggling with these problems.
I’d posit that a lot of this has to do with the decline of religiosity in Western cultures. Religion was where a lot of people got their group cohesion and sense of an importance of something greater than self. And while I’m no fan of religion, we’ve removed it without replacing it with something else that serves the same function. We’re going to have to find that something or these sorts of trends will only continue.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
What you seem to be implying is people are lazy and choosing TikTok over real relationships. But I also think people choose TikTok because it’s low effort and they don’t have much gas left in the tank.
> It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
The interesting part is what causes what. Are people exhausted and disillusioned because they aren't experience life the same way as previously, or aren't they having these experiences because they are exhausted and disillusioned.
>seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
Counterpoint, people are TOLD and CONVINCED that they are exhausted and that life is way harder than it is.
Capitalism loves someone who is "too busy" to make stuff or avoid buying stuff.
Our lives are all about reducing friction and making everything easier.
Relative to 20-30 years ago we are so lucky and privileged. It's nuts how the victim mindset has spread.
I've lived all over the place and one thing I've seem priliferate is this mindset of "I'm a victim, doing this is too hard, so I just won't for X and Y reasons" while folks order Uber eats.
The baseline for what is acceptable has dropped so, so far. And I'm sure people will reply saying I just don't get it. Lol.
I remember when the iPhone first came out. I was at a bar, at a table with a few people I didn't really know. This was a pretty common occurrence.
You usually got a drank, talked. This was a kind of gothic-theme bar, all done up with spooky decorations, a good dj, interesting drinks. We'd host arts/culture slide show jams before the place really would get going for the night. The art was curated and swapped out monthly. There was a lot going on! The place did a lot to charge the space with energy and excitement, bringing a lot of different people together.
Then this guy at the table whipped out his phone and just ignored us all sitting there.
I knew right then and there that this was the beginning of the end.
Even before the iPhone it started happening with the Blackberry, Palm, et. al. I distinctly remember the early-mid '00's when my aunt got her first BB, a 7250(?) and it quickly became more important than anything else. Family get-togethers started to consist of her sitting by herself on her phone while the rest of us enjoyed each other's company.
My memory is that my phone was always on me, and I texted a lot on the go, but most of the texts were about meeting up, getting directions, or coordinating. After that, if a phone was brought out it was to do more of that in the group setting "Hey Sally is going to be here in 15 brining Jake"), then put back.
Now we're all dopamine seeking doom scrollers.
I've been out with a group of friends -- some I just met -- once this year. It also doesn't help that meals and drinks seem hard to justify for the price. I'm waxing nostalgia, but $30 of tacos used to be maybe $8; my $10 beer today was $3.
In secondary school, the first kids got phones and some of them were already spending a ton of time and money texting others. Wasn't for me because every text message had a fixed cost, but I followed not long after through ICQ, MSN and the like. But that wasn't on phones yet at the time, so at least it wasn't a constant possible activity.
My online social activity has declined a lot since then though, there was just so much unnecessary drama, oversharing, and vying for attention, emotional support, etc and the people that gave it burned out and left, leaving just emotionally needy people yelling into the void while the others moved on with their lives.
Thinking back to when I got my first smartphone 15 years ago, it occupied just so much of my attention and I figured it was some kind of honeymoon phase with a new gadget. But it never got less, if anything it's increased since then.
I was out in NYC when the iphone 2007 came out, without an app store and without 3G broadband, and I don’t think it was that entertaining to the people I saw with it. It was still mostly just for text communications.
It wasn’t until iphone 3G in 2008 that you had a full fledged browser with unlimited broadband capable of streaming audio, maps, and visiting websites with graphics. And, of course, new apps coming out everyday.
The battery was also not good enough to use long for a long time.
> Then this guy at the table whipped out his phone and just ignored us all sitting there.
Sounds like the real gothic-guy in the place. ; )
Also a similar story: This was a kind of normal bar, all done up with fine photos for decorations, good music, good drinks. We'd host performances and jams before the place really would get going for the night. The art was curated and swapped out monthly. There was a lot going on! The place did a lot to charge the space with energy and excitement, bringing a lot of different people together. Then one day a guy got bored and went home alone early. I knew then and there, that place was finished!
Every single social event is a financial consideration now. Want to go out with the wife for the evening? It's going to cost $150+ for a baby sitter at $25/hour. The dinner + tip is going to cost $200. Parking is going to cost $50 - $100 if you go into a city. You could take public transportation but then you're loooking at that cost shifting back to the babysitter. Before you know it you're in for $300 - $500 just for a night off.
> The dinner + tip is going to cost $200. Parking is going to cost $50 - $100 if you go into a city.
Why are you driving into a city that costs $100 to park in and then to a restaurant that costs $100 per person if money is a consideration?
Go to a local restaurant. Go to one outside of that city. Do literally anything other than the scenario you described.
I guarantee that if you're near a city where you can find $100 parking, you can find 100 or 1000 amazing small restaurants that are affordable and interesting.
This is a type of defeatism where someone imagines the worst possible scenario, erases all other options, and then pretends it's a choice between the worst scenario or nothing at all.
I had a burger, fries and 2 beers last night at one of these small local restaurants. It was $47 with tip. I had a bbq plate the other day at a local restaurant. 2 meats, 2 sides was $26 dollars before a drink or tip was added.
Going out in the US is so expensive now, even the low end, that you might as well do something nicer.
You haven't seen "event pricing" parking in cities have you? I was in Atlanta a while back and I was unfortunate enough to need to go in to the city during some big concert. Every garage had event parking prices that were $80+.
When I'm visiting developing countries, I'm often in awe of the increased social activity and wondering why we don't have that in the western world anymore. One thing I think about is the cost increase like this.
Baumol's cost disease often comes to mind - in my (might be wrong) application of it - western society simply has had too much productivity and efficiency improvements. You can make more money as a software developer or as an investment banker because those jobs have gotten more efficient and have higher payouts to employers who want the best employees.
There can't be efficiency improvements in efficiency for child care, so the only way to have people want to become child care workers is to pay a competitive salary, so the efficiency increases in the other unrelated fields directly increase the cost of child care.
Developing countries don't have this problem and domestic labor and child care are still cheap.
I spend about half of every year cycling the developing world. Whatever the continent, I'm seeing more and more young people on their phones watching short-length video. I don't think they are far behind the West in the decline of socializing.
Babysitting is cheap if there are enough aunts and uncles (or trustworthy teenage neighbor girls) around, but in Western countries many of us don't have siblings or moved too far away.
I have often thought about how many movies and TV shows in my childhood (1980s) focused on plot lines of people regularly gathering at a bar after work. Did people really do that or is it just a Hollywood thing to put people in the same place? Now that I think about it, actually, I guess my department at work did this when I first started in the early 2000s, going out to the bar once or twice a week.
It's hard to imagine doing that nowadays. I have a family, so doing that instead of going home in the evening would be selfish (if done too often), but even if I were younger and had time, it would seem very extravagant now. When a beer is $8-10 or even more, it would be an expensive proposition to go to the bar every night after work. And if you order food it's even worse...
I think the answer to your question is right there in your post:
> Now that I think about it, actually, I guess my department at work did this when I first started in the early 2000s, going out to the bar once or twice a week.
> It's hard to imagine doing that nowadays. I have a family,
This still happens. Young people get together and go out after work. I don't go to pubs often, but when I meet up with someone after work the crowd is people meeting up after work with each other.
If everyone in your department is over 35 and has kids, you won't have much luck with this. If everyone is in their 20s and friendly, there's probably something going on.
I think a lot of people forgot how to be friendly with coworkers, especially if they spend a lot of time online. Online discussions about jobs mostly read like it's a cutthroat single player game where you shouldn't get too close to anyone because you can't trust anyone and you should be planning your next job hop anyway. I have to remind a lot of people younger than me that it's okay to have friends at work. You need to have friends outside of work, too, but you can be friendly with people at work.
People really did that regularly. It does seem to be economically related, for a lot of reasons.
One aspect is that a single income really was enough to not feel extravagant to have a home, a family, and afford to go to the bar a few nights a week. (Part of this was there wasn't as much random other stuff to buy, it wasn't being marketed to you nearly as aggressively either.)
I certainly did this quite a bit in the 1990's, and in the early 1980's I definitely remember my father going out at least twice a week and then the weekends also being for going out and doing something as a family at least 2/3 weekends per month - like trips to a nearby city, or to a sports game, or visit other family, or whatnot.
It used to be fairly common in smaller but densely populated areas in the United States, not so long ago (pre-2020). A lot of breweries were setup so that there were even outdoor areas that kids could be in. Usually one of the drafts was priced drastically lower than the others, and there were many unspoken relationship-based discounts or "try this" from the bartender or owner.
I live in an urban area. Most bars in the area have a decent crowd after work into the night. The demographics of the crowd varies based on the bar. Based on your description we're roughly the same age, as a data point I wind up out after work usually 2-3x a week.
There's one bar I go to regularly where there's a couple of guys who I've literally never seen absent over the years.
It was mostly a fiction to advance the plot. Going to bars after work has always been a thing for young singles or old alcoholics, but pretty rare for parents/married people to do routinely.
Interestingly, "went to a bar in the past year" is one of the few questions in the survey whose answer basically didn't budge (52% in 1995 vs. 49% in 2026).
I went first time with office team this year a couple of weeks back. Needless to say whole experience was atrocious. No common reference, movies, sports, TV and so on to talk about besides work. It was just: "Oh, what do you do on weekend? I do x,y,z " in a round-robbin manner.
It was definitely not good time, or even bad time one can remember, just an insipid gathering for 3 hours of doing nothing. $8 for a beer and $15-20 per person for lukewarm food not sure I'll be excited for another meet any time soon.
Babysitting is the big one for me. I can eat cheaper, but I can't really get a cheaper babysitter. My wife used to babysit for 5 bucks an hour just 10 years ago, and high school aged girls now want 20 an hour minimum. We're not talking "professionals" and my cost of going out is now at least 60-80 bucks without acting else.
This is also caused by the decline in social activity and community. People in the past didnt have this problem as much because they had tons of trusted family members, friends, neighbors, who also had children and could thus look after theirs for an evening.
I think the friction is a much bigger issue than the cost. People are stuck in a trap of scrolling short form video because it provides no friction. While organizing a picnic is extremely high friction relative to social media scrolling.
I think to solve this we are going to have to blow up social media and make going out in public more convenient and friendly. Otherwise we are going to end up in a WALL-E society where people spend all day with their meta glasses streaming AI generated micro dramas.
See that's the problem, you live IN the city, and you're not afraid of the city, so you know how it really is.
I've gotten the "Parking is too expensive and hard to find" from friends when I try and get them to come into the city to hang out. No, come to my apartment, park in the plentiful free protected street parking right out front, and then we'll walk the 5 minutes to the center of downtown.
Dinner + tip can easily reach $200 if you're talking about a fancy restaurant for date night, even with just a single drink each. $50 for parking is crazy, that's like a music festival price or something.
Of course, if you live in the kind of city where the above is true, then a very delicious dinner + tip can usually be had for $50-75, it just won't be as fancy.
I'm 25. I go to work and then I go home. Same schedule since I got out of university. I do networking / IT. I usually buy a six pack of beer and then go to bed when I'm off, sometimes I'll stay up on my lab but I usually regret it because lack of sleep.
No bars, no dinners with anyone. I think the only blessing this lifestyle has given me is minimized impact from the failing economy we're in, at the cost of not seeing anyone or doing anything. I still have outside hobbies, but it's all too expensive to keep up with now, or being heavily regulated.
So it's basically Rush's "Working Man" - "So I get home at five o'clock and I take myself out an ice-cold beer. Always seem to be wond'rin' Why there's nothin' goin' down here. It seems to me I could live my life a lot better than I think I am. I guess that's why they call me...They call me the workin' man"
(and this goes back farther than 30 years. Closer to 50 now)
I love not socializing. I've never enjoyed a party in my life, I hate dating, I don't want to lose any time in the day to hanging out with anyone. But what I wonder is if am I fundamentally an antisocial person, or am I a product of my cursed environment and trapped in the momentum of the antisocial tidal wave that has been happening since before I was born?
Not really satisfied, but the alternatives seem like an uphill battle for myself. Most of my friends have moved on to their marriages, kids, etc. Certainly entering childless uncle phase of my life.
Work as much overtime as you possibly can for a few months or even a year and save as much as you can. Then get rid of any material possessions bogging you down and go travel and find life.
Just some personal anecdotes: I've come into the orbit of a local "no phones" meetup group in my city. I discovered it by seeing a black and white printed scan of a hand-drawn flyer on a pole by my apartment. Currently it's just organized by one guy who sends out random Signal pings for stuff to do like a potluck picnic, group trip to some free instructed yoga at a park, craft night at a local bar/bookstore, etc., and usually there's ~4-15 people that show up. I organized a World Postcard Day postcard writing party last week, found a venue that would host for free, donated some of my own dollars to provide free official WPD postcards to attendees, and had 7 people come write postcards with me, I convinced 4 of them to sign up for Postcrossing, it was a great time.
If anybody else is looking for change, try setting something like this up. It has so far been free, easy, relatively low stakes, and I think by virtue of the main focus being "no phones", you get some great people who are all tired of the same algorithmic churn.
I became very good friends with someone who I met at one of the meetups and we've done all kinds of things just the 2 of us and have had some really interesting conversations, which is something I haven't done in a LONG time.
I can't square this with the fact that I have a perfect storm situation that should point me there. I am a foreigner of minority ethnicity to the United States living in a high-rise building of 600 people that has no Schelling point common-space to spend time in that's located in a city that is expensive and I have all the social contact I desire: family, close friends, more distant friends, neighbours, strangers in the building, familiar strangers in the area.
I talked about how relatively easy it is to have social contact here at all levels and so I must conclude that most people simply have better uses for their time (by their own judgment) than this. https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community
A lot of people are convinced of things without ever trying, which they then use to justify not trying.
"I mildly attempted doing this once and it didn't work, so I won't bother trying again" describes a shocking amount of people's experiences.
I sometimes think people fail on purpose to justify apathy or giving up.
Then if anyone says anything they scream about how their experience is valid and nobody can tell them otherwise. It's wild.
There's something important about being outside our comfort zones. We need entropy in our lives and the best way to accomplish that is being in new environments with different people/creatures. What I've found is over time my comfort zone expands as I become familiar with more stuff.
The flip side to this is thinking everyone is on equal footing and that your trying is the same as their trying. They're just doing it wrong.
Most people in this post's comments that are "not trying" seem to also be depressed in some way. If you've never experienced it, depression can make trying impossible not just a minor inconvenience. Going to therapy can help, or not. Taking anti-depressants can help, or not.
Also a "mild attempt at doing this once" that ends very poorly can cause a depressed or anxious person to spiral into a self-hatred looping hellscape. It's not a rational decision they're making it just happens. After you've experienced that you're very cautious and try to never feel it again.
And then the kicker is when you're paralyzed like this everyone just thinks you're lazy or unmotivated and pretty much tells you "don't be depressed stupid" which further sends you into having a poor outlook of yourself and it spirals from there. I've been in and out of this several times in my life, it's not pleasant. I've also tried every single remedy known to man and sometimes nothing works.
To put it simply: their experience is probably valid and nobody should tell them otherwise.
I'm a white foreigner in Asia and feel the exact same as you. But I also realize, because I'm different than everyone else, there is more interest in getting to know me.
Also, people that are different than everyone else (but same background as me) seek me out to be friends.
For example, there is a HUGE difference between a Seattle Tech event where I am literally the same as the other 60 people in the room vs Vietnamese Tech event where I am one of 3 people that speak english. Those other 2 English speakers are going to walk over and chat with me.
This is precisely because you are a foreigner of minority ethnicity (the minority ethnicity points towards hailing from a more traditional culture compared to if you were white and therefore you would be from Europe which does not have a traditional culture, it has a modern culture).
To clarify the idea: you have a healthy social matrix but if you marry and settle in the US, your grandchildren won't.
Right, and perhaps that indicates that the decline in social activity is a conscious trade-off made as Americans (a relatively wealthy group) prefer to live in detached land properties. That points to the social activity decline as not being something to be bemoaned but something to be celebrated because people have the opportunity to choose otherwise and they have done so in droves.
Fellow desi here, and I am happy for you, but I haven't had the same experience at all in the Bay. Imo, there is something in American culture which makes people very incurious about other cultures...because there are so many immigrants from all over the world, Americans find it hard to relate to anyone not American. My favorite example to illustrate this is how "where are you from" is everyone's favorite question in South Asia and often asked with good intentions, but it can be considered rude in the States.
Gonna be real honest here. I live across classes and and observe quite a few
The entirety of the socialization decline I see is with the poor and middle class. The poor seem to have to work a ton more and struggle to make ends meet while still living in a highly individualistic world without the shared community of previous poorer cultures of the past.
And from my observations the middle class are amusing themselves to death while simply becoming sloths at home doing very little other than their children’s sports. No hosting, not social manners and little get together than gets in the way of television or video games.
The upper class and wealthy socialize a great deal. I mean a ton. Shared vacations, constant social occasions hosting fund raisers galas sports hobbies etc. practically non stop.
>The upper class and wealthy socialize a great deal. I mean a ton. Shared vacations, constant social occasions hosting fund raisers galas sports hobbies etc. practically non stop.
I wonder how many of them would count this as work time, since so much of value add at high level positions is precisely through activities like that.
This is more complex than you might thing. First, there's far more places to meet people - rather than having them over for coffee, we meet in a coffeeshop. Networks have provided a "together in time" alternative to "together in place", so people can game, talk, ... via voice and video rather than traveling to a common location. There's far more 2-working-member families than previously, so the ability to organize household events is reduced. Finally, there's far more organized sports activities that consume both child and parent time. These pull everybody out of the house.
I’ll never forget a conversation I overheard on a plane years back: a caricature of a man in his 20s failing repeatedly to explain to an older lady what a “gastropub” was. Each time, he rephrased his description, and each time she responded, “that sounds like a pub.”
“No, not exactly...,” he replied in an increasingly exasperated tone. I could hear the struggle in his voice as he recognized the cracks forming in the thin veneer of his identity. “It’s like a pub, but it serves food. Like, real food, thoughtfully considered by a gastrochef.” She returned the serve, now teetering on boredom at minute four of the flight. “At our pub we call him Kevin. He makes the best pot pie.”
He regrouped and they found truce in talking about the weather in Toronto. I resisted the urge to twist around to ask if they knew any good restaurants downtown.
A pub must serve drink. It doesn't need to serve food.
In Ireland that distinction matters. It generally will affect other things, like what time and how loud music will be played, how the tables and chairs will be organised and what type. It will often affect opening hours and the price of a pint. Gastro pubs also tend to be much larger.
In North America it seems the vast majority of "pubs" are gastro pubs, possibly why that lady couldn't see the difference. I personally love micropubs and they never serve food other than crisps and maybe a toastie.
I feel like a pedant but I get that dude in his 20s and had to speak up.
Decline in religion + third spaces combined with socioeconomic system expectations of a 40 hour work week + two incomes needed to live comfortably. Places and time for community and social activities has declined, and so social activity has as well.
If more social time is desired at the macro system level, people need to have more leisure time (shorter work week, higher wages, good quality of life with more free time broadly speaking) and more third spaces to meet and socialize.
Is there a citation for the decline in third spaces? I read such a claim often. But in my part of the US (Brooklyn NY) the number of third spaces like coffee shops and pottery studios is booming.
An enormous portion of my social life is through my church. Bible studies, committee, small groups, Sunday schools are the main structures things, and then you make friends through it and start having other people over and hanging out with them. I don't know what my social life would look like without it.
The 40 hour work week is most assuredly not new in the past 30 years.
The households where both parents work full time probably have increased in that time, but I'd say you have to go back closer to 50 years to really get to a time where it was still somewhat common for a housewife to be home all day with the kids.
regarding the 40 hour work week, I wonder what "always on" is doing to impact social activities. Meaning, you work 40 hours in the office, then you go home and get online and work a few more hours each night.
Yeah, but they weren't as common as they are today. There were pubs and eateries before also, but again, not so common. My point was that much of what was done "then" in one's house are now done elsewhere. Some, of course, aren't done and I'm not sure they're quite so popular.
And I assume the pertinent discussion is what happened/changed in the western world post WW II.
From Europe something I notice when I spend time in the USA is that you guys have to drive to everything. Felt very isolating to me to drive 20mins to go grab a pre-planned beer or a coffee with friends. Our neighbourhood as 3 pubs/bars in 15min walk of each other as well as shops, community spaces and parks, the 3rd places where people and communities are made.
I live in an area of the US that pre-pandemic, it wasn't the case of "everything scheduled and planned". I'd wake up, wander down to the cafe and chat with people I knew around town... just whoever I'd see. After work I'd go to the downtown area and just stop at pubs and patio cafes and whatever and sit until someone I knew came by or I saw someone doing the same and stop and chat with them.
After the pandemic it's like everyone forgot this. The coffee shops are all students studying or people rushing in and out, the pubs and cafes are all ghost towns or groups of people being very insular. Even at events like the farmer's market there's less socializing and more "go get the things and go move on, don't look around, don't talk to people", the vendors even mention how boring it is these days without anyone just chatting anymore.
"Go out and be in the world" seems to have just died.
GCC countries are car-heavy, including a lot of drivethrus where no one gets out of their car, and yet I got the impression that social activity was remarkably healthy compared to Europe or North America. Men meeting in cafes in Oman were talking normally and not taking out their phones. There was an openness to talking to me, a foreigner, that has disappeared elsewhere. Not sure what to credit that with -- a combination of Islam and a generous welfare state?
As someone who grew up in the US and then moved to the EU; I came here to say exactly this. You leave your private house, get in your private car, then go somewhere. You could live 10 years beside someone and never know their name.
Here in the EU, I know most of the people on my street because I walk by them every day on my way to the store. In the US, even though I lived less than 1 mile/500ish meters from the store, I couldn't walk there if I wanted to.
Urban design makes a huge difference. The post war culdesac boom was a terrible idea. It does tend to keep unwanted strangers and poor people out of your neighborhood though, which was probably the point.
I had a pretty busy social life in university, 20 years ago
The first city I landed in afterwards, I was able to make some connections and was lucky enough some of my uni friends were around too
But I moved for work to a much further away city and my social life has dropped to zero since then. The pandemic and lockdowns didn't help of course, but that was years ago. I don't have a single friend in this city and I've lived here almost 10 years now
Admittedly I'm kind of socially awkward and quite afraid of new groups, which has only gotten worse over the years. I also haven't had any luck making lasting connections through work or anything like that.
I tend to blame myself for this but it's not too surprising to hear many others are struggling too
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to call out housing as a huge factor here for four reasons:
1. Every third space represents an ever-larger opportunity cost of being turned into housing. If you can close a pub and turn it into million dollar condos, that commercial rent is going up;
2. More expensive rents are an input into everything done at a business or third space;
3. This decreases spending ability in real terms. 20 years ago, you could get a pint in London for 2-3 pounds. Now it's 6-7. Have wages doubled? No. And pubs were (and are) part of the UK social fabric; and
4. People need to work more to pay for their ever-larger mortgages and other debt. This gives people less time.
Expensive housing is literally destroying society.
I think this is not America specific and decline could be even steeper when today's kids are gonna grow up.
I see most of the kids are constantly on mobile and when they are not, they feel a void. It was almost similar to not having friends in pre social media age.
I see people getting more and more absorbed in screen so much so to forget greeting people. This happens to me all the time , someone known coming out of elevator, I am ready to greet, but they simply did not notice or noticed too late and vice versa
Fun dumbbell plot. I like how the bottom "Used the internet" is graphically and metaphorically the foundation for the entire presentation of change. The change is so total that you might miss it, as if it is the baseline or the water we are all swimming in.
I feel that beyond the proper social events (e.g. dinner parties, hangouts etc.), another important part that has declined is the little social stuff.
Having a chat with the butcher, barista, etc. or just bumping into people you know and talking for a few minutes is pretty uplifting when it happens regularly.
I feel like the containerization of life erodes this.
in America we have had 20 years of "Tech Disruption"., making the world a better place and relentless technical innovation, combined with the 'corporization' of America
Has our day to day lives improved?
Do we work less, live healthier, have less stress?
Seems like this (the younger generation) is far worse off then pre-internet connected, smartphone generation
As long as technology keeps being visible I don't think society will be improved by it. The development in the past few years have let me to the conclusion that having technology insisting on being in your face, it will not benefit society. It has to blend into the background and be something you pull out when you need it. Almost anything "big tech" has produced in the past 25 year have pushed technology into the foreground.
It would be useful to know whether the same trends have happened in other places. If iPhones are causing people to be less social, we should see similar trends in France and Japan.
If we didn’t see the same trends, it points to reasons more specific to the US.
Japan is not necessarily applicable 1:1; homes are smaller and space is at a premium so people are far more likely to just go sit somewhere… and nowadays they are usually on their phone.
because suburbs and housing models like it designed around a closed loop even some apartment building which have high population density encourage social isolation.
compare a 'luxury' Florida apartment vs the old New York apartments built in the 1800s. the NY apartments have narrow stairs, one way in.
likewise dense / small cities / villages in either africa/europe etc force more natural social interaction.
even for friends - easier to host friends when they can easily walk to your home & they don't have to drink & drive.
so blaming tv, social media, video games etc doesn't get to the root of the matter.
I don't know if "read a book" is a "social activity," meanwhile "play video games" often is a social activity. Not to mention there are gains in attending concerts, exercise classes, airtravel, and using the internet-- all of which are social activities.
It's kind of an outdated survey if the goal is to track social activity. Each individual question is interesting on its own though.
How are online video games parasocial? You're actually playing with and likely against other people. That's social. Isn't parasocial more watching streams and podcasts?
I sign up for things like entertaining people, church, dinner parties, but reading, breakfast, movie, stayed late at work, come on! Concerts I also sign up for but the pop and rock element I find very restricting. We shouldn't forget that focus/subject of common activities shift. Like we don't go out that much with friends to a public execution any more, which was very popular in the past, peak social event. Possibly we can find closer examples disappeared too. Times change, old things like clubs disappear, new ways emerge, things shift elsewhere. How about group chats/calls, open-source projects, commenting articles? Not only with people in 1 hour distance max but with people from around the planet? Gamer events, e-sport (despite my dislike)? Communicate with someone on the bus (regardless of being on the same bus or elsewhere)?
In person socialising is definitely down, likely the overall too, but I would not base a social activity judgement on a questionnaire like this here alone, I miss important elements.
The home price to wage ratio from 1995 to present increased 40% so maybe a nation of renters has less incentive to host dinner parties. Source: BLS: https://www.bls.gov/cps/wlftable16.htm
> One of the steepest declines in the survey is for "entertaining people in my home." While in 1995, 88% of Americans reported entertaining others at home at least once in the past year, this number has declined to 67% in 2026.
That really jumped out at me. I don't doubt it, but it's just weird because my partner and I constantly watch home improvement shows on HGTV where folks are constantly talking about improving their kitchen or other space "to entertain guests". And my partner is always nagging at me about the same thing - upgrading the kitchen or backyard so we can have guests. But our house is fine and we never have guests over. I get this sense from a lot of people. I think people love the fantasy of having guests to entertain, but no one ever wants to actually do it.
"Meetups" are glorified pickup activities, hookup culture is too prevalent, and people are kind of gross when they're getting drunk. I don't drink, I don't smoke. Why would I want to do any of that when I could talk online to my friends about actual nerdy stuff, instead of having to listen to someone using nerdy stuff as a "common ground" but whose interests are far more singular than that? The article says internet usage is up 90%, much of that is probably socially motivated, especially if your interests are any degree above extremely ordinary.
in NYC it takes more than $50 to do anything and minimum wage is $17.00...And it takes like 1 hour commute with stupid city tax/ state tax/ federal tax/ school tax...
And they keep saying why people aren't socializing or making babies and blame it on phone.
I think social interactions are very tiring, especially today. The reason being, most people want to be impressed by someone somehow, but the comparison is no longer the person down the street, but some really really funny person that lives on a social media feed. Another reason is, people are getting less and less accustomed to any pushback, since they are not used to it anymore, any discussion above smalltalk is difficult.
It's probably true that some form of a satisfying social interaction is missing today, but I would say it's a trope any will do to make us happy. In general any type of party I've been to recently, I've enjoyed leaving as soon as possible.
I think this is a great one that a lot of people overlook. Also, doesn't cost $40+ like a lot of people are saying in different comments. Plus, it actually does some good in the world.
I made an app for iOS for creating a social roster and setting specific catchup cadences for each friend. It's free, is purely local and has no backend, and was co-created by my wife and I. We've gotten a lot of value out of it, and it has measurably improved our lives. Try it out if you're interested!
Research on this has been done and the cause is known. There is just no desire to improve the conditions of social activity on the part of civil society or the government.
Niche area I think about often is how genuinely for some people they’re only real irl social interaction is through work. I wonder how increased use of ai (why ask a colleague when you can just ask chat) further exacerbates some of the social isolation that seems to be around now
I really think it did. After covid i moved to Asia where the measures were a lot more intense (3 month house arrest), and a lot of people are traumatised by it, you would think that people would go out and go wild, but the opposite seems true. Plus phones, AI (people ask AI first), the economy and size of the cities (lack of access to third spaces, if you dont consider 711..) all contributes. Now this is from my perspective. I have some friends who are out and about every day, but the majority either seems to sit at home broke or work their ass off.
Cars, + social media and you have most of your answer right there. It’s difficult to be “social” when the activities requiring at a minimum driving 10-15 minutes. Insert a surrogate activity (social media) and there isn’t any real reason to leave your couch.
This sounds like a news article from 2020-2021 if you remove "30 years" :D
But on the serious side - it all make sense because we have more ways to socialize without going out (via chats, games, etc.). Although it would be interesting to see the same stats for Gen Z and Gen Alpha
This is very one-sided. How about Zoom meetings and other virtual activities? And "staying at work late" is not a social activity, nor is reading a book, and the decline in church attendance obviously has other causal factors.
Two years ago I moved to a smallish (think 3,5k people) town (in Europe, ie you get everywhere by foot) and it has done wonders to my mental health. All the daily social micro-interactions with people who are aware of you seem truly healing.
This is very one-sided. How about Zoom meetings and other virtual activities? And "staying at work late" is not a social activity, and the decline in church attendance obviously has other causal factors.
Was having this conversation the other day. I’m wondering whether with the advent of technology we’re now “over organising” social activities to the point where that organisation has become too much of a task to perform consistently.
Socializing with people who are not friends is too shallow and unsatisfying. How are you? I’m good. But you’re not good and nothing is good. Okay but that is just pleasantries and not even a literal question. Still it bothers. What’s better? Putting on a fake smile so that you can have idle, useless chatter with near-strangers because you happen to be proximate due to eating habits? Or not.
Satisfying would be to bond over common problems and share common joys. But again too surface-level if not even taboo. I swear it’s gotten to the point where AI or whatever the next doom is could take 5% of all jobs. And there would be talk like, oh poor Joe he lost his job and has no marketable skill. Yup. Yup. Any solutions? Any venting? No, just frustrating reminders of impotence.
The absurdity of going to work every day as a wage commodity, another line item for the bougies to increase profits, then go “consume” your wages so that your “disposable income” can go towards the impossible goal of increasing profits into eterntiy, then see advertizements about how consumers are ruining the planet by buying food that they have no skill, land, or means to grow. But why talk about that? You can’t, not even in a fabled “social democratic” society.
We could be talking about real problems. Just venting, or maybe educating each other, or maybe even doing something about it. Even strangers since we all obviously, as plain as fucking day, go through these bullshit motions every day. We see each other. But we can’t talk about it.
How much of this is preference though? I don’t particularly like going to parties or especially hosting them in my home so the fact that there is less of this is actually positive for me.
It could be that doing things you don’t like is sometimes good for you, and maybe there is a collective preference shift towards avoiding short-term pain at the expense of long-term gain.
Do folks have social nerd meetup suggestions in the Bay Area? I'm pulling my hair out here in Mountain View. Aside from trying to run my own, with limited success, it's veeery slim pickings.
You mean their Monday open mics, their monthly book club, and their... motorcycle enthusiasts meetup, if that's still going on? I've been at that open mic for years, most weeks. I've tried the book club, and I don't have enough interest in motorcycles.
This doesn't really account for new ways in which we are social. After my kid goes to bed, I typically get an hour or two to spend online with my friends on Discord. We mostly talk about work, fatherhood, etc...
I think it's way more healthy for me to be able to talk about life every day for an hour online, than meeting up once per week for two hours over beer. I still see them in person on a monthly basis.
In my experience it’s not because there’s lack of attempts to get people together
When given the option between: socializing with people in a shared space and being at home and entertaining yourself people are consciously choosing the latter.
When I ask why, this is what I hear from other people the most:
-I don’t have time
-I don’t have transportation
-Who else is going to be there
Etc…
There seems to be a genuine lack of desire whatsoever to simply get yourself to a place where there is a free event.
And to be clear this is not just talking about one particular type of event
I just went to a Democratic socialist of America event this weekend in support of Gaza, and the amount of people who showed up compared to the number of people who are on the list (even the organizing list) is some vanishingly small group.
If the plurality of individuals don’t want to join groups in person because they feel satisfied by themselves, then that’s a signal of some kind.
I'm an American who dislikes socializing with humans in general. Toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, classism, increasing wealth inequality, the global economy being unsustainable, the internet's golden era being over, children being infantilized rather than treated like full human beings, and other things are why I dislike socializing with humans. Unlike humans, I like being with my dogs. My dogs are far more trustworthy and loyal. They don't lie to me. They're not ruining this planet.
I've spent about $1000 on equipment and classes so far, and about a year of my time. My problem is that I still kind of suck, and I have no friends who also play pickleball. So at open play, people just beat me so they can finally get to play with their own friends. This is really demoralizing!
I blame this on two things, technology and the financialization of everything.
Long ago places had large parks, outdoor swimming pools, cities became less of a place to live and more of an efficient use of space/money and thus the human aspect was removed.
Technology in the sense of games, twitter, chat, etc removes the superfical need for human contact but ruins real bonds with people
So the social cohesion in the USA is absolutely broken.
What is more tragic, though, is how they try to export
their insanity onto other countries, be it Canada or the
EU. Trump also supporting war criminal and genocidal man
Putin, is such a clear fact for the agent Krasnov theory.
Evil in joint operation here.
The population in the USA really need to begin to think
about their political system. That two-party system does
not really work; and the transition to a de-facto one-party
system led by an authoritarian clique is even worse. The
system is totally broken here.
Social media, smart phones, and all of that are heavily responsible for this, but at the same time I think the main crux of the issue, in my opinion, is that we don’t have a common culture anymore. As long as you don’t have a common culture and a common understanding of the basic rules that everyone agrees on, no one can spend time with each other comfortably.
"All but the most extreme far-right and far-left people in the country really do agree on 95%+ of anything with daily relevance to their lives."
Can I get a source for this? Or is this just something you are pulling out of nowhere to argue against someone else's lived experience because it conflicts with yours?
I don’t think the “agreeing middle” is 95% anymore. Maybe this is a Chronically Online POV but it seems the extremes are growing quickly, the center is shrinking, and society is going bimodal.
That 95% number is so far from the truth. Gen Z males are significantly (though not majority) right wing and Gen Z females are the exact opposite. Based on data, 67% of the time, Gen Z males and females do not agree on the same political issues.
The fragmentation of culture is also the fault of social media (and all media to a lesser extent). It's far easier to get sucked in to echo chambers where other opinions are mocked or shut out.
In the past we all got our news from Walter Cronkite.
The homogenization of culture was the fault of traditional centralized media. If you go back before the printing press, there was actually a much greater diversity of cultures and languages. Decentralized (social) media is bringing us back to how traditionally tribal humanity used to be.
Who wants to hang out with illiterate, intolerant goblins? Not even their fellow goblins apparently. You ever see an American on fentanyl walking around with a hunched back? Goblin.
Americans are happy online cheering for people getting killed, maimed, tortured or otherwise suffering in other countries. Heck, even within their own neighbourhood. They come together online in droves posting memes and pimping themselves to advertisers. This article is using an old fashioned notion of what was social. Their social activity has not declined, atleast on Reddit. Or youtube. Or twitter. Or TikTok. Or bluesky. Or instagram. Or……
Americans are very intolerant of others, whether it's political convictions or food preferences; the few that have kids threat the little ones like fragile glassware that can't be moved or otherwise inconvenienced, so it doesn't surprise me that they meet others less. My wife and I meet with a varying group of friends every week, or even more, but we're all immigrants. We've tried to invite local acquaintances, but they always find a reason to say no and just stay home.
They're right about the intolerance, though. One tribe literally calls the other "Demon-crats", and has worked to reduce participation based on gender, sexuality and skin color.
What a dumb take. That person is not the president of US to go shake hands with every one. They just said what they experienced. How is that invalid. It just proves that persons point, Americans are close minded, your comments itself proves that.
I think unhappiness is the default of human state. Or rather discontent. Its probably wired into us bc if we were ever content we wouldnt procreate, try to attain financial success, etc
Dipends how you see it. For North American standards, it's a lovely suburban neighbourhood in the Midwest; for us it's suburban hell because we love cities.
> the expats are sending time together instead of trying to assimilate
These days I must make a real effort to be social on a regular basis. Personally I've found satisfaction in going to meetups to find like minds. I also go with my gut and in the moment ask to swap Instagram usernames with interesting people and promptly schedule with them to get coffee. If they prove to be as interesting and kind as I had sensed, then I invite them to a potluck dinner party which I throw every other month. In this way, I invite people under my umbrella, keep them in my life by regularly seeing them, slowly build a friendship, and hopefully they make friends with the regulars at dinner party. I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons.
> I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator
Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with, it made things a lot easier. Went from making up all kinds of stories in my head about myself and others to thinking about each interaction as practice and realized lot more people were like me, thinking I'll be invited somewhere or talked to if I was liked or was interesting enough; waiting for someone else to do the inviting or talking first. I just remind myself that a lot of others also want to be invited or talked to, and that reminder greatly reduced my fear of rejection.
Indeed I've had a similar realization and it's a very helpful reminder. Also every time I go to a meetup, I remind myself: to be interesting, you must be interested.
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>Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with
I agree that it is a skill, but like any skill it helps immensely to start learning it as a child. It took me until my 30s to realize that my parents were essentially... antisocial. And that most of the social skill lessons I took from them, if any, were probably wrong and unproductive. I spent a lot of time (and money) trying to learn to overcome that, but never made any progress.
>Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with,
Agreed, but I'm not so sure this was previously true. Or at least not _as_ true. There used to be a lot of more socializing by default. People who were poor in this skill set still had relatively regular social opportunities.
This seems to be gone today, and now it's purely manual.
+1 for the potluck dinners. I find much satisfaction in seeing my social circles merging.
Another lost art is keeping a contacts list and contacting them regularly. People used to have these lists on paper and then send cards at least once per year on birthdays/christmas/independence. With this being relegated to social media, your contacts often fall in the cracks of the quirks of tech companies.
Every year I make some (handmade) digital art and write a letter with it about our year, and then I email it (bcc’d) to all our friends, family, and other people we want to stay in touch with.
It’s not as tangible as a paper card but by being an email, people can just hit reply and answer. Every year a few dozen people write back to our card (out of maybe 350 recipients), and a lot of people have said that this is one of their favorite messages to get all year.
I think people can tell when you actually put time into something instead of just making a quick conventional card with platitudes. It’s helped us keep in touch with people from all over the place, across different continents, etc, who we might not stay in touch with so much otherwise.
Yep, I used to merge my circles often in the past, usually at restaurants and bars. I did not think about it otherwise though than optimizing my available time to target as many friends from different groups as possible.
But this also created a group of its own that I was coining together for regular Thursday craft beer night or occasionally having wine and beef together.
I stopped though, many years ago as when I started my own family, family and work consumed me too much to have regular night life and meetup exercising and my home was always my sanctum, I rarely invite people to my home. this is where i rest and only some inner circle has entrance there.
that inner circle was developed during last 20+ years and I don't find much space to expand this circle unless somebody new spends with me 20+ years having random access to my limited time.
And that's ok. having up to 5 close friends who you see and talk to regularly if you're 45+ is already enough. Random folk... can stay online. like here to share ideas and then bring them back home.
I actually stopped looking for new friends based on the interests.. I have enough in that gang to cover already. sharing interest related insights is where I use internet mostly.
one of the reasons why place like HN started becoming attractive again as after ditching FB, Discord and many other places with just noise instead of valuable insight and content only HN, lobsters and telnet/ssh BBSes become legitimate sources of idea sharing and tech progress.
other topics are covered fine for decades and when I'm randomly at bar sometimes (usually work delegations outside my own town) then I'm open for one evening conversation about any nonsense just to stay connected with the city folk, but no huge expectactions about phone sharing or another meeting.
I never share my social accounts connection with strangers. I stopped doing that.. it's just spam after all and like collecting f* pokemon cards instead of having meaningful relationship. One can't maintain relationship with 1000+ people so I dropped all that and keep online activities either socially anonymous or narrowed to under 100 people whom I at least remember I had a drink with, once.
This mirrors my experience quite a bit. Hobbies that involve creative thinking and leaning on each others' skills are incredible at creating lasting social bonds which go beyond the hobby itself. For me that's music (creating it) and tabletop gaming (especially D&D or any similar RPG).
Meeting others through those activities and then gradually building upon the relationships via other social outings, dinner parties, weekend trips etc.
I'm also introverted but learned early on in life that it often just takes one person instigating things to rally a whole group.
You're doing good work, not just for yourself, but for others.
Sometimes, it may be just the knowledge that you're contributing positively to other peoples lives that makes it worth sacrificing some of your own comfort.
> Personally I've found satisfaction in going to meetups to find like minds
I enjoy meetups, but those have been pretty much nonexistent here since covid.
Meetup.com used to be full of in person stuff, now it is full of online stuff instead.
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I got tired of being the planner.
As soon as I stopped it all stopped.
And like really all stopped; via digital comms everyone from the social group has said they realized after the plans I pulled together was their extent of their social life.
American culture fuckin' sucks. And it's Americans propping it up. It isn't Russia or the other usual boogeymen.
Well, here is the real truth - everyone’s culture sucks in the right circumstances.
We’re going through the aftermath of the old social paradigm collapsing, while dealing with the hangover from the COVID response (including massive inflation), and the robber barons are feasting on the corpse while manipulating the public because of course they are.
We’ll find a new one eventually, and people will adapt (eventually) and they won’t feel the suck in the same way everyone used to the old way does right now.
It will just be normal to them.
Of course it’s going to suck in the meantime.
You could ask anyone who grew up in the USSR, India (who wasn’t top .001% anyway), China would lived through the Great Leap Forward, etc.
Same as last time.[1] The ones who “make an effort” go to top of the thread. Why are things the way they are? static Make dinner for friends.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49892789
Join a club!
It did wonders for me.
Small side project, if you know of a nice club in you area please submit it: https://clubs.fyi
Dang you're on top of things, kudos. Wish I had the mental energy to do all that.
Does it get easier overtime for you?
> Does it get easier over time for you?
Not OP, but wanted add for myself it did.
I took the CBT approach. First to change how I thought about things (as a skill to practice) and then that allowed me to do a form of exposure therapy. Mostly finding something small to start with, a single relevant question or comment that is genuine. Saying something nice to someone, like a stressed out cashier at the grocery store goes a long way, or commenting on something like someone reading the packaging of a item and you know it and can give a brief review.
I didn't start trying to have deep conversations or expectations of ever seeing that person again. Only simple interaction for social skill improvement and over time this small talk started to come more naturally. Then that snowball into this lighter feeling around people (so anything would have been perceived as rejection before became not personal and moved on) and that, in gaming terms, was a level-up to more meaningful interaction, then another level-up and another etc. This is a decades long practice that is still going. Like many skills some pick up faster than others.
Overall yes. When I attend a meetup then I have a mindset of putting myself out there and should I meet an interesting and kind person, then just ask to get coffee with them sometime and talk shop. Also I remind myself that the current conversation went well from my perspective, so probably from theirs too.
It does. It eventually sinks in that no one is watching nearly as much as you think, and are for the most part disinterested in what you’re doing. Not in a judgey way, but in the sense that nobody saw you do that slightly weird thing, and even if they did they’re still more interested in how fat the pigeon outside is than anything you do.
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YMMV but I find people who want to exchange socials like insta far less likely to meet up again then just old fashioned phone numbers. To such an extent that I exchange socials and not waste the time.
do ppl usually have instagram accounts?
> being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons
It depends on the personality. Some people are very open. Some are not. I find social open-ness much harder than closed-ness. The open-ness approach, though, is most likely the better strategy indeed. It just helps little when people are naturally closed off mentally already.
I'm worried that although you might build up a big group of acquaintances that you hang out with on a regular basis this way, none of those would quite fit the definition of "friends".
A friend to me is someone with whom you can drop the mask of social propriety near-completely - share unpopular opinions, make racist jokes (directed at them or others), talk about the opposite sex (assuming hetero), gossip about other people, talk about your own relationships, give honest feedback, do borderline illegal stuff like smoke weed etc. Because this is what intimacy means.
If I meet my friend after a bad haircut and he doesn't immediately go "what the fuck is wrong with your hair?", he's not a true friend, just someone I hang out with.
I think most people stop having friendships like this after grade school or university. I suspect some people have never had a friendship like this.
I think the cool thing about this, especially as an older person (40's), is that it creates a low-stress, high-interactivity scenario. So while some of the people may just be acquaintances that come to one or two potlucks, some will inevitably click and become more than just once a month dinner guests.
Forming friendships after schooling isn't hard, but it takes work. That said, I've had a good number of small social interactions that usually don't even lead to an acquaintance over the last decade, and even those feel good just to get out of my shell. Then there's the people I'd recognize if I saw them again and maybe remember their names. And a small but close group of about 12 and counting have become incredibly close friends that have recently begun mingling with my prior set of really close friends (different states, so we have a couple yearly gatherings).
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> , none of those would quite fit the definition of "friends".
Why can't the big group of acquaintances not lead to real friendship?
I would haver guesst that's the way you find friends. Stranger -> acquaintances -> friends -> close friends?
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To me, being close with someone does not involve being insulted, insulting them or making racist jokes. I also dont particularly care about other peoples haircuts, one way or the other. I do have friends I spend 1 on 1 with who I am completely open with.
> I think most people stop having friendships like this after grade school or university.
When I was younger, I was never open with people who would be insulting to me or found it important to make racist jokes. I would simply not tell them what I think to avoid conflict or insult. They were assymetrically open, I was not.
But I genuinely did not cared about their haircuts either.
I hear you but maybe not everyone wants this. It sounds great but it's also high investment/high effort and sometimes hurts and disappoints. I think some people are fine with having shallower relationships than that.
Maybe you don’t have friends because you’re a racist in your heart of hearts?
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There's a post-Covid dynamic in large cities where people often report that meetups are not as social as they once were, that one isn't isn't likely to meet anyone outside the meetup (or perhaps ever again even inside it). It can even be cringe to some when someone like yourself acts as instigator, because there is a gnawing feeling the world has changed utterly and your approach is a futile attempt to go back to the past.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think it is general social meetups, or hobby meetups, or religions of the lax and casual type (someone posted on a previous HN thread that the Haredim and a comparable Muslim sect seem to be doing alright).
My experience is that meetups have largely the same dynamic, but the attendees very rarely reach out to get coffee. I can't think of a single instance in recent memory where someone has asked me, and yet I have many experiences where people later thank me for instigating. That used to bother me until I spoke with some people about it and realized it seemingly doesn't happen much these days outside of business pitches.
But personally I cannot afford to worry if they think it's cringe. For a long time I was lonely, even in a healthy marriage, but having friends that I see regularly is something that I have found to be a vital aspect of having good mental health and avoiding stagnation. So I continually take the risk and put myself out there when I meet an interesting and kind person.
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Who is reporting this? That has not been my experience at all. Social hobbies are how I make almost all of my friends as an adult (specifically: music and tabletop gaming). It's been very consistent through my entire adult life. I often have to be the instigator at first, but it has led to lasting friendships where everyone contributes. To the degree of traveling overseas together and attending each others' weddings.
EDIT: The only "cringe" meetups I've attended were "singles meetups" in my city. Mild desperation and no common interests aren't exactly a social lubricant. Hobby meetups are great because if you're truly interested in the subject matter it's an easy/exciting conversation starter.
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Also many people simply aged out of it. When I moved to a major city I'd attend every programming meetup (had something to go to 3 nights/week for a solid 3 years), after covid I found more worthwhile hobbies with others.
What COVID broke is that there was no one to take over from the previous club leaders so they mostly just died with nothing to replace them and now the new generation doesn't really know how to rebuild it because they never experienced it.
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> It can even be cringe to some when someone like yourself acts as instigator
Yes it can feel cringe but I would argue we need to just accept it as prosocial and not cringe. We are cringe for thinking normal social things are cringe.
Like, I would probably have thought OP was after my money like 5 years ago. But now I would just assume good faith.
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> that one isn't isn't likely to meet anyone outside the meetup (or perhaps ever again even inside it).
I don't think that's a post-COVID dynamic as much as a pre-COVID one that got accelerated. When I moved to a new city in 2018, I spent a lot of time at meetups and had exactly that issue. No one would want to meetup outside the group (to be fair, most of it was that some people seemed to be willing to travel really far for a meetup group but not for other things), and you wouldn't see the same people often enough to really be friends within the group.
All of that sounds awful.
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> I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person
Ironically, the potluck style events strike me as the most introverted way to socialize. Not to denigrate the initiative at all, I have two Canadian friendsgivings this month, and they're fun, but I really wouldn't see the hosts frequently otherwise, because they're the ones packing their schedules in advance, moving to the distant suburbs, or just don't get out much. I don't feel like I can hit them up for something more casual, whether it's always true or not, it's more of a calendar event style relationship I have with them.
The reason I don't take it upon myself to host these myself is primarily because the substance of my social life comes largely from common interests outside the house that I invest deeply into, some of which are non-event hangouts just to watch movies at theirs, hiking, climbing, billiards bar, coffee and a walk etc... I don't try to find like-minded people as much as I do people that I have enough chemistry with, and build on that.
That said, in general it is important to try to take any kind of initiative you can. Friendships don't build themselves, and everyone's scared to stick their neck out.
This has actually been a trend since the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
The simple answer is media. First television, then internet, then smartphones.
People used to actively seek the company of others - if for no other reason than out of boredom. Entertainment and parasocial relationships have filled that hole.
Another reason I might posit is declining birth rates and an aging population. Entire neighborhoods used to be filled with young families of roughly the same age. Now on any given city block in the US, there may only be 1 or 2 houses that have kids of any age in them. Smaller concentration of kids -> thinner market for playdates and sleepovers -> less interactions between families.
> Entertainment and parasocial relationships have filled that hole.
I would also add the suburbanization of American society. A neat little home in a neat little sub-division with a neat little patch of grass. You can sit on your grass in your own little kingdom, and be completely unbothered by the world around you.
It turns out, being completely unbothered is also unchallenging, and challenge drives us. And being alone and bored is enabled by television and scrolling.
Honestly, I view the suburbs as the worst of both worlds (urban and rural), with few benefits.
BTW: As an aside, this is why i think the suburbs-class loves tesla self driving so much. The one downside is the long monotony of transitting to the place where people gather to do your work. I'm not against self driving cars, but they enable suburban self-imposed isolation.
When I rented an apartment in central part of large city for 2 years, I literally haven’t never seen people from 2 other apartments on same floor as me and maybe had one chat with last one. I rent house in suburbs, at nice cul de sac, I know names of neighbors in 2 houses and had chats with 2 more. So your mileage may vary A LOT. Although large city offers many more chances to randomly step up. Reaching literal center of city and it’s life in 30 minutes on subway is much different from reaching another burbs on car.
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I’m from Germany so I can’t comment on the exact dynamics of American suburbia but I grew up in a medium to small town in a single family House and we were regularly in contact with the neighbors. Eventually I moved out into the next big city and in the apartment complex that I moved into it’s completely anonymous and no contact between neighbors except the occasional head nod.
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Interesting experience I supposed. Mine is the exact opposite. Neighbors in the suburbs are a community , whereas in the city, it’s common for neighbors to remain strangers.
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Another problem with the suburbs is car-dependency. When you're in a car you're not interacting in a positive way with other people. In the best case scenario you're just isolating yourself and in the worst case scenario you're angry and frustrated at other people on the road.
This stands in stark contrast to my car-free life. Every time I go out of the house to travel somewhere, I run into people I know. I say hi to strangers. I nod to pedestrians crossing the street. I have a brief conversation with somebody on the bus. I didn't expect that traveling by transit or bike would have such a positive impact on my well-being.
Knowing what I know now, it's not possible for me to go back to a suburban car-dependent life. It would be a major step backwards
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My grandparents lived in what was then rural Pennsylvania.
Everyone had a part of their house that was essentially a bar and they would have house parties all the time.
So I don't think it's sub-urbanization per se.
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When I lived in the suburbs I knew all my neighbors. You’d just naturally run into people around the neighborhood.
Once I moved to the city I didn’t know my neighbors. People kept to themselves or the turnover was high.
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> I would also add the suburbanization of American society. A neat little home in a neat little sub-division with a neat little patch of grass. You can sit on your grass in your own little kingdom, and be completely unbothered by the world around you.
What are you talking man? Atomic family from 50s with their suburb is literally the utopia for American and whatnot family. Kids running around in droves, BBQ with neighbors, helping around with a house, etc. Good luck having that in New York rat cages.
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I live in a suburb and I know and talk to my neighbors way more than any of my coworkers who live in the city do.
It's common of Internet discourse to reduce an extremely wide range of experiences down to either the one you personally had or a stereotype. Suburbs are kind of like that. You can see it in the existing responses, with some people saying they experienced tremendous community in a suburb but not in a city and some saying the opposite.
The truth is there is no archetype of an "American suburb." They can be wildly different from each other. I grew up in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, famous for car culture. You can find videos today all over the place of lowriders on hydraulics cruising Whittier Blvd. It's referenced in rap songs from the 90s. But you could also walk or ride a bike. Whittier Blvd itself is two lanes each way for much of its length and is the biggest street in the city. I lived two blocks from this street and walked places all the time. I knew all my neighbors. Kids played in the streets. We walked to parks and played there, too. Whittier even has a really nice wilderness park thanks to Turnbull Canyon, where you're not really remote but you can feel that way. In high school when we were assigned to read Walden Pond and produce similar journals, I found isolated creekbeds where you couldn't hear or see anything except the woods and kept a paper journal I wrote in.
On the other hand, my sisters have moved out to Murrieta, CA and are raising their children there. It's a radically different experience. My wife asked if we could walk to a convenience store when we first visited and my sister was almost laughing at us. It's miles away, some streets have no sidewalks, the streets are a hundred feet wide with 50 mph+ speed limits. It's also hot as hell because it's out in the desert.
Both suburbs, even both in Southern California, but very different experiences with very different communities.
Hacker News talks past each other a lot by not acknowledging this and reducing everything down to "suburbs" or "American" and assuming that kind of shorthand has a clear, universal meaning.
Even television and media consumption in general are not the automatic atomizers they're being characterized as. Aside from the old watercooler monoculture of having something to talk about when everyone watched the same five primetime shows, for sports fans and especially when pay-per-view first took off, gathering at one person's house to collectively watch together was almost ubiqitous. That's not even considering cinema in theaters, which were always a group event. I grew up with that. We almost never watched anything alone in the 80s. If people are now primarily watching video media on their phones from their beds while alone, that is a lot different than how we grew up 40 years ago. Reading was more characteristic of alone-time media consumption.
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Yes, its the suburbs, but it's because of the car-dependency -- not as much the single family detached homes.
Are you kidding? Suburbs used to have thriving social circles around churches, golf clubs, schools, etc. Trust can be easier too because of greater cultural uniformity.
This hating on suburbs has got to stop. It's fine if you don't like it, but I have way more friends in suburbia than I ever had in the faceless city where people just walked right on past out of fear.
I don’t think being unbothered is unchallenging/stagnating? You can have solo hobbies that push you. I hate suburbs and car-based societies as much as the next person, but being left alone doesn’t feel like the underlying problem.
The urban lifestyle is also to blame when it demands a lot of time for work and commute, leaving the individual with little time for self improvement and free time. It deteriorates the third place by not allowing time to dedicate to it.
These however are all effects of a larger mentality of hyper-individualism and hyper-productivity, symptoms of late-stage capitalism.
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My cultural anthropology professor used to study remote villages in Nepal. Once he told the class a story about this one village where a group of people used to socialize each night, with each family taking turns hosting dinner at their home.
Then one family got a TV, and they stopped rotating because everyone wanted to spend the evening watching TV at that one family's house.
Then the other families got TVs, and they stopped the socializing tradition altogether, preferring to watch TV at home.
Media in general is probably the real answer. We lack boredom at home. Earlier you were bored, so you signed up for sports, went on cheap trips, camping, pretty much anything to get out. Talking to older people 60 - 70+, some of them spent three or four days at the clubhouse of their chosen sport, they where constantly out of the house, because that's were you weren't bored.
Communal boredom is where a lot of our creativity comes from.
"playdates" is in itself a tell. That didn't used to be a thing. Kids would just... go out and find their friends and play. No parental scheduling or coordination required.
We use this term when little kids aren't old enough to just go out and find their friends and play. E.g., 2-5 year olds definitely aren't going to be let to go wander around the street.
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Yes the post's title calls to mind that 'Bowling Alone' was already detailing loss of cohesion nearly 30 years ago.
People are alienated, y'all.
People form communities when they have shared stressors that they work together to manage, but what remnants of that lifestyle remain today is little more than a skeuomorphic throwback to more vulnerable times.
Everything about modern life is designed so you do not have to directly depend on anyone for anything. You can instead be entirely dependent on a series of distant and unaccountable corporations to get through the day.
my 94 yo gpa is calling his homies ALL DAY LONG. ill see my best friends between once a week to once a month and texting comes and goes. if i got a phone call i assume its an emergency
> First television, then internet, then smartphones
i like vr so i sometimes wonder if itll catch on and if were in the "we know one or two people with a tv" era of the early 40s. theres certainly seems to be a financial incentive since it seems like tvs and phones have gone about as far as we can take them. its also certainly seems like a another leap down the isolation path as well
luckily i think most people reject vr bc it sucks to wear something on your face
edit: grammar (still bad but better)
Older people grew up socializing constantly so they can just start talking to strangers like they've known each other for years, especially if they are from the same town.
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> my 94 yo GPA is calling his homies ALL DAY LONG
Our modern day equivalent is being on HN or Reddit all day long
It's a negative feedback loop too. There used to be people out doing things so when folks got bored they'd go find them.
Now entertainment and social media sort of fill that gap (not really) but enough that there's less people out. Less people out mean it's less entertaining, so less people go out etc.
Incredibly pedantic, but I think that's describing a positive feedback loop where the previous result amplifies the next result further.
And when you do find people out, they're wearing headphones and/or their nose is in a screen, and if you try to talk to them they look startled and annoyed like how dare you speak to me in a public place. The culture is just gone.
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Putnam did followup work investigating the causes.
https://www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com/pdf/j.1467-9477....
I think the media influence went far beyond just pacifying or entertaining.
The relentless satire is what really did it. It was all written by some of the smartest yet depraved and depressed people who found a home in comedy. What did we think was going to happen?
Satire is all well and good, but what are we doing when we no longer take anything seriously anymore? Social media, but particularly reddit, continues to be an echo chamber for these mentally castrated and bitter people who couldn't challenge the comedy with a life that was actually any better than what was being mocked.
No longer take anything too seriously anymore?
That was a very 90s 'thing'. Today people, especially young people, are exceedingly lacking in levity. Everything is serious.
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It’s not quite that simple, though. Various studies show that people are feeling increasingly lonely. It is not so much that media replace social activities, but rather that they tend to simply inhibit them.
Yeah, I don't think the age disparity is talked about enough. Admitedly I'm in this weird "youngest millenial" bracket where, growing up, I was always much older than my parent's friend's kids. But even in general with young adult life: once you leave college, everyone around you feels "older".
There's maybe 1-2 other people around your age at work, unless you actively chose the massive internship to employment pipeline of MAANG, Big 4, or your industry equivalent that was still actively training employees. Not really for me; my first gig was pretty young, but going to a large corporation for much higher pay: it was a satellite office with 2-3 other people my age than a bunch of seasoned veterans.
Neighborhoods are the same way too. Even today, I can make small talk with my neighbors. But they are some 15+ years ahead of life with two young kids. Different vibe from a single dude in his 30's.
It's not just smartphones - it's any connected device. Before the pandemic, I'd arrange Peloton rides with my friends and colleagues with bikes, and we'd ride "together" from our houses, high-fiving as we went. I'd meet up with college friends in other cities on Xbox or PlayStation from the luxury of my couch. Social moved, but made us sedentary at the same time.
It feels strange to assign all the blame to media, like theoretically it should be a number of factors, but that's what I got from reading Bowling Alone (fwiw I read the 1995 essay and not the 2000 book).
Even on the TFR point, the birth rate in 1976 in USA was 1.74, 2025 it was 1.6. So it's not like a China situation where it went from over 3 to less than 1 in 50 years.
> The simple answer is media. First television, then internet, then smartphones.
It probably began with cave painting. Once Grog discovered cave art he realized that he didn’t actually like his fellow tribesmen all that much.
For some time every new form of isolation had limits causing people to keep finding friends. Early on, one family or shop had a TV set, so people flocked there. Video games were made to play 2 or 4 in the same room. Near free tech and networking was an inflection point.
I think Bowling Alone did a great job of describing the phenomena. I don't think it did a great job of explaining why it was happening.
It doesn't, for example, cover the privatization of public spaces, it doesn't mention mass white flight from cities to suburban sprawl due to people wanting to preserve apartheid, nor does it cover the rise in wealth inequality or the weakening of labor laws or the obliteration of pedestrian friendly infrastructure.
Instead, it pins it all on 'television' which, sure, but there's a reason why people gravitate towards entertainment that is served to them much more cheaply per-hour than not. It's a little like saying the problem with small pox is that the boils are painful, not the underlying virus systematically destroying your body.
In my personal experience in community organizing, the main pain points people have are 1) that they have day jobs that exhaust them, 2) the traffic sucks and they don't want to drive to our meetings, or 3) they need to pick up a second shift or another job to cover their basic needs. And even to those points, it's hard to get a public space where you can regularly meet that doesn't charge a lot of money, to provide food/refreshment, to maintain an ongoing potluck which requires a lot of coordination especially when it comes to preferences/dietary restrictions, etc. It's almost never out of a lack of interest. People desperately want community but there are so many barriers in place.
> It doesn't, for example, cover the privatization of public spaces, it doesn't mention mass white flight from cities to suburban sprawl due to people wanting to preserve apartheid
That's because, contrary to the way it's often depicted, the 20th century was overwhelmingly a flight from rural areas to cities. Suburbs were an outgrowth of that, but the reality is that rural areas were hollowed out the most. (Also, community engagement in rural areas with lots of sprawl was even higher than in cities).
> that they have day jobs that exhaust them
The median adult is spending 5+ hours on their phone a day. This is what is exhausting people. Everyone is essentially working a second job that involves lots of reading and attention and social engagement. It's a parasitic draw on our lives.
> they need to pick up a second shift or another job to cover their basic needs.
Maybe that's true for some people, but the data usually shows that income and free time is inversely related to community time. Poorer people are making more time for friends and family.
I can see what you're trying to do - reframe this problem as another outgrowth of class struggle. But it doesn't really explain the reality. A steelworker in the 1920s coming off of a 10-hour shift would still find the time and energy to go out dancing. A software engineer in 2026 is going to get off of work at 5pm and watch 3.4 more hours of screen time in a day.
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Was the flight out of the cities to "preserve apartheid" or did many people simply want the suburban lifestyle with a yard and bigger house?
I don't thin racism was the dominant factor for people moving out of the cities. Today the suburb I'm in is packed with immigrants.
Regardless, I don't think you're being very charitable.
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> Now on any given city block in the US, there may only be 1 or 2 houses that have kids of any age in them.
Thats why we plan to move to the burbs. Lots of ethnic enclaves where kids go around the neighborhood on their own and play.
My controversial idea for urban planning: age and demographic based zoning.
There is lots of urban planning in the US that is poorly optimized. Walkable neighborhoods close to parks and schools are often filled with retirees, whereas young families are often crowded into newer neighborhoods at the edge of town with little infrastructure nearby.
You wouldn't even have to do much pressure to move the needle. Cities are already putting in millions of dollars to place their parks and schools, and etc. Offer tax incentives that encourage young families to move into family areas, singles into single areas, and retirees into retiree areas.
It sounds kind of crazy, but we more or less do this for student areas around colleges.
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Ethnic enclaves?
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I've read a study that stated that the average US adult socializes 90 minutes per week, down from 4+ hours in the 90s, and 16+ in the 60s.
> The simple answer is media. First television, then internet, then smartphones.
And, as is often the case, the simple answer is incomplete/oversimplified. Because there are cultures which have absorbed those technologies while remaining much more social than Western cultures. And they are ones that are less individualistic and stress more of a group, family or clan mentality.
The issue with fertility rates is similar/correlated. Most of the developed world is seeing rates far below replacement, but some cultures are far more resistant to the influences of technology than others. Many developed countries have tried to address their low birth rates from a policy standpoint, essentially paying people a small percentage of what it costs to raise a child to incentivize parenthood. But I’d argue it’s far more important to address their low birth rate as a cultural issue, which is basically a semi-narcissistic focus on maximizing our own lives rather than doing what’s best for our (for lack of a better word) tribe. Because the less individualistic a society is, the less it’s struggling with these problems.
I’d posit that a lot of this has to do with the decline of religiosity in Western cultures. Religion was where a lot of people got their group cohesion and sense of an importance of something greater than self. And while I’m no fan of religion, we’ve removed it without replacing it with something else that serves the same function. We’re going to have to find that something or these sorts of trends will only continue.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
What you seem to be implying is people are lazy and choosing TikTok over real relationships. But I also think people choose TikTok because it’s low effort and they don’t have much gas left in the tank.
> It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
Is life today bleaker or harder than it was during the Great Depression? People still made time for each other.
What if it is the media that is making people exhausted and disillusioned? Not the other way around.
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> It seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
The interesting part is what causes what. Are people exhausted and disillusioned because they aren't experience life the same way as previously, or aren't they having these experiences because they are exhausted and disillusioned.
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>seems like people are increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with life.
Counterpoint, people are TOLD and CONVINCED that they are exhausted and that life is way harder than it is.
Capitalism loves someone who is "too busy" to make stuff or avoid buying stuff.
Our lives are all about reducing friction and making everything easier.
Relative to 20-30 years ago we are so lucky and privileged. It's nuts how the victim mindset has spread.
I've lived all over the place and one thing I've seem priliferate is this mindset of "I'm a victim, doing this is too hard, so I just won't for X and Y reasons" while folks order Uber eats.
The baseline for what is acceptable has dropped so, so far. And I'm sure people will reply saying I just don't get it. Lol.
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I remember when the iPhone first came out. I was at a bar, at a table with a few people I didn't really know. This was a pretty common occurrence.
You usually got a drank, talked. This was a kind of gothic-theme bar, all done up with spooky decorations, a good dj, interesting drinks. We'd host arts/culture slide show jams before the place really would get going for the night. The art was curated and swapped out monthly. There was a lot going on! The place did a lot to charge the space with energy and excitement, bringing a lot of different people together.
Then this guy at the table whipped out his phone and just ignored us all sitting there.
I knew right then and there that this was the beginning of the end.
Even before the iPhone it started happening with the Blackberry, Palm, et. al. I distinctly remember the early-mid '00's when my aunt got her first BB, a 7250(?) and it quickly became more important than anything else. Family get-togethers started to consist of her sitting by herself on her phone while the rest of us enjoyed each other's company.
My memory is that my phone was always on me, and I texted a lot on the go, but most of the texts were about meeting up, getting directions, or coordinating. After that, if a phone was brought out it was to do more of that in the group setting "Hey Sally is going to be here in 15 brining Jake"), then put back.
Now we're all dopamine seeking doom scrollers.
I've been out with a group of friends -- some I just met -- once this year. It also doesn't help that meals and drinks seem hard to justify for the price. I'm waxing nostalgia, but $30 of tacos used to be maybe $8; my $10 beer today was $3.
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In secondary school, the first kids got phones and some of them were already spending a ton of time and money texting others. Wasn't for me because every text message had a fixed cost, but I followed not long after through ICQ, MSN and the like. But that wasn't on phones yet at the time, so at least it wasn't a constant possible activity.
My online social activity has declined a lot since then though, there was just so much unnecessary drama, oversharing, and vying for attention, emotional support, etc and the people that gave it burned out and left, leaving just emotionally needy people yelling into the void while the others moved on with their lives.
crackberry we called it
it happened with books, and before that papyrus. :)
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Thinking back to when I got my first smartphone 15 years ago, it occupied just so much of my attention and I figured it was some kind of honeymoon phase with a new gadget. But it never got less, if anything it's increased since then.
Now it's not just phones. It's video games, it's that new TV show people watch in the background, it's X and Y.
The baseline keeps dropping.
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I was out in NYC when the iphone 2007 came out, without an app store and without 3G broadband, and I don’t think it was that entertaining to the people I saw with it. It was still mostly just for text communications.
It wasn’t until iphone 3G in 2008 that you had a full fledged browser with unlimited broadband capable of streaming audio, maps, and visiting websites with graphics. And, of course, new apps coming out everyday.
The battery was also not good enough to use long for a long time.
> Then this guy at the table whipped out his phone and just ignored us all sitting there.
Sounds like the real gothic-guy in the place. ; )
Also a similar story: This was a kind of normal bar, all done up with fine photos for decorations, good music, good drinks. We'd host performances and jams before the place really would get going for the night. The art was curated and swapped out monthly. There was a lot going on! The place did a lot to charge the space with energy and excitement, bringing a lot of different people together. Then one day a guy got bored and went home alone early. I knew then and there, that place was finished!
Every single social event is a financial consideration now. Want to go out with the wife for the evening? It's going to cost $150+ for a baby sitter at $25/hour. The dinner + tip is going to cost $200. Parking is going to cost $50 - $100 if you go into a city. You could take public transportation but then you're loooking at that cost shifting back to the babysitter. Before you know it you're in for $300 - $500 just for a night off.
> The dinner + tip is going to cost $200. Parking is going to cost $50 - $100 if you go into a city.
Why are you driving into a city that costs $100 to park in and then to a restaurant that costs $100 per person if money is a consideration?
Go to a local restaurant. Go to one outside of that city. Do literally anything other than the scenario you described.
I guarantee that if you're near a city where you can find $100 parking, you can find 100 or 1000 amazing small restaurants that are affordable and interesting.
This is a type of defeatism where someone imagines the worst possible scenario, erases all other options, and then pretends it's a choice between the worst scenario or nothing at all.
> restaurant that costs $100 per person
I had a burger, fries and 2 beers last night at one of these small local restaurants. It was $47 with tip. I had a bbq plate the other day at a local restaurant. 2 meats, 2 sides was $26 dollars before a drink or tip was added.
Going out in the US is so expensive now, even the low end, that you might as well do something nicer.
You haven't seen "event pricing" parking in cities have you? I was in Atlanta a while back and I was unfortunate enough to need to go in to the city during some big concert. Every garage had event parking prices that were $80+.
Plus there is no way parking is $100. SpotHero is like $22.
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When I'm visiting developing countries, I'm often in awe of the increased social activity and wondering why we don't have that in the western world anymore. One thing I think about is the cost increase like this.
Baumol's cost disease often comes to mind - in my (might be wrong) application of it - western society simply has had too much productivity and efficiency improvements. You can make more money as a software developer or as an investment banker because those jobs have gotten more efficient and have higher payouts to employers who want the best employees.
There can't be efficiency improvements in efficiency for child care, so the only way to have people want to become child care workers is to pay a competitive salary, so the efficiency increases in the other unrelated fields directly increase the cost of child care.
Developing countries don't have this problem and domestic labor and child care are still cheap.
I spend about half of every year cycling the developing world. Whatever the continent, I'm seeing more and more young people on their phones watching short-length video. I don't think they are far behind the West in the decline of socializing.
Babysitting is cheap if there are enough aunts and uncles (or trustworthy teenage neighbor girls) around, but in Western countries many of us don't have siblings or moved too far away.
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> I'm often in awe of the increased social activity and wondering why we don't have that in the western world anymore.
Is Southern Europe not part of The West?
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I have often thought about how many movies and TV shows in my childhood (1980s) focused on plot lines of people regularly gathering at a bar after work. Did people really do that or is it just a Hollywood thing to put people in the same place? Now that I think about it, actually, I guess my department at work did this when I first started in the early 2000s, going out to the bar once or twice a week.
It's hard to imagine doing that nowadays. I have a family, so doing that instead of going home in the evening would be selfish (if done too often), but even if I were younger and had time, it would seem very extravagant now. When a beer is $8-10 or even more, it would be an expensive proposition to go to the bar every night after work. And if you order food it's even worse...
I think the answer to your question is right there in your post:
> Now that I think about it, actually, I guess my department at work did this when I first started in the early 2000s, going out to the bar once or twice a week.
> It's hard to imagine doing that nowadays. I have a family,
This still happens. Young people get together and go out after work. I don't go to pubs often, but when I meet up with someone after work the crowd is people meeting up after work with each other.
If everyone in your department is over 35 and has kids, you won't have much luck with this. If everyone is in their 20s and friendly, there's probably something going on.
I think a lot of people forgot how to be friendly with coworkers, especially if they spend a lot of time online. Online discussions about jobs mostly read like it's a cutthroat single player game where you shouldn't get too close to anyone because you can't trust anyone and you should be planning your next job hop anyway. I have to remind a lot of people younger than me that it's okay to have friends at work. You need to have friends outside of work, too, but you can be friendly with people at work.
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People really did that regularly. It does seem to be economically related, for a lot of reasons.
One aspect is that a single income really was enough to not feel extravagant to have a home, a family, and afford to go to the bar a few nights a week. (Part of this was there wasn't as much random other stuff to buy, it wasn't being marketed to you nearly as aggressively either.)
I certainly did this quite a bit in the 1990's, and in the early 1980's I definitely remember my father going out at least twice a week and then the weekends also being for going out and doing something as a family at least 2/3 weekends per month - like trips to a nearby city, or to a sports game, or visit other family, or whatnot.
It used to be fairly common in smaller but densely populated areas in the United States, not so long ago (pre-2020). A lot of breweries were setup so that there were even outdoor areas that kids could be in. Usually one of the drafts was priced drastically lower than the others, and there were many unspoken relationship-based discounts or "try this" from the bartender or owner.
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> Did people really do that or is it just a Hollywood thing to put people in the same place
People really did that.
Maybe not every single night, but weekly for sure
I live in an urban area. Most bars in the area have a decent crowd after work into the night. The demographics of the crowd varies based on the bar. Based on your description we're roughly the same age, as a data point I wind up out after work usually 2-3x a week.
There's one bar I go to regularly where there's a couple of guys who I've literally never seen absent over the years.
It was mostly a fiction to advance the plot. Going to bars after work has always been a thing for young singles or old alcoholics, but pretty rare for parents/married people to do routinely.
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Interestingly, "went to a bar in the past year" is one of the few questions in the survey whose answer basically didn't budge (52% in 1995 vs. 49% in 2026).
Yeah, often once a week only team up until COVID.
Most people did not go to bars. As with many things, an unrealistic image portrayed in media. Perhaps more did, but far from most.
Agree.
I went first time with office team this year a couple of weeks back. Needless to say whole experience was atrocious. No common reference, movies, sports, TV and so on to talk about besides work. It was just: "Oh, what do you do on weekend? I do x,y,z " in a round-robbin manner.
It was definitely not good time, or even bad time one can remember, just an insipid gathering for 3 hours of doing nothing. $8 for a beer and $15-20 per person for lukewarm food not sure I'll be excited for another meet any time soon.
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Babysitting is the big one for me. I can eat cheaper, but I can't really get a cheaper babysitter. My wife used to babysit for 5 bucks an hour just 10 years ago, and high school aged girls now want 20 an hour minimum. We're not talking "professionals" and my cost of going out is now at least 60-80 bucks without acting else.
This is also caused by the decline in social activity and community. People in the past didnt have this problem as much because they had tons of trusted family members, friends, neighbors, who also had children and could thus look after theirs for an evening.
A picnic is basically free, for those near enough to open spaces. Likewise for hikes, which I’ll happily pay to drive an hour or more to enjoy.
I don’t think money is a barrier to getting out.
I think the friction is a much bigger issue than the cost. People are stuck in a trap of scrolling short form video because it provides no friction. While organizing a picnic is extremely high friction relative to social media scrolling.
I think to solve this we are going to have to blow up social media and make going out in public more convenient and friendly. Otherwise we are going to end up in a WALL-E society where people spend all day with their meta glasses streaming AI generated micro dramas.
What's the motivation though?
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So true. Society has been captured by banks and telecoms/internet/TV.
Feels like a guinea pig society with all of the rapid changes happening
This is very sad to read, every social thing I do cost me zero dollars because they're in my community with my neighbors.
Why do you feel the need to spend money to socialize?
Dinner + tip is not $200, parking is not $50, I live in a city lol
See that's the problem, you live IN the city, and you're not afraid of the city, so you know how it really is.
I've gotten the "Parking is too expensive and hard to find" from friends when I try and get them to come into the city to hang out. No, come to my apartment, park in the plentiful free protected street parking right out front, and then we'll walk the 5 minutes to the center of downtown.
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Dinner + tip can easily reach $200 if you're talking about a fancy restaurant for date night, even with just a single drink each. $50 for parking is crazy, that's like a music festival price or something.
Of course, if you live in the kind of city where the above is true, then a very delicious dinner + tip can usually be had for $50-75, it just won't be as fancy.
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50 is steep for parking, but between dinner/drinks/rideshare, you can pretty quickly hit $250 on a nice-but-not-crazy date night in my HCOL city.
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I live in the boonies and dinner + tip (and drinks) for two can easily be $200. Parking is free here because, ya know, boonies and whatnot.
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Prices have risen faster than wages but $200 is a choice. They simply have high standards and treat it like poverty.
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Depends on the city. Here you can have a really nice time out for two people for $250.
Which city? Downtown Austin? Seattle?
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I'm 25. I go to work and then I go home. Same schedule since I got out of university. I do networking / IT. I usually buy a six pack of beer and then go to bed when I'm off, sometimes I'll stay up on my lab but I usually regret it because lack of sleep.
No bars, no dinners with anyone. I think the only blessing this lifestyle has given me is minimized impact from the failing economy we're in, at the cost of not seeing anyone or doing anything. I still have outside hobbies, but it's all too expensive to keep up with now, or being heavily regulated.
So it's basically Rush's "Working Man" - "So I get home at five o'clock and I take myself out an ice-cold beer. Always seem to be wond'rin' Why there's nothin' goin' down here. It seems to me I could live my life a lot better than I think I am. I guess that's why they call me...They call me the workin' man"
(and this goes back farther than 30 years. Closer to 50 now)
Do you want to socialise more but can’t or are you satisfied with how things are?
I love not socializing. I've never enjoyed a party in my life, I hate dating, I don't want to lose any time in the day to hanging out with anyone. But what I wonder is if am I fundamentally an antisocial person, or am I a product of my cursed environment and trapped in the momentum of the antisocial tidal wave that has been happening since before I was born?
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Not really satisfied, but the alternatives seem like an uphill battle for myself. Most of my friends have moved on to their marriages, kids, etc. Certainly entering childless uncle phase of my life.
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Work as much overtime as you possibly can for a few months or even a year and save as much as you can. Then get rid of any material possessions bogging you down and go travel and find life.
At this point I think your experience can be multiplied by millions and still be quite accurate.
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Just some personal anecdotes: I've come into the orbit of a local "no phones" meetup group in my city. I discovered it by seeing a black and white printed scan of a hand-drawn flyer on a pole by my apartment. Currently it's just organized by one guy who sends out random Signal pings for stuff to do like a potluck picnic, group trip to some free instructed yoga at a park, craft night at a local bar/bookstore, etc., and usually there's ~4-15 people that show up. I organized a World Postcard Day postcard writing party last week, found a venue that would host for free, donated some of my own dollars to provide free official WPD postcards to attendees, and had 7 people come write postcards with me, I convinced 4 of them to sign up for Postcrossing, it was a great time.
If anybody else is looking for change, try setting something like this up. It has so far been free, easy, relatively low stakes, and I think by virtue of the main focus being "no phones", you get some great people who are all tired of the same algorithmic churn.
I became very good friends with someone who I met at one of the meetups and we've done all kinds of things just the 2 of us and have had some really interesting conversations, which is something I haven't done in a LONG time.
The meetup app still exists.
Meetup sucks.
The reason for the decline in social activity is not that it was insufficiently commercialized. Meetup should be a nonprofit.
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I looked recently for my area. Almost all the listed meetups are online now, not in person. Bad juju.
The meetup app costs money for organisers except for the smallest meetings (10 people or less)
aaaaand it's been bought by BendingSpoons
I can't square this with the fact that I have a perfect storm situation that should point me there. I am a foreigner of minority ethnicity to the United States living in a high-rise building of 600 people that has no Schelling point common-space to spend time in that's located in a city that is expensive and I have all the social contact I desire: family, close friends, more distant friends, neighbours, strangers in the building, familiar strangers in the area.
I talked about how relatively easy it is to have social contact here at all levels and so I must conclude that most people simply have better uses for their time (by their own judgment) than this. https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community
A lot of people are convinced of things without ever trying, which they then use to justify not trying.
"I mildly attempted doing this once and it didn't work, so I won't bother trying again" describes a shocking amount of people's experiences.
I sometimes think people fail on purpose to justify apathy or giving up.
Then if anyone says anything they scream about how their experience is valid and nobody can tell them otherwise. It's wild.
There's something important about being outside our comfort zones. We need entropy in our lives and the best way to accomplish that is being in new environments with different people/creatures. What I've found is over time my comfort zone expands as I become familiar with more stuff.
The flip side to this is thinking everyone is on equal footing and that your trying is the same as their trying. They're just doing it wrong.
Most people in this post's comments that are "not trying" seem to also be depressed in some way. If you've never experienced it, depression can make trying impossible not just a minor inconvenience. Going to therapy can help, or not. Taking anti-depressants can help, or not.
Also a "mild attempt at doing this once" that ends very poorly can cause a depressed or anxious person to spiral into a self-hatred looping hellscape. It's not a rational decision they're making it just happens. After you've experienced that you're very cautious and try to never feel it again.
And then the kicker is when you're paralyzed like this everyone just thinks you're lazy or unmotivated and pretty much tells you "don't be depressed stupid" which further sends you into having a poor outlook of yourself and it spirals from there. I've been in and out of this several times in my life, it's not pleasant. I've also tried every single remedy known to man and sometimes nothing works.
To put it simply: their experience is probably valid and nobody should tell them otherwise.
I'm a white foreigner in Asia and feel the exact same as you. But I also realize, because I'm different than everyone else, there is more interest in getting to know me.
Also, people that are different than everyone else (but same background as me) seek me out to be friends.
For example, there is a HUGE difference between a Seattle Tech event where I am literally the same as the other 60 people in the room vs Vietnamese Tech event where I am one of 3 people that speak english. Those other 2 English speakers are going to walk over and chat with me.
All of the foreigners I know seem so healthy about this kind of thing. I don't know what's wrong with the rest of us.
This is precisely because you are a foreigner of minority ethnicity (the minority ethnicity points towards hailing from a more traditional culture compared to if you were white and therefore you would be from Europe which does not have a traditional culture, it has a modern culture).
To clarify the idea: you have a healthy social matrix but if you marry and settle in the US, your grandchildren won't.
About 70-75% of Americans live in single family homes. Your experience is not universal.
Right, and perhaps that indicates that the decline in social activity is a conscious trade-off made as Americans (a relatively wealthy group) prefer to live in detached land properties. That points to the social activity decline as not being something to be bemoaned but something to be celebrated because people have the opportunity to choose otherwise and they have done so in droves.
Fellow desi here, and I am happy for you, but I haven't had the same experience at all in the Bay. Imo, there is something in American culture which makes people very incurious about other cultures...because there are so many immigrants from all over the world, Americans find it hard to relate to anyone not American. My favorite example to illustrate this is how "where are you from" is everyone's favorite question in South Asia and often asked with good intentions, but it can be considered rude in the States.
Asking in the US seems to risk a faux pas these days. "Why do you assume I'm 'from' somewhere else?"
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Gonna be real honest here. I live across classes and and observe quite a few
The entirety of the socialization decline I see is with the poor and middle class. The poor seem to have to work a ton more and struggle to make ends meet while still living in a highly individualistic world without the shared community of previous poorer cultures of the past.
And from my observations the middle class are amusing themselves to death while simply becoming sloths at home doing very little other than their children’s sports. No hosting, not social manners and little get together than gets in the way of television or video games.
The upper class and wealthy socialize a great deal. I mean a ton. Shared vacations, constant social occasions hosting fund raisers galas sports hobbies etc. practically non stop.
>The upper class and wealthy socialize a great deal. I mean a ton. Shared vacations, constant social occasions hosting fund raisers galas sports hobbies etc. practically non stop.
I wonder how many of them would count this as work time, since so much of value add at high level positions is precisely through activities like that.
This is more complex than you might thing. First, there's far more places to meet people - rather than having them over for coffee, we meet in a coffeeshop. Networks have provided a "together in time" alternative to "together in place", so people can game, talk, ... via voice and video rather than traveling to a common location. There's far more 2-working-member families than previously, so the ability to organize household events is reduced. Finally, there's far more organized sports activities that consume both child and parent time. These pull everybody out of the house.
I’ll never forget a conversation I overheard on a plane years back: a caricature of a man in his 20s failing repeatedly to explain to an older lady what a “gastropub” was. Each time, he rephrased his description, and each time she responded, “that sounds like a pub.”
“No, not exactly...,” he replied in an increasingly exasperated tone. I could hear the struggle in his voice as he recognized the cracks forming in the thin veneer of his identity. “It’s like a pub, but it serves food. Like, real food, thoughtfully considered by a gastrochef.” She returned the serve, now teetering on boredom at minute four of the flight. “At our pub we call him Kevin. He makes the best pot pie.”
He regrouped and they found truce in talking about the weather in Toronto. I resisted the urge to twist around to ask if they knew any good restaurants downtown.
A pub must serve drink. It doesn't need to serve food.
In Ireland that distinction matters. It generally will affect other things, like what time and how loud music will be played, how the tables and chairs will be organised and what type. It will often affect opening hours and the price of a pint. Gastro pubs also tend to be much larger.
In North America it seems the vast majority of "pubs" are gastro pubs, possibly why that lady couldn't see the difference. I personally love micropubs and they never serve food other than crisps and maybe a toastie.
I feel like a pedant but I get that dude in his 20s and had to speak up.
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Decline in religion + third spaces combined with socioeconomic system expectations of a 40 hour work week + two incomes needed to live comfortably. Places and time for community and social activities has declined, and so social activity has as well.
If more social time is desired at the macro system level, people need to have more leisure time (shorter work week, higher wages, good quality of life with more free time broadly speaking) and more third spaces to meet and socialize.
Citations:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302
Is there a citation for the decline in third spaces? I read such a claim often. But in my part of the US (Brooklyn NY) the number of third spaces like coffee shops and pottery studios is booming.
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An enormous portion of my social life is through my church. Bible studies, committee, small groups, Sunday schools are the main structures things, and then you make friends through it and start having other people over and hanging out with them. I don't know what my social life would look like without it.
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The 40 hour work week is most assuredly not new in the past 30 years.
The households where both parents work full time probably have increased in that time, but I'd say you have to go back closer to 50 years to really get to a time where it was still somewhat common for a housewife to be home all day with the kids.
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regarding the 40 hour work week, I wonder what "always on" is doing to impact social activities. Meaning, you work 40 hours in the office, then you go home and get online and work a few more hours each night.
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I can assure you we had "coffeeshop"s in the ancient times.
Yeah, but they weren't as common as they are today. There were pubs and eateries before also, but again, not so common. My point was that much of what was done "then" in one's house are now done elsewhere. Some, of course, aren't done and I'm not sure they're quite so popular.
And I assume the pertinent discussion is what happened/changed in the western world post WW II.
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Wait until they find out "coffee shops" preceded "coffee at home"
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From Europe something I notice when I spend time in the USA is that you guys have to drive to everything. Felt very isolating to me to drive 20mins to go grab a pre-planned beer or a coffee with friends. Our neighbourhood as 3 pubs/bars in 15min walk of each other as well as shops, community spaces and parks, the 3rd places where people and communities are made.
Also yes media, phones, TV etc.
I live in an area of the US that pre-pandemic, it wasn't the case of "everything scheduled and planned". I'd wake up, wander down to the cafe and chat with people I knew around town... just whoever I'd see. After work I'd go to the downtown area and just stop at pubs and patio cafes and whatever and sit until someone I knew came by or I saw someone doing the same and stop and chat with them.
After the pandemic it's like everyone forgot this. The coffee shops are all students studying or people rushing in and out, the pubs and cafes are all ghost towns or groups of people being very insular. Even at events like the farmer's market there's less socializing and more "go get the things and go move on, don't look around, don't talk to people", the vendors even mention how boring it is these days without anyone just chatting anymore.
"Go out and be in the world" seems to have just died.
GCC countries are car-heavy, including a lot of drivethrus where no one gets out of their car, and yet I got the impression that social activity was remarkably healthy compared to Europe or North America. Men meeting in cafes in Oman were talking normally and not taking out their phones. There was an openness to talking to me, a foreigner, that has disappeared elsewhere. Not sure what to credit that with -- a combination of Islam and a generous welfare state?
As someone who grew up in the US and then moved to the EU; I came here to say exactly this. You leave your private house, get in your private car, then go somewhere. You could live 10 years beside someone and never know their name.
Here in the EU, I know most of the people on my street because I walk by them every day on my way to the store. In the US, even though I lived less than 1 mile/500ish meters from the store, I couldn't walk there if I wanted to.
Urban design makes a huge difference. The post war culdesac boom was a terrible idea. It does tend to keep unwanted strangers and poor people out of your neighborhood though, which was probably the point.
Looks like they don't like the truth - down-vote-aggeddon
I'm Canadian not American but I feel this keenly
I had a pretty busy social life in university, 20 years ago
The first city I landed in afterwards, I was able to make some connections and was lucky enough some of my uni friends were around too
But I moved for work to a much further away city and my social life has dropped to zero since then. The pandemic and lockdowns didn't help of course, but that was years ago. I don't have a single friend in this city and I've lived here almost 10 years now
Admittedly I'm kind of socially awkward and quite afraid of new groups, which has only gotten worse over the years. I also haven't had any luck making lasting connections through work or anything like that.
I tend to blame myself for this but it's not too surprising to hear many others are struggling too
- in university 20 years ago. My brother in Christ you’re just an old fart now.
Are you trying to say that someone who is 40 is just supposed to not have a social life anymore?
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Early to mid forties is middle aged in G20 countries, my own university days were 40 years past.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to call out housing as a huge factor here for four reasons:
1. Every third space represents an ever-larger opportunity cost of being turned into housing. If you can close a pub and turn it into million dollar condos, that commercial rent is going up;
2. More expensive rents are an input into everything done at a business or third space;
3. This decreases spending ability in real terms. 20 years ago, you could get a pint in London for 2-3 pounds. Now it's 6-7. Have wages doubled? No. And pubs were (and are) part of the UK social fabric; and
4. People need to work more to pay for their ever-larger mortgages and other debt. This gives people less time.
Expensive housing is literally destroying society.
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Immigration doesn't cause expensive housing. Making it hard and/or expensive to build more causes expensive housing.
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I think this is not America specific and decline could be even steeper when today's kids are gonna grow up.
I see most of the kids are constantly on mobile and when they are not, they feel a void. It was almost similar to not having friends in pre social media age.
I see people getting more and more absorbed in screen so much so to forget greeting people. This happens to me all the time , someone known coming out of elevator, I am ready to greet, but they simply did not notice or noticed too late and vice versa
Fun dumbbell plot. I like how the bottom "Used the internet" is graphically and metaphorically the foundation for the entire presentation of change. The change is so total that you might miss it, as if it is the baseline or the water we are all swimming in.
I feel that beyond the proper social events (e.g. dinner parties, hangouts etc.), another important part that has declined is the little social stuff.
Having a chat with the butcher, barista, etc. or just bumping into people you know and talking for a few minutes is pretty uplifting when it happens regularly.
I feel like the containerization of life erodes this.
So here's the question:
in America we have had 20 years of "Tech Disruption"., making the world a better place and relentless technical innovation, combined with the 'corporization' of America
Has our day to day lives improved?
Do we work less, live healthier, have less stress?
Seems like this (the younger generation) is far worse off then pre-internet connected, smartphone generation
As long as technology keeps being visible I don't think society will be improved by it. The development in the past few years have let me to the conclusion that having technology insisting on being in your face, it will not benefit society. It has to blend into the background and be something you pull out when you need it. Almost anything "big tech" has produced in the past 25 year have pushed technology into the foreground.
It would be useful to know whether the same trends have happened in other places. If iPhones are causing people to be less social, we should see similar trends in France and Japan.
If we didn’t see the same trends, it points to reasons more specific to the US.
Japan is not necessarily applicable 1:1; homes are smaller and space is at a premium so people are far more likely to just go sit somewhere… and nowadays they are usually on their phone.
because suburbs and housing models like it designed around a closed loop even some apartment building which have high population density encourage social isolation.
compare a 'luxury' Florida apartment vs the old New York apartments built in the 1800s. the NY apartments have narrow stairs, one way in.
likewise dense / small cities / villages in either africa/europe etc force more natural social interaction.
even for friends - easier to host friends when they can easily walk to your home & they don't have to drink & drive.
so blaming tv, social media, video games etc doesn't get to the root of the matter.
I don't know if "read a book" is a "social activity," meanwhile "play video games" often is a social activity. Not to mention there are gains in attending concerts, exercise classes, airtravel, and using the internet-- all of which are social activities. It's kind of an outdated survey if the goal is to track social activity. Each individual question is interesting on its own though.
Playing online video games can be a social activity but more often than not it is a parasocial activity.
How are online video games parasocial? You're actually playing with and likely against other people. That's social. Isn't parasocial more watching streams and podcasts?
Semi-related, this story stuck with me about the university experience now vs in the 90s.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/how-uni-life-has-chan...
By the end I felt so sorry for the young man they profiled, what an enormous life experience he largely misses out on.
I sign up for things like entertaining people, church, dinner parties, but reading, breakfast, movie, stayed late at work, come on! Concerts I also sign up for but the pop and rock element I find very restricting. We shouldn't forget that focus/subject of common activities shift. Like we don't go out that much with friends to a public execution any more, which was very popular in the past, peak social event. Possibly we can find closer examples disappeared too. Times change, old things like clubs disappear, new ways emerge, things shift elsewhere. How about group chats/calls, open-source projects, commenting articles? Not only with people in 1 hour distance max but with people from around the planet? Gamer events, e-sport (despite my dislike)? Communicate with someone on the bus (regardless of being on the same bus or elsewhere)?
In person socialising is definitely down, likely the overall too, but I would not base a social activity judgement on a questionnaire like this here alone, I miss important elements.
See https://joinordiefilm.com/
The home price to wage ratio from 1995 to present increased 40% so maybe a nation of renters has less incentive to host dinner parties. Source: BLS: https://www.bls.gov/cps/wlftable16.htm
> One of the steepest declines in the survey is for "entertaining people in my home." While in 1995, 88% of Americans reported entertaining others at home at least once in the past year, this number has declined to 67% in 2026.
That really jumped out at me. I don't doubt it, but it's just weird because my partner and I constantly watch home improvement shows on HGTV where folks are constantly talking about improving their kitchen or other space "to entertain guests". And my partner is always nagging at me about the same thing - upgrading the kitchen or backyard so we can have guests. But our house is fine and we never have guests over. I get this sense from a lot of people. I think people love the fantasy of having guests to entertain, but no one ever wants to actually do it.
"Meetups" are glorified pickup activities, hookup culture is too prevalent, and people are kind of gross when they're getting drunk. I don't drink, I don't smoke. Why would I want to do any of that when I could talk online to my friends about actual nerdy stuff, instead of having to listen to someone using nerdy stuff as a "common ground" but whose interests are far more singular than that? The article says internet usage is up 90%, much of that is probably socially motivated, especially if your interests are any degree above extremely ordinary.
you can go to a meetup and not drink, nor smoke, nor hit on people?
If you're hit on yourself, politely decline, and strike up a different topic of conversation.
Most of the meetups I attend are not "glorified pickup activities".
There are also plenty of nerdy meetups. Some of the biggest nerds I know I've met through board game and trivia meetups.
All that screen time has to be sourced from some place.
It feels like it costs like $40+ to do anything.
in NYC it takes more than $50 to do anything and minimum wage is $17.00...And it takes like 1 hour commute with stupid city tax/ state tax/ federal tax/ school tax...
And they keep saying why people aren't socializing or making babies and blame it on phone.
I think social interactions are very tiring, especially today. The reason being, most people want to be impressed by someone somehow, but the comparison is no longer the person down the street, but some really really funny person that lives on a social media feed. Another reason is, people are getting less and less accustomed to any pushback, since they are not used to it anymore, any discussion above smalltalk is difficult.
It's probably true that some form of a satisfying social interaction is missing today, but I would say it's a trope any will do to make us happy. In general any type of party I've been to recently, I've enjoyed leaving as soon as possible.
I started volunteering at my local bike kitchen co-op, mostly just to meet like-minded people
I think this is a great one that a lot of people overlook. Also, doesn't cost $40+ like a lot of people are saying in different comments. Plus, it actually does some good in the world.
I made an app for iOS for creating a social roster and setting specific catchup cadences for each friend. It's free, is purely local and has no backend, and was co-created by my wife and I. We've gotten a lot of value out of it, and it has measurably improved our lives. Try it out if you're interested!
https://morelandjs.github.io/chumlord-site/
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chumlord/id6767711584
Looks cool! Would you consider making the app available in the eu app stores?
Recent and highly related: “Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over”. 15 days ago; 751 comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891295
https://www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com/pdf/j.1467-9477....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
Research on this has been done and the cause is known. There is just no desire to improve the conditions of social activity on the part of civil society or the government.
Zuck got rich though
There are bills to pay. Who has time for friends?
Niche area I think about often is how genuinely for some people they’re only real irl social interaction is through work. I wonder how increased use of ai (why ask a colleague when you can just ask chat) further exacerbates some of the social isolation that seems to be around now
Anyone else think Covid exacerbated this problem?
I really think it did. After covid i moved to Asia where the measures were a lot more intense (3 month house arrest), and a lot of people are traumatised by it, you would think that people would go out and go wild, but the opposite seems true. Plus phones, AI (people ask AI first), the economy and size of the cities (lack of access to third spaces, if you dont consider 711..) all contributes. Now this is from my perspective. I have some friends who are out and about every day, but the majority either seems to sit at home broke or work their ass off.
Inequality has increased the middle class have been hollowed out and young people have no money so hardly surprising.
this data doesn’t have things like “talked in a group chat with my friends”
Digital captupture of society
As an introvert I’d say my social activity has stayed about the same the last 30+ years. Being out with people just drains me.
Cars, + social media and you have most of your answer right there. It’s difficult to be “social” when the activities requiring at a minimum driving 10-15 minutes. Insert a surrogate activity (social media) and there isn’t any real reason to leave your couch.
That should be "In-Person Social Activity Has Steeply Declined". While online social activity has increased significantly.
It saddens me that soon we'll need to split this out between actual human-to-human activity and parasocial bot-stuff. (Worse, covertly-bot stuff.)
This sounds like a news article from 2020-2021 if you remove "30 years" :D
But on the serious side - it all make sense because we have more ways to socialize without going out (via chats, games, etc.). Although it would be interesting to see the same stats for Gen Z and Gen Alpha
This is very one-sided. How about Zoom meetings and other virtual activities? And "staying at work late" is not a social activity, nor is reading a book, and the decline in church attendance obviously has other causal factors.
Two years ago I moved to a smallish (think 3,5k people) town (in Europe, ie you get everywhere by foot) and it has done wonders to my mental health. All the daily social micro-interactions with people who are aware of you seem truly healing.
This is very one-sided. How about Zoom meetings and other virtual activities? And "staying at work late" is not a social activity, and the decline in church attendance obviously has other causal factors.
Was having this conversation the other day. I’m wondering whether with the advent of technology we’re now “over organising” social activities to the point where that organisation has become too much of a task to perform consistently.
I also see that people generally like to be invited but rarely initiate things on their own.
Same in the 90s.
Socializing with people who are not friends is too shallow and unsatisfying. How are you? I’m good. But you’re not good and nothing is good. Okay but that is just pleasantries and not even a literal question. Still it bothers. What’s better? Putting on a fake smile so that you can have idle, useless chatter with near-strangers because you happen to be proximate due to eating habits? Or not.
Satisfying would be to bond over common problems and share common joys. But again too surface-level if not even taboo. I swear it’s gotten to the point where AI or whatever the next doom is could take 5% of all jobs. And there would be talk like, oh poor Joe he lost his job and has no marketable skill. Yup. Yup. Any solutions? Any venting? No, just frustrating reminders of impotence.
The absurdity of going to work every day as a wage commodity, another line item for the bougies to increase profits, then go “consume” your wages so that your “disposable income” can go towards the impossible goal of increasing profits into eterntiy, then see advertizements about how consumers are ruining the planet by buying food that they have no skill, land, or means to grow. But why talk about that? You can’t, not even in a fabled “social democratic” society.
We could be talking about real problems. Just venting, or maybe educating each other, or maybe even doing something about it. Even strangers since we all obviously, as plain as fucking day, go through these bullshit motions every day. We see each other. But we can’t talk about it.
How much of this is preference though? I don’t particularly like going to parties or especially hosting them in my home so the fact that there is less of this is actually positive for me.
It could be that doing things you don’t like is sometimes good for you, and maybe there is a collective preference shift towards avoiding short-term pain at the expense of long-term gain.
Are these your actual preferences or have you been nudged and pushed to pursuit consumerism to replace human socialization?
Feels anti-human to purposely deny yourself what makes humans human.
I mean that’s the point right? Preferences have shifted.
Do folks have social nerd meetup suggestions in the Bay Area? I'm pulling my hair out here in Mountain View. Aside from trying to run my own, with limited success, it's veeery slim pickings.
Oh, I almost forgot the Mountain View Reverse Engineering meetup. Very nerdy crowd.
I want to build more than I want to disassemble, but maybe I should check out the BBQ people's meetup.
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Red Rock Coffee hosts recurring events. Not explicitly nerdy events, but the local demographics here mean that the crowd skews nerdy.
You mean their Monday open mics, their monthly book club, and their... motorcycle enthusiasts meetup, if that's still going on? I've been at that open mic for years, most weeks. I've tried the book club, and I don't have enough interest in motorcycles.
Last night I found a post-it note in my copy of _The Organized Mind_ by Daniel J. Levitin.
It says "Connect with Others. Learn. Be Active".
Strikes me as good advice 10 years ago when I wrote it, and just as good now.
Related:
Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891295
This doesn't really account for new ways in which we are social. After my kid goes to bed, I typically get an hour or two to spend online with my friends on Discord. We mostly talk about work, fatherhood, etc...
I think it's way more healthy for me to be able to talk about life every day for an hour online, than meeting up once per week for two hours over beer. I still see them in person on a monthly basis.
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Probably true regarding everywhere, not just America.
Go to Asia and you'll see people glued to their phones everywhere while out in public.
And meanwhile I feel like I can never find time for myself on the weekend
Staying late at work is seen as social activity? (8th line in the graph)
Presumably for a social occasion at work, not to get more work done.
Drunk driving laws (plus the way cities are built obviously).
I don't know. I like it better this way.
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
I can not think of a society that hates itself more, so yeah.
In my experience it’s not because there’s lack of attempts to get people together
When given the option between: socializing with people in a shared space and being at home and entertaining yourself people are consciously choosing the latter.
When I ask why, this is what I hear from other people the most:
-I don’t have time
-I don’t have transportation
-Who else is going to be there
Etc…
There seems to be a genuine lack of desire whatsoever to simply get yourself to a place where there is a free event.
And to be clear this is not just talking about one particular type of event
I just went to a Democratic socialist of America event this weekend in support of Gaza, and the amount of people who showed up compared to the number of people who are on the list (even the organizing list) is some vanishingly small group.
If the plurality of individuals don’t want to join groups in person because they feel satisfied by themselves, then that’s a signal of some kind.
I accidentally went to a DSA meeting once. Was entertaining, they spent much of the time attacking eachother.
Not surprising but depressing nonetheless!
The only advantage of social media is that it showed how many assholes surround us, and maybe there's no reason to socialise that much
I'm an American who dislikes socializing with humans in general. Toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, classism, increasing wealth inequality, the global economy being unsustainable, the internet's golden era being over, children being infantilized rather than treated like full human beings, and other things are why I dislike socializing with humans. Unlike humans, I like being with my dogs. My dogs are far more trustworthy and loyal. They don't lie to me. They're not ruining this planet.
Yeah, like, go hang out with someone fresh off the boat whose only idea of cosine is you cosigning his or her immigration application.
it also cost money, generally, to be social. Thats also an impingement.
The solution: open play pickleball
I've spent about $1000 on equipment and classes so far, and about a year of my time. My problem is that I still kind of suck, and I have no friends who also play pickleball. So at open play, people just beat me so they can finally get to play with their own friends. This is really demoralizing!
I blame this on two things, technology and the financialization of everything.
Long ago places had large parks, outdoor swimming pools, cities became less of a place to live and more of an efficient use of space/money and thus the human aspect was removed.
Technology in the sense of games, twitter, chat, etc removes the superfical need for human contact but ruins real bonds with people
Doesn’t control for age?
There's a study for this, Bowling Alone.
Hint: it's diversity.
together we are alone
We can all tell
Americans are wasting their precious dopamine on stupid shit.
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NPCs dont need a social life /s
Well - they also voted for Trump. Twice.
So the social cohesion in the USA is absolutely broken.
What is more tragic, though, is how they try to export their insanity onto other countries, be it Canada or the EU. Trump also supporting war criminal and genocidal man Putin, is such a clear fact for the agent Krasnov theory.
Evil in joint operation here.
The population in the USA really need to begin to think about their political system. That two-party system does not really work; and the transition to a de-facto one-party system led by an authoritarian clique is even worse. The system is totally broken here.
This was foreseeable. We all know it. We all know why. Yet we fail to do anything about it.
It's happening in other countries as well. Any suggestions what could be done about it?
Turn off all social media and organize around shared beliefs/interests
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Easy. Reduce our use of technology and stop consuming so much. It will require you to lower your standard of living.
Is your partner willing to do this with you? Probably not.
Social media, smart phones, and all of that are heavily responsible for this, but at the same time I think the main crux of the issue, in my opinion, is that we don’t have a common culture anymore. As long as you don’t have a common culture and a common understanding of the basic rules that everyone agrees on, no one can spend time with each other comfortably.
We absolutely do have a common culture. The fact so many people think we do not is derivative of social media and smartphones.
All but the most extreme far-right and far-left people in the country really do agree on 95%+ of anything with daily relevance to their lives.
For a long time the number 1 song in the USA was "Choosin Texas" by Ella Langley.
I have no idea who that is and I've never heard the song.
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"All but the most extreme far-right and far-left people in the country really do agree on 95%+ of anything with daily relevance to their lives."
Can I get a source for this? Or is this just something you are pulling out of nowhere to argue against someone else's lived experience because it conflicts with yours?
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I don’t think the “agreeing middle” is 95% anymore. Maybe this is a Chronically Online POV but it seems the extremes are growing quickly, the center is shrinking, and society is going bimodal.
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That 95% number is so far from the truth. Gen Z males are significantly (though not majority) right wing and Gen Z females are the exact opposite. Based on data, 67% of the time, Gen Z males and females do not agree on the same political issues.
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The fragmentation of culture is also the fault of social media (and all media to a lesser extent). It's far easier to get sucked in to echo chambers where other opinions are mocked or shut out.
In the past we all got our news from Walter Cronkite.
The homogenization of culture was the fault of traditional centralized media. If you go back before the printing press, there was actually a much greater diversity of cultures and languages. Decentralized (social) media is bringing us back to how traditionally tribal humanity used to be.
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Who wants to hang out with illiterate, intolerant goblins? Not even their fellow goblins apparently. You ever see an American on fentanyl walking around with a hunched back? Goblin.
Americans are happy online cheering for people getting killed, maimed, tortured or otherwise suffering in other countries. Heck, even within their own neighbourhood. They come together online in droves posting memes and pimping themselves to advertisers. This article is using an old fashioned notion of what was social. Their social activity has not declined, atleast on Reddit. Or youtube. Or twitter. Or TikTok. Or bluesky. Or instagram. Or……
Americans are very intolerant of others, whether it's political convictions or food preferences; the few that have kids threat the little ones like fragile glassware that can't be moved or otherwise inconvenienced, so it doesn't surprise me that they meet others less. My wife and I meet with a varying group of friends every week, or even more, but we're all immigrants. We've tried to invite local acquaintances, but they always find a reason to say no and just stay home.
Totally off-base projection based on your very small sample size.
They're right about the intolerance, though. One tribe literally calls the other "Demon-crats", and has worked to reduce participation based on gender, sexuality and skin color.
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What a dumb take. That person is not the president of US to go shake hands with every one. They just said what they experienced. How is that invalid. It just proves that persons point, Americans are close minded, your comments itself proves that.
"There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch."
-- Nigel Powers in "Goldmember"
Cause our culture is f'ed, lol. Everyone I know is unhappy. It's impossible to be happy when things are this messed up.
I think unhappiness is the default of human state. Or rather discontent. Its probably wired into us bc if we were ever content we wouldnt procreate, try to attain financial success, etc
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You must live in a terrible place. That’s not my experience at all in a suburban neighborhood.
I’d imagine you don’t have any family around so the expats are sending time together instead of trying to assimilate.
> You must live in a terrible place.
Dipends how you see it. For North American standards, it's a lovely suburban neighbourhood in the Midwest; for us it's suburban hell because we love cities.
> the expats are sending time together instead of trying to assimilate
What do you mean by "assimilate" ?
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