In the American Time Use Survey, there are three big categories of time spent with non-family members (other than work): civic/religious activities, volunteering, and socializing. Here's what that looks like over the past 20 years:
Time spent with others is fairly flat until 2010. Since then it's been declining rapidly, helped along by a big drop during the pandemic that we never recovered from. Today we spend less than hour per day in social activities, a drop of 25% since the beginning of the century.
Well, one could argue that time spent on (some) social media is time spent with others.
(PornHub does not count, people)
I know today's social media landscape always leaves me filled with warm fuzzies.
I know you could consider it, but I think most people would not consider doom scrolling on Facebook to be time spent with others.
Staring at phones has become the 21st century plague.
Haha, when I read "since the beginning of the century" I thought "1900?"
Me too, also.
There's an entire cottage industry of people lamenting how _alone_ Americans are, from the Surgeon General to Derek Thompson, based on this data. The problem is that it defines social interaction as being "in-person." This is a ridiculously out of date definition given the way the world works now. I'm betting that if you added in online social interaction the entire decline would disappear.
There is no way you can consider online social interaction as not being alone. Not being able to read the room is making people unable to function in true social situations.
There’s every way I can consider it so, and do. You really want to argue that texting with a loved way is worse than sitting drunk at a bar?
Like this you mean?
Yeah, like this.
Personally, ‘on line’ is really not a good social interaction. I have a sense that young folks do not know how to interact “in person”. No more social skills.
Young folks do go to school where at least part of the time they can't be scrolling.
And then there are the olds who can’t manage an online interaction to save their lives.
Personally, covid lockdown taught me that being at home with my husband and our dog and a puzzle is better than 99.999% of socializing.
Yes. Same for me. Covid really made me realize how much I enjoyed spending the day with my wife puttering around the house compared to being with other people.
I wonder how the shift from in-person to online interaction changes the nature of human interaction and our understanding if others. It seems to me that our online presentations of ourselves are more curated, more constrained, and less natural. As we volunteer less and spend less time on civic activities, our exposure to people unlike ourselves lessens. It may feel good in the moment to have online interactions with others, but an online friend can't pick you up from the hospital, drop off soup when you are sick, or hug you when your mom dies. And you can't do the same for them. If we are entirely online, does it even matter if the person texting you is human or AI?
There seems to be something necessary about the physical world, even with its messiness and unpredictability. If there weren't, we'd have ditched real pets for robot ones long ago. Yet we still clean out the litter boxes of millions of infuriating cats every day. Maybe our pets will end up the replacement for people - we will get the enjoyment of closeness and touch, the thrill of unpredictability another creature brings, but far less of the compromise another human requires of us.
“ It seems to me that our online presentations of ourselves are more curated, more constrained, and less natural”
Let me go brush my teeth, comb my hair, put a nice shirt on, and work on my small talk. There! I’m ready to be “natural” in person.
Question is: Is this a choice? Are we spending less time with people because we want to, aggregately?
Somebody out there is socializing 2 hours a day because I almost never socialize in person. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
I have a bad habit of reading the advice columns. In innumerable cases lately, somebody writes in whinging that their dear old friend of several decades has been revealed (gasp!!) as having a differing political belief system than the "LW".
In all cases, the roar from the commentariat and generally the advice columnist, too, is to drop that old friend of decades and remain true to their "principles." Don't give an inch. No possible "understanding". There can be no common ground ... even though there was plenty of it for the last several decades.
Might this be one factor in diminished socialization? Simple intolerance? A holier than thou attitude? And yeah, I know, I know ... it's always the other guy's fault. They changed!! I'm still good!
Interesting, because my experience is different. I *don't* read a lot of advice columns (or whatever you call the online equivalent), but when I do, the response from the columnist has always been either (a) here's how to deflect talking about topics that will push you farther apart, or (b) here's how to frame your viewpoint in a way that might move your friend/relative to a new perspective without engaging directly. (As for reactions from commenters... yeah, not much useful to be learned there.)
Well, finding common ground was fairly easy when the major point of contention was top marginal tax rates. It becomes rather more difficult when the disagreement is about the very humanity of other Americans.
So, zooming is not interpersonal interaction? Multiplayer gaming isn't? Posting and liking and friending all over the place is not "interacting"? Why do some think that only meat to meat contact is "social interaction"?
For a blast out of the past, consider Asimov's novel "The Naked Sun", in which a big distinction was made between "seeing" another person (in person) and "viewing" (a kind of hyper 3D zoom). Due to their vast estates and total robot work force, Solarians mainly "viewed" one another, even physically proximate neighbors, and only "saw" one another on rare occasions, like a married couple getting together for sordid mating purposes.
People who deplored "seeing" were considered the "best" Solarians; those who liked "seeing" others were thought of as perverts. No wonder they all looked down on Earthmen, living cheek to jowl in their crowded megacity "Caves of Steel."
I'm just not seeing a "this is modern life" or "this is the generation always on the phone" trend or indeed any other trend. I'm seeing a sharp, sudden fall-off from the pandemic that has already terminated but not yet rising for recovery. That's not surprising if you imagine getting people to adopt ways of living all over again. Stopping can happen all at once. Starting, especially setting up a program of volunteering, takes time.
And even there we're seeing only leveling-off data too recent and thus a short time period to draw conclusions from. (FWIY, the younger generation in my neighborhood seems to be going to bars and partying as much as one could ask or complain about.)
The Internet and online services are slowly replacing in person interactions as well as physical communal spaces.
Online connection is not nothing, but it is definitely not as fulfilling on a personal level. This isn’t some binary where one is good and the other is bad, but there are trade-offs and I’m not sure that on an emotional level, it’s an even trade or positive sum.
I would like to see the graph broken down by age cohorts.
My age and disabilities prevent a lot of the in person things I used to do.
I have interacted with blogs for since they became active in the 1990s.
I think I know more about my internet friends than my adult children.
I just taught my daughter how to make a pie crust for an apple pie.
I could never have done this with as much joy and passing on as much knowledge of how it feels in your hands over the internet.
I take on-line classes (chemistry for dyers at the moment,) but prefer to teach in person. I have a community on-line of experts, but a community in person of friends I make with that meets regularly.
Both are nice. I can't imagine giving up the library that the internet of everything provides. But I cannot fathom how I would teach someone to make a pie or properly use an indigo vat without doing it in person.