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Who Americans spend their time with

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Re: Who Americans spend their time with

#52
post #22

Longitudinal 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…

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…

Most women I know have a hoard of men waiting to take them out and entertain them. On the other side, most men I know struggle to get a single woman to go out with (or men for that matter as friends).

Men are in such compitition now that they have deep distrust of other men and won't let them into their circle.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with

#53

Longitudinal 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…

>...I strongly suspect people spent less time alone in the past.

Yea, a book that overs this is:

"Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community"

https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu...

Re: Who Americans spend their time with

#54
post #52
post #22

Earlier 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…

Most women I know have a hoard of men waiting to take them out and entertain them. On the other side, most men I know struggle to get a single woman to go out with (or men for that matter as friends). Men are in such compitition now that they have deep distrust of other men and won't let them into their circle.

Depends on the location, I suppose. Are you in Seattle?

Re: Who Americans spend their time with

#55
post #54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most women I know have a hoard of men waiting to take them out and entertain them. On the other side, most men I know struggle to get a single woman to go out with (or men for that matter as friends). Men are in such compitition now that they have deep distrust of other men and won't let them into their circle.

Depends on the location, I suppose. Are you in Seattle?

Yes. Seems like the entire west coast is similar. Also, there are few places where women outnumber men. And if you look under 40 the ratio is even more skewed towards many more men than women. I think this impacts men's mental health as they are unable to build a relationship of any sort. Men commit more crime, go to college less, commit suicide more, are heavier drug users, and so on. I wonder how the male/female ratio plays into that.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with

#56

Rigtheo, 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…

On the up side: people who are more separate, isolated, lonely, without being to far in to the pathological extremes, tend to buy more things, which is good for The Economy.

I would expect them to buy more functionally useful goods, like televisions, but fewer positional goods, like houses with lawns. Since the price of manufactured goods is constantly being brought down by markets, but positional goods by definition cannot be, I would expect the socially connected to spend more. They have to drink in bars, not at home; they have to buy a car that impresses, not one that drives; they have to buy a home to entertain in, not a shipping container.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with

#57

These are some of the worst designed charts. I had to download the CSV to figure out that the x-axis is age. Once I figured it out the bottom right chart was chilling.

Additionally the coloring choices are bad. The purple/blue split indicates relationships between items with the same color that don't exist. Combined with the confusing axis labels, my first interpretation of the plot was this was data comparing 2003 to 2015.
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