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The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

happiness.hks.harvard.edu

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Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#281

Post by esperent »

ryandrake wrote: post #159
NalNezumi wrote: post #104

The article already mention physical changes (car dependent suburbs, lack of 3rd places) and cultural shift (work as identity and nuclear family) but I think the two last things can be expanded to: we now have higher expectations of friends/people we meet. I recently moved back from Asia to Northern Europe, famous for being a place hard to make friends. I made a new friend, when I one day went to the local swimming p…

> It was a fun story so I told it to friend & partner/families. All of my women friends first reaction was caution. "what does he want? Be careful with your drink!". My guy friends were more perplexed on why I'd even bother befriending someone almost 50+ year older than me. What's there to be gained. It's pretty sad and telling that people's first reaction to something as wholesome and positive as making a new friend…

Go into the Reddit threads of anyone doing something interesting like showcasing their skill. All the top threads will comments like "he's lucky he still has fingers", "hope he washed his hands afterwards", "damn that's ugly", and on and on, on a video where I will see a skillful guy doing something that would be dangerous for me, but is clearly within normal safe boundaries for his skill level. It's just a feedback loop of negativity unless the person is both extremely beautiful and skilled in which case all the comments are about how hot they are. The threshold of quality is ridiculous, the only people who can meet it are genetic lottery winners who also have a makeup and camera team.

This is what we are judging potential friends against. They have to be both perfect and beautiful to get even close to matching what we see everyday on the internet.

In the same way porn can make your real sexual partners feel lacking, these perfect people on reddit/Instagram/TikTok will make any potential real friends seem lacking and worthless. Not worth the effort.

Meanwhile the fact that we are also less than perfect is kept bottled up, we avoid looking at ourselves in the mirror too closely, all of that gets shunted into the subconscious and bubbles back up as depression, lack of self worth, workaholism, addiction, and other mental health issues.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#282

Post by BlueTemplar »

tycho-newman wrote: post #95
BlueTemplar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How a child is supposed to survive "on their own" ? And why do you think this would even be a good thing ?

“On their own” is in air quotes because it’s a vast simplification. In kinship group days, and especially before vaccines, children simply didn’t survive. They died by the millions. Today, a child has a viable alternative to the abusive or neglectful kinship group. Very often it is The State, but still. An alternative!

Ah, I had a different interpretation of "until recently"...

I am afraid that the child is still pretty screwed... especially if you try to generalise this to 60% of children !

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#284

Post by em-bee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #196
swat535 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human kids are exotic pets for the wealthy or crazy I'm having a hard time parsing that statement. Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian.

> Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? A little of both. Kids are a luxury good in the current macro. The cost to raise a child from 0-18 in the US in 2023 dollars is ~$330k (Brookings, USDA). This does not include daycare (~$1k/month if you can find a slot) nor college. No sick leave no…

Welcome to the shit show

no no no. welcome to america. in no other country in the world is raising kids so expensive and receives so little support.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#285

Post by toomuchtodo »

em-bee wrote: post #284
toomuchtodo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets? A little of both. Kids are a luxury good in the current macro. The cost to raise a child from 0-18 in the US in 2023 dollars is ~$330k (Brookings, USDA). This does not include daycare (~$1k/month if you can find a slot) nor college. No sick leave no…

Welcome to the shit show no no no. welcome to america. in no other country in the world is raising kids so expensive and receives so little support.

I’m unsure I agree with this. South Korea, Japan, China, etc. This is clear from the total fertility rate, how it presents is just a different shade in each country. Outside of the Nordics and parts of Europe, I don’t think anywhere else puts an effort into making being a parent not suck. And even places putting material resources into family and parent support, it doesn’t move the needle.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/babies-birth-rate-d...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#286

Post by thimkerbell »

creata wrote: post #38
torben-friis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness. Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available. Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there…

I don't think it's just the attention economy. I think the Internet was bound to replace a lot of the time that people spent with friends. There's just too much interesting stuff too conveniently accessible.

What would happen if you tried a meetup with nearby people to read&discuss what you found interesting?

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#287

Post by thimkerbell »

ryandrake wrote: post #165
dm03514 wrote: post #16

For the us, I feel like it’s late stage individualism. This is what happens I think when people prioritize themselves over their communities, I think we have less dependence on our communities than ever thanks to the internet and being able to physically avoid community. We have less interaction than before. We can order grocery pickup and not even have to be physically around people for basic life tasks. We order ne…

> The article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships Yea, this tracks my observations. A lot of adults make connections in their community through their kids and kids' friends. Kids pick their friends and their parents and guardians just go along for the ride, so when the kids play together, it kind of forces the parents to meet and i…

If the young parents are women and you're a guy, the situation could fall into a different category to them.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#288

Post by SoftTalker »

ryandrake wrote: post #251
pesus wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have no obligation to entertain you even if your kids are playing together. This is a really cynical and negative way to view basic human interaction, the cornerstone of our species and civilization. I've been seeing it a lot lately online, and it doesn't surprise me that people are lonely and aren't making friends if they adopt an attitude like that.

That's right. The whole "He is under no obligation to [do nice thing | be social | act friendly]" is a very Reddit attitude. Yes, it's technically correct: You don't have to be nice. But you are allowed to be nice, and that choice doesn't hurt or cost anything. If you go up to a fellow parent and say, "Hey, nice to see you again." and they just ignore you scrolling their phones, sure, they have a Constitutional right…

We (most of us) live in a society. Therefore we are obligated to be social.

If you don’t want to be social go live in a cabin out in the woods.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#289

Post by em-bee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #285
em-bee wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the shit show no no no. welcome to america. in no other country in the world is raising kids so expensive and receives so little support.

I’m unsure I agree with this. South Korea, Japan, China, etc. This is clear from the total fertility rate, how it presents is just a different shade in each country. Outside of the Nordics and parts of Europe, I don’t think anywhere else puts an effort into making being a parent not suck. And even places putting material resources into family and parent support, it doesn’t move the needle. https://www.independent.co.…

ok, i don't know about south korea and what's going on there with the extremely low fertility rate. but china has way more support for children than the US. china's low fertility rate is not because of social or economical factors like elsewhere but because of the one-child policy which has been abolished a few years ago.

I don’t think anywhere else puts an effort into making being a parent not suck

i don't believe that is true. not even in developing countries. the reason we can't see that is that developing countries suffer from other problems. but those problems don't motivate people there to not have children. on the contrary.

And even places putting material resources into family and parent support, it doesn’t move the needle

because material considerations are not a big factor. you were arguing that having children is expensive, and that children are only to be afforded by the wealthy, and treated as a status symbol.

but if that is a factor then it is only a factor in the united states and nowhere else in the world. especially not in developing countries.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#290

Post by em-bee »

redczar wrote: post #256
em-bee wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you got cause and effect wrong. desegregation is not the cause. racism is. it takes a lot more than laws to root out racism.

I think it’s clear that the reason desegration was the starting point is racism.

yes, but your wording made it sound like as we should simply have kept segregation and also women out of social life. you can see where not ending segregation would have lead to in south africa. i am sure in the US it would have lead to another civil war. so if we want to fix community life, we need to fix racism.
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