When my mom was teen, she says the way they had the most fun was to go to dancing parties in people's houses and sometimes in some special venue for younger people. That was in the 60's. As I grew up in the 80's we had nothing like that, we just went to night clubs or some street full of bars/restaurants. Dancing was mostly a thing you did by yourself, like in most night clubs still these days, not like she describes, with "their faces touching" :D.
It seems to me that every single generation changed and there needs not be an external reason for that other than young people wanting to do things the way they see fit, which normally is anything different from what their parents see as ideal.
Yet I can't help but wonder if people also said the same about the telephone (which enabled socialization without colocation) and television (Which enabled entertainment as a passive indirect consumption)
I realize of course that the internet, and mobile (and eventually VR/AR) is Yet Another Step Further.
But...like every step does it not also come with benefits for some at the expense of others?
For example, I simply can't believe that true extraverts are simply going to be resigned to giving up all these physical moments - they will continue to seek out and create and participate in-person spaces.
To me, the problem is less about the way that we do or do not socialize, and rather the monumentally addictive nature of online and app spaces, and the fact that the companies in charge of them have no other motivation at his point it seems than to just push it all to the limit.
Our feeble caveman brains cannot handle the dopamine roulette that is the TikTok/Instagram/Twitter feed. We have no immunity to it, so the only solution is artificial restrictions like screentime. Then again, we've had to reckon with that with plentiful calories too as we trended towards universal obesity and have STARTED to turn it around (but not succeeded yet). And that took decades.
Every generation struggled with something. Our grandparents were choked by smog. Our parents had polluted waterways and lead in everything. We are engulfed in microplastics and addictive technology. Our children will wreckon with the effects of climate change.
Through all this, humanity continues to grow, invent new technology, and raise both the floor for existence and the ceiling for prosperity.
The worst thing we can do now is to give up on the next generation or on the future of humanity. Optimism is our obligation and responsibility.
> and television (Which enabled entertainment as a passive indirect consumption)
Absolutely. There were periods of time in history when there was significant opposition to television. Hence the coining of terms like "boob tube", "idiot box", "idiot's lantern", "cultural wasteland", etc. You can see a bit more of some of that (although not with a primarily historical focus) here:
> if people also said the same about the telephone [...] and television
I'd say they were probably right. Pre-solo-consumptive technology, people on average were better socialized.
It's inherent in the nature of improved consumptive and interactive experiences to smooth off the pain points.
Unfortunately many of those same pain points are also intrinsic to realworld, realtime interaction. And doing them more proficiently is a skill that one can learn and improve (or not).
> I can't help but wonder if people also said the same about the telephone (which enabled socialization without colocation)
There were a lot more letters before the telephone. In London, the mail would be picked up and delivered up to twelve times per day. Within the city, you could have back-and-forth conversations through the mail within a single day.
There’s an unspoken phrase here, it’s “in the way I think it should be done”.
Just because the younger generation are doing things differently it doesn’t make them wrong, in my generation it was sending text messages that was wrong because we weren’t talking on the phone. Before that it was talking on the phone rather than going to people’s houses.
I’ll also add what my psychologist told me.
Social skills aren’t innate in humans, we have to be taught them. Smaller family sizes and greater distances from extended family mean these aren’t taught by older siblings/cousins/etc like the used to and parents aren’t filling the gap, which means standards of social interaction are changing much more rapidly.
You say it doesn't make them wrong, but you also clearly illustrate the decline of a skillset which is essential to maintaining the social fabric across a large swathe of the population. Sounds like a pretty big problem to me.
When Facebook first took off, I had an inkling radical transparency was going to be a societal outcome.
With everyone posting everything, and everyone's digital history recorded (if anyone cares to archive or dig it up), everyone would have skeletons in their closet.
I was hoping that would make society more tolerant and willing to accept faults in people.
In actuality, it just seems to have produced an industry of digital cleaners that the wealthy can afford, while everyone else gets fucked.
But then, that's why I limit my posting on social media outside of HN.
This seems like way too complex an explanation when a much simpler alternative is possible.
Most people are simply not that virtuous, because by definition the vast majority of the population has to have mediocre virtues or be in that ballpark range.
So ‘radical transparency’ reveals as much negative as positive, on average.
But the next step was how society would change (or not), suddenly realizing that most people are simply not that virtuous. Certainly not as much as their previously perception-dominant "best face" made them seem to be.
Instead of accepting that, we seem to still be taking pot shots at leaders or prospective leaders for faults.
Or... maybe Trump's twice electability is an indicator that most people are willing to overlook things, now.
> Or... maybe Trump's twice electability is an indicator that most people are willing to overlook things, now.
They are not overlooking things. They are looking at things and like what they see. There is segment population for which a credible accusation is seen as a good thing about a guy.
Girls are not as interested in nightclub substantial interaction anymore. "Substantial interaction" defined as "genuine attempts to meet a guy to go to the next club/bar/party and then maybe home"
There's a whole separate realm of social circle snapchatting (networking).
In my experience young people are just as good at face to face interaction as they have ever been, but they now integrate online communication into the same interactions.
It's different but I think it's wonderful.
I actively work to learn how to do the same, and it's like having an extra-sense. The ability to backchannel while also doing face-to-face adds elements to communication that people who don't do it fail to catch.
Boomers basically pulled up the social ladder of fun when it wasn't convenient to them anymore.
Technology combined with oligarchy is really leading to a demographic and social disaster. I think the iron placenta and designer babies are the only things that will prevent population collapse. Well, age extension will probably kick in too.
It's a race between us killing the worlds biosphere and us fading away to nothingness right now. I think there's plenty of population momentum to kill off the planet
It seems to me that every single generation changed and there needs not be an external reason for that other than young people wanting to do things the way they see fit, which normally is anything different from what their parents see as ideal.