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 -
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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