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.
I've been interested in this for quite a while, and have read a fair bit about it as a phenomenon. I think that pursuing comfort and convenience to the point that it's actually harmful is sort of a big factor in a lot of societal change the last several decades in many developed/Western countries. As a European/American dual national I think it's a particularly strong current in American culture, personally.
An accessible intro is Michael Easter's book The Comfort Crisis, which, while a little pop-sciencey, explores the idea that making our lives more and more comfortable (across various axes) creates a feedback cycle that shrinks our comfort zones, making some of the more rewarding (but potentially challenging/uncomfortable) things in life seem unthinkable.
For me this was a bit of a "once you've seen it you can't unsee it" kind of thing. Letting convenience be your primary metric for success often produces totally unsatisfying results, anywhere from how you build cities to the way you eat a meal.
The arc of the original World of Warcraft (broader social impacts aside) is an interesting microcosm to explore: players continually asked for convenience features that would simplify the most tedious aspects of the game and reduce social friction (organizing groups, traveling etc), but as they made things more convenient over the years, many people found that the game actually began to lose something important. The response culminated in a very successful re-release of the original, inconvenient, game after 15 years.
There's this (to me) weird idea that's common in the US and increasingly Europe about dating/activities/convenience that you have to always go somewhere and spend money to "do things", as if you need a new and different activity every day and as if only things you spend money doing are time worth spent.
I think that 200 years ago this idea would seem very strange to people, but today is the entire life of many.
The other direction is probably "quality time", but even that often involves taking someone somewhere to some paid "activity".
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.
macNchz · · focus · HN ↗
An accessible intro is Michael Easter's book The Comfort Crisis, which, while a little pop-sciencey, explores the idea that making our lives more and more comfortable (across various axes) creates a feedback cycle that shrinks our comfort zones, making some of the more rewarding (but potentially challenging/uncomfortable) things in life seem unthinkable.
For me this was a bit of a "once you've seen it you can't unsee it" kind of thing. Letting convenience be your primary metric for success often produces totally unsatisfying results, anywhere from how you build cities to the way you eat a meal.
The arc of the original World of Warcraft (broader social impacts aside) is an interesting microcosm to explore: players continually asked for convenience features that would simplify the most tedious aspects of the game and reduce social friction (organizing groups, traveling etc), but as they made things more convenient over the years, many people found that the game actually began to lose something important. The response culminated in a very successful re-release of the original, inconvenient, game after 15 years.
hobo123 · · focus · HN ↗
I think that 200 years ago this idea would seem very strange to people, but today is the entire life of many.
The other direction is probably "quality time", but even that often involves taking someone somewhere to some paid "activity".
hobo123 · · focus · HN ↗