novum.substack.com
Fewer friends, relationships on the decline, delayed adulthood, trust at an all-time low, and many diseases of despair. The prognosis is not great.
In 2000, political scientist Robert Putnam published his book Bowling Alone to much acclaim and was first comprehensive look at the decline of social activities in the United States. Now, however, all those same trends have fallen off a cliff. This particular piece looks at sociability trends across various metrics—friendships, relationships, life milestones, trust, and so on—and gives a bird's eye view of the social state of things in 2022.
A piece that I wrote that really picked up on HackerNews recently with over 300+ comments. Some excellent comments there, I suggest reading it over.
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Notes -
I guess this is subjective, but as someone with an active, meat-space social life, it takes time, money and effort to maintain. You can substitute time and effort for money (pasta, red sauce and a screw-top Barbera can go a long way). I know we Americans tend to informally socially segregate by class, but at least my social life bridges that pretty easily. I host a large BBQ with white and blue collar guests every year. It’s amazing what breaking bread together does to bridge divides.
I haven’t found online socializing to be more than a simulacrum for meat-space socializing. Nearly all my friends are current and former teammates from rec sports leagues, current and former coworkers, people I met in young-professionals arts organizations, the bar I used to be a regular at, a book club, etc.
My GF and I are having folks over for dinner, tonight. That involved a more thorough cleaning of the house than we normally do on Saturday morning, a bigger grocery bill to account for the extra food and wine, and starting work in the kitchen at 9:00 this morning to sear the roast and get the slow cooker going.
And, it’s not that we don’t subscribe to multiple streaming services and couldn’t just pop something on tonight and put our feet up. But as others have said, here, it’s instant gratification versus long-term payoff. And, Netflix can be like weed, where you can put a pause on thinking about why you might not be satisfied with how you’re spending your evening.
But hugs, handshakes, smiles, eye contact, laughs, etc. land much differently, in person. As do frank discussions requiring sympathy or empathy.
We try, as much as our schedule, energy levels, and finances allow, to make plans, get people together, host dinner parties, etc. And, while we have not gotten a 1:1 return, the more often we make an effort to be social, the more others do in our direction, as well. And it’s encouraging, how often when we set something up, how many people say, “This was great. We need to do this more often.” You also over time figure out who will reciprocate, socially, and can prioritize spending time with them.
I think so many of us get into a rut once out of school, and there’s nothing making socializing more of a default you have to opt out of.
As someone who went from single and bouncing around family members' homes in fly over country to then having a girlfriend and living in San francisco, I can attest that my social life has blown up but also that it's extremely expensive. I wonder how much being broke factors into sitting around and doing nothing by yourself. Luckily I have not been broke throughout all of this, but I was certainly able to save money and throw it at stocks and whatnot until the last few months in SF.
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