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U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

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Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#51

Post by jmoss20 »

trhway wrote: post #34
skywhopper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, more and more super-suburban living, combined with increasingly restrictive teen driving regulations, curfews, and fear-based media stories about abductions have ratcheted down the ability of teens to hang out together. So when technology came along to enable improved interpersonal contact, it was embraced far more rapidly than it would have been if teen freedom were as high as it was in the 70s. The graphs they…

> that they are entirely responsible for changes in loneliness. loneliness? The amount and richness of communication like the number of participants, number of parallel communications, number of the topics and the range of opinions, etc. is most probably much higher when using smartphones then when it is subject to the limitations of physical presence. Our species brain development is basically history of social comm…

> "... may feel like loneliness."

Isn't the feeling the whole point?

It's a bit strange to claim that, even though some people might feel lonely, they aren't /actually/. Lonely is a word that refers to an emotion -- not a word that refers to the circumstances that tend to bring about that emotion.

I'll grant you that if we had a perfect account of what those circumstances were, the two might be identical (for a physicalist, anyway). But that some people "may feel lonely" even now is a proof by counterexample that your account is not it.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#52

Post by [deleted] »

trhway wrote: post #48
stiglitz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” I’m amused by this notion that “it may feel like loneliness but it’s actually the richness of our new modes of communication you are feeling! Just get used to it!”

>It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” the tech today allows to for example easily and frequently Skype with your family, like parents, sibling, nephews residing on the other continent. A humongous improvement compare to previous modes of expensive international phone, especially when many of those participants didn't have a phone back then. What…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#53

Post by stephenhuey »

mises wrote: post #18
darkpuma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "because nobody likes spending time with people in person as default." That's very far from true.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure where he got this. I'm an introvert, and I still really enjoy spending time in-person with close friends. In fact, I don't do that well relating to people over the internet (at least not emotionally speaking).

Sounds a big like they are from the planet in Asimov’s The Naked Sun in which people live miles apart and only see each other through holograms, never in person.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#54

Post by samstave »

Zak wrote: post #14

Part of the issue, I think is that teenagers are more restricted by parents, laws, and business owners than they used to be. As with younger children, parents are less likely now than in past decades to allow their teenage children to travel alone or hang out in groups without adults present. Legal restrictions compound the issue, with curfew laws being increasingly common, as well as increased driving ages and gradu…

YUP

Tell me a family that says " YOU BETTER BE HOME BY SUNDOWN "

Today.

Regardless of neighborhood...

I used to only come home for provisions and to prevent being grounded.

LET THE FUCKING KIDS PLAY. FORCE them to be outside and play. Period.

This is how you get nice things, like the internet.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#55

Post by euske »

stiglitz wrote: post #43
trhway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that they are entirely responsible for changes in loneliness. loneliness? The amount and richness of communication like the number of participants, number of parallel communications, number of the topics and the range of opinions, etc. is most probably much higher when using smartphones then when it is subject to the limitations of physical presence. Our species brain development is basically history of social comm…

It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” I’m amused by this notion that “it may feel like loneliness but it’s actually the richness of our new modes of communication you are feeling! Just get used to it!”

It just occurred to me that virtual interaction is like a vitamin pill. There should be a right amount of human interaction, at right timings, in a right way. But today it's happening too often and/or too much, and the type of interactions is limited. Just like vitamins, it's easy to overdose. The best way to take nutrition/interaction is through natural ways because it gives you other kinds of nutrition and there's less risk of overdose, etc.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#56

Post by nodemaker »

_qwfv wrote: post #45
iheartpotatoes wrote: post #37

I volunteer at STEM after school program at a Northern California suburban public school in a very affluent county. Engineers from the local companies work on projects with hacker kids. It's a pretty dreamy albeit "canned" town, I never lived in a place that nice. Lots of cul de sacs and "mini malls" and "canned fun" places that are very walkable (unlike the poorer suburbs where kids have to cross 8 lanes of traffic…

> few of them drive. WTF?! Rad? I didn't need to drive in High School, and I still found plenty to do back in the 90s. Kids today have even more options. > there's a frigging movieplex down the street with a bunch of restaurants and TWO parks on opposite sides of the main E/W street... and they just ... go home. WTF. First, movie theaters are awful. Second, there's so much cool stuff to do once you get home! I can go…

Is being so boring and antisocial a norm these days ? :D (Just busting your balls haha)

I think a lot of us deeply care about the future society that will cater to the people that are currently young. And it seems remarkably boring, superficial and for the lack of a better word, just devoid of anything fun.

In the end noone cares if this is a subculture (there were enough subcultures when I was in school i.e goths, metalheads etc), its more of a problem if this behaviour becomes uniform across all cultures and mainstream.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#57

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

trhway wrote: post #48
stiglitz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” I’m amused by this notion that “it may feel like loneliness but it’s actually the richness of our new modes of communication you are feeling! Just get used to it!”

>It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” the tech today allows to for example easily and frequently Skype with your family, like parents, sibling, nephews residing on the other continent. A humongous improvement compare to previous modes of expensive international phone, especially when many of those participants didn't have a phone back then. What…

Just because you can communicate with someone doesn’t mean you don’t feel lonely.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#58

Post by RobLach »

Zenst wrote: post #50
Zak wrote: post #14

Part of the issue, I think is that teenagers are more restricted by parents, laws, and business owners than they used to be. As with younger children, parents are less likely now than in past decades to allow their teenage children to travel alone or hang out in groups without adults present. Legal restrictions compound the issue, with curfew laws being increasingly common, as well as increased driving ages and gradu…

So true, in essence driving them into online friend interactions. Makes you wonder what life will be like for children 50 years from now, and how that would compare with today. After there was a time when making explosives was a childhood right of passage along with chemistry sets, making fires, even having a pocket knife. Today, such common activities would not end well at all, however innocent the intention. These…

50 years from now teens will have a subscription to curated experiences for them to get together in-person for while their typical interpersonal interactions will happen over the Internet where it’s nice with a relatively null marginal cost.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#59

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

gowld wrote: post #40
CharlesColeman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPhone I doubt it. How many high school seniors would have owned one soon after its release? Too much of an early-adopter luxury item. I'd be curious to know when smartphones actually started became ubiquitous among older teenagers.

Dumbphone texting was ubiquitious, though.

Remember the teens with leet T9 keyboarding skills?

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#60

Post by Retric »

trhway wrote: post #48
stiglitz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” I’m amused by this notion that “it may feel like loneliness but it’s actually the richness of our new modes of communication you are feeling! Just get used to it!”

>It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.” the tech today allows to for example easily and frequently Skype with your family, like parents, sibling, nephews residing on the other continent. A humongous improvement compare to previous modes of expensive international phone, especially when many of those participants didn't have a phone back then. What…

An in person hug with a close friend or family member is worth a lot. Phone calls have been around for a long time and still miss out on such things. Cellphones provide some benifit, but often reduce the quality of face to face interactions by distracting one or more participants.
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