I wonder what are the strategies folks can adopt to see that they don't become victims of loneliness.
I think it’s just a matter of being proactive with your social life. Take and create opportunities to meet people.
Who Americans spend their time with, by age
21–30 of 432 posts
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This isn't how it should be... What makes you say that?
Humans are naturally social creatures. I wonder if this graph is missing a data point of time spent with strangers. (caregivers and the like)
In many situations (daycare, elder care) the caregivers are by no means strangers. My 2 year old spends as much or more time with her daycare teachers and classmates than she does with my wife and I.
They love her and she loves them. Just because they aren't blood doesn't mean they don't play a huge part in her day to day experience and growth. In fact, they play a much larger part in her world than her grandparents or other family that she only sees several times a year.
It feels to easy to dismiss these folks as 'not as good as family' when, at least in my experience, they are much more than just paid baby sitters.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#23This data makes me sad just looking at the parents, children, and coworker lines. This isn't how it should be...
[deleted]
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#24I wonder what are the strategies folks can adopt to see that they don't become victims of loneliness.
Finding comfort in solitude... Don't ask me how -- I haven't figured it out yet -- but I understand it's a thing.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#25Missing time spent with computer.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#26I don't even want kids. I don't know why the 'time spent with one's children' line hurts so much, but it does. It sharply rises, before plummeting at age 40. That's got to be a jarring transition. No wonder so many folks have trouble with the 'empty nest' and mid-life crisis.
The Western nuclear family is a very unnatural social arrangement. Anthropologists have found that in most hunter-gatherers, the average infant is held at one point or another by 30+ people in a typical day. The nuclear family has the twin downsides of putting tons of stress on parents of young kids, who shoulder the entire childcare burden, and deprives a lot of grandparents, aunts, cousins, and others of meaningful…
I’m the parent of a young child and I definitely feel some sort of internal pressure to be all babies all the time. I feel pretty guilty leaving him with anyone other than my wife. All I can think to myself is whether what I’m doing is really worth it compared to spending time with the baby.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#27This data makes me sad just looking at the parents, children, and coworker lines. This isn't how it should be...
Agreed. But a silver lining of the pandemic is that my wife is now my office mate. As a result, we've spent the majority of most days together over the last 8 months and I could not be happier!
My hope is (for occupations that can accommodate it) that all work remains at home. There are multitudes of pros and marginal downsides in my eyes.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#28What counts as "spending time"? I'm sure they define it somewhere in the article, but I wonder what percentage of the effects do I get to experience by commenting here. Are we "spending time" together right now? I ask because I've bugged a few healthcare professionals I randomly meet about how millennials (and younger) will age, and if their comfort with the connective nature of the Internet will help reduce mental d…
No I don’t think it’s the same. We are spending some time here but the amount of interaction is very low. I recently bought something from a whiskey group on FB. We spent about 30 minutes talking about whiskey after our transaction. It was probably more meaningful than a week of HN interactions.
I believe online interaction can be a mild substitute for real interaction, even through a forum like this, but it requires that it be the same people interacting (and for the interaction to be pleasant). Me writing this here isn't to you, person I am responding to, but to anyone who reads it. It lacks the building of interpersonal camaraderie until we have direct, frequent, and multiple interactions.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#29I don't even want kids. I don't know why the 'time spent with one's children' line hurts so much, but it does. It sharply rises, before plummeting at age 40. That's got to be a jarring transition. No wonder so many folks have trouble with the 'empty nest' and mid-life crisis.
The Western nuclear family is a very unnatural social arrangement. Anthropologists have found that in most hunter-gatherers, the average infant is held at one point or another by 30+ people in a typical day. The nuclear family has the twin downsides of putting tons of stress on parents of young kids, who shoulder the entire childcare burden, and deprives a lot of grandparents, aunts, cousins, and others of meaningful…
We have preschools where they have close friends, tons of activities etc. it's not that bad.
Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age
#30I don't even want kids. I don't know why the 'time spent with one's children' line hurts so much, but it does. It sharply rises, before plummeting at age 40. That's got to be a jarring transition. No wonder so many folks have trouble with the 'empty nest' and mid-life crisis.
Makes me feel better in a way. By age 60 it won’t matter much whether I had kids or not. Time spent with them per day equals, like, one TV episode. So I’m happy to see that my partner and my self will continue to be more important by that metric.