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Aside from the dating recession, we have the equally important problem of the friendship recession. In the video Richard Reeves, gives some interesting possible hypothesis as to why friendships have been declining:
Work. I can back this anecdotally. I have made a post on here about how tough it is to find work as a young adult, in my specific industry of IT. Id probably have better chances if I were to move out of Florida, and to Austin TX or Atlanta GA. They have a larger Tech scene (& honestly, as a tech nerd, it be nice to live closer to a micro-center). I would lie if i said i haven't flirted with this idea before, but I actually have decided to remain put, precisely because I love the close friends I've made living where I'm at currently. But I won't exactly blame others for moving around for monetary reasons - we all need cash and it sucks ass to be broke.
He mentions parents & the amount of time now spent on raising children. This is HUGE in my opinion and needs to be talked about more: the fact that we can no longer free range raise our children as was done in the past is a great sorrow. It SUCKS to be constantly helicoptered and hand held as a child. I dont think I can emphasize that enough. It also doesnt need to be done, especially when children in other countries have much more independence, and are happier and healthier as a result.
Break ups splintering friendship groups. If couples break up, it can screw with the friend group as a whole, especially if someone is crazy toxic or commits infidelity. I've seen this happen in friend groups first hand. Its not pretty.
The obvious elephant in the room here is the rise of social media. Where people mindlessly scroll instead of talking to people in real life. While i think this plays a role, sociologists have been recording these kind of declines since the invention of TV. I suspect something deeper going on. What do you think?
These three explanations seem wrong:
I would hypothesize:
I'm actually going to mention the loss in socialized drinking.
Significantly more young people don't see the purpose of clubs and bars. Alcohol can be had for cheaper, healthmaxxing turns people away from it, and many don't drink at all. The purpose of alcohol as social lubricant doesn't hold if there's nothing to lubricate.
You can get around overpriced bar alcohol by going to someone's house with a bottle of supermarket booze, but that needs a level of trust that basically doesn't exist anymore outside of macro house parties. The era of going to party at some stranger's house doesn't seem to have survived Facebook or the #MeToo movement.
I actually kind of want to make a post on the moment I finally understood bars, but that understanding took years to evolve. And by the metric I now consider bars worthy, most of them fail completely.
But it seems like the decline in drinking is an effect, not a cause, of the friendship recession.
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I look forward to an effortpost in the Friday Fun Thread.
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