When I visit my wifes family in (very) rural China, it kind of reminds me how we used to socially interact back when I was young 20 years ago. People would just pop by back then and sit in my couch for an hour or two, have a talk, watch some TV and get a snack and tea for no particular reason other than they just wanted to come by and it was okay. Everyone is always busy doing something today and everything has to be planned and just popping by feels weird and rude now..
Its funny how people had time to do something like standing in line at the post office to pay their bills back then, but they still managed to spend and hour or two to just be with a friend for no special reason. Maybe it was just a necessity back then without the phones and all and nobody actually really liked to spend time with friends and family. Seems like friendship has been automated somehow today to make it more efficient. I bet that in 1000 years long after human kind has disappeared, there will be friends sending each other automated birthday greetings in one of those solar powered data centers somewhere in Finland.
Here in the states, it starts very young. A parent must schedule a playdate beforehand, update it in the google calendar, drive the child 10-15 blocks to their friends house. Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date.
To ensure maximum progress, play date activities must be intellectually stimulating and structured based on how much they contribute to test scores and college admissions down the line—this is known from statistical methods of course. Video streaming smartphone applications enable parents to check in at any time during the activity to ensure maximum growth.
As the children grow up, this does not stop of course. In fact, it becomes less playful and more efficient. Time wasted during youth is punished brutally in the holistic college admissions process.
By the time we've grown into adults, such impulses—such as spending time at a friends' house for no reason at all—can be completely eliminated. This ensures that more time in adulthood is dedicated to what truly matters, which is.... gosh I'm not sure. I can ponder that after I finish this next 'to do' on my list!
Reading this and replies to it saying how this is slowly becoming(or already is) the reality, I now get why stranger things is a highly acclaimed show. Not to take away anything from the storyline, direction, acting but one large appeal of the show was that it brought back memories. Parents of today lived the life portrayed by the kids in the show(cycling, staying overnight at friends house, etc) and yearn for a comeback of those days, long gone by for the most part.
I've seen some online commenters (that I can only assume are younger millennials or Gen-Z'ers) call the show "unrealistic" due to the amount of autonomy the kids have, apparently not realizing that this is how many people grew up in the 1980's. It's hard not to feel wistful when you see that things have changed so much that people growing up today will watch a show where kids bicycle around town in the afternoon before going home for dinner and can't identify with it.
I was born in 1990 and I feel like my childhood sort of straddled the line between these two realities. When my family moved to California in the early 90's, I made friends with the neighbor kids simply because they were the neighbor kids, and we many afternoons finding wandering around looking for ways to entertain ourselves. Kids would frequently play in the middle of the street. Nowadays, the streets of that neighborhood are empty. I'll go to the small nearby park, and maybe see kids if there's a youth sports league game or someone having a birthday party there.
Having spent some time in Australia recently, one of the things that struck me is how often you see kids (often in their school uniforms) walking around town by themselves, going to get fast food with friends or hang out at the library. In the US, I've also noticed it in several ethnic neighborhoods (Jewish and Chinese neighborhoods, specifically).
Part of me wonders how much of this is born out of affluence. On occasion, I'll find myself passing through a lower-income part of town, and the dynamic changes. You see kids walking to the store alone, maybe to buy things, maybe just to hang around and wait for their friends to stop by. Often, groups of kids consist of an older kid (maybe 10 years old) acting as a "caretaker" for a younger group of siblings. You'll be pumping gas, and someone at the opposite pump randomly strike up a conversation with you. If you're not used to it, it actually kind of catches you off guard. I know some people flee to suburbs specifically to avoid these kinds of interactions, but once you get past the initial surprise of, "huh, someone I don't know started talking to me just to talk to me, that doesn't happen every day," I actually find certain parts of it to be quite pleasant. It reminds me of how I used to live, and how I suspect my parents (and their parents) lived.
And there you have the crux of the matter. On the one hand, I'm sure cities have gotten larger, traffic a lot busier, suburbia becoming busier, etc. On the other, parents are afraid, and get told by e.g. the media to be afraid - there's child snatchers around every corner, for example.
But what are the distances kids have to travel to school or their friends nowadays vs back then? I mean the school bus was a thing back then too.
"But what are the distances kids have to travel to school or their friends nowadays vs back then? I mean the school bus was a thing back then too."
This highly depends on the area, at least with schooling. In Indiana, it was around a half mile when I was a child in the 80's. This was where the school wouldn't bus you. Sometimes in high school, it was around a mile. Some folks have to walk a mile and a half.
My sister just spent some time in Connecticut - there were no busses for anyone. Only one of the busy roads had a crossing guard and things for elementary students.
For playing and whatnot, I think this highly depends on area and parents. While I could walk to a friend's house in the same neighborhood in the town I grew up in, my sister often couldn't because the town of 40,000 we lived in was a normal, sprawled, midwestern town and it was often too far to walk. By the time my brother (11 years younger than me) reached some of those ages, they moved to a rural location and distances got further. I had friends with much more freedom than I had, however: My mother was fairly strict.
> Parents are afraid, and get told by e.g. the media to be afraid
As a parent, this has not been my experience. In our (pretty affluent and safe) town I still see kids walking to elementary school alone. I let my kids stay home alone when they were 3-5 (you can go with me to the grocery store or play home, your choice) with main fear while I am gone being that of police or juvenile justice Nazis.
The media and government do seem intent on snuffing this out. In their view we must be afraid and any attempt to let kids play by themselves is placing them in unnecessary risk.
Many years ago, my friend's mother tried to bill my mother for some perceived amount of food that I was apparently consuming from their house. Which I largely wasn't and was also after the fact so if I knew there would be a bill I would would have turned down the offer of some spaghetti. That put a nail in the coffin of their friendship.
Didn't this friend also come by your house to play or stay overnight and ofc, after so many hours playing, wouldn't your mom make yourselves a nice snack for you to charge up and stuff? How come your friend's mom do something as autistic as that?
imho, his mom didn't like you (or was just jealous you were hanging out too much? narcissistic parents and stuff) and just wanted to kill the friendship....
srsly dude, the more you live the more you get spooked by people, thank you for refreshing my view of humanity.
I don't know if reimbursement happens, but kids will bring home a note with the contact details of their playmate, and their parents will schedule it. The whole calendar scheduling, driving, chaperoning etc are things that definitely happens. It's not the age of 'go play with the kids down the street', at least in the urban California I'm familiar with.
Just another datapoint, I've never seen anyone do that (I don't live in urban CA). I think you've just experienced how insular communities can descend into (I'm not trying to offensive in saying this) self-parody at blinding speeds, if they're cut off from outside mixing for too long.
I'm quite sure they were saying they've never seen this happen:
"but kids will bring home a note with the contact details of their playmate, and their parents will schedule it. The whole calendar scheduling, driving, chaperoning etc are things that definitely happens."
What's also sad is that after schools most kids are bundled into a car and driven off to their next appointment. There is little opportunity for spontaneity in life for Car Kids. Like play-dates, everything is rostered.
There are a few who walk home from my son's school and it's great to see them take 30 minutes to play or even just sit together throwing cut-grass in the air.
My eldest (12yo) has several friends nearby (<2 miles, easy biking) and I always try and encourage her to just go out and meet up with friends. Its like a foreign concept to her though. I've finally had some recent success, but its just so weird that I have to prod her into what amounts to going out to have fun with friends.
Everything is too scheduled. Its hard to break out of the "if it isn't schedule, it isn't happening" model when everyone in the family is so busy. We try and encourage independence even in our youngest, but "free time" is at a premium.
NOTE: my kids aren't "neurotypical" and have lots of appointments, etc adding an extra layer of "busy"
Also if there isn't anything scheduled, they're driven home and will do what they like - back in the 80's, what Stranger Things likes to idealize, that was hanging out with friends, nowadays that's playing video games.
My 5yo kid regularly comes home with a phone number scribbled down of their friend's parent's cell # that they got from a playmate from school. I've called and setup several play dates this way. I just drop my kid off to play at their house or have their kid come play at our place. Based on conversations with other parents in my neighborhood, this is the norm.
Sadly, kids in our direct neighborhood don't generally mingle or have unschedule play. Definitely different from the way I grew up (grew up in the 90s: little to no supervision, just wandered the neighborhood.)
Anecdotally, I know of a Singaporean whose brother charged for taking the daughter with his kids on holiday. He didn't outright make it a billable item but made it a markup on flights and hotels. Both are HNWIs for whom the amount is as trivial as a dollar menu item at McDonald's.
Well, yeah. Not for the profit of other parents, mind you--that'd be gauche. the money's just to cover the fees of whatever venue the play date's to be held at.
That is, unless you're arranging play dates at free / public venues... like some kind of common poor.
That's significantly different than paying someone in cash. (Also, I didn't say they rotate, they do, but it's not among everyone. Some people have larger houses and are happier to host so they do it more often.)
That’s a pretty funny exaggeration but not an exaggeration by much. That is, I’ve seen examples of it all.
But I brought up a (now) 20 year old in Palo Alto without the scheduling, tutoring, driving around and other nonsense, and he did get into a “top” school (whatever “top” really means).
But it did show a clear partition in which kids he could in practice be friends with.
OTOH he was able to pocket quite a bit of cash tutoring some pampered kids!
Again, if this is the norm in America -- it only became so recently. Not early enough for the generation of kids raised under this norm to turn thirty. I just turned forty and for both me and my younger sister, hanging out with kids from the neighborhood spontaneously was routine for us.
It started in the 80s with the Jacob Wetterling [1] kidnapping and things like the McMartin preschool trial [2]. Stranger danger, fear of crime (it was much higher in the 80s than now) and whatnot has lead parents being overly afraid to let their kids roam.
I think this might have contributed, but a larger contributor is likely the explosion of housing developments with larger lot sizes and suburbs-of-suburbs/exurbs, which prevent a kid from knowing any other kids living within a mile radius.
We're a part of the problem, my daughter is lucky she can walk to one of her schoolfriends houses. Her other besties are a minimum 30 minute walk, but they all attend the same school they're zoned for.
Here's where I let armchair "back in my day" parents down: I don't trust the drivers here. We also have massive elevation diffs and no sidewalks anywhere. Some ditches are basically cliffs.
Also I've noticed the proliferation of parents using 'kid tracking' apps for Android along with 'find my phone' iOS type tracking for their kids phones to keep tabs on them for peace of mind (find my phone is this a feature out of the box for iPhones?).
I think this helicopter parent micromanagement has just exploded with smartphone gps availability whereas in the 90's parents were pulling out the ol' paper map before road trips and maybe had a malfunctioning Tom Tom gps. Would love to see some data on tech savvy parents tracking their kids, anyone know about this?
Agreed, all of this is overblown. Kids find fun things to do. That's what kids do; with or without "helicopter parents" and with or without technology.
I'd bet most of these replies in this nature are written by child-less people giving their view of how things are so much worse now than when they were kids.
They're still doing the same stuff they've always done (wasting time and having fun).
I enjoy this joke because it tickles my pre-conceptions, that I grew from reading articles on the internet by Americans. But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)?
> But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)?
It's basically accurate in the literal sense. Or at least, I'm a parent and I'm seeing this essentially word-for-word with all nearby parents/children in our area. The venmo part stands out as being a SF thing. In the midwest, even young families are mostly old school and just pay with a credit card or paper check (yes literal paper checks written from a checkbook).
But the rest of it...yeah? It's essentially accurate.
Playdates are always scheduled beforehand (in Google Calendar, or far more commonly via Facebook invites between the parents). You do have to drive the child 10-15 blocks to every event (children are so expensive and housing is even more expensive, no one can afford to live near each other, so kids of similar age groups are still all spread out across the metro region and not in any one area/neighborhood). You can check on your kids at via smartphone at any daycare, and any other activity requires at least one parent be present anyway. All activities are required to have some attempt at "education", no matter how silly or tenuous that is.
And it's kind of tricky because it's a defacto part of society. I hate this hyper-scheduled hyper-data-driven stuff myself. But since the large majority of other parents do this, I can't avoid it -- we must contribute to this with our own kid too, otherwise we'd be depriving the child of social interaction with other children of matching ages.
It's not accurate -- or at least, not necessarily. I live in "urban California" (East Bay), and at this moment (7:40p on a Sunday evening), my five-year-old daughter is out front on the stoop with one of our five-year-old neighbors, who wandered over to show her a new toy motorcycle he got. My ten-year-old is out to an impromptu dinner with a friend of his and their family. My thirteen-year-old is at a nearby park skateboarding and/or playing pickup ultimate with some friends.
The five-year-old will come in shortly; the ten-year-old will be home later; I expect the thirteen-year-old home sometime around sundown. I planned none of this -- none of it was scheduled. Moreover, none of this is an attempt to educate them in any conventional way, and the only data driving is that freedom and unstructured time help build important qualities like independence and resilience.
As with so many things, there are many microclimates of parenting and child-rearing; if you value unstructured time for your kids and building their independence, you can likely find a community that shares those values.
Beautiful, sounds like my life in S. Minneapolis in 1985-2005ish. My friends who still call it home are having kids recently and they’re pretty free-range organic like this too. I’ve been thinking about forgoing a fam because of how things seem in my SF life for the last years (NoPa to Outmost Sunset). I like Oakland when I visit, like First Fridays, vibe is more relaxed. Thanks for sharing.
> you can likely find a community that shares those values.
So did you look for such a community yourself, or did it just happen? Either way, do you have any tips that maxsilver and others can use to find or create a good "microclimate"?
Yes, we absolutely sought out a community that shared our values; it didn't just happen. And it wasn't easy or quick; it took us a while to identify a community, and then a while more to find a house here (with our objective to find a house before our oldest entered kindergarten). In terms of tips: spend spare time trying a community on for size; go to its parks, walk its streets, talk to its inhabitants, meet its neighborhood groups. And importantly, figure out where you're willing to compromise. (For example, if walkability is important to you (and it is to us), you will almost certainly be compromising on lot size and house size: walkable neighborhoods usually have high density, which likely means smaller dwellings more tightly packed.)
None of this is easy, but finding a community that matches your values (or at least isn't inconsistent with them) is worth the effort: it's one of the most important decisions you'll make in your adult life, and merits special time and attention.
Paying when visiting friends sounds bad to American ears (maybe others) but I'm not so sure it's objectively bad.
Here in Japan if someone throws a house party it's common for everyone to pitch in $10-$30. Before I moved to Japan I had never heard of such a thing. In the USA when I or my family through a party for friends it was always our treat (we paid everything) and anytime I visited a friend's party they never asked for or expected money. The closest to that kind of thing was a "potluck" party where every one brought some food or drink.
Now that I've lived in Japan for a long time I've started to see the benefits of paying. It spreads the burden. It makes it easier to consider throwing a party since you know it won't cost you $50 to $200 in expenses.
Also in Japan it's extremely common to rent an an entire bar, space, restaurant for parties and tell all your friends, come to my party, $30 a person. Before I was lived here that idea would have blown my mind? $30? I'm not going if it even costs $5!. Now that I'm used to it I just see it has "paying for experience" and or "the cost of having fun" and I see that it enables cool venues and also places to be loud without annoying neighbors (since clubs and bars are usually designed for sound). I've gone to the opposite extreme where I'm disappointed when my western friends complain about having to contribute.
So, paying for playdates sounds like it might have positives. More playdates. Maybe easier for the organizer to stock all the various alternative diets the different kids need. etc...
> And it's kind of tricky because it's a defacto part of society. I hate this hyper-scheduled hyper-data-driven stuff myself. But since the large majority of other parents do this, I can't avoid it
The problem is that this behavior is driven by a tiny monitory, and supported by the rest.
The honest answer is to be the jerk who doesn't go along with it. The only way we can stop being victim to societal trends is to go against the flow.
> The only way we can stop being victim to societal trends is to go against the flow.
This. Or to put it another way: "You know who's a more interesting person in adulthood? Someone whose parents didn't bow to peer pressure when they were a kid."
FFS. If you're a parent, you're supposed to be setting an example. Not giving in to the same impulses we ostensibly teach our children to resist.
If other parents expect planned meetups, then "organically" is exactly that. Even if they take no issue random meets in principle, they already planned most time for other things. Their kids are not outside to be randomly met. Often other kids don't even live within walkable distance.
For that matter 3-6 years old don't "organically" start to visit each other alone without parents. How exactly you expect that to happen, really?
Maybe for a _very_ specific subset of people, but I think by & large we can count on Americans' distaste for organizing our schedules to preclude any kind of hyper-optimized child-rearing from becoming too popular.
That is: the caricature's funny, but it sounds like _way_ too much damn work.
It's not accurate. In a country of 325 million, you'll surely find some examples of it, but it's not been my experience as the father of two young children.
I live in the suburbs of north chicago. This weekend my 8 year old had a friend ride his bike to our house. They rode bikes up and down our street while our two younger kids tagged along, and they went and played in the creek up the road for an hour. Then they came back and played capture the flag and basketball, then came in and had a popsicle and played Super Smash Bros. At no point did my wife or I talk to his parents, aside from "X would like to come over sometime Saturday, will you be around?"
Apart from the Smash Bros., it could have been a scene from Andy Griffith or something. If it matters, this is from a pretty wealthy area (Michael Jordan's mansion is about 10 minutes up the road from us).
Growing up I used to go to friends' houses all the time unannounced. Thought nothing of it. When I came to the U.S. (grew up in Panama) and stopped by a friend's house unannounced he was upset and didn't let me in. It seems like all encounters with friends have to be planned. There's little spontaneity. My friend's kids all have planned activities too. No one plays in the streets. Kids can't go out without adult supervision or even ride a bike to a friend's house. It's weird. It's like people have forgotten that relationships are what make us human.
I think this is a class-driven norm. I grew up in a poor neighborhood and dropping by unannounced was the norm. If you called beforehand, it was likely just to make sure your pal was even home.
Overall, I think most trappings of etiquette fade away as you climb down the socioeconomic ladder (I think rich folk have a lot to learn from poor here, fwiw).
> I grew up in a poor neighborhood and dropping by unannounced was the norm.
Same and I think you're onto something, but my childhood predated mobile phones.
I've watched my nephew, who's from a fairly affluent family, call out to his friend who lives next door to come play. They'll chat to each other over the fence and then negotiate with their parents on where they can go play. Neither have mobile phones and I doubt either have used a landline (or have one) so yelling over the fence or knocking on the door seems like the most straightforward approach.
I think phones were the tipping point which changed behaviours - from most people being fairly OK with unannounced or very loosely planned visits (I'll see you Wednesday! == 7:30pm, Wednesday) to requiring a heads up in the form of a call or instant message.
I've never heard of this happening before. I'm not saying it's not common, just that you shouldn't assume it's a cultural thing. Did it happen more than once? Kids can be weird. Maybe he was just playing with some toys that he didn't want to share that day.
This was when I was an adult. I was best man in his wedding. My experience with Midwesterners indicates this is not uncommon but maybe it’s not normative either.
> I bet that in 1000 years long after human kind has disappeared, there will be friends sending each other automated birthday greetings in one of those solar powered data centers somewhere in Finland.
Beautiful. It gives a special meaning to "best friends forever."
When I grew up I would just show up at peoples houses. I'd be running around town doing this or that and "oh yeah... so and so lives over here" and I'd knock on the door and hang out or better yet come up with an adventure to go on and grab some other people.
I don't think I've knocked on someone's door without them expecting me to be there in at least 10 years.
I see some of this "just pop by" approach in my new neighborhood. Less than a year ago, I moved to an older neighborhood, where most of the houses are old. Most of the houses on my street are about 80 years old or older. All of the older ones, have front porches that extend the width of the house. People hang out on their porches and people walking by stop, sit down, and talk.
There are a few houses that were built about 20 years ago and they have a front porch barely wider than the front door.
Yeah, I miss those days of just popping in without calling. In Mexico, this is still largely the norm, but now that I live in Canada, that's just a no-no.
This is why I ended up creating an algorithm to connect the most compatible people together in a city. Would be great if this community connected in meat-space more often. For those curious: https://www.we3app.com/
When I was a kid in the 90's I had the same experience. My family had friends that would just stop by and they would entertain them for an hour or two just to catch up. I think our "connectedness" killed this off - now we see a status update and that fills us in on the things that we would have learned from that conversation, with zero effort. The problem is that the status update doesn't build an actual human relationship. But it isn't just social networks, even things like SMS have killed off more meaningful connections, over the phone. Most people have chosen quantity over quality.
I think it's a byproduct of "development" (which might be not positive after all). In my mother's country it was the same.. people came by all the time, it wasn't all perfect, some times people would complain that someone was too often coming to drink your drinks; but it was a very relaxing friendly social structure.
It's interesting. It's either an optimistic view or a pessimistic view.
remember the concept of innocent childhood only really took off in the west in Victorian times - think of how much changes in the last generation, the last century, the last 300 years
But then compare the previous 2000 years. Would someone from Plato's era be that unrecognisable to someone from renaissance Florence? (or vice Versa)
What will the next 200 years bring? What about the next 500?
It seems quite likely to me, maybe not every trace of human kind but I find it quite difficult to believe we are going to survive climate change in any significant way.
Ah, we've survived a few ice ages, should be fine.
Well, some of us anyway; I'm sure a lot of places will be abandoned / evacuated due to it being crushed by a few hundred meters of ice, and a lot of people will die from starvation and the inevitable war for resources and hospitable areas.
I'm going to throw out a controversial statement: It's hard because adults don't (and rightfully shouldn't) make friends a priority.
When you're young (<20), you don't have many responsibilities or long term goals. But as soon as you get out of college, you have several multi-decade goals to work towards:
1) asset accumulation
2) lifestyle development
3) family raising
From a pure risk management point of view, assets, lifstyle, and family are much more stable in terms of extracting value from.
Friends, from a value added point of view, are a risky investment for a couple of reasons. They require time and commitment to make and get value out of, but have a high chance of no return. If you invest too much in friends, you're pretty much guaranteed that something out of your control breaks the friendship by 5-10 years, either moving away, diverging interests, or the most likely, the friend decides to invest time in the assets, lifestyle, and family instead of your friendship.
There's a vicious circle (opposite of virtuous cycle) in this. As a society, if more people focus on family, assets, and lifestyle because they are less risky, there's less people willing to commit to being a friend available for those that want to focus on friendships, and eventually friendship by the age of 30 become extinct except in rare cases where special environments sustain them.
To summarize, it's a systemic issue where even if you wanted to make friends, it's not worth it as an adult to do so.
Friendship is worth it. Loneliness is a serious threat to your health. It keeps your cortisol levels elevated. The effect on your health is comparable to a bad smoking habit. According to this study, mortality goes up by at least 26%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392
Anyway, what's the point of having a lot of assets if you don't enjoy your life at the end?
Despite research to support that I think the problem might lie in that friendship may not seem worth it. Societies can emphasize individual independence, and technology can amplify it in real terms, making human interaction not necessarily where it once was. Why have lots of friends when so much of the immediately-obvious utility can be bridged by some other services?
Where neighbors used to possibly serve as an extension to your resources (a large ladder, sugar, someone to sign a package for you maybe), these days solutions (often technological) have sprung up to reduce the necessity of working together (rent-a-tool shops/sites, ease of transportation, configurable delivery).
Of course, the negative effects of restricted social networks are being felt now in communities (poor cohesion) and individually (mental health issues)... Tech helps sometimes (connecting people who might feel isolated in their immediate surroundings) and can hurt a lot of the time as well.
Yes, I think you're absolutely right. It's a combination of capitalism and bad urban planning (having to hop in a car to see people is bad for socializing since people are so lazy).
Assets and lifestyle are meaningless if not shared with someone [1]. Kids develop their own independent lives 20 or so years after you brought them into the world. The goals you define are neither written in stone nor happiness maximizers.
Happiness is maximized by social inclusion coupled with a sense of meaning (as in your impact in your social sphere being needed and positive). Being surrounded by people who matter and who want you in their midst. That can be a large, cohese, multi-generation family, or an extensive friend network. Multi-generation families living in tight neighborhoods don't happen anymore, so your next best target is an extensive friend network. I'm sorry, but I sincerely believe your stated goals are plain wrong.
[1] Someone other than your life partner; sharing assets and lifestyle with your life partner is limited and an exhaustible resource -- to use your terms.
At the age of 30, you are not worried about your kids leaving the nest (you may not have kids yet), your social circle can still be lively with colleagues, family, and past friends that are slowly going out of your lives. You may not have any assets to share with others. Your lifestyle may be still in transition from a young adult mindset to a breadwinner. You may be moving around a lot or moving companies frequently.
I'd understand the argument if 50 year olds should be making more friends. They have assets, they have a stable lifestyle, and maybe it's precisely because they didn't invest in making friends earlier that they don't have anyone to share their assets with.
But I'll double down and say that for 30 year olds there are so many other things they can be doing and the environment for making friends is so harsh, that it's simply not worth it. For most young adults, their social circle is extremely mobile. Everyone gets more responsibilities and other priorities that take their time. Most aren't in a position to take care of others (from a combination of money, time, and responsibility) - the simplest of friend making activities, like inviting someone over for a meal, can be very much out of your reach as a 30 year old.
For myself, I'm collecting assets because I want to build a responsible safety net of protection for your family & future. I'm developing my lifestyle to build a nice environment for my kids to grow up in. Not everyone has those things handed to them, and building up those things are not trivial in the modern world. These goals really are multi-decade goals.
I'll acquiesce that they are not lifetime goals. After they are accomplished, there's still a lot of life to live, and values and priorities can change after the underlying needs that the previous goals are built on are fulfilled.
No, I don't view everything in investment and value extraction. I'm actually a very sentimental person, but since writing allows you to think before you type, I like to take the opportunity on HN to write out more objective focused arguments or point of views.
To clarify - the study of systems is not to prove a point of superiority or inferiority or to affirm or deny your value system; it's to observe the features of the system that indicate why things might happen the way they do.
When I say adults shouldn't invest much in friendships, it's not because it's bad for adults to value friendship, but because the investment into friendship yields less results than if they invested it somewhere else.
When talking about systems, it's better to talk about them objectively rather than subjectively, and to consider them from a detached viewpoint. Observation is not the same as association; just because I observe a phenomenon and attempt to write it down doesn't mean I associate with it.
For the goals I stated, I do not have an evaluation about these goals from a worth perspective. I merely point out that those things are the primary long term goals of most adults. There's a lot of others, but those seem to be the most common. I'd be happy to argue why they are, but again, my arguments will come from an objective point of view (the features that going after those goals have that make them so popular) rather than a subjective point of view (what I believe is a worthwhile goal).
I understand now, though I would argue that nothing you call "objective" is actually so. These goals you listed are just the formulation of a game, which a lot of Westerners choose to play (though not all global citizens, which already makes your opinions non-objective). We can choose to play any games we want on this planet, and it baffles me that people choose to invest time (the only thing you ever truly invest) into one of the worst games.
It's no wonder that whenever I go back to America or see Americans in my travels I am struck by how utterly shallow and unhappy they seem to be. And the stereotype of the American Smile is already disappearing from people's memories.
I learned that other humans are the most important thing in life. It took me a while and right circumstances to really feel and appreciate the importance of social interaction. I used to think I don't need to be around people much with all the goals to achieve and learning to do. Until I tried living and working in isolation for a while. Everything just becomes meaningless.
Some people value what good family and friends provide, having experienced it firsthand. Some have experienced good family and friends but don't value it, and some haven't experienced it.
Typically, if one of your primary needs is to feel loved, valued, and cared for, family and friends solves that the best way. Assets do not.
However, not everyone's primary need is to feel loved, although there is a certain level of that needed by everyone. Your primary need may be for things to stable, organized, orderly, or for you to accomplish goals you set out for, or to be consistent with your value system whatever you set up.
Because above a minimum threshold (which is pretty low) they contribute significantly more towards happiness and life satisfaction than "assets". Excuse me for not providing the links, but I'd say this has been shown and discussed sooo many times that I decide to be too lazy. I'm not even sure what "Honest question" is supposed to mean. Just like more and more people on the Internet write "this is my honest opinion", or "I honestly think". What does that even mean?
In this case, I wrote "honest question" since my question could be interpreted as trolling otherwise. The familialism is so strong here that it's unfathomable that some people (like me) just don't care that much about family and friends.
I don't give two shits about family; my family are assholes and aren't worth the time of day.
That being said, I have found the feeling happiness and contentment impossible to obtain without mutual human companionship. That being said, the amount of human companionship needed is probably heavily variable between humans; I'm sure some people are happier with less. I find it difficult to imagine a well adjusted (non serial killer) person who is perfectly happy with none. If your personal needs for companionship have always been met, I understand why you'd be confused as to why people seek it out so much.
I don’t disagree and my closest friends have recently dropped because I hit a bump in my career and/or politics (ostrasized from offices, destroyed resume), it was pretty hurtful for a while. “Your network is your net worth,” makes me want to not even go interpersonal again but I think an expectation realignment is a better path, invest more broadly. I’ve also gotten more into meditation/study again but lack of benign social interaction shows. In our city of origin we were a fraction of the passionate programmers so we stuck together, now all in SF there are more dimensions (eg. my new connections are primarily from fitness activities, service staff met at concerts or high end lounges).
I wish I had people I felt I could trust like a friend again though, and also understood+got excited by the nerdy stuff. Everyone has their hustles. Takes time I suppose, a couple people I know could turn to friends. Hacker Dojo 1.0 was awesome, seems like hacker spaces have more general appeal now, can’t imagine parties like that again... but I do still know a handful from that era, 1-2 could be friends. I am connecting with relatives, feeling silly for neglecting them for 20 years.
Anecdotes, hopefully helpful and not too self-focused.
While I can see where this viewpoint works, I disagree with the ROI assessment.
Friends can and do provide very strong returns on investment. They can help with asset accumulation (networking for better jobs; in my case I helped a couple of friends with portfolio management of their retirement plans!).
Friends are part of a lifestyle. My lifestyle includes doing group activities with friends 2 nights a week. The social interaction that happens between rounds of trivia is more important to me than the trivia result themselves.
Friends are part of a family, too. Good friends accept and even enjoy it when your partner/kids come along. Eventually you can enter into babysitting swap systems where one family watches the kids while the other couple goes and does other stuff. Also it's important to model mature friendship patterns for your kids.
So overall, friendship isn't only super important in it's own right, it also overlaps with the three important categories you list in your post.
Ah, this seems to be the root of the problem: trying to min/max life. This is a problem I associate with a purely empirical/rational worldview, which is the current societal norm and is therefore encouraged as the ultimate.
I'd like to posit that "back in the day", people's lives had reached a max in their 20's after they finished school, got a job (unionized and/or indefinite contract), got married, bought a house, started having kids, etc.
Nowadays, school will take longer because you need it to make a decent living - there's too many low paid jobs. Second, to get married and buy a house and such, you need a decent income. To get that, you either need a high education and live in an area where you can use that, or work multiple jobs and have no time for a social life, or be lucky and get a middle class paying jobs in an affordable area.
So it's not just a personal choice from ambition, like you're suggesting, but it's also that the previous generation had it easier. They had the option to work where they live, to buy a house off of that money, and do it all before their 30's.
This reminds me if the college freshman who starts freaking out about post-college life. They immediately regret the college they chose. They're chattering non-stop about the what classes are worth taking.
They later get two internship offers: one from a no name local place where the internship is data science (which they want), but the other is at Googazon Faceple chasing birds off the property. The student inevitably has a meltdown, because they want the prestige of a big four.
This isn't to say that there is inherently anything wrong with trying to min/max life. You'll have a better time (to a point) when you make more money. But let's not forget that if you're spending 5 years in misery for little gain, that's 5 years you aren't getting back.
Not happiness - enjoyment. The two are closely linked, but you don't inherently have to be happy to get enjoyment out of something.
What I mean is that you don't always have to hit max to be satisfied. Don't get so bogged down in the details that you come up for air after you've hit 50.
This exactly. To achieve the same things that our previous generation achieved (quality of life, financial stability, and betterment of our future generations) takes a lot more resources (time and money), to the point that min/maxing is necessary.
My cousin lives in Texas, where I had a glimpse of what it was like back in the day. Her 2000 sqft house cost 200k, and she paid it off on a 50k salary. She lives very well, and has no financial worries; life is a bit boring for her.
If I were to buy the equivalent house in my current city, it would cost 20x as much. And it's not just housing that's skyrocketed, it's every aspect of modern day living.
It's truly a multi-decade goal, and min maxing is important to being able to achieve it.
How is making friends not a part of lifestyle development?
Btw kurtzgesagt has a very interesting video[1] on the subject where they show that rats get really anxious if they can't socialize. They then take a leap and say that human are pretty much the same.
It depends on what you define value. The ancients wrote extensively about friendship and attributed very high value to it, and that value degraded gradually, first with christianity and then with industrial way of life.
I think such a utilitarian view is a post-hoc rationalization rather than a useful way to look at it. But even if we follow this line of thought, it is not clear that family, for example is of such high value that it has to be detrimental to everything else. It seems more to me that family benefited from the time freed up by not having friendly relationships, but whether people derive more value from family than they did in the past is very debateable. Spending more time with it is not proof that it has higher value - people will always do something in lack of alternatives.
I guess my definition of value is purely based on effort/reward. Especially as someone in their 30s friends come and go a lot, they are not hard to pick up but are very hard to keep, and other things like building a stable environment for myself takes priority. Many of my really good friends moved away, or settled down and married and kids.
Not bitter about it but just stating the fact that lasting friendships aren't the best investment because of how volatile modern society can be.
I think family raising has more risks and possible value loss than friendships, especially with the divorce rates in the USA. Goals 1-2 are always top priority after Health, which is the most important!
I think the elephant in the room for making new friends over 30, is stagnation in one's daily routine caused by one's job.
I don't think anything changed dramatically in the last 60 or so years on this point, even with the development of social media; by the time you're 30, you're basically done making friends.
The article glossed over it, but in your childhood and teens, you're surrounded by a new group of people every 5 or so years, and just through sheer quantity, you're likely to make at least a few friends. Throw on team sports, extracurriculars, clubs, and the ease of introductions in a school environment, and it's almost impossible not to make a few friends all the way into your late 20s.
Somewhere around when you turn 25 or so, though, without substantial effort, things stabilize. If you were going to leave your home, you probably did, and you're settled in. You and your old friends start to marry and have kids, and both of these occupy your free time (and theirs). You may have bought a house or found a job you want to settle into for a while, with plans to stick around for several years.
For at least 8 hours of your day, you are at work, interacting with people in an environment toxic for creating trusting friendships (You're competing for the same roles, titles, bonuses, etc.), and worse, these people you're competing with are almost always the exact same people, so if you're not really friends with any of them immediately, that's basically never going to change.
With the remaining time in your evenings, you'll also settle into a routine. You won't be playing sports anymore, and if you have hobbies, you'll generally be doing them with the same small consistent set of people in your area, assuming you do them with others at all.
So, in short, if your 8-hour workday isn't a time to make friends, and you're not interacting with people in a way that leads to making friends in your 8-hour evenings, when the hell do you expect to be making your friends over 30, during your 8-hours asleep?
> stagnation in one's daily routine caused by one's job.
Definitely this.
We let work take way too much time from our lives.
If you count commuting, the minimum 8 hours at work (more like minimum 10) then work can eat up to 12 hrs/day.
On top of that us 'knowledge workers' carry our work around in our heads all the time.
It's not as though after 8hrs we just put the wrench down and go home, no the ongoing problems of work follow us around and even toss and turn us in our dreams sometimes.
To me this is unacceptable.
The way that we employ our working hours is a waste of time[1] on a colossal scale, and for little benefit to humanity most of the time.
[1] Literally the finite precious time we each have on earth.
> We let work take way too much time from our lives.
This is one of the sad realization one must have at some point. Reminds me of Bukowski's Factotum[1] where Bukowski mentions that we're selling our most precious item: our time.
> “You haven’t been busting your ass, Chinaski.”
> I stared down at my shoes for some time. I didn’t know what to say. Then I looked at him. “I’ve given you my time. It’s all I’ve got to give—it’s all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour.”
> “Remember you begged for this job. You said your job was your second home.”
> “…my time so that you can live in your big house on the hill and have all the things that go with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this arrangement…I’ve been the loser. Do you understand?”
I think this quote is valid whatever your paycheck. If you're working full time you're probably getting screwed in the deal.
> It's not as though after 8hrs we just put the wrench down and go home, no the ongoing problems of work follow us around and even toss and turn us in our dreams sometimes.
As many people who done both labour and knowledge work could tell, there isn't that much of a difference.
An hour long one-way commute is certainly not the norm. Working for free beyond 8 hours is certainly not the norm. I work at a client site, and bill 40.0 hours a week. I work approximately 41.5 hours a week, including my commute.
The average commute will be somewhere in the middle, sure. But just tossing out that work takes half of most people's day is disingenuous - it only does that if you let it, and if you choose not to live close to your office. I understand that's not always an option, especially in SF/NYC, but if you're willing to base your housing choices in part on where you're working, it's generally not difficult to have a sub-30 minute one-way commute.
And letting work keep you up at night is 100% a choice.
I disagree with you, especially with our field: you take work home. Even if you don't want, you can't disconnect and stop thinking about work as soon as your working hours are done. The only time where I can really disconnect is when I'm on holidays, and this usually happens after a week of holidays.
Lately, while reading The Now Habit, I've become more aware of how much my life revolves around my job (logistics and optimization). I think about it, I read about it, my current interests revolve around it and I also do it. It makes me happy, but what about all the people around me, and the time I'm not spending socializing with them.
I also found it unacceptable. I'm definitely going to start planning for life, not for work.
Now. When else? contracting is good for establishing boundaries, because it costs money to violate them. Price according to value of life mission opportunity cost, and have faith you’ll always have enough resources.
No need, the pay for software development is more than enough (like, 3-4x more than enough). The main problems are excess housing prices (so that income is not enough), and a combination of ambition / competitiveness / fear of missing out / fear of running behind.
Have you ever noticed how nobody complains about "excess housing prices" when they can easily afford it and the populations that have been living there for decades can't?
> when the hell do you expect to be making your friends over 30, during your 8-hours asleep?
You neglect the other 8 hours in a day, and you aren't alone in that. I have a ton of coworkers who do their 8, go home and watch tv and have a beer, then go to bed.
Meanwhile I'm going on short hikes, taking classes or hitting the gym, or going to shows and meeting new people.
With kids, the equation is obviously different (at least the eight hours of sleep portion) but you can take the little one to the park, to play dates with other kids, and occasionally non-kid focused events (the last beer fest I went to seemed to have several kids running about).
At the end of the day you have to prioritize how to spend your time and use it fully. It is harder then just watching tv and having a beer, but much more rewarding. Take classes, volunteer, be social. Your time is limited, always use it well.
After spending 8 hours a day at work, plus an hour lunch, plus time commuting—we're talking up to 11 hours here for work even if only 8 is spent in the office—I'm exhausted and don't have the energy for much else. I'm not just physically exhausted, either. I'm socially drained: spending 8 hours surrounded by coworkers and being forced to interact with them uses up my entire social budget for the day. Socialization is extremely draining to me, and work forces me to use up that energy on coworkers instead of my friends.
OK, that's a little harsh to my coworkers: I get along with them well enough, and after I or they leave the company I'll probably add some of them on Facebook, but that doesn't change the fact that I have no energy for people I know outside of work.
On the occasion I do have the energy to go out to a bar or something, then I have to choose between socialization and spending time on my hobbies. I can spend a few hours after work at the bar... or I could spend them at home reading more of a novel or hacking at one of my personal projects. Back when I was in college, I had plenty of time to do both. I could hang out with friends and then go and do stuff on my own at home. Now that I'm out of college, I have to choose, and having to choose sucks.
This is basically the entire problem. And, if I want to be good at my job the upcoming week, I basically have to hermit around the house and avoid the computer to avoid burnout. I love my job and I really like the people I work with, but the tank is only so big.
Except it's exhausting after 8 hrs (or more) in a job, 30-45m commute each leg, and some gym or other exercise (which can energize but steal hours from the day to socialize). Going home and opening a beer is the popping of the pressure/people overdose cork. Commuting on a crowded subway is exhausting personally.
In general, stamina (social, mental and physical) is like a muscle. The more you train it, the better shape it gets in and the more work it can do before it's exhausted. Start with something small like reading a book in a coffee shop after work, or meeting a friend for dinner and a beer. Slowly do more over time.
Just like you wouldn't go to a gym and deadlift 300lbs cold, you're not going to get off work and run a social club in your free time - but if you put in the consistent work, you can absolutely get there.
> but if you put in the consistent work, you can absolutely get there.
I'm guessing you're right - you _can_ do it (the same way people in medical residency can force themselves to work 80 hour workweeks), but will it ever feel pleasant and not like a chore? I can go out with friends in the evening after work, but I'll be a bit slow and groggy.
To continue using the gym metaphor - there's often times an initial hurdle, but once you're actually socializing and out there, you have a good time and you feel good afterwards.
> Commuting on a crowded subway is exhausting personally
Honestly I find all types of commuting exhausting in different ways, except possibly a medium-to-long trip on a nicer train, where I can use my laptop (mostly) how I would in a hotel room.
It will probably never happen, but in my view the next major worker's rights advancement should be some kind of amelioration of the commute factor, either by employers or the government. It's probably more than half the reason I left my last job.
I've always believed that making things 'feel more fair' tends to motivate at least some workers to put in extra effort more enthusiastically.
I wouldn't expect it any time soon (except on specially regulated roadways, which hopefully there will be a lot of), but I tend to agree that in the long run, full automation is the ultimate answer to the commuting issue. Safety first, though.
I had a friend who once told me that once you have kids socializing is easy by the nature of getting the kids out and meeting up with other parents. I have found this to ring true since having our first. We have met other parents through daycare, mutual parenting groups, and other distant relationships. Having a kid also makes this inherent struggle a bonding exercise for new friendships as you learn to rely or at least sympathize with each other.
Also, no one is ever stuck. On your time for self care you have to make an effort. This is a lesson you simply have to learn. I know I have.
This is very true, I've found. I have more in common with people who also have small children; together we easily have things to talk about.
I'll sit and have hours-long conversation with other parents of my kids' friends'. Pretty meaningful conversations. I'm not even entirely sure of their names.
My lifestyle is already shifting me out of the no-kid lifestyle (and therefore friends who don't have kids) by default.
Right on. My definition of alcoholic shifted. I now see occasional binge drinking as legit (ie. it’s an occasion) and nightly beers are where damage comes from due to compound interest logic. It takes several days to truly recover from even one beer, so I almost never feel the price is worth it. It’s not age, I regained my ability to drink like a Mad Man again over 30 when I moved to SF, but cut back again after a year and it’s totally obvious that even 1 beer kills the week (3 sober periods in life: 0-21, 28, now 32-33 sans 4 occasions). I would’ve downvoted this a couple years ago, but now I preach it because it’s so counter intuitive yet life changing and I think took 2-3 points to make a line. Occasional drinking without limit if ever fine, vs. daily beer and you have a problem. Compound interest and greater energy levels = best self every single day.
I think most people 60 years ago would have not considered the workplace a "environment toxic for creating trusting friendships". In fact, most people met their future spouse from their neighborhood or workplace when they analyzed marriage records from early to mid 1900s. Perhaps the real story here is that the reason people don't make friends over 30 is that the historical avenues for adult friendships, neighborhoods and work, are no longer conducive to meeting people.
Throwaway, but made the throwaway for the express purpose of saying “this”. Maybe what was before not-exactly-zero-sum has become now indistinguishable-from-zero-sum.
Maybe it depends on where you live, but I'm over 30 and I've made friends with coworkers from probably every job I've ever had in my adult life. Sure I've dealt with a few jerks at work, but very few of the relationships have felt adversarial. I certainly would not call most of my workplaces environments "toxic for creating trusting friendships".
I don't know, maybe you need to be more particular about where you work.
I don't think it can be entirely blamed on oneself or stagnant routines – making friends is a two way street, and I find more often than not the other party just isn't that interested.
I tend to go out a lot on my own, and over the past three years or so I've made maybe two friends. Not close friends mind you, but people I feel comfortable shooting a message out of the blue just to see if they want to meet up and shoot the breeze.
During the same three years however, I've made a conscious effort to meet new friends but it's a hard shell to penetrate. People already have their circles, or maybe they think you have ulterior motives (e.g. "I already have a partner" or "we're not looking to hire".) It seems to me that as people grow into their 30s, they grow cynical to the point of almost closing themselves off.
I have a much easier time making friends who are in the 40s or 50s, or younger people in their 20s – neither group which I can really feel entirely comfortable just hanging out with.
I've taken up video games over the past year. It's hard to find quality conversation while shooting imaginary characters on screen, but at least I've been able to find enough people that there's at least one or two people online that I can have a casual conversation with while mashing buttons. This helps somewhat, but it's a far cry from in-person social interaction.
> I have a much easier time making friends who are in the 40s or 50s, or younger people in their 20s
There's also another reason for that: they don't have to take care of kids. Young singles and old empty-nesters are the best people to hang out with. Most people my age either have kids or are newlyweds, neither of which is conducive to hanging out with people.
Though I'd probably go with "50s or 60s" over "40s or 50s", just because older people are more likely to be empty-nesters. Or if their kids are still living with them, they're adults who don't need any kind of supervision.
There are a lot of 'you' statements in there that sound more like they probably are 'I' statements. Alot of what is written is not true for me. I've made friends at work that I hang out with outside of work and I do hobbies and exercise with new people. No one's stopping anyone from living a life like the one you described though.
>For at least 8 hours of your day, you are at work, interacting with people in an environment toxic for creating trusting friendships (You're competing for the same roles, titles, bonuses, etc.)
I... man, I hate working at places like that. And I don't very often; I suppose it's the privilege of having in-demand skills and living in a place with a wide choice of employers, but yeah, I've had jobs like that and I got out quick. The vast majority of places I've worked came with sort of built in friend groups. I mean, "work friends" are different from real friends, but it is a built in social group that pretty much has to be friendly to you unless you do thing that are outlandishly unacceptable. And sometimes 'work friends' turns in to real friends.
Friendship and competition can go together, and they usually do. I mean, look at normal people and sports, or academic high achievers and academics. If you can't compete without being friends, you either need to work on yourself or you need to compete with different people.
As technical individual contributors, I personally don't feel a strong sense of competition, for that matter. In my experience, you get more points by telling the boss something true and good about a co-worker than you do for telling the boss something true and bad about a co worker. I mean, we all know, if you want to really get ahead, you switch jobs, right? and yes, in the abstract, you are competing with your co-workers for those other jobs, but you rarely know who else is interviewing for a particular position.
But my own experience is that work is way better for meeting friends than high school.
(I mean, unless by friends, you mean dates... which is a different sort of thing, and yeah, I personally don't have the social skills to date people I work with, so I avoid that whole can of worms)
I think it's partly an ingrained cognitive issue. There are some stable patterns to friendships and age, which this article is speculating around.
Women tend to have more than men over 30, and it is true that the number of new one's fomed tends to decrease from the youthful stage, where other patterns are more prominent (practicing mature social roles through play, etc).
Much of it is likely evolved, though there is definitely a large culural and environmental component.
I have made plenty of friends after the age of 30. The problem is that is is hard work. New friendships consume more time than old friends.
The ratio of people actively befriending me, is lower than people I befriend. Maybe 3:1 Making me think most people don't put much effort into making friends.
My advice would be:
1. Networking is not making friends. If you want to leverage someone, it's a business relationship not a friendship.
2. People who befriend you might not be the kind of person you would choose to be your friend, but they obviously like you enough to make an effort so give them a chance and reciprocate. People probably try to befriend you but you don't even notice.
3. Let bad or superficial friendships go and concentrate on making good ones. I have loads of really close friends, but keep my Facebook friend count (relatively) low.
4. If a friend is having a problem, help them. This is how you move past the superficial friendship. Prove you are worthy of being a friend.
5. Never screw a friend over. See rule #1. If you intend to play a zero sum game with a friend, be willing to lose that friend. (I do business with good friends, but only if I know I will never be in a position to have to choose between my wealth/happiness and theirs). Also always be honest. Friendship requires trust.
6. Make an effort. Ask people out for a drink or a coffee. Invite them over for dinner. It's hugely time consuming. This week I am running out of time with friends wanting to hang out and friends who need help. But it's worth it.
7. Join clubs, organizations and/or religious institutions. Not just one. Friends of mine had good success with dance classes.
8. One close friend is worth hundreds of superficial friendships.
For many people their partner is their best friend. As a rule it is just the one partner.
There is much benefit in being monogamous. Polygamy or frequent changes to whom the partner is comes at quite a cost in time and effort.
Similarly with friendships, there is a cost to having 'hundreds of close friends' (as if such a thing could happen). There is also a cost in trying to push one's 'friends quota' beyond what we have (5-6 close friends) to a wider circle of not-so-close friends.
Yet some people - those with 500 Facebook friends - think that having more than the small circle of close friends is a desirable thing, which it may be but only in the way that having a harem of partners is a desirable thing.
There is also the matter of being part of a community. We all need to belong. Yet too many people hop in their car, drive out their driveway and never say hi to the neighbours.
Superficial neighbourhood friendships are fine. The guy who you say hello to whilst you are walking the dog is okay to say hello to even if he votes differently to you. That superficial chat about the weather is okay.
Recently had a funeral to attend, of a neighbour. Although this was a well attended service I was quite surprised at how some people chose not to go to the wake. Those dog-walking saying-hellos do actually matter, this was what made the funeral mandatory for me but meh for those that did not care to go.
By actively going to a church group or dance class I didn't really have my heart into I think the resultant relationships would be as fake as my belief in god/dancing in silly shoes. Your friend might think he/she has success but there may be others in the group who think that he/she is a sad letch rather than someone passionate about what they are doing.
Joining a dance class to shed a few pounds (rather than to get laid) is legit though.
I would disagree with point 8. I tend to go for superficial friendships over close ones (by choice), and it works out to be a better deal. One thing is that you get a lot more diverse set of friends when you are not going that deep. Secondly, deep friendships kind of lock you in, and I do not like that. Thirdly, having a large set of friends, exposes you to more interesting opportunities and new friends that having a few close friends doesn't. Moreover, a lot of pathologies like jealousies etc don't show up with casual friends. They often come up in ugly ways with close ones.
In Polish, there are different two words for friends (i.e. people who care for you, who would give you ex. a big loan or a kidney) and for people who you just like to hang out with, because it's fun and convenient for both of you at the time. I feel it's more blurred in English, with both of them being called friends.
I’ve recently started throwing a monthly dinner party and I invite a diverse group that pulls in people from work and politics and theater and other places I’ve lived. I’ve found this is a good way to build a stable social group, especially here in New York, where people are so busy the once-a-month structure is useful, the dinner becomes a not too often but still recurring event. Once a month is about the right frequency.
I recall that my parents used to have dinner parties all the time, out in the suburbs during the 1970s/1980s and their friends also had dinner parties. There was a culture of dinner parties among adults back then. For some reason it died out. But I think the idea, and the habit, is a useful one.
Thanks—so this one is clearly a dupe, yet also such a good discussion that I hate to penalize it off the front page. I think we'll reduce the penalty and let it run. It's rare for a topic to strike a nerve in such a meaningful way, leading to so many high-quality comments.
Is there some site that keeps track of these highly rated comment threads. Certain topics like this one keep popping up and some of the comments/stories on them are a real treat to glimpse into others realities and perceptions of how to live life.
The site would probably have recurring topics like:
1. Making Friends / Socializing in our day and age / Loneliness
Those threads made an interesting read. A general feeling i got is that random interactions, or interactions loosely based on common interests (like sports) are becoming less successful at making friends, because everyone is more guarded now, but also because people have an expectation of having a more 'tailored' matching processes. So their random interactions often end up frustrating.
Interestingly, people who belong to a subculture report success - gay people have it better, but also swingers, another lifestyle (I would add to that the nudists as a very friend-seeking community). Online gaming seems to be a good venue for having that initial "match" of a common interest, as well as meetup groups. While i suspect most people find friends at work, it appears to be an unsatisfactory way for many to make lasting relationships.
So, it appears that there is a genuine need here that can be filled by "something that looks a bit like dating". Maybe facebook should consider rolling out a 'friend finder' along with their dating feature. Nevertheless, it seems to have become less of a taboo to admit that people can't find friends, and it seems there is space here for social apps to cover.
In Germany, I witnessed a multi-family household. A married couple bought the house. Then they had kids, but they divorced amicably yet continued to live in the same house. Then each of them found a new partner who also started living in the same house. Now they are like friends, with 3 couples living together, and 5 kids in the house. It's hard for me to imagine living like that, the stress that would take, but they seem to be happy with the arrangement and they hang out together and take care of each other's kids. That might be a better model for society in the future. Not necessarily marrying, but living in a close community with your friends. It is interesting to think about the logistics and social changes that need to happen for this to work, though.
I know a couple of polygamous / polyamorous people on the internet, I don't know how they manage but apparently some people are wired like that where they can tolerate other people in intimate relationships.
For a lot of people in a lot of places not called the bay area, people move to a town and find themselves a church. The church organizes provides all kinds of opportunities to socialize and make friends in a non competitive in-group sort of way. I'm not religious, and think that organizing life around church can promote certain myopic attitudes, but I can see how this kind of access to an egalitarian community of worship can really have benefits
I am not religious, but regularly attend my wife's church. I agree with this. Church really does provide a great community. I'm very curious about what a secular alternative to church would even look like. I get to meet people of all ages from all kinds of backgrounds every week. I have made friends of all ages (at least one in 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s). These aren't just people I know, but people that I could call, if needed, and they would help me. People who would gladly come over to my house for dinner. I work from home, and would have little chance to meet new people if it wasn't for church. Its been quite a surprised to me, as an atheist in his 30s that church would become an important part of my life!
There are churches for atheists. The religious cultural beliefs of a welcome opening community are a huge factor for church but as someone else has mentioned, I think regular planned meetings are also a key factor.
I started hosting board games once a month and it made it a lot easier to maintain and grow friendships for everyone. So I would say any group for any activity that meets regularly, whether for video games, books, athletics, etc are also good places to foster friendship.
I don't like that idea, or the whole atheism movement - it's like they turned a religion out of not believing, reading Dawkins instead of the bible.
What do those churches do / talk about anyway? If it's people going on about why / how they don't believe, it's not for me. Or is it more like a humanistic church?
Can't speak for OP but I too attend my wife's church pretty frequently. I'm probably more agnostic than an atheist but have found her UU (Unitarian Universalist) church pretty welcoming and found a ton of like minded folks there. I wouldn't call it an atheist church but lots of self described atheist attend.
The basic tenants or '6 principles' that the church holds are all things I subscribe to in my personal beliefs anyway (basically respect other people) and most of the sermons are fairy interesting and cover lots of different religions, philosophies, and ideas (bonus: the whole thing wraps up in under an hour!). There are tons of smaller groups that meet outside of regular services to discuss everything from Christianity to Hinduism as well as more general philosophy and social work. As well as things such as neighborhood groups, parenting groups, gardening groups.
> I'm very curious about what a secular alternative to church would even look like
For me sports clubs fill that niche. From my local lawn bowls club I meet people of all ages, the oldest member is 84, the youngest are kids of parents and there is everything in between and from all walks of life. You can do this without even playing sport but if you participate you can meet an even wider range of people.
Much of this activity is centered around various sports and the bar of course. If that's not your deal then there are all sorts of other local communities, you just have to look.
I haven't read the article. My reply is not a response to the article, but intended for an audience who might think their life is looking all downhill from here.
In my late 20s my life looked like downhill. I had had friends but I had no friends at that point. I was single and alone. I was depressed and anxious. The only good thing I had going for me was that I had a job.
Just before I turned 30 I was fortunate to come across a video on youtube which pointed out that there were various quite impressive personages who were at 30 failures and only became the impressive persons after that date. I don't have to become a genius, but it's nice to know that our society's rich privilege that favors young people says nothing about human nature. Life can get better from any starting point, and there's nothing wrong with ageing.
And then I joined a community where I was able to find friends. (In my case, it's the Esperanto community.) Now I'm engaged to someone I met through the community (though she's not an Esperantist) and my own personal community of friends has expanded even further. Now I've got the opposite problem I used to have - I have so many friends I struggle to balance them all (and my own need to have some empty time - perhaps higher than average because I became so accustomed to being alone). It happened in only a few short years (today I'm almost 34, but it feels like I've got another life). My fiancee regards me as an optimist - anyone who knew me five years ago would be shocked.
And all this is to say nothing about the changes I've witnessed in my parents' lives in the same period.
It might be harder for humans to get friends after 30 but you don't need to think "I'm a friendless blahblah year old, what hope is there for me?".
As someone who's in the same boat (Late twenties. Moved to a country where I don't know anyone. "Discovered" that most people already have friends, and they don't materialise spontaneously as they used to at uni.), your comment resonates with me.
What do you think is required to bond at these things? I've done a couple of after-work activities in an attempt to socialise, but I haven't struck gold yet. (At cooking class, people seem more interested in catching their train, than socialising afterwards.)
It's occurred to me that any out of hours activity just has far less social exposure than what I'm used to. For example, at school you'd sit next to someone for 8 hours a day. To get the same kind of exposure from a weekly 1 or 2-hour class would take 1 or two months!
I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about which aspects helped bridge this in your case. A deep, shared interest in Esperanto? Luck? Nothing in particular?
The advice that's stuck in my head for building up a social group is: Schedule an event of your own choosing. Advertise it when you go to other events. Something that is easy to get to, undemanding, and not costly or highly exclusive(e.g. board game night, Wednesday night coffee at Starbucks). Let people you meet and want to be friends with know about it. Hold the event. Nobody shows up the first time - that's fine. And some crowds will never be receptive but you can't tell them what's good for them. Just keep holding it regularly on a strict schedule and letting folks know and eventually your circle appears. Then you can repeat this process, if you want, to filter the group down. It can swing quickly between empty and full calendar since time is actually relatively scarce.
^ this. People always appreciate when you invite them, and then they might decide to invite you to other stuff later (even if they don't show up to your thing). A decade ago, I used to organize "volleyball" afternoons. I hate volleyball, but I would just do it and invite anyone I could. Made a lot of friends like this :) 5 year later (and earlier) I would organize drinks every Wednesday along the docks of Bordeaux during the summer and I would invite all the people I could. What started as a few people became dozens and dozens of people.
When I read that two weeks ago, I reached out to an acquaintence who I wished to 'move up' the friend tier structure, because he (and his wife) fit into the Healthy & Enjoyable quandrant. Last weekend they came over to see an air show. Today they invited my wife and I out on their boat. We all had an amazing time.
We're all in our 30s. It's tough. But I like to idea of focusing on the ones which can make an impact, and are healthy and make you happy having them as friends. I'm an advocate for fewer, closer friendships.
I find it interesting that we are trying to quantify friendship and understand it with distribution charts like in that blog post. Like it is some kind of lost art.
In my case marriage was the great motivator for leaving frendiship and not having new friends. My old friends who are single now, still have good friendship, even after 30. I guess my best friend is my wife now.
From casual observation it appears that spouses who aren't introduced by mutual friends rarely like their spouse's friends. Friendships take time, are valued because of shared past experiences, and require a certain personality alignment to be sustained.
Also when spouses go and spend time with the other spouse's friends, its challenging to simultaneously catch-up with their old friends while also trying to include their new spouse in the conversation.
Some married couples work through this but others just privately and repeatedly criticize each other's friends so eventually they are left with only one friend -- their spouse.
It's for exactly this reason that I find being friends with married couples to be draining unless I knew them both before they got together.
You can't just be friends with one of them. You can't just go and hang out with one person without their spouse coming along. If you tell them their spouse isn't invited, they'll get offended. If you don't tell them, you can expect the spouse to tag along... and if their spouse gets tired and wants to leave early, they're both just going to cut out right then and there (I had one friend who would just up and leave the bar with his wife whenever she got tired without even giving me a chance to finish my drink and tab out so we could leave together... every time, it felt like a slap in the face).
Sometimes, even if I like their spouse, I just want to hang out with a friend one-on-one. And then there are people who I like but whose spouses I can't stand.
Seriously though, marriage doesn’t mean you can’t have friends, keep friends or make new ones. It’s a twisted sort of relationship that requires you to give up your friends or only spend time with your wife.
My wife is my best friend but my 2 out my 3 kayak buddies are women, I spend that day with friends helping them build motors, I go on road trips with friends, I go off for mountain biking weekend and ski trips with my friends, etc.
I will say, my friends who have kids do tend to drop off the radar but you can’t blame that on marriage.
It's not. I'm still making new friends regularly. It's not about the age. It's about your lifestyle and your desire to make friends.
It just happens that a lot of people, around 30, prioritize some life styles that makes you less social. Also, they are trying to make something out of what they have right now, instead of getting something new.
Having just turned 31 recently, this read hits hard with my own experiences. From time to time I worry I'll end up languishing in old age due to loneliness without a network of supportive friends.
Some seem to reiterate the importance of time investment into the search for new friends. I agree with this. The more you put yourself out there, the odds would hopefully be more in your favour. However, the guarantee of the outcome isn't there. One could spend hours, days, months joining various hobby and interest groups with such an agenda and still end up with nothing.
It's almost like after a certain age, new friendships become more incentivised. The friendship itself only exists because it can be rationalised with mutual benefits.
I would suggest not to join a hobby, interest group etc. with an agenda of making friends. I think such a plan might create some unnecessary mental pressure on one's behaviour. On the other hand if you join a group with a topic that really interests you, chances are you'll be sorrounded with at least some like-minded people. And then, if you casually fall into a conversation with someone, then you grab the opportunity for making an acquaintance. And that person might some day turn into a friend.
Before that certain age, we do not "try" to make friends. We live with them physically. Turns out human are not that suited to "look for friends" when they actually need them.
Most of the 20s social activities are there to find mates. In our 30s an increasing number no longer need to do this, and another number don't have the time anyway due to work or family.
In our 20s we still have our school friends, and they introduce us to their friends. We study and make friends. They introduce us to their friends. There's always a few parties. I'm those parties mostly everyone is looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend. We're in the same boat. We have common aims.
In our 30s, those school friends have largely disappeared. We stop studying and stop meeting fellow students. The parties dry up: more and more of those people now have found someone and find no need to "party".
You have your workplace. But if you're a manager your friends are often brown-nosing. And if you're not, office or company politics may interfere. And those left may need to rush back to look after their kids anyway.
The best thing I've found is volunteering. You meet new people, you form new friendships, you learn new skills, you help your community, your week now probably involves at least a little more exercise.
I see it happen first hand - the people that make friends are the ones that grab them, and don't let them go. If you push through the uncertainty and trepidation that happens early in every relationship, you'll find you've made friends thankful of your persistence.
Partly because, growing up you didn't have to put in effort. Later on in life there are different social mechanics that not everyone readily adjusts to.
It's hard because they don't have the time either. Kids, soccer practice, gym, and so on.
For a lot of people in a lot of places not called the bay area, people move to a town and find themselves a church. The church organizes provides all kinds of opportunities to socialize and make friends in a non competitive in-group sort of way. I'm not religious, and think that organizing life around church can promote certain myopic attitudes, but I can see how this kind of access to an egalitarian community of worship can really have benefits
Christians are still sinful, prone to pride and selfishness, egalitarianism is a central part of Christian doctrine but choosing to follow Jesus is a process ... and I have a weird sense of humour.
It's hard because those are all organized events - in early years, you can just idk, throw some beer around and hang out, order a pizza, but as an adult there are Expectations that it's a set table, you cook yourself, you make sure your house is presentable, etc. When younger, you just hang out; as an adult it's almost like dating, you want to make an impression. It's a lot more formal because you're not poor anymore.
The worst part of this is that you have to make sure your house is clean. Food, get people to chip in, alcohol get people to bring their own drinks. If you're having to bend over backwards to impress people, they're not your friends and they won't be.
Because we have fewer and fewer shared experiences as our lives diverge and specialize. I'll go out on a limb and say that there's no such thing as a fixed personal identity that is some ineffable quality of everyone. Presumably people with similar identities could bond at any time of their lives, but I haven't found that to be the case. You are what you do and think, and people keep changing. As society becomes more complex with more unique niches, and also becomes less colocated, the chances that you find someone in person with similar experiences keeps declining. Sure you can go online but we all know that's not the same.
it isn't hard at all practically everyone I meet becomes a friend. How much time do I have to dedicate to friendship? Practically none, but that doesn't stop them from coming over --sometimes to much. Just don't be so judgmental. There's also this toxic ideology that unfortunately has swept the society that promotes defeatism, victimhoodization, promoting sociopaths ways of judging people, locking in your thinking through group think/wrong think. This ideology use to be a good value in our society before it was hijcked, it promoted peace and anti-war, individual liberties, as long as you didn't hurt another person. Now its been hijacked by very evil people and it has entrapped people into defeating themselves. Once you free yourself from this toxic way of thinking, the world is everything that you make good of it. Everyone wants to join you and make it more wonderful. It is truly the greatest time to live and have friends.
There is some wisdom in this. If you are open to, and more accepting of people who think differently than yourself, you have a larger “friendship surface area”.
My own friends are truck drivers, engineers and software developers, vegetarians and hunters. They all are fundamentally nice, decent people.
this happens a lot with me, and it annoys me. First I try to establish if it just a good reason that I don't know about. 99% of the time, this is the reason. They either forgot, had an emergency, or got to busy. Second, I consider the other possibility that they intentionally did this. If this is the case, they are trying to show a "power move" or superiority over you, aka "I am better then you and this is my power I ditched you" When you fully think it out, these people are actually powerless and sad. They lack self confidence in themselves, they lack power over themselves, so much that they have to artificially make up scenarios where they feel empowered. This is basically the definition of a sociopath. So immediately you don't want to be friends when them once you realize this. Also, you want to check critically to see if you have any of this type of thinking inside of you and move to get rid of it. So also, this happens a lot in business. Sometimes you have to deal with it. I had very prompent lawyer stood me up 3 times. Eventually, somehow, she wanted me to do something. We were to meet and I give her access to a conference she wanted to go to. I became ill and couldn't make it, I called ahead. Apparently she didn't get my message and got stuck at the conference waiting for me Eventually they let her in when she namedropped me. It was totally unintential, but basically I mirrored what she did to me back to her. Long story short we became friends as far as professional. I use mirroring a lot in business like this -- if you respond to my email in 3 days, I wait 3 days. If you call only during business hours, I make sure I do the same. If you return my calls immediately, I do the same. So but that's business. In friendship, consider yourself lucky you dodged a bullet. One way to test if they honestly forgot or whatever circumstances is to never bring it up or bring it up in a way where you establish if you can tell by their body language that they got pleasure by ditching you. An honest person will feel bad about it. A dishonest person will feel powerful and haply spiteful. I'm not the best at articulating all of this, you will need to think this out for yourself. You have to take their power away by not getting upset. Its the same when somebody is bullying you and you laugh at their jokes with them, they get upset and mad. If they are a good person, it goes away after a while perhaps you become great friends. Some people do this as a way of protecting themselves from risk also, its about self confidence. Again, our society is broken with this toxic ideaology. Right now, bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Its changing, but right now sociopaths are being rewarded and honest people aren't. Just don't give them the power over you to make you upset and they go away.
Thanks for this! I could have used a few return entries to break it up, but otherwise I very much appreciate the response. Much of what you said echos some of my observations.
I too find myself mirroring - if they are a verbose writer, I'll be verbose; if they're short I'll be short.
"Editor’s note: This article first ran on July 13, 2012, but we’re running it again because the topic is timeless."
I see this kind of thing happening more and more. Looking at the tags on the page, it bears a modified date of 2018-02-09T19:25:10-05:00. This is important, because they are telling Google that the content has been updated, when it hasn't. But they'll get more traffic and revenue now from an old article by lying to Google.
You see this happening on TV now too. In a technique I call "DVR Fraud," shows like 60 Minutes, which are made up of a few 15-30 minute segments per episode, are mixing and matching segments from old shows and creating "new" episodes with nothing new in them except for brief commentary explaining "as we first showed you in 20XX...". They are marked as "new" in the program guide, and if you have set your DVR to record only new episodes of that show, it will record this rehashed content.
TV networks and websites are abusing automated services and tools like Google and your DVR to generate new revenue from old, rehashed content. I despise regulation, but I think somebody needs to take a look at least at the DVR Fraud issue. It is becoming a large-scale fraud, as it is being used to artificially inflate Nielsen ratings, and likely siphon millions of ad dollars based upon viewership that would never have watched the content had it been properly labeled as a rerun.
I basically only watch TV from my DVR. So yes, for me, having to sift through the recorded "new" episodes only to think "oh I remember this one" is annoying. Worse, they are doing it on purpose to artificially inflate their ratings and ad revenue.
"Clip show" episodes have been a cheap trick used by TV fiction for ages. Now they are doing it on the news? I guess it was inevitable that someone would eventually put the concepts together.
For someone who hates regulation... Something entertainment that isn't even a matter of psychological manipulation... needs regulation? Does that mean this guy only wants to regulate things which don't actively reinforce social structures?
Or maybe the best course of action for HNers is to be far less judgmental and self-centered, and offer something other than snark in their comments. I don't spend a great deal of time watching TV, and when I do it is mostly DVR'd content. To have old episodes marked as new doesn't make a huge difference to one viewer - it's an annoyance that costs me a bit of time. But for the people behind this, across millions of viewers also experiencing the same thing, it makes a very large difference in terms of inflated viewership. That's a large-scale, significant fraud, likely involving millions of hours of watch time and millions of dollars in fraudulently generated ad revenue. THAT is why maybe someone like the FCC should take a look at the issue.
Even if they’re ‘tricking’ people into watching a re-run (seems a silly thing to say to me) then it’s still a view isn’t it? People are still watching the adverts so why would the advertisers care? The viewer numbers aren’t wrong.
HN is an extension from YCombinator which has funded a number of successful startups at their very first moments (so relatively low investment at relatively high stakes), which have had huge exits or IPO's; AirBnB and Dropbox are a few to name.
I don't think the company or people hosting HN needs to worry about money.
I've had this over time with work, school, etc; I get along great with people, but the moment I move on to another school or another job or whatever, I lose contact.
I'm not the type to reach out to people or offer to hang out, and given I don't get similar invitations, I guess others aren't like that OR there's an air about me that indicates I wouldn't appreciate it. Which is probably not wrong, I mean my infrequent meetups with my childhood friend are awkward at best, we watch a movie and have a chat or something but that's it.
Making church friends is really easy for this reason. I'd like to see an actual study, but I suspect it's not hard for people who regularly attend religious services to make friends.
The fact is school is the biggest reason why we make so many friends. Different classes, different people, from grade school to college. Food is taken care of by adults or the dining hall. parents pay the bills or it's covered by your student loan.
Then you graduate. Now you must: spend time to cook, work to pay bills, and if you have an SO/kids, the rest of your time goes there. That's literally it.
I agree with this, but with one caveat: it's a slow process, and it takes years to fully take effect.
The process of your friend groups disintegrating does indeed begin with your college graduation, but it takes so long for the effects to be really felt that a lot of people don't realize their friend groups have disintegrated until around the time they hit 30.
Yes for sure, it isn't sudden. I think right after college people "settle down" at different times. Some marry early, some later. Marriage and kids are huge time sinks. By 30 many are married. The more that are married means less time for friends, and slowly those "groups" wither away to the most important.
> Then you graduate. Now you must: spend time to cook, work to pay bills, and if you have an SO/kids, the rest of your time goes there. That's literally it.
Unfortunately, it's even worse than that. Even when _I_ did have the time, say when I've taken a year or two off jobs just to enjoy life, other people usually didn't. So I've spent a lot of that time being alone. That's actually one of the major positives of having a job - it provides you with collegues you can hang around and have fun with (assuming the workplace is not toxic and there are people there whose company you enjoy).
That's also a big negative about a job - like group projects in school, you're FORCED to work with people you may or may not like. As they say, you don't quit your job, you quit your manager.
Yeah I feel this. 24ish and I never really experienced the 'so easy to make friends in high school and college'. I guess not so much that it wasn't easy, I just wasn't in a place where I wanted more than one or two close friends. As a result, I never really got practice.
I think once you figure out what you want (way harder than it sounds like) it becomes just another thing to work on, like going to the gym. I've been making new friends lately, partly by globbing on to some of my roommate's local friends, and it's been easy since I decided to let it be (apologies for the cryptic sentence, I'm still not sure exactly what I'm trying to say). Actually I think it's way easier than the gym, but I've only got a small sample size, and I'm particularly bad at going to the gym.
Just about to turn 38, and it's certainly true that after college, friends ramp down significantly. You'll stay in touch with a handful maybe if you're lucky. If you're a male, that number is usually much smaller than a female. My suggestion, find a hobby, a side venture, whatever it is, that integrates you into the local social scene. A few years ago I started doing food/cocktail promotion and the amount of social experiences I've had since then has skyrocketed, and yes some actual friends have come of it. They may not be childhood close friends level, but we're all on the same page. Everyone knows it's hard, and that's why we get together.
Part of it’s obviously the changing social outlets and life situations as we get older, but IMO the biggest reason is that social interaction for its own sake loses a lot of its luster as people get older. Friendship becomes more focused and personal, alone time becomes much scarcer and more precious, and everyone’s just way less bored all the time.
The threat of boredom is always a huge motivator for people to hang out and try not to be bored together. As people get older, that ceases to be a social motivator for many/most people. They may still have a bunch of other reasons for wanting to socialize, but boredom’s not one of them.
I can definitely resonate with this line:
"Once people start coupling up, the challenges only increase. Making friends with other couples “is like matchmaking for two,” said Kara Baskin, a journalist who works in Boston."
From experience, finding new couple friends appears to be impossible. The difficulty is even quantifiable. For example, to make a friend person A must like person B, and vice versa, or expressed as a permutation: P(2,2)=2 units of difficulty.
But to make a couple friend the difficulty increases to P(4,2)=12...a 6x increase :(
>Basically, she suggests, this is because people have an internal alarm clock that goes off at big life events, like turning 30.
I disagree with this notion that adults at the age of 30 shift their focus to children when the average age of first time mothers has steadily risen to 26.3 years old since 1970.
I feel like the general points made in this article apply more to 35-40 year olds as I know there are plenty of people in their early 30's still focused on growing their social circles without settling down with a family yet.
This article actually makes me feel better for living in the US for almost a decade, now in my mid 30’s, having less real friends here than fingers in my left hand.
Living in Washington, DC with a lot of other people who are over the age of 30 and still single, it's not as hard as I anticipated it would be, actually. The key is to have reasons to bring people together. I'm in a karaoke club, and a programming meetup, and several other things, and my social life is pretty healthy as a result.
With parenthood in the mix, you have to get really aggressive about scheduling, but it's still not impossible.
I find it easier to make meaningful relations now that I am past 30. Usually these start with doing something that really matters together and on top of that I have way better access to people who match my intelectual profile. Maybe it's simply because I am a person who goes out looking for good things to happen not wait for them to come.
Anecdotally, a lot of men in my circle complain that their wives won't let them spend time with other men, outside of family gatherings. Definitely not healthy, definitely needs to be remedied.
That really ties in with another post I read a while ago - the running gags at weddings and such where the wife is referred to as "the ol' ball and chain", where the man's life is basically over and he's emasculated for life by the wife.
I mean all of those 'jokes' make it sound like a really unhealthy and abusive relationship. No wonder people don't get married as much anymore.
Ever since I graduated college, I've watched my circle of friends dwindle over the years, as all of us have busy lives and don't have much room for socialization, especially not when factoring in each other's schedules.
I stopped talking to one of the few close friends I had left after he married an extremist tradcon and started posting a constant stream of hate. It's really disheartening to watch a guy who used to be one of the most compassionate people I know post memes with slurs in them (including slurs against a group I'm part of), videos by Neo-Nazis, rants about how Jimmy Kimmel's done deserves to die, etc. He went from being like a brother to me to being someone I never want to talk to again. And even before he completely jumped down the alt-right rabbit hole, as soon as he started dating her, I would never see him without her ever again. It was draining inviting him to hang out places and him always bringing his then-girlfriend who I hated with him every single time. Even when I went to buy him expensive scotch at a bar to congratulate him on his engagement (because even though I hate her guts, I was still happy for him that he found someone), she decided to tag along (seriously, that was supposed to be a private moment between me and him)... I really regret wasting that money on scotch for both of them given what he's turned into.
In the last month, I have set foot of my house to socialize exactly once, and that was for a friend's birthday party... so that's not going to happen again for another year.
Facebook has been a godsend, because it's basically the only way I talk to most people anymore. Through Facebook, I can stay in touch with a bunch of people who I wouldn't have the opportunity to see in real life. I have a ton of friends I get along with really well but for various reasons none of us are able to get together in real life, so Facebook it is.
It doesn't help that I have no interest in getting married or having children. In fact, the idea of either sickens me. So as everybody else is pairing off to get married or spending 99% of their free time taking care of kids, I'm stuck by myself. I just wish I had more single (and preferably asexual) friends to hang with.
I actively hate being in my 30s. I wish I was in college again, because I really miss the vibrant social life I had back then.
I'm only 23 but I am very much the same as you. All my friends have gone a traditional route so finding new friends outside university is harder.
I've made a few friends from work but politics are starting to threaten 2 of these. I too live in a small town/suburb but never have tried living in a city so I will need to try that!
I think I am demisexual personally so I'd totally be your friend!
I found some friends by taking up brazilian jiu jitsu and that has proven really useful. Find a topic you truly love and I think friendships will sprout up.
I live in the suburbs, and I strongly prefer it here. Cities are cramped, noisy, dirty, and crime-riddled. I love having lots of space, and I'd honestly rather kill myself than live in an apartment ever again. And the last time I even _worked_ in the city (2014), I was subject to constant street harassment by homeless people begging for money and getting angry when I didn't pay them, and I was terrified I was going to get raped and killed some day.
If not having a vibrant social life is the price I pay for living in a place that doesn't make me want to kill myself, then I'll go ahead and pay that price. I miss having a vibrant social life, but I'd take not having one over not living in the burbs.
> Cities are cramped, noisy, dirty, and crime-riddled.
okay, the disconnect here may be that i live in europe, and you live in ...i'd guess north america?
> It doesn't help that I have no interest in getting married or having children. In fact, the idea of either sickens me. So as everybody else is pairing off to get married or spending 99% of their free time taking care of kids, I'm stuck by myself. I just wish I had more single (and preferably asexual) friends to hang with.
suburbs are indeed optimised for numerous things you're not up for; this is a difficult problem to solve.
> If not having a vibrant social life is the price I pay for living in a place that doesn't make me want to kill myself, then I'll go ahead and pay that price.
things can eat away at you quietly. not having a vibrant social life may not confrontationally make you want to kill yourself, the way the other serious issues you've mentioned do, but it can erode moral and have cascading negative effects on your mental health.
Its usually the way we train ourselves to behave in work environments. Spontanity only gets you into trouble. Nobody can be really trusted, everything better be documented.
Work kills the ability to make friends, because you see how all those former "friends" crawl over each other to backstab one another and get to the top of the pile.
Wow, I'm glad I don't work where a bunch of folks here evidently work. I've make plenty of friends at work and I don't see a lot of backstabbing and jockeying for positions.
I simply would not stay in a work enviornment like that.
[Edit: to all the people downvoting this, care to explain why you find it objectionable? The article is trying to explain a phenomenon and it completely ignores the existence of certain kinds of factors that may have an explanatory role. It doesn't even mention them, even to disagree with them. Do think that's not problematic?]
I find it disappointing when articles like this don't even consider biological, evolutionary factors that could play a role.
Why? I'm being serious when I say that. I'm not an expert on that topic, and I could only provide some very general possibilities. I think it's fair to criticise the article for that deficiency without having to propose answers as well. Do you expect film critics to propose how they'd make the film differently?
It's a bit odd that you criticize the author for not considering biological/evolutionary factors when you can't come up with any too. Isn't it possible then that these factors (if indeed they exist) don't provide convincing enough evidence to merit being written about in the article? It seems the burden is on you to demonstrate that your criticism is justified and that the article has a glaring omission. Otherwise, what is your basis for criticism? How can you criticize an article for a deficiency that hasn't been established as being one that exists?
The role of biological and evolutionary factors in human behaviour in general is well established enough that it's a glaring omission to ignore it's possible role in questions of human behaviour. That's why it's ok to criticise a case like this on principal.
It's like ignoring the possibility economic factors in trying to explain some feature of society.
It should not be necessary to propose specific possible factors to make such a criticism.
Since so many people seem to want a possible account, there might be an evolutionary advantage to gaining friends leading up to and during prime reproductive years, advantages that are lesser as you transition past those ages.
Just like our brains are more receptive to learning languages when we're younger our younger brains may be more receptive to developing friendships. Note that I've said right from the start that such details could be factors in an explanation, not that they would be the whole explanation.
Why do you think it's only in the last 40 years that people have found it more difficult to make friends after 30 or so? It seems like it's been like that for a long time.
Also, I've repeatedly said that biological and evolutionary details may be factors not the whole explanation, so other factors can have changed during that timeframe.
What is your evidence that it has been like that for a long time? If anything in the past people were a lot more immobile which means it would be easier for them to eventually make new friends over time.
Considering the evolutionary argument, what happens is the opposite of what one would expect - when people are getting old they are more in need of friends for practical reasons - failing physical condition. So if there is an evolutionary reason, it's probably a paradox.
It may be true however that people seek more alone time as they get older - our brains become less excitable, less craving of novel environments and people and information etc. That's a behavior that's related to aging however, not evolution.
You're the one who originally claimed it's changed in the last 40 years, so it's on you to back that up.
Re: evolutionary argument. That's not what one would expect. That's simply your assumption based on a simplistic notion of what an evolutionary explanation would involve.
Re: your final paragraph, that shows you haven't been paying attention to what I've been saying. If you read my comments you'll notice I've said "biological or evolutionary", and aging is most definitely biological. Anyway, you're wrong to assume that has nothing to do with evolution!
i can point you to the absense of literature talking about this lack of post-young-age friendships. For example, while the grecoroman philosophers and the stoics wrote extensively and in detail about friendship , they don't seem to mention any problems finding friends even though they were past their prime when they wrote their stuff. Society was also a lot more gender-segregated in the past, gender roles were separate, which means marriage did not disrupt the social life of men (primarily) as abruptly as it does now. I have no time to research the subject but it 's reasonable to assume that all that, combined with immobility and slower pace of life contributed to someone gaining more friends as time goes by instead of losing them.
Perhaps it would help your argument if you provided counterarguments to others instead of just dismissing them. Pretending to speak from authority weakens your position.
You still haven't provided any evidence that it's changed in the last 40 years, and clearly the philosophers you cite are completely irrelevant to that claim.
Re: counterarguments - or how about you don't make confident assertions about topics you're clearly lacking a solid grounding in (for example, your comment shows you don't understand that evolution operates on the level of genes rather than individuals) -- where you must know you're lacking that grounding -- and go and learn a bit more about it yourself rather than demanding that others provide you that education? I'm sure you wouldn't behave in this sort of way if it was some other topic, like something to do with computing.
you are evidently unable to form a counterargument, so i can up make one for you:
It is possible that evolution might have made it so that older people do not have friends, so they die sooner and thus consume less resources from prime-age people. The older people are past their child-making age, so they can't affect future evolution in their favour. It's odd however that people did not complain about this until the latter half of the 20th century , or that men did not escape this fate (since men can have children even at old age).
i do not back this up with any evidence though, since you 'd dismiss it as irrelevant anyway.
As I've already pointed out, you do not understand that evolution works on the level of genes not individuals. You're reiterating that ignorance here.
Other parts of your really basic lack of understand of it is also demonstrated by your latest comment:
- thinking that evolution works as if it had intention and foresight.
- thinking that being past child-making age can't affect "future evolution in their favour" (this is a variation on the misunderstanding that evolution operates on individuals rather than genes).
There's nothing wrong with being ignorant about a topic, but there is with being so and acting like you know what you're taking about.
They're not intended as insults, they're intended as objective statements of fact that your understanding of evolution is based on misconceptions
And BTW, this new comment of yours represents another elementary misunderstanding of evolution, that of assuming group selection (despite some contested arguments for specific cases of purported group selection, no one agrees with such naive group selection).
Yes, generally, good film critics describe what the movie could have done better/differently. You don't read many serious critiques solely consisting of, "This movie sucks".
I have now downvoted you because you criticize the article for not "even" doing a thing without even believing the thing is reasonable to do. It is not a fair criticism; in fact it is perhaps the exemplar of an unfair criticism.
People down vote because the sun is out, or their coffee is cold. You're free to find an article disappointing. Maybe someone would prefer you elaborate. Maybe someone else down votes for a wall of text. Votes are noise, focus more on comments and dialog; if any.
The reason you're being down-voted is because liberalism believes in a clean slate for human beings. Heritable genetic traits that provide advantages or disadvantages goes against this model.
These perceptions are in the eye of the beholder. Multiply that 10x when it's about "who downvoted me", since there's literally no information then, just a blank screen to project on.
Its funny how people had time to do something like standing in line at the post office to pay their bills back then, but they still managed to spend and hour or two to just be with a friend for no special reason. Maybe it was just a necessity back then without the phones and all and nobody actually really liked to spend time with friends and family. Seems like friendship has been automated somehow today to make it more efficient. I bet that in 1000 years long after human kind has disappeared, there will be friends sending each other automated birthday greetings in one of those solar powered data centers somewhere in Finland.