As others have mentioned, the decline started long before social media and the Internet. When I was a child, in the 70s, my parents often had other families and couples over for dinner, and we often attended small dinner parties, too.
As an introvert, I absolutely loathed these gatherings and was frustrated by how powerless I was in avoiding them.
Recently, I have been reading over my mother's old letters she wrote to her parents at that time, in which she described the effort and social anxiety that went with this tradition. It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. Someone invites you over, then that goes into an unspoken balance sheet, and you are required to reciprocate. She often spoke of "owing" dinner to people. I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.
I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones. My parents were always busy and exhausted.
> It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. ... I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.
It's worth noting that not everything that's good for you is enjoyable, especially in the moment.
Avoiding everything that's a "drag" means staying alone, passively consuming easy media, not exercising, eating hyper-palatble junk food, getting obese and probably depressed, etc.
> I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones.
While I agree that those cloying clickbait articles/videos idealizing random pre-smartphone teen photos and videos are obnoxious (as someone who grew up in that era). I think the modern emphasis on mindlessly reducing "friction" is going to prove ultimately unwise, though probably uncorrected as generational turnover causes people to forget what was lost, and certain degradation gets redefined as "normal" and accepted.
> My parents were always busy and exhausted.
So are modern parents, and all indications are they are more exhausted.
Avoiding everything that is a drag is almost an axiom for most young people in the modern world... any sort of discomfort is obviously wrong and something to avoid. It's almost a sin to suggest someone should do something that might bring them temporary discomfort even if it's good long term.
There is this pervasive modern trend of using things like questionable or even imagined mental or other health issues to try and get out of any sort of mild discomfort or challenge. The recent boston globe article on that lesbian bar that required kn95 masks that recently went viral seems to me to be almost the ultimate expression of that type of culture and the absurdities of how it ends up when taken to the logical conclusion.
vertnerd · · focus · HN ↗
As an introvert, I absolutely loathed these gatherings and was frustrated by how powerless I was in avoiding them.
Recently, I have been reading over my mother's old letters she wrote to her parents at that time, in which she described the effort and social anxiety that went with this tradition. It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. Someone invites you over, then that goes into an unspoken balance sheet, and you are required to reciprocate. She often spoke of "owing" dinner to people. I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.
I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones. My parents were always busy and exhausted.
palmotea · · focus · HN ↗
It's worth noting that not everything that's good for you is enjoyable, especially in the moment.
Avoiding everything that's a "drag" means staying alone, passively consuming easy media, not exercising, eating hyper-palatble junk food, getting obese and probably depressed, etc.
> I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones.
While I agree that those cloying clickbait articles/videos idealizing random pre-smartphone teen photos and videos are obnoxious (as someone who grew up in that era). I think the modern emphasis on mindlessly reducing "friction" is going to prove ultimately unwise, though probably uncorrected as generational turnover causes people to forget what was lost, and certain degradation gets redefined as "normal" and accepted.
> My parents were always busy and exhausted.
So are modern parents, and all indications are they are more exhausted.
mik1998 · · focus · HN ↗
fivefifty · · focus · HN ↗