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The death of partying in the USA

derekthompson.org

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Re: The death of partying in the USA

#61

Post by mtrovo »

01100011 wrote: post #15
lr4444lr wrote: post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

Parents just want to watch their Internet content and it's easier to just stick their kids in front of a video game or computer vs having an event that requires parenting. At least when parents are addicted to alcohol they can still be social and function as parents. Not so with Instagram/tiktok.

Oh that rings true and it's so depressive. But I think it has more to do with this notion that everything you do socially is awkward in some degree and could be seeing as bad or hurtful, smartphones didn't help us there with the chance of becoming the next national meme just a tiktok away.

Also social interactions nowadays have become so "one of a kind" and disconnected from a general contract that sometimes it's hard to not feel overwhelmed, I remember being 10 years old and just knocking on the door of my neighbourhood friends to check on them and kind of invite me in, depending on the time I would stay and grab dinner there and only come back home when it was getting too dark. Now as a parent I feel this serendipity is almost gone, you have to officially arrange play dates on parent groups, pick kids up, ask parents what kind of food should I offer, is it ok if I let them play videogames, is it ok to offer sugary drinks, list goes on and on.

In that world consuming media is much easier, but I wouldn't say that's because it is addictive on itself, I think there's a big portion of people that just got tired of trying to navigate how to interact with others. My impression is that the proportion between lurkers to posters increased with time on different platforms including in real life.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#63

Post by imzadi »

> Burrowing into the appendix tables of the American Time Use Survey, she unearthed the fact that just 4.1 percent of Americans said they “attended or hosted” a party or ceremony on a typical weekend or holiday in 2023. In other words, in any given weekend, just one in 25 US households had plans to attend a social event.

There's a huge difference between not hosting or attending a party and not attending a social event. "Party" has very specific connotations. If I go out bowling with my friends or have a game night, I don't call that a party, but it is certainly a social event.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#65

Post by sltkr »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #13
eplatzek wrote: post #2

With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. That's a pretty hard lesson to unlearn. They carries a lot of momentum. Like with World Wars there's been a generational impact that changed how people relate to one another. The tribal momentum, of one monkey teaching the next, gets lost.

>With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. Given the mortality rate for people typically in the partying age group (and especially those under 30), you were more likely to die in a traffic accident on your way to or back from the party, or from alcohol poisoning, than from a case of COVID acquired there. Let's not exaggerate. From the NIH: The median IFR for COVID based on age groups: 0.0…

To be pedantic, it's still possible for people to modify their behavior based on mistaken beliefs (in this case, that COVID is really dangerous, when it isn't for healthy young people). Though I don't think this explains the actual trend in this case.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#66

Post by Retric »

sokoloff wrote: post #56
Apreche wrote: post #28

This article isn’t wrong, but it neglects to mention real estate, transportation, and lodging. A party needs a venue, and it needs guests. And the guests need a way to get to and from the venue. If they stay a long time, they need a place to sleep. People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party witho…

> Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. About 2/3 of households in the US own the home they live in. Renting is the minority, not the majority.

Owning an apartment isn’t materially different than renting an apartment here. It’s sometimes better as many apartments have free or rentable spaces available for parties as a selling point, but rarely can you use that space late in the evening.

Owning a home in an HOA area can drastically cut down on what kinds of parties you can host.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#67

Post by DidYaWipe »

Apreche wrote: post #28

This article isn’t wrong, but it neglects to mention real estate, transportation, and lodging. A party needs a venue, and it needs guests. And the guests need a way to get to and from the venue. If they stay a long time, they need a place to sleep. People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party witho…

[flagged]

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#68

Post by avhception »

lc9er wrote: post #48
lr4444lr wrote: post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

Kids used to just go outside, find one another, and play. I see that you are attempting to solve the problem with organizing playdates. However, I think that playdates and structured EVERYTHING for kids is a contributing factor to how we got here. I think at some point, we need to acknowledge media sensationalism (traditional and social media varieties) have not only poisoned politics and bolstered conspiracy theory…

When I was a kid, we would always hatch a plan on what to do with the rest of the day while we were still at school. As soon as the bell rang, we hurried home to catch something to eat and then it was off to the woods to build that fortress or whatever. If there was no school, we'd call the house phones of our friends until we had a plan cooked up. And every day without fail we didn't want to go home. So much stuff to do!

Now, watching the kids my friends have - they won't even leave the house if their parents didn't plan a playdate and brought them there. Something is completely off.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#69

Post by lurking_swe »

ryandrake wrote: post #24
lr4444lr wrote: post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

Often the kids like to play together, but the parents are the ones that are just... weird and asocial. I hate to bring agism into this, but there definitely seems to be a generational gap with the adults. Some of my kid's friends are raised by their parents, and others are (apparently) raised primarily by grandparents. When my kid wants to get together with friends whose (50-60 year old) grandparents bring them by, t…

context: i’m in my early 30’s and i’m not a parent

the behavior you described of the 25-35 year range is appalling. and those aren’t my kids so that’s saying something.

Call it what it is, antisocial. Baffling to me…why are people so weird?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#70

Post by tclancy »

lawlessone wrote: post #12
lr4444lr wrote: post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

>I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents Yeah if i was a kid i'd be mortified at having to do this.

Really? While I don’t do it, the alternative is having a kid come home with a scrawled phone number that may or may not be right along with a vague recollection of the name of the parent I am supposed to be calling. Things are a little less akward in our life but it may be because we are closer to what OP describes as grandparents I suppose.

I get the idea, but I would suggest the reaction to an attempt at lubricating social interaction as “cringe” is part of the issue OP is describing.

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