Badly designed plots. What does the bottom axis represent ? fraction of the population ? age ?
Who Americans spend their time with
41–50 of 75 posts
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
A gender breakdown for both single and married would also be useful. For marriages there should also be another dimension based on the health of the marriage. Recent literature suggests that men are lonelier than women which incites my curiosity on gender differences in this topic. I've been theorizing that if true, those men who fall further below the envelope of social interaction end up having greater difficulty i…
Well, there is the societal expectation that in order to "grow up" a man must stop spending time with his friends and/or on his hobbies and "settle down". There is no such expectation/pressure on women.
[deleted]
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
A gender breakdown for both single and married would also be useful. For marriages there should also be another dimension based on the health of the marriage. Recent literature suggests that men are lonelier than women which incites my curiosity on gender differences in this topic. I've been theorizing that if true, those men who fall further below the envelope of social interaction end up having greater difficulty i…
Well, there is the societal expectation that in order to "grow up" a man must stop spending time with his friends and/or on his hobbies and "settle down". There is no such expectation/pressure on women.
There is a lot of pressure on women to have children, though, and having kids drastically changes how, when, and with whom you socialize.
To elaborate, in case you don't have kids: for the first several months, you're likely exhausted and don't even want to socialize. If you do, you're still limited due to time - young children just sleep and eat, and you're bound to their schedule. If you're exclusively breastfeeding, you can't drive an hour out to see a two hour movie with your friends, because your kiddo's feed is going to fall within that timespan.
Once they get older, you can go out again, but you're not going to necessarily be doing the same things you wanted to earlier. Being woken up hungover by a screaming baby at 5am is terrible, so you're going to cut down your social drinking. Going camping on the weekend is more difficult, too - you're leaving your partner in the lurch. Spur of the moment plans are difficult, too - you're still tied to your kid's schedule, and there are places where it is difficult to take a small child. ("You wanna go rock climbing?" "Yes, but...")
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because to view any Facebook event page you must agree to a Nondisclosure Agreement that restricts you from revealing the particulars of the event to people who do not have Facebook accounts.
Because there's so much more friction involved in including people who don't have Facebook accounts that, eventually, you just stop bothering to do it.
Yes my last high school reunion was like that. (i.e., people who weren't on facebook weren't invited, even if they were known in the community and available at phone numbers advertised to the public.) Their loss!
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there's so much more friction involved in including people who don't have Facebook accounts that, eventually, you just stop bothering to do it.
Yes my last high school reunion was like that. (i.e., people who weren't on facebook weren't invited, even if they were known in the community and available at phone numbers advertised to the public.) Their loss!
I wonder if that is why I didn't hear of any high-school reunion yet. Last year was my 10th anniversary of graduation. (Although, it might just be that reunions are not as common in Germany. Maybe noone bothered to put one up.)
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#46Rigtheo, so now we need to compare to other cultures and overlay the results with mental health issues, self-reported happiness, income, GDP, obesity, and all the other interesting metrics. We already know the results though: people who have strong family ties and closer and enduring friendships and sense of community live longer healthier lives than their lonely counterparts and are more productive at work and in th…
We already know the results though: people who have strong family ties and closer and enduring friendships and sense of community live longer healthier lives than their lonely counterparts
I've often wondered whether, in the absence of any action to correct the issue, it's better to promote this conclusion (which feels a little bit like loneliness-shaming) or to tell less social people that being alone is OK and doesn't mean you're less of a person.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there's so much more friction involved in including people who don't have Facebook accounts that, eventually, you just stop bothering to do it.
Yes my last high school reunion was like that. (i.e., people who weren't on facebook weren't invited, even if they were known in the community and available at phone numbers advertised to the public.) Their loss!
> Their loss!
Miss a couple weddings that way and see if you feel the same.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not convinced by your argument with regard to the multitude of choices. A counter point could be that we should be more likely to have at least something in common with more people. Somebody must be consuming mass-media, problem the masses . I think a better theory to support your point is that we tend to be less religious and therefore less community oriented. I don't really know if that holds up though. We have…
Fwiw, when I got off of Facebook my family decided to explore local churches and found one that has been great. We've made about the same amount of friends there in 6 months that we did living here for 13 years without going there. Plenty of activities too. When I was on Facebook I found that I was spending significantly more time chatting it up with my friends from college who are all over the country. Not that I do…
What kind of activities does your church organize?
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
A gender breakdown for both single and married would also be useful. For marriages there should also be another dimension based on the health of the marriage. Recent literature suggests that men are lonelier than women which incites my curiosity on gender differences in this topic. I've been theorizing that if true, those men who fall further below the envelope of social interaction end up having greater difficulty i…
Well, there is the societal expectation that in order to "grow up" a man must stop spending time with his friends and/or on his hobbies and "settle down". There is no such expectation/pressure on women.
"There is no such expectation/pressure on women" is a bit of a blanket statement, and I highly doubt it's true; see e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11406568/Why-wo....
We all, regardless of gender, face different types of pressures from outside. Women are often seen (and mystified) through motherhood, and men through stoic toiling. Women are supposed to be the emotional ones, and men hard and logical and impervious to emotions. You see it all the time in various forums when people comment on a sad article, with the "I'm not crying, I'm cutting onions schtick." A lot of this comes down to old gender roles born out of a confusing soup of evolution, Abrahamic social norms, and history. It's not just the men facing social pressures, it's everybody in the society.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with
#50Longitudinal data would be informative. I strongly suspect people spent less time alone in the past. (Note: The X-axis is age.) My theories: * Multitude of choices given to us by technology have led to fewer things we pay attention to in common with our friends and neighbors. Thus, fewer shared loci of interaction. Career specialization is another key contributing factor. * More recently, dopamine rush generated by e…
Some data from an interview with Prof. John Cacioppo, the director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and author of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (W. W. Norton & Co., 2009) http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/loneliness-is-a-modern-day-epi... "I’ve seen studies that suggest the percentage of Americans who report chronic feelings of loneliness has risen…
We aren’t as closely bound. We no longer live in the same village for generations, which means we don’t have the same generational connections.
That's true over longer time periods, but Americans are moving much less than in previous decades.
Of course, it might be that the lonely people today were the movers of the 70s/80s.