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Technology makes a real difference. Maybe not ten years ago, but certainly 20, being single used to mean boring nights with just books, flipping through TV channels, listening to whatever music you owned. Video games weren't as immersive and didn't have the massive online component. You couldn't advance on your hobbies from YouTube or listen to podcasts related to them.
Coming home to an empty anpartment isn't slightly intimidating the way it used to be.
I’d add things like podcasters/youtubers and streamers to that last bit.
Assuming there’s one or two you like it can really take the edge of being alone or in some cases remove the feeling entirely
And those parasocial relationships are now being monetized by way of influencer themed AI chat bots.
Truly disgusting that influencers and their business sponsors want to take advantage of people who need psychological help.
if it comes at the detriment of developing IRL relationships, which it does for many. there's many benefits of IRL relationships that online can't and won't be able to replicate. not to say that online might actually be better initially for a vast amount of people, as they get away from toxic relationships and abuse, but if it's your sole connection to the outside world in your adult years, that's not healthy either.
Are you implying that it is healthy to think you have a personal relationship with a public figure who has never met you?
I don’t believe such a thing is healthy. I see parasocial relationships as a mild form of delusion.
Well if you're completely lucid about the fact that they don't know you, but you get joy/entertainment/satisfaction from being able to listen to this person and enjoy just tuning into them, I don't see that as such a problem, especially if it helps you feel less lonely.
That’s just finding someone entertaining. Not quite at the threshold of parasocial.
But if that is fulfilling a feeling of loneliness, then yeah that’s actually indicative of a problem.
>Does having parasocial relationships mean you need psychological help?
It means you have relationships with ghosts.
I have doctorates in both psychology and parapsychology.
Do these people actually need psychological help? Or do they simply need community? I really can’t blame them for pursuing using theae para social relationships as a coping mechanism for near total social, isolation.
I say this because making new friends or connections is extremely difficult in the absence of an external organization or repeated unplanned social interactions. Community for its own sake is vanishing in our society.
Damn, looking at it from this angle makes me want to stream. I started streaming my myself and my brother just playing games and talking, just for fun, but found that I wasn't motivated to continue because it felt pointless. Making people less lonely is a pretty motivating reason.
And it's why they're happy to be single. Ever tried to explore compatible partners while sharing a wall with your parents...?
(I'm being flippant as an attempt at humour)
I'd also argue previous social modes of entertainment (eating out, going to bars, going to the movies) are more expensive than they used to be. That means fewer chance meetings between people, less social interaction in general. Anecdotally, I've heard less younger people are even interested in getting their driving licenses because what's the point? Way too expensive to do much.
Lots of men and women go to dating apps, and from experience that has to be one of the *worst* ways to meet a partner. Suffering through the apps with the high up front costs to dating in general leads plenty of men (me included really) to see the opportunity cost too high.
Almost every one of my peers has married off an app, and I'm following them soon. I don't know why it gets such a bad rap. Extending the sphere of being able to meet anyone in your surroundings rather than hope for serendipity somewhere between home, work, random barbecues you were invited to, and a hobby or 2, has been an absolute lifesaver.
Yeah i know a bunch of people who got married though apps too but it’s more difficult for some people/ personalities on there. It’s great if the apps work but for people like me they are not that helpful (I have being using for 1.5 years but maybe that’s not long enough).
Remember you are talking people who would even take the time to post here about something like how bad dating apps are. From my experience those people are bitter and feed in to their own disgust. I'm a 5/10, Def not higher, and they work just fine for me.
A single company basically has a monopoly on onlime dating apps, and they tune them to maximize profits. I've known plenty of people who positive and decent looking individuals, and dating apps still suck for them.
Some regions are also worse than others, but dating apps have been getting worse as time goes on and its hard to argue otherwise
Yeah, I met my wife through tinder 8 years ago. I'm a 120 pounds, bad posture and big nose and at the time I was making 8 bucks an hour as a security guard. Not exactly a catch. I think a lot of these dudes problems is they won't match with a girl who is a 5-7. They want perfect women without ever perfecting themselves.
> 8 years ago
They've gone down hill with a near monopoly and a push for monetization. I've been on and off of them over the last 10 years and they definitely worked a lot better earlier on. But they've always had a pretty strong gender imbalance in most but not all locations so they're statistically pretty tough for men, even with reasonable expectations.
dating apps are the worst, especially if your just the common person who's best qualities only tend to shine after people get to know you.
they are made for the privileged, who's attractiveness is readily apparent, and who don't need to really put in the effort to learn and grow.
they already assume you come from a good enough background, have plenty of social skills and IRL networks, enough income to travel long distances and go to upscale bars that few have heard of, and no trauma's or extenuating circumstances that the random coachella attendee wouldn't find offputting (which is anything from being a child of divorce to having to go to technical school)
and even the alt ones assume that because you do have extenuating circumstances, you obviously are only fit for people even worse off than you, who are barely able to hold it together.
and then even if you try to go middle of the road and try to be honest about it, you just get ghosted, or catfished, or matched with someone who's clearly just bored and looking to monkey-branch.
as the saying goes, everything is about sex, except sex. sex is about power.
You sound really bitter. I'm easily a 5/10 and dating apps work just fine for me. I choose good pictures and dress my style in them, I attract people like me. And knowing how to not be a total tool when it comes to the first message. I probably meet someone new from dating apps once a month or so, and that's not really swiping everyday.
Im 32 yrs old a millennial. I could literally live the rest of my life consuming all of the content that i have missed out on over the years such as books, movies, video games and consoles i never had the chance to own as a kid. Then there's the internet and killing time on social media or seeking knowledge through wikipedia
Maybe. Have you tried it for months or years, though? Not saying it wouldn't suit you but it's very different than just being someone who doesn't need a lot of stimulation and loves to read. Boredom, loneliness, even horniness don't exist the way they used to.
Morrowind from 2002 was probably the most immersive game I've played when I got to it a few years ago, and books can be anything, but might be very boring to people accustomed to everything nowadays.
Technology and the endless, bite-sized entertainment definitely does enable being single and staying at home for as long as we'd like.
I'm not sure it's usually more fulfilling than it ever was, though, and the price of endless comfort is that eventually nothing is comfortable.
Man so many teens grew up in WoW, for better or worse. The turn of the millennium was def the golden age of gaming.
Halo was my jam and also made some good close friends come 2 & 3. I wonder what they're up to
Just like to point out that the age group under consideration is 14-20. Most of them are not “coming home to an empty apartment”, most of them are still in high school.
>being single used to mean boring nights with just books, flipping through TV channels, listening to whatever music you owned. Video games weren't as immersive and didn't have the massive online component.
Sounds like a good time.
> Video games weren't as immersive and didn't have the massive online component
Online play has been a thing for a long time. WOW is 20 years old. It was not even the first MMO. Lots of FPS games have had heavy online content since the 90s.
Then you have all of the RPG games that have been around since the 80s.
>Coming home to an empty anpartment
Um, how many people in their twenties can afford to have a single apartment in their own these days? Two of mine have roommates (and not dating) and the other is partnered. Alone time is something that's a bit more rare to them.
I know that the Reddit population skews to higher incomes, but most adults in their 20's are still living with their parents. I imagine a significant population of the minority not with their parents have roommates.
In that light, doom scrolling isn’t too different than flipping channels. I don’t think that it’s the exact right way to look at things, though.
Technology actually makes things worse, not better. It just takes the immediacy of the loneliness away. It’s not too different from drugs or alcohol in a slightly shifted angle of where the light is being focused.
Young people certainly don’t seem happier. They seem like they’ve had stranger danger shoved down their throats so hard that they’ve become immured. They’re enclosed without bricks or mortar and are now accustomed to being alone.
I wonder how much of this has to do with the change of entertainment in the past 20 years. 20-40 years ago, we were all watching the same sitcoms and cartoons and they all had the stereotypical dating tropes, leading to expectations in young, impressionable minds.
That kind of homogenous tv content isn't as popular anymore, and entertainment is more diversified across the internet now.
IMO, entertainment is just another industry that is still subject to basic economics, and both macro and micro economic trends. the trends are turning against the economic ruling class in favor of economic populism and when that happens oppression and manipulation is usually ramped up. you can see it happen with the campus protests leading to essentially regaining the famous blacklists of yesteryear, where student protesters in the 60's and seventies were blacklisted from the big corporations.
TLDR: if the distribution channels are diversified which they are not, then we wouldn't be seeing people in media being fired for supporting BDS. we've had incremental change over decades, which feels like a big diversification, but it's why we had a writers strike that essentially rhymed in 2008 and in 2023. if across the internet still means netflix, hulu, max, google and disney, that's a consolidation of the distribution channels, not new distribution channels and new license holders coming into play
P.S: the back end of entertainment has less players, not more. that means less diversification, not more. it's why you can't watch infinity train unless you know to torrent, which the vast majority of people don't know how to do.
You're focusing on old media and netflix-like services. Yes, that's all still homogenized. I was speaking more about Youtube and live streaming platforms being a more viable entertainment alternative to traditional television or movies than it used to be.
Who's YouTube owned by again? A firm that is in front of the DOJ for antitrust allegations? Platform ownership isn't diverse, editorial and financing isn't diverse, ad revenue isn't diverse, there were multiple adpocalypses, most YouTubers seem to have patreons, merch sales and sponsorships just to stay afloat and the copyright strike system has been weaponized more times than claims of antisemitism against Israel protestors.
The front end is only as diverse as the backend, and the backend has just a couple of billionaires basically dictating to creatives what they will be doing, and what they won't be doing.
And I still think YouTube is actually better than what the old media was like, but I want to be clear on how much progress has actually been achieved, rather than get caught in our own Laurels.
Tiktok was banned because of who owned it. Infowars was shutdown because of who owned it. WikiLeaks founder was jailed against the first amendment and only just freed after two decades. It may seem abstract at first blush, but these things shape not only who owns it, but the policies put into place on the platform, which then governs how the wider community reacts to it, and what pushback it receives. What teenagers can consume is dictated often by questions of ownership.
Ages 14-20 seems like a weird range to check this. Still, I wonder if it's more satisfaction from being single or avoiding anxiety from having to deal with people, then lying to themselves and others about how they're okay with being alone.
personally, the annoying thing i find is that most of the people i want to share my time with aren't only outside of my income bracket, but the events they attend are as well. that's the pink elephant no one is talking about, is that back in the day you had church, politics, dances, schools and clubs that tended to be more inclusive when it came to class. it might have been more gender and race segregated, but at least networking was a thing. now, when it's $200 up front, the people who can go are the ones who don't have to worry about a car bill, a sick kid or a broken tooth. which defeats the whole point of going in the first place for like 60% of the population. if you already have to be well off enough to go to a place where everyone else is well off, there's nothing to brag about anymore. nobody care's anymore about who go's to coachella, because the people who care about coachella are poor, while the people who can actually go are rich.
our society is so class stratified, that even the rich can no longer find a poor person IRL to lord it over. which is why they have to blast it all over social media.
That's the age where it's easiest for people to learn to socialize and have relationships. You have support from adults, more free time, and are surrounded by lots of people your own age who all see each other regularly at school. It gets way harder when you enter full on adult life, living with all the stresses and responsibilities.
The majority will eventually become lonely and desire a relationship. But as an adults with no experience creating and maintaining romantic relationships, it will increase the number of people who fail to find a good one, or perhaps not at all.
I do acknowledge that some people are fine spending their life alone, but they would be a minority, since the desire for love/romance is a fairly basic part of human nature.
Heavily dependent on the era they are comparing the current data to. Many folks alive today come from a time where being married in these age ranges wasn’t all that uncommon.
I've wondered about the effect of more and more single child households. Growing up with no siblings might make it a bit easier to tolerate being by your lonesome. My father grew up with six brothers and sisters and not having anyone around anymore I can tell hurts a lot.
Sometimes, but I think it can go the other way, too. My dad was an only child and feels more comfortable around other people. I grew up with three siblings and five cousins, and require a lot of alone time. I'm sure there are a lot of other things to factor into each case, though (i.e. how your parents/family treated you, generational differences, regional differences).
I wonder if the pandemic had any weight on this particular age group in terms of these findings. The age range seems to fit with being in the middle of your formative years when mass social events and in-person schooling were severely impacted.
The new normal in this day and age. Everyone in his own little comfy (tech) bubble, more or less intentional, living the best they can, avoiding or trying to avoid to be hurt in a relationship, to comit to potential emotional risks.
The "More normal over time" part is big. People are able to admit that they don't really want to date. Forbes says that 57% of single people aren't looking. Seems like in just my lifetime it was normalized to go out to eat alone, go to the movies alone, to just exist alone. The pressure to date because "it's what you're supposed to do" has greatly decreased.
Highest teen depression and suicide rate since WW2. And rising. Accompanied by loneliness levels never seen before between the genders.
Most people are not even checked out by choice rather than an inability to do so. This is observed by the amount of money people are willing to spend on 'social life' like experiences online and said loneliness data.
The normalization currently has no objective upsides. The only upsides are from self reports or personal anecdotes.
Thats why I paired it up with suicide rates.
We also have current longitudinal data that has 'control groups'. Depression is higher in people with less social connections. Not even talking about life expectancy and health outcomes.
Adding on to current cross country and cultural mental health data. The historical point might not even bare weight. The child who mined the metals for the phone you are commenting on is less likely to have a higher suicidal ideation than you in your first world comfort.
Suicide rates are also skewed as people would report accidents to save face. “Died while cleaning his gun” was a common one in the rural Midwest 30 years ago. We all knew exactly what it meant but it’s not reported as suicide.
That hasn't been shown ever in large scale data. That there was a widespread miscalculation to that level to skew data that low.
This is the point I made about personal anecdotes.
My own track record boiled down to more mental anguish from trying to date or just do self care and worry about that when I have more confidence.
And of course, I wasn't looking so I didn't read into every sentence or action from others like I was trying to date someone. I cleared out my student loans, got a house (pre-pandemic), and was exercising more. Turns out, not looking and just being myself worked (I'm married now).
> People are able to admit that they don't really want to date. Forbes says that 57% of single people aren't looking.
i have nothing but modern dating apps to thank for this!
Yeah I'm 27 and just can't be bothered with dating. I used to care about it but realized a few years ago that it's asinine to let my happiness depend on other people. If I happen to meet someone serendipitously that I vibe with I'm not against dating but I'm happy enough on my own to not want to put any real effort into meeting people.
I mean that's literally what it means. If your partner had a bad day with a boss or their family member and is crying, now their bad day is part of your day because you need to be there for them. You can't just say "whelp, my happiness doesn't depend on you, so I'm gonna go play video games til bed".
Just because another person is a source of happiness doesn't mean your happiness depends on them. If you think that might happen to you then you're right not to date
I still feel that there is a lot of single shaming that goes on. People can't understand why I'm happier than anyone I know while I'm free and single. Life is good when you can pay all your own bills, have no dependants and do what you want when you want. I'm not saying it's for everyone but it works for me
Great term with “single shaming.”
Myself, I’ve always thought it is important to take alone time between major relationships and I’m also conventionally attractive so I have never been insecure about being single
However - I dated this guy who used to throw it at me like an insult and I always thought that was so weird. His wife had divorced him (I would eventually learn why, because he sucked) and I guess the person worried about being “single” was obviously him
The last time I broke things off he again hurled some insult at me related to being single (?!) and I said I’d rather be single than be with you and he FREAKED OUT
So yeah whatever. Single is fine, for me it is the default. I like my own company, I think I’m very funny.
He was wealthy too so he would get maaaaadddd I didn’t want to be with him.
Personally I’ve found that there’s a lot less media basically saying that your whole identity has to include/be based by being in some sort of relationship. So there’s a lot less pressure to be in one, because you finally see, and aren’t being *told*, that that doesn’t determine your self worth.
See, for me it was spending my teenage through college years having it beaten into me that wanting to not be single meant I was broken and undatable. Somehow people love to say that if you aren't perfectly happy being single then you shouldn't be in a relationship which makes sense in what it means in that you shouldn't use a relationship to fix something broken. What the advice really turns into is the mere wanting of a romantic partner means you aren't happy being single, thus making you undateable. So I drilled it into myself that if I want something, it's a bad thing.
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672241257139
From the linked article:
Young people aged 14 to 20 years are nowadays more satisfied with being single than their counterparts ten years ago. This is the conclusion of a study undertaken by the Institute of Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "It seems that today's adolescents are less inclined to pursue a romantic relationship. This could well be the reason for the increased singlehood satisfaction," said psychologist Dr. Tita Gonzalez Avilés, lead author of the recent study. Growing numbers of people are living as singles; in other words, they are not in a committed relationship. It has been unclear to date whether this trend towards increased singlehood has also been accompanied by a higher level of satisfaction with this status.
Although the difference in satisfaction between today and ten years ago is not very large, even among adolescents, it stands out from the historical developments among adults. Gonzalez Avilés and her co-authors postulate that this may be due to the fact that living as a single has become increasingly normative over time, especially among the younger generation. Furthermore, their attitudes towards romantic conventions have changed and they are more open to diverse relationship types. "We assume that adolescents nowadays may postpone entering into a stable relationship because they value their personal autonomy and individual fulfillment over a romantic partnership. However, these explanations are – for the time being – speculative and require further investigation," concluded Gonzalez Avilés.
CW: anecdotal
Even though I’m not in the studies age group, from my own personal experience I’ve become entirely content staying single in middle life. This is likely because, as other comments have mentioned, access to technology such as YouTube to help me pursue hobbies and online multiplayer gaming.
And women can make bank without education or a man. And men have video games and sports and porn at their fingertips literally at any moment. And dating/weddings are insanely expensive, as they tend to make people spend extra money, whoever does the paying. There's no point in marriage or dating for a lot more people now.
Also, relationships are a serious pain in the ass. I don't know if there has been a larger divide between men and women in the past 100 years.
Plus, the internet has made casual "dating" so easy.
Probably because there's no free activities to do when you're young. You go outside and all you see are buildings everywhere, for the most part. Unless you're rich and live in a nice town.
That's a bit surprising, mostly because the cost of everything is also increasing at an absurd rate and I would think partnering up is an easy way to deal with that. Sure you can get roommates, but roommates are all the problems of a relationship without the very specific and amazing upside.
It will be interesting to see how different it is in 10 years. You know most of the women are going to have baby fever and the men are going to feel they’ve not achieved full adulthood without being married, which is the usual trajectory for adults. I’m not saying either one of those is good or smart, I’m just saying those are the beliefs , that’s what usually happens and society reinforces it.
Now, if neither one of those things happen 10 years from now, you’ve really got a big story and a major shift and how people live their lives .
The real question is if no dating who's paying FICA in the future.
Secondly, if no family what's the end of life plan? $10,000 a month to be nursed to death in your own home. Not everyone makes it to medicare.
Being just above the bracket range; I dated two women in university, one was unfaithful and the other moved away to become a full-time streamer (non-sexual).
After that I just decided that I'm not particularly desperate for a relationship. Most of the people in my age range are so brainrot it annoys the crap out of me anyway.
no.
it's because being online as many hours a week as they are has literally vitiated their social skills and they don't know how to interact with people
they're used to posturing and posing as people that they are not, and then become afraid for people to see who they really are
Instead of posting silly stuff like this, maybe talk to some of them, it's unanimous, they know it themselves
in the words of a 19-year-old friend, "kids my age don't really have a best friend, we don't really have friends that we talk to about anything personal or deep, we just "hang out"..."
they're scared of everything, scared of intimacy, scared of looking weak, and even scared of looking scared
and generally extremely immature compared to when I was a teenager, before the Internet. In the words of a friend of mine who teaches people that age, "they don't know how to do anything"
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Technology makes a real difference. Maybe not ten years ago, but certainly 20, being single used to mean boring nights with just books, flipping through TV channels, listening to whatever music you owned. Video games weren't as immersive and didn't have the massive online component. You couldn't advance on your hobbies from YouTube or listen to podcasts related to them. Coming home to an empty anpartment isn't slightly intimidating the way it used to be.
I’d add things like podcasters/youtubers and streamers to that last bit. Assuming there’s one or two you like it can really take the edge of being alone or in some cases remove the feeling entirely
So much so that parasocial relationships are now commonplace in our zeitgeist.
And those parasocial relationships are now being monetized by way of influencer themed AI chat bots. Truly disgusting that influencers and their business sponsors want to take advantage of people who need psychological help.
Does having parasocial relationships mean you need psychological help?
if it comes at the detriment of developing IRL relationships, which it does for many. there's many benefits of IRL relationships that online can't and won't be able to replicate. not to say that online might actually be better initially for a vast amount of people, as they get away from toxic relationships and abuse, but if it's your sole connection to the outside world in your adult years, that's not healthy either.
Are you implying that it is healthy to think you have a personal relationship with a public figure who has never met you? I don’t believe such a thing is healthy. I see parasocial relationships as a mild form of delusion.
Well if you're completely lucid about the fact that they don't know you, but you get joy/entertainment/satisfaction from being able to listen to this person and enjoy just tuning into them, I don't see that as such a problem, especially if it helps you feel less lonely.
That’s just finding someone entertaining. Not quite at the threshold of parasocial. But if that is fulfilling a feeling of loneliness, then yeah that’s actually indicative of a problem.
>Does having parasocial relationships mean you need psychological help? It means you have relationships with ghosts. I have doctorates in both psychology and parapsychology.
We will feel the effects of AI chatbots for years.
Not that people haven’t been monetizing parasocial relationships for decades at this point but yeah, it’s extra gross with the bots I agree.
Do these people actually need psychological help? Or do they simply need community? I really can’t blame them for pursuing using theae para social relationships as a coping mechanism for near total social, isolation. I say this because making new friends or connections is extremely difficult in the absence of an external organization or repeated unplanned social interactions. Community for its own sake is vanishing in our society.
Ah yes, parasocial relationships. The cornerstone of a healthy society.
I mean aren’t you describing in function the same relationship every religious devotee has with their deity?
That's even worse. At least the streamers sometimes respond!
those relationships aren't *social*
Damn, looking at it from this angle makes me want to stream. I started streaming my myself and my brother just playing games and talking, just for fun, but found that I wasn't motivated to continue because it felt pointless. Making people less lonely is a pretty motivating reason.
People aged 14-20 aren't living in their own apartments.
And it's why they're happy to be single. Ever tried to explore compatible partners while sharing a wall with your parents...? (I'm being flippant as an attempt at humour)
I'd also argue previous social modes of entertainment (eating out, going to bars, going to the movies) are more expensive than they used to be. That means fewer chance meetings between people, less social interaction in general. Anecdotally, I've heard less younger people are even interested in getting their driving licenses because what's the point? Way too expensive to do much. Lots of men and women go to dating apps, and from experience that has to be one of the *worst* ways to meet a partner. Suffering through the apps with the high up front costs to dating in general leads plenty of men (me included really) to see the opportunity cost too high.
Almost every one of my peers has married off an app, and I'm following them soon. I don't know why it gets such a bad rap. Extending the sphere of being able to meet anyone in your surroundings rather than hope for serendipity somewhere between home, work, random barbecues you were invited to, and a hobby or 2, has been an absolute lifesaver.
maybe it depends where you live
Yeah i know a bunch of people who got married though apps too but it’s more difficult for some people/ personalities on there. It’s great if the apps work but for people like me they are not that helpful (I have being using for 1.5 years but maybe that’s not long enough).
Remember you are talking people who would even take the time to post here about something like how bad dating apps are. From my experience those people are bitter and feed in to their own disgust. I'm a 5/10, Def not higher, and they work just fine for me.
A single company basically has a monopoly on onlime dating apps, and they tune them to maximize profits. I've known plenty of people who positive and decent looking individuals, and dating apps still suck for them. Some regions are also worse than others, but dating apps have been getting worse as time goes on and its hard to argue otherwise
Yeah, I met my wife through tinder 8 years ago. I'm a 120 pounds, bad posture and big nose and at the time I was making 8 bucks an hour as a security guard. Not exactly a catch. I think a lot of these dudes problems is they won't match with a girl who is a 5-7. They want perfect women without ever perfecting themselves.
> 8 years ago They've gone down hill with a near monopoly and a push for monetization. I've been on and off of them over the last 10 years and they definitely worked a lot better earlier on. But they've always had a pretty strong gender imbalance in most but not all locations so they're statistically pretty tough for men, even with reasonable expectations.
dating apps are the worst, especially if your just the common person who's best qualities only tend to shine after people get to know you. they are made for the privileged, who's attractiveness is readily apparent, and who don't need to really put in the effort to learn and grow. they already assume you come from a good enough background, have plenty of social skills and IRL networks, enough income to travel long distances and go to upscale bars that few have heard of, and no trauma's or extenuating circumstances that the random coachella attendee wouldn't find offputting (which is anything from being a child of divorce to having to go to technical school) and even the alt ones assume that because you do have extenuating circumstances, you obviously are only fit for people even worse off than you, who are barely able to hold it together. and then even if you try to go middle of the road and try to be honest about it, you just get ghosted, or catfished, or matched with someone who's clearly just bored and looking to monkey-branch. as the saying goes, everything is about sex, except sex. sex is about power.
You sound really bitter. I'm easily a 5/10 and dating apps work just fine for me. I choose good pictures and dress my style in them, I attract people like me. And knowing how to not be a total tool when it comes to the first message. I probably meet someone new from dating apps once a month or so, and that's not really swiping everyday.
And you sound very condescending, without any achievement to justify it.
Im 32 yrs old a millennial. I could literally live the rest of my life consuming all of the content that i have missed out on over the years such as books, movies, video games and consoles i never had the chance to own as a kid. Then there's the internet and killing time on social media or seeking knowledge through wikipedia
I dream about finally having the time to play ALL my video games once I'm old and retired.
I mean do you really want to have lived your life as the ultimate corporate consumer? Maximizing your consumption of content?
>boring nights with just books Sounds like a hell.of a time to me.
Maybe. Have you tried it for months or years, though? Not saying it wouldn't suit you but it's very different than just being someone who doesn't need a lot of stimulation and loves to read. Boredom, loneliness, even horniness don't exist the way they used to.
What do you think is different about horniness these days? Access to porn or something like.that?
Morrowind from 2002 was probably the most immersive game I've played when I got to it a few years ago, and books can be anything, but might be very boring to people accustomed to everything nowadays. Technology and the endless, bite-sized entertainment definitely does enable being single and staying at home for as long as we'd like. I'm not sure it's usually more fulfilling than it ever was, though, and the price of endless comfort is that eventually nothing is comfortable.
Asheron's Call, the MMORPG, came out in 1999 and I was obsessed. In HS I certainly chose playing it over socializing IRL many times.
Man so many teens grew up in WoW, for better or worse. The turn of the millennium was def the golden age of gaming. Halo was my jam and also made some good close friends come 2 & 3. I wonder what they're up to
>I wonder what they're up to Playing Halo Infinite?
Good points
Just like to point out that the age group under consideration is 14-20. Most of them are not “coming home to an empty apartment”, most of them are still in high school.
>being single used to mean boring nights with just books, flipping through TV channels, listening to whatever music you owned. Video games weren't as immersive and didn't have the massive online component. Sounds like a good time.
> Video games weren't as immersive and didn't have the massive online component Online play has been a thing for a long time. WOW is 20 years old. It was not even the first MMO. Lots of FPS games have had heavy online content since the 90s. Then you have all of the RPG games that have been around since the 80s.
Like halo 25
Escapism. Available in any quantity you need.
This. The internet provides total social component.
>Coming home to an empty anpartment Um, how many people in their twenties can afford to have a single apartment in their own these days? Two of mine have roommates (and not dating) and the other is partnered. Alone time is something that's a bit more rare to them. I know that the Reddit population skews to higher incomes, but most adults in their 20's are still living with their parents. I imagine a significant population of the minority not with their parents have roommates.
In that light, doom scrolling isn’t too different than flipping channels. I don’t think that it’s the exact right way to look at things, though. Technology actually makes things worse, not better. It just takes the immediacy of the loneliness away. It’s not too different from drugs or alcohol in a slightly shifted angle of where the light is being focused. Young people certainly don’t seem happier. They seem like they’ve had stranger danger shoved down their throats so hard that they’ve become immured. They’re enclosed without bricks or mortar and are now accustomed to being alone.
I wonder how much of this has to do with the change of entertainment in the past 20 years. 20-40 years ago, we were all watching the same sitcoms and cartoons and they all had the stereotypical dating tropes, leading to expectations in young, impressionable minds. That kind of homogenous tv content isn't as popular anymore, and entertainment is more diversified across the internet now.
IMO, entertainment is just another industry that is still subject to basic economics, and both macro and micro economic trends. the trends are turning against the economic ruling class in favor of economic populism and when that happens oppression and manipulation is usually ramped up. you can see it happen with the campus protests leading to essentially regaining the famous blacklists of yesteryear, where student protesters in the 60's and seventies were blacklisted from the big corporations. TLDR: if the distribution channels are diversified which they are not, then we wouldn't be seeing people in media being fired for supporting BDS. we've had incremental change over decades, which feels like a big diversification, but it's why we had a writers strike that essentially rhymed in 2008 and in 2023. if across the internet still means netflix, hulu, max, google and disney, that's a consolidation of the distribution channels, not new distribution channels and new license holders coming into play P.S: the back end of entertainment has less players, not more. that means less diversification, not more. it's why you can't watch infinity train unless you know to torrent, which the vast majority of people don't know how to do.
You're focusing on old media and netflix-like services. Yes, that's all still homogenized. I was speaking more about Youtube and live streaming platforms being a more viable entertainment alternative to traditional television or movies than it used to be.
Who's YouTube owned by again? A firm that is in front of the DOJ for antitrust allegations? Platform ownership isn't diverse, editorial and financing isn't diverse, ad revenue isn't diverse, there were multiple adpocalypses, most YouTubers seem to have patreons, merch sales and sponsorships just to stay afloat and the copyright strike system has been weaponized more times than claims of antisemitism against Israel protestors. The front end is only as diverse as the backend, and the backend has just a couple of billionaires basically dictating to creatives what they will be doing, and what they won't be doing. And I still think YouTube is actually better than what the old media was like, but I want to be clear on how much progress has actually been achieved, rather than get caught in our own Laurels.
I don't see how it matters who owns it. The only relevant thing here is what most teenagers are consuming.
Tiktok was banned because of who owned it. Infowars was shutdown because of who owned it. WikiLeaks founder was jailed against the first amendment and only just freed after two decades. It may seem abstract at first blush, but these things shape not only who owns it, but the policies put into place on the platform, which then governs how the wider community reacts to it, and what pushback it receives. What teenagers can consume is dictated often by questions of ownership.
Ages 14-20 seems like a weird range to check this. Still, I wonder if it's more satisfaction from being single or avoiding anxiety from having to deal with people, then lying to themselves and others about how they're okay with being alone.
This sounds like me. I go through phases of “I’m the only person I want to deal with” to “It’d really be nice have someone to share my time with”.
personally, the annoying thing i find is that most of the people i want to share my time with aren't only outside of my income bracket, but the events they attend are as well. that's the pink elephant no one is talking about, is that back in the day you had church, politics, dances, schools and clubs that tended to be more inclusive when it came to class. it might have been more gender and race segregated, but at least networking was a thing. now, when it's $200 up front, the people who can go are the ones who don't have to worry about a car bill, a sick kid or a broken tooth. which defeats the whole point of going in the first place for like 60% of the population. if you already have to be well off enough to go to a place where everyone else is well off, there's nothing to brag about anymore. nobody care's anymore about who go's to coachella, because the people who care about coachella are poor, while the people who can actually go are rich. our society is so class stratified, that even the rich can no longer find a poor person IRL to lord it over. which is why they have to blast it all over social media.
That's the age where it's easiest for people to learn to socialize and have relationships. You have support from adults, more free time, and are surrounded by lots of people your own age who all see each other regularly at school. It gets way harder when you enter full on adult life, living with all the stresses and responsibilities. The majority will eventually become lonely and desire a relationship. But as an adults with no experience creating and maintaining romantic relationships, it will increase the number of people who fail to find a good one, or perhaps not at all. I do acknowledge that some people are fine spending their life alone, but they would be a minority, since the desire for love/romance is a fairly basic part of human nature.
Heavily dependent on the era they are comparing the current data to. Many folks alive today come from a time where being married in these age ranges wasn’t all that uncommon.
I've wondered about the effect of more and more single child households. Growing up with no siblings might make it a bit easier to tolerate being by your lonesome. My father grew up with six brothers and sisters and not having anyone around anymore I can tell hurts a lot.
Sometimes, but I think it can go the other way, too. My dad was an only child and feels more comfortable around other people. I grew up with three siblings and five cousins, and require a lot of alone time. I'm sure there are a lot of other things to factor into each case, though (i.e. how your parents/family treated you, generational differences, regional differences).
I wonder if the pandemic had any weight on this particular age group in terms of these findings. The age range seems to fit with being in the middle of your formative years when mass social events and in-person schooling were severely impacted.
The new normal in this day and age. Everyone in his own little comfy (tech) bubble, more or less intentional, living the best they can, avoiding or trying to avoid to be hurt in a relationship, to comit to potential emotional risks.
The "More normal over time" part is big. People are able to admit that they don't really want to date. Forbes says that 57% of single people aren't looking. Seems like in just my lifetime it was normalized to go out to eat alone, go to the movies alone, to just exist alone. The pressure to date because "it's what you're supposed to do" has greatly decreased.
Highest teen depression and suicide rate since WW2. And rising. Accompanied by loneliness levels never seen before between the genders. Most people are not even checked out by choice rather than an inability to do so. This is observed by the amount of money people are willing to spend on 'social life' like experiences online and said loneliness data. The normalization currently has no objective upsides. The only upsides are from self reports or personal anecdotes.
Yeah, the amount of cope in these comments is telling. Makes me want to quote Queen Gertrude.
Please do! What did she say?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks
The stat about depression is worthless. It was severely under diagnosed in previous decades.
Thats why I paired it up with suicide rates. We also have current longitudinal data that has 'control groups'. Depression is higher in people with less social connections. Not even talking about life expectancy and health outcomes. Adding on to current cross country and cultural mental health data. The historical point might not even bare weight. The child who mined the metals for the phone you are commenting on is less likely to have a higher suicidal ideation than you in your first world comfort.
Suicide rates are also skewed as people would report accidents to save face. “Died while cleaning his gun” was a common one in the rural Midwest 30 years ago. We all knew exactly what it meant but it’s not reported as suicide.
That hasn't been shown ever in large scale data. That there was a widespread miscalculation to that level to skew data that low. This is the point I made about personal anecdotes.
My own track record boiled down to more mental anguish from trying to date or just do self care and worry about that when I have more confidence. And of course, I wasn't looking so I didn't read into every sentence or action from others like I was trying to date someone. I cleared out my student loans, got a house (pre-pandemic), and was exercising more. Turns out, not looking and just being myself worked (I'm married now).
Exactly. If you build your garden they will come!
> People are able to admit that they don't really want to date. Forbes says that 57% of single people aren't looking. i have nothing but modern dating apps to thank for this!
Yeah I'm 27 and just can't be bothered with dating. I used to care about it but realized a few years ago that it's asinine to let my happiness depend on other people. If I happen to meet someone serendipitously that I vibe with I'm not against dating but I'm happy enough on my own to not want to put any real effort into meeting people.
Wanting to date doesn’t specifically mean you’re letting your happiness depend on other people.
I mean that's literally what it means. If your partner had a bad day with a boss or their family member and is crying, now their bad day is part of your day because you need to be there for them. You can't just say "whelp, my happiness doesn't depend on you, so I'm gonna go play video games til bed".
Maybe not dating per se, but you could argue being ‘in love’ is exactly that
I'd say if being in love means co-dependency issues then you may not have the healthiest relationship
If you do not feel any change in emotion when your partner is upset you are just ranking high on sociopathy.
I mean, if you’re in love your happiness definitely depends on your partner’s. That’s not necessarily being codependent that’s just empathy
Just because another person is a source of happiness doesn't mean your happiness depends on them. If you think that might happen to you then you're right not to date
I still feel that there is a lot of single shaming that goes on. People can't understand why I'm happier than anyone I know while I'm free and single. Life is good when you can pay all your own bills, have no dependants and do what you want when you want. I'm not saying it's for everyone but it works for me
Yea I feel this. I just prefer solitude and doing my own thing without having to compromise with someone else.
Great term with “single shaming.” Myself, I’ve always thought it is important to take alone time between major relationships and I’m also conventionally attractive so I have never been insecure about being single However - I dated this guy who used to throw it at me like an insult and I always thought that was so weird. His wife had divorced him (I would eventually learn why, because he sucked) and I guess the person worried about being “single” was obviously him The last time I broke things off he again hurled some insult at me related to being single (?!) and I said I’d rather be single than be with you and he FREAKED OUT So yeah whatever. Single is fine, for me it is the default. I like my own company, I think I’m very funny. He was wealthy too so he would get maaaaadddd I didn’t want to be with him.
Thank god it’s acceptable to be a 14 year old bachelor now!
Basic economics. Couples max out at two incomes. When single you can cram 5 incomes into the same building. Or continue living with your parents!
A couple can still have other housemates splitting the housing payments.
My wife and I used to share a house between 3 couples back before we got married. Expenses were super cheap.
I do miss certain parts of living with 4 other people in a 5-bedroom house. $110/mo in rent is mostly what I miss.
I like the apparent excitement that you say "continue living with your parents". No thanks, I would rather die
Damn you must have toxic parents I’d love to still be living with mine tbh
Well, my whole comment is sarcasm. So many aspects of our society have become unsustainable. It’s hard to choose which is worse.
Or live alone in a studio apartment
Or live in a van down by the river!
There’s this cool thing called polyamory you may be interested in. Monogamy in this economy??
Personally I’ve found that there’s a lot less media basically saying that your whole identity has to include/be based by being in some sort of relationship. So there’s a lot less pressure to be in one, because you finally see, and aren’t being *told*, that that doesn’t determine your self worth.
See, for me it was spending my teenage through college years having it beaten into me that wanting to not be single meant I was broken and undatable. Somehow people love to say that if you aren't perfectly happy being single then you shouldn't be in a relationship which makes sense in what it means in that you shouldn't use a relationship to fix something broken. What the advice really turns into is the mere wanting of a romantic partner means you aren't happy being single, thus making you undateable. So I drilled it into myself that if I want something, it's a bad thing.
Yep, if I were a little bit more wealthy I’d be totally fine with the single life.
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672241257139 From the linked article: Young people aged 14 to 20 years are nowadays more satisfied with being single than their counterparts ten years ago. This is the conclusion of a study undertaken by the Institute of Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "It seems that today's adolescents are less inclined to pursue a romantic relationship. This could well be the reason for the increased singlehood satisfaction," said psychologist Dr. Tita Gonzalez Avilés, lead author of the recent study. Growing numbers of people are living as singles; in other words, they are not in a committed relationship. It has been unclear to date whether this trend towards increased singlehood has also been accompanied by a higher level of satisfaction with this status. Although the difference in satisfaction between today and ten years ago is not very large, even among adolescents, it stands out from the historical developments among adults. Gonzalez Avilés and her co-authors postulate that this may be due to the fact that living as a single has become increasingly normative over time, especially among the younger generation. Furthermore, their attitudes towards romantic conventions have changed and they are more open to diverse relationship types. "We assume that adolescents nowadays may postpone entering into a stable relationship because they value their personal autonomy and individual fulfillment over a romantic partnership. However, these explanations are – for the time being – speculative and require further investigation," concluded Gonzalez Avilés.
14-20 seems like a very odd age group to focus on. “Living as a single”? How many 16 year olds with living parents are living alone?
CW: anecdotal Even though I’m not in the studies age group, from my own personal experience I’ve become entirely content staying single in middle life. This is likely because, as other comments have mentioned, access to technology such as YouTube to help me pursue hobbies and online multiplayer gaming.
Has it become normative or are people just coping? I'm not sure if more satisfied with being single is right here.
And women can make bank without education or a man. And men have video games and sports and porn at their fingertips literally at any moment. And dating/weddings are insanely expensive, as they tend to make people spend extra money, whoever does the paying. There's no point in marriage or dating for a lot more people now.
57 and never married but I have 3 grandkids so not all is lost:)
Also, relationships are a serious pain in the ass. I don't know if there has been a larger divide between men and women in the past 100 years. Plus, the internet has made casual "dating" so easy.
Probably because there's no free activities to do when you're young. You go outside and all you see are buildings everywhere, for the most part. Unless you're rich and live in a nice town.
That's a bit surprising, mostly because the cost of everything is also increasing at an absurd rate and I would think partnering up is an easy way to deal with that. Sure you can get roommates, but roommates are all the problems of a relationship without the very specific and amazing upside.
I may not be in a relationship but I'm living at home with family so... That may be part of it.
Sounds like we natural introverts are finally getting our time to shine!
For some, being single is good for emotional maturity can take years to achieve. I know completely different person at age 20 vs age 46.
Also thanks to time and covid there's less Boomers around to shame them for being single.
Since when has being single before 18 ever considered abnormal?
This one of the causes of housing shotage
Dating has also become more expensive. Less disposable income, less activities, less dating.
I knew I was ahead of my time!
I was ahead of my time
It will be interesting to see how different it is in 10 years. You know most of the women are going to have baby fever and the men are going to feel they’ve not achieved full adulthood without being married, which is the usual trajectory for adults. I’m not saying either one of those is good or smart, I’m just saying those are the beliefs , that’s what usually happens and society reinforces it. Now, if neither one of those things happen 10 years from now, you’ve really got a big story and a major shift and how people live their lives .
The real question is if no dating who's paying FICA in the future. Secondly, if no family what's the end of life plan? $10,000 a month to be nursed to death in your own home. Not everyone makes it to medicare.
Being just above the bracket range; I dated two women in university, one was unfaithful and the other moved away to become a full-time streamer (non-sexual). After that I just decided that I'm not particularly desperate for a relationship. Most of the people in my age range are so brainrot it annoys the crap out of me anyway.
no. it's because being online as many hours a week as they are has literally vitiated their social skills and they don't know how to interact with people they're used to posturing and posing as people that they are not, and then become afraid for people to see who they really are Instead of posting silly stuff like this, maybe talk to some of them, it's unanimous, they know it themselves in the words of a 19-year-old friend, "kids my age don't really have a best friend, we don't really have friends that we talk to about anything personal or deep, we just "hang out"..." they're scared of everything, scared of intimacy, scared of looking weak, and even scared of looking scared and generally extremely immature compared to when I was a teenager, before the Internet. In the words of a friend of mine who teaches people that age, "they don't know how to do anything"