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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

#411

Post by kjkjadksj »

watwut wrote: post #363
codegrappler wrote: post #84

Anecdotally a lot of families we see in my social circle can be reliably split between single income and dual income households. We see the single income folks far more than we see the dual income folks, which tracks with this article. If I come home from work and my wife says “Sarah and family are coming for dinner tonight”, I know that my wife has tidied up the house, coordinated food and all I have to do is pour s…

Being stay at home parent is extremely isolating. It is most lonely thing one can do. You spend ovwrwhelming majority of the day completely alone. No collegues to bump into you and talking with you. If the stay at home parent does not actively organizes meetups, they are completely alone until partner comes home ... after he talked with people at work.

Sounds like my wfh job

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#412

Post by micromacrofoot »

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #213
chkaloon wrote: post #149

The article mentions alcohol consumption by kids, but I think it doesn't emphasize enough the effect of efforts like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and strict DUI laws. Back in the 70s and 80s having a few drinks at a party, bar or friend's house was normal and part of the social lubrication. Even drinks during lunch was common where I worked. No more. You either need to have a designated driver, find a taxi (which do…

> You either need to have a designated driver, find a taxi (which doesn't exist in most rural areas), or just not drink. Or live in a place where you don’t drive to get around.

or drive drunk, which if my upbringing was any indication, happened all the time

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#413

Post by Auracle »

1shooner wrote: post #388
germinalphrase wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a HS teacher for about a decade. The demands on kids and families around youth sports (especially private/club leagues) is out of control. I had students, 14/15-years-old, going to their school team practice then club team practice, not getting home until past 9 pm every night. Families from three states away would enroll their kids in my school half of the year to play on the hockey team (staying with local sp…

>The demands on kids and families I'd like to understand this more. Families like this that I know talk about it as though it's as unavoidable as their mortgage, but functionally isn't this entirely self-imposed? Is it a lack of vision for an alternative? Are whole families succumbing to peer pressure? I don't relate to it.

We only have a 3 year old and a baby, but my wife and I have already argued a bit about this. She's all in on the sports train - it was a large part of her life growing up for her and her siblings. I, on the other hand, did a lot with my free time as a kid/teen.

I think part of the problem is that for people like her they can't imagine their kids not being in all sorts of sports, but they don't realize just how much the time commitment has ballooned. By the time it's too late they're all in and they're effectively in a sports sunk cost fallacy.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#414

Post by 01100011 »

mtrovo wrote: post #61
01100011 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 har…

When I grew up back in the 80s there was a sense of more stability, I think. People didn't move around as much. American suburbs were more of a monoculture(for better and, mostly, for worse, but it was what it was). That stability and comfort let people be more at ease and more open to things. I think now there's a generally higher level of anxiety and it spills over into the need to plan every social interaction.

Even as someone who grew up in more spontaneous times I find I need more scheduling and such these days.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#416

Post by kjkjadksj »

carabiner wrote: post #29

Spending all of your time studying in high school and college is your best hope at landing in the vanishing middle class. With decreasing job security as well as hyperinflation, continuing that work ethic into your 20s and 30s is quite reasonable. Everyone is too exhausted to party.

In college we’d only study 3 or 4 days a week to make room for the drinking

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#417

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #268
Telemakhos wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't buy on the west coast for a quarter million. A house big enough to start a family will likely start at a half million, and in some communities will come with hefty tax burdens.

in 2025 anything vaguely desirable in a coastal-ish city is starting at more like 600-700k. actual decent houses will be 1MM or more. the folks in those areas, if you owned a house for the last 20 years, are now richer than ever due to that property appreciating. but the younger generation is absolutely screwed

The north coast has cheap housing.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#418

Post by potato3732842 »

parineum wrote: post #334
api wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's for the whole country. This site is very heavily biased toward people who live in major cities, where real estate has in fact become the purview of only the rich. Short version of the history: Starting in the late 1990s, you had a super-concentration of both good jobs and interesting culture in a short list of cities: SF Bay, New York, LA/OC, Seattle, and a few others. I remember growing up during this period…

> Starting in the late 1990s... How old were you then? People have a tendency to remember some time period when everything was carefree and you didn't have to worry about how much stuff cost and all this new, great stuff was happening. And then you find out they were 12 and the time where they think all that went downhill was when they were 20.

The general feeling of "things were better and looking more upward in the 90s" is pretty common across generations. 9/11 was kind of the 21st century's market crash of '29

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#419

Post by CoastalCoder »

imzadi wrote: post #63

> 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 eve…

I agree. I was graduated from highschool around 1990. My friend group was very active every weekend, we just didn't do "parties".

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#420

Post by rwyinuse »

afavour wrote: post #309
Aurornis wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really sad to me how we have completely fucked a lot of youth with social media, smart phones, You have to be careful with Gen Z threads like this on Reddit and Twitter. They are inherently biased toward Gen Z people who are chronically online and deep into social media. If you spend time with kids in the real world, you learn very rapidly that most of them aren't on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Of those…

> If you spend time with kids in the real world, you learn very rapidly that most of them aren't on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Of those who use Reddit, few of them actually post anything or even have accounts. Certainly true. But it's also undeniable that a huge number of them are on TikTok, Instagram and the like. I think OP's point still stands that today's youth have been affected by that.

Yep, I believe that at this point in rich countries people who are addicted to their smartphone and social media far outnumber those who aren't, at least in all age groups that aren't small children or retired.
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