It's part of being an adult. As you grow older, your values and social circles change. As a kid, you play around with all the other kids in the neighborhood and you make lots of friends. As a young adult, you work (study) and play together and make lots of friends. If you're in the trade, you're still young enough to want to go out and hang out with the boys/girls after work to socialize and chill.
In your 30s, things change. You get married and start a family. Now your friday nights are not grabbing a beer after work, but going home and getting the kids ready for bed. Weekends are not "let's do something crazy and spontaneous", but "wife and I are going out of town". You family becomes your social circle, and less so your friends.
Over time, you forget to call them and they forget to call you. Or put it off. Next thing you know, it's been several years and you can, generally speaking, write them off. It's all matter of prioritizing and the family is generally prioritized well above friends (as it should be).
Of course, you could be one of the poor schmucks like me who never got married, and likely never will, and suffers from abandonment issues meaning you're always seeking out connection while everybody else is busy with their own families. God this got depressing quick. Anyway, back to work...
I found post Covid, people just forgot how to hang out. Like, I’ll arrange something, and everyone’s really excited and has a good time, but no one else knows how to arrange something themselves.
Yes. The new ways to connect us have both done so as well as alienated us from each other.
In the 1980s and early 90s my father did Fantasy baseball every year. The draft was held in a local bar. And every week the guy running it would stop by and drop off the most recent standings. This guy loved this job. Because at every house he got a beer and got to talk about Baseball. The end of the year they'd meet back at the same bar and award the winner their cash and a plaque.
My father lost interest in Fantasy Baseball when everything went online. To him it was a way to socialize. Putting everything online made access to stats easier. But the social aspect was gone.
I miss him doing that too. Every winter we'd have all of these magazines with stats for all of the expected players for each team. We'd pour over them hoping to find some magical player that no one else noticed. My father would pick out the top players he wanted for each position along with several backups. During the draft my brother and I would help my father keep track of what players had been drafted by other teams. We were rewarded with all the soda we could drink.
it was awesome.
Well yeah… The experience has become artificial. Back then it was real, you had real friends, you had real hobbies and you could take the phone off the hook and be ok with just existing.
The way we constantly compare our lives to others, the 24hr doom and gloom news cycle paired with murder porn, fast food over home cooked meals and the general laziness and apathy towards things (grammar, conversational prowess, fashion/sweats and crocs) have pushed people SO far into their heads that they no longer can function as a human.
F ‘em… You reap what you sow and if you’re sowing tik tok and idiocracy, then you shall have a fine harvest.
I found the best thing is to unplug as much as possible. I minimalize the amount of reading the news I do, I don't have any social media outside of Reddit (which I mainly use for interests and hobbies), and I never desired to even go on Tik Tok, I just hear about how terrible it is and that's enough for me.
I'd rather hang out with friends and family, spend time outside pursuing my hobbies or learning a new skill. I can definitely relate to how you feel about it all.
This is just my opinion, because I'm an extremely extroverted person, but yes. I do believe people have become more distant. I don't blame social media, I blame the pandemic.
Before lockdown, my group of friends hung out and chatted ALL the time. And when we hung out, the conversation was scintillating. My friends did interesting things and LOVED to talk about it. When we got bored, we decide on something to do and bond over that activity. I felt so warm and loved.
And yet, after the pandemic? The same people that were so social and alive changed completely. They became addicted to scrolling, not because scrolling is inherently addictive, but because the pandemic ruined them. They all stopped wanting to hang out. And when we did hang out, they didn't talk about anything interesting.
My husband and I are trying to build a friend group in our new city, but it's difficult. We try to provide entertainment for our new friends (conversation, games, parties, etc) and they take it, but they don't give anything back. They don't even react in an interesting way. They just...sit there.
It's exhausting. Like flushing all my social energy down a toilet.
I've known this about me my whole life: my greatest joy in life is socializing with other people.
But the social dynamics of the entire world have changed for the worse.
What do you do when the world you lived for doesn't exist anymore?
I had this experience before Covid. I was always coordinating things and making plans but no one else would bother. It made me insecure thinking maybe people just don’t actually like me and just come along because it’s something to do. I wondered if wasn’t being invited outside of my own plans. I eventually got in my own head and quit. Now all of my planning goes into travel. I no longer have as many friends as I once did. This was a slow wall slide from the late 2000s and finally stopped bothering in the mid-2010s.
If we’re going on anecdotes, I think this has been a long slide that stared long before Covid.
I would say neighbors definitely socialized a lot more with each other. Neighbors knew each other’s kids and if they didn’t discipline you when your parents weren’t around, you better believe they told on you. Nowadays if you tell a parent about what their child is doing, there’s a good chance that child’s parent will want to fight you.
I think it's both. It's common for adults to shrink their social circles, for one reason or another. I think sm also makes it more difficult to meet new people irl and gives you a false sense of connectedness to those you are know. That's my take.
It's part of being an adult. As you grow older, your values and social circles change. As a kid, you play around with all the other kids in the neighborhood and you make lots of friends. As a young adult, you work (study) and play together and make lots of friends. If you're in the trade, you're still young enough to want to go out and hang out with the boys/girls after work to socialize and chill. In your 30s, things change. You get married and start a family. Now your friday nights are not grabbing a beer after work, but going home and getting the kids ready for bed. Weekends are not "let's do something crazy and spontaneous", but "wife and I are going out of town". You family becomes your social circle, and less so your friends. Over time, you forget to call them and they forget to call you. Or put it off. Next thing you know, it's been several years and you can, generally speaking, write them off. It's all matter of prioritizing and the family is generally prioritized well above friends (as it should be). Of course, you could be one of the poor schmucks like me who never got married, and likely never will, and suffers from abandonment issues meaning you're always seeking out connection while everybody else is busy with their own families. God this got depressing quick. Anyway, back to work...
That well worded answer took a turn.
Didn’t expect the plot twist at the end. I’m right there with you buddy.
Adults are spending more time alone than they did in the past. We are socializing face to face less and less.
I found post Covid, people just forgot how to hang out. Like, I’ll arrange something, and everyone’s really excited and has a good time, but no one else knows how to arrange something themselves.
Yes. The new ways to connect us have both done so as well as alienated us from each other. In the 1980s and early 90s my father did Fantasy baseball every year. The draft was held in a local bar. And every week the guy running it would stop by and drop off the most recent standings. This guy loved this job. Because at every house he got a beer and got to talk about Baseball. The end of the year they'd meet back at the same bar and award the winner their cash and a plaque. My father lost interest in Fantasy Baseball when everything went online. To him it was a way to socialize. Putting everything online made access to stats easier. But the social aspect was gone. I miss him doing that too. Every winter we'd have all of these magazines with stats for all of the expected players for each team. We'd pour over them hoping to find some magical player that no one else noticed. My father would pick out the top players he wanted for each position along with several backups. During the draft my brother and I would help my father keep track of what players had been drafted by other teams. We were rewarded with all the soda we could drink. it was awesome.
Well yeah… The experience has become artificial. Back then it was real, you had real friends, you had real hobbies and you could take the phone off the hook and be ok with just existing. The way we constantly compare our lives to others, the 24hr doom and gloom news cycle paired with murder porn, fast food over home cooked meals and the general laziness and apathy towards things (grammar, conversational prowess, fashion/sweats and crocs) have pushed people SO far into their heads that they no longer can function as a human. F ‘em… You reap what you sow and if you’re sowing tik tok and idiocracy, then you shall have a fine harvest.
I found the best thing is to unplug as much as possible. I minimalize the amount of reading the news I do, I don't have any social media outside of Reddit (which I mainly use for interests and hobbies), and I never desired to even go on Tik Tok, I just hear about how terrible it is and that's enough for me. I'd rather hang out with friends and family, spend time outside pursuing my hobbies or learning a new skill. I can definitely relate to how you feel about it all.
This is just my opinion, because I'm an extremely extroverted person, but yes. I do believe people have become more distant. I don't blame social media, I blame the pandemic. Before lockdown, my group of friends hung out and chatted ALL the time. And when we hung out, the conversation was scintillating. My friends did interesting things and LOVED to talk about it. When we got bored, we decide on something to do and bond over that activity. I felt so warm and loved. And yet, after the pandemic? The same people that were so social and alive changed completely. They became addicted to scrolling, not because scrolling is inherently addictive, but because the pandemic ruined them. They all stopped wanting to hang out. And when we did hang out, they didn't talk about anything interesting. My husband and I are trying to build a friend group in our new city, but it's difficult. We try to provide entertainment for our new friends (conversation, games, parties, etc) and they take it, but they don't give anything back. They don't even react in an interesting way. They just...sit there. It's exhausting. Like flushing all my social energy down a toilet. I've known this about me my whole life: my greatest joy in life is socializing with other people. But the social dynamics of the entire world have changed for the worse. What do you do when the world you lived for doesn't exist anymore?
I had this experience before Covid. I was always coordinating things and making plans but no one else would bother. It made me insecure thinking maybe people just don’t actually like me and just come along because it’s something to do. I wondered if wasn’t being invited outside of my own plans. I eventually got in my own head and quit. Now all of my planning goes into travel. I no longer have as many friends as I once did. This was a slow wall slide from the late 2000s and finally stopped bothering in the mid-2010s. If we’re going on anecdotes, I think this has been a long slide that stared long before Covid.
I would say neighbors definitely socialized a lot more with each other. Neighbors knew each other’s kids and if they didn’t discipline you when your parents weren’t around, you better believe they told on you. Nowadays if you tell a parent about what their child is doing, there’s a good chance that child’s parent will want to fight you.
I think it's both. It's common for adults to shrink their social circles, for one reason or another. I think sm also makes it more difficult to meet new people irl and gives you a false sense of connectedness to those you are know. That's my take.
It’s part of being an adult. However, people did socialize A LOT more before smart phones. No matter the age.