With COVID partying meant that someone could kill you with an illness. That's a pretty hard lesson to unlearn. They carries a lot of momentum.
Like with World Wars there's been a generational impact that changed how people relate to one another. The tribal momentum, of one monkey teaching the next, gets lost.
Holy crap, I've never seen a Janathan Richman recommendation on the Internet ever ;) I listened to him like crazy in college (1988ish) and saw him play once. My favorite still remains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR6Ns3AcDco
I know two other people that know of Richman, four if you count my wife and son who I made listen to him!
edit: had to add Richman was a big influence on the Talking Heads :)
My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list where our phone numbers are listed (and where we find these other parents' contact info).
Something happened with the culture of getting kids to play with each other outside of school hours, and I don't know what it was. COVID lockdowns definitely delayed it from starting for our kids, but I know these parents are mostly in my generation, and we certainly played more together.
We live in the suburbs, so it's not a car creep problem - at least, no more than it was 60+ years ago when the numbers were better. When I ask the parents who stay, they tell me a vague mix of weekend junior sports leagues, visiting relatives, and just being really tired after working all week. They're lame excuses: spending time with kids constantly is _also_ really tiring.
Kids having regular playdates would encourage more familiarity among the families and trust in letting kids play unsupervised with each other. Often I take them to the main playground, and it's virtually empty. I can't believe I'm the only one in the community who's unhappy enough about this to try and change it.
> We live in the suburbs, so it's not a car creep problem - at least, no more than it was 60+ years ago when the numbers were better.
Kids were not driven to playdates 60+ years ago. They would play with other kids living nearby. Parents would not organize their playdates either.
> When I ask the parents who stay, they tell me a vague mix of weekend junior sports leagues, visiting relatives, and just being really tired after working all week. They're lame excuses: spending time with kids constantly is _also_ really tiring.
I do not seen how these are "lame excuses". Seems like valid things that lower your availability and also valid reasons to want to you remaining time for own rest.
> Often I take them to the main playground, and it's virtually empty. I can't believe I'm the only one in the community who's unhappy enough about this to try and change it.
60+ years ago, 6 years old kids would go to main playground on their own. Partly it is that kids are much less independent these days ... and partly it is that their own rooms are much more fun. So, kids want to stay at home because it is good enough and parents do not want to sit bored on playground.
There is a coordinated action problem here, I think. (I have three young kids).
When I was a kid, I could be relatively sure that if I went outside on a random day, there would be other kids playing outside. So, all the kids went outside most days to play.
I _could_ send my kid out to play and there _are_ other kids in the neighborhood, but almost all of them are inside playing video games. At best there might be some kids going on a walk with their parents.
If my oldest kid wants to interact with with his friends, his best bet is to get on fortnite, which he does most days _and he doesn't even like fortnite_.
Another aspect of the coordination problem is that when I was a kid all the other children in the neighborhood rode the bus home together, and many of us got home before our parents were back from work, so playing together until dinner time was the natural thing to do.
These days, the school day is longer and more parents drive their kids to and from school, so extra effort is required for kids to get back together.
Every family is dual income now, so every family needs to find something to do with their kids once school lets out. Growing up in the 80's most families around were single income and kept kids at home over the summers. As a result, kids ruled the neighborhoods, bouncing around between houses all day, where there could be some reasonable expectation of peripheral oversight. Now, everyone is min-maxing camp schedule to ensure there is child oversight during working hours, and the neighborhoods are empty.
We decided to break from the trend and return our kids to more of a free-range kid paradigm, risking the disruption to our working schedules, this year. It sounds good in theory, but you are left with the realities of every other child friend being wrapped in camp schedules, as well. It took a lot of proactive discussions with other parents to convince them to keep their kids at home and accessible. But you're still left with the dual income problem, so you find yourself hiring a sitter to oversee and shuttle.
The result is an improvement over the 100% booked compartmentalized camp situation, but without the same level of independence that I experienced and have come to credit with really advancing my own personal development as a child.
That’s interesting to hear, because I feel like all of my friends who have kids have a very conscientious approach towards socializing their kids, setting up play dates, (plus finding other parents they get along with to make new friends with!)
I really wonder what the less involved, less intentional approach would be - hope your kid figures it all out for themselves?
A lot of Millennial parents are -- paranoid. We have had neighbors exclaim that they don't want their children saying hi to us or they'll learn to talk to "strangers". Or a neighbor whose little boy played with my daughters for months, but when they moved the mother scowlingly rejected the idea of playdates because part of her goal in getting a bigger house was -- to put it in my words -- insulating him from other children. These tend to be the same parents who micromanage their children in other ways, like very limited diets and excessive summertime clothing, so, again, it seems like some form of paranoia.
> My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa.
Why do you think this is? Because it's very true for me too -- not only play dates but also just regular socializing, like hangouts, game nights, happy hours and bar dates, cookouts, holiday, parties, etc. I feel like I'm always the first one to text or call somebody. It makes me question what other people are doing.
It is if you are hosting; but if you are going to the party...hey, it's free food! I think a systematic analysis would show that it would be cheaper for all of us on the whole to share food at parties since it is cheaper to buy in bulk.
This isn't a social effect at all, it's all a financial effect. Of course most of the HN population is isolated from those issues because we work in a high paying field, but nobody has any money to do anything anymore.
My grandma was the head of the local Air Force wives' club. Their house was always stocked like a full bar and at least several people stopped by for a visit just about every day. They knew at least 10 of their neighbors well, and some former neighbors too.
Find me community like this anywhere in America these days. Immigrant communities perhaps? Most Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.
Social networks have moved online and have been drowned in ads and TikTok dances. No time for in-person meetups unless you're going to that fancy instagrammable place to take pictures of yourself.
“
It seems that the original modern American swingers were crew-cut World War II air force pilots and their wives. Like elite warriors everywhere, these “top guns” often developed strong bonds with one another, perhaps because they suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military. According to journalist Terry Gould, “key parties,” like those later dramatized in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, originated on these military bases in the 1940s, where elite pilots and their wives intermingled sexually with one another before the men flew off toward Japanese antiaircraft fire.“
>Find me community like this anywhere in America these days.
The only reason I have become a staple member of my little dead-end, working-class street is because I don't email/text, and last summer I spent outdoors building a tinyhome (that all the passersby watched/asked about).
"How do I get ahold of you?" they used to ask... "Simple," I'd say, "just knock on my door between noon through sunset" [my calling hours, to use the historic term, posted by my doorbell]. Haven't even used my phone but a handful of times this 2025 — turned off entirely since early May — & my social life is what I want it to be, I am not alone any more than I wish to be.
I moved here two years ago, and already know everybody on my street (24 dwellings, total); it's primarily rentals, so when there is a new U-Haul I make sure to bring over a beer/conversation (typically a week after moving in — so they can settle/adjust/remember).
Before living in this working-class neighborhood, I lived in the nicer parts of towns... and honestly, these working-class people are nicer and more giving/understanding/decent than anywhere else I've ever lived (e.g. Westlake Hills [near Austin]; West End [Nashville]; Barton Hills [ATX]; Lookout Mountain [Tenn]).
Stop doing everything on your phone. Start being neighborly.
Example: multiple neighbors and I have jointly-purchased a nicer lawnmower, instead of each buying our own simpler pusher.
They definitely still exist, my sister, and both of my sister in laws are extremely social people and regularly hang out, "party", with their neighbors and other friends. I additionally have a couple of coworkers that have block parties, and just really social communities. But they are definitely the exception now, and are only really for people that are just inherently social and extroverted. The rest of us, where "partying" is a lot more of an effort, just kind of don't anymore.
I miss it a little bit, like I enjoy being social for a couple of hours two or three times a week, but not much more. But a bunch of people like me makes for a poor social situation since it is hard to get everyone's social levels aligned.
The chart labeled Percent Decline in Hours Spent Attending or Hosting Social Event by Age 2003 - 2024 seems to be a bad way of view thing the data since it assumes that there is an inherit difference on how people approach this based on arbitrary age groups. Having it be by birth year would be better, since it would reflect how the people in question’s habits are changing over time.
That said, party culture had been excessive in the past and it was impoverishing to many people. I and others my age more wisely do without, which leaves us with money for things that are more important than one offs.
Young people aren’t becoming homeowners at the same rate, so there’s a sense of transience to their living situations that make forming neighbor communities seem like a waste of time.
My 20s were full of partying, and I wasn't a homeowner a was really introverted at the time. You just cram into whoever's apartment was having that party and have fun. Our partying dropped off after becoming a homeowner, actually.
This article isn’t wrong, but it neglects to mention real estate, transportation, and lodging. A party needs a venue, and it needs guests. And the guests need a way to get to and from the venue. If they stay a long time, they need a place to sleep.
People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party without a big home, a yard, a big kitchen, etc. Small apartments are for small get-togethers that probably don’t register as parties.
Likewise, the larger someone’s home is, the more likely it is to be location in an area with low population density and little to no public transportation. Congrats, you can throw a party, but who are you inviting? All your friends are far away. How can they get there? How long can they stay? Can you accommodate them sleeping there? You aren’t friends with your neighbors who can party easily. You are friends with people on the Internet who are strewn about the world.
And of course, if you live in a major city with lots of friends, small apartment strikes again.
This is part of the reason we have seen the rise of more public events like conventions. There’s a hotel involved. It’s a multi-day event worth traveling to. A lot of people you know will be there. It costs everyone some money, but it’s not out of the realm to go a few times a year. Best part, nobody’s home gets trashed!
I'm not convinced. I live in Berlin and everyone is living in a flat, yet I've had my fair share of home parties, even in small two room apartments where half the party spilled out to the stairwell.
> People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes.
If you look at a graph of home ownership in the US by cohort at various points in time (see, e.g., https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership...), while the rates are somewhat lower, between the highest point and the lowest point the difference is at worst 10 percentage points.
This sentiment strikes me a lot more as people in their 20's complaining that they're poor because they don't have the financial resources of someone in their 40's, despite having more resources than the latter did at their age.
You need a home to party? News to my younger self. Parties in crowded shitty apartments, outdoors, or even in cars were the norm when we were young.
This complaint - we don’t have nice houses so we can’t party - is unintentionally emblematic of the root issue in misaligned expectations and excuses for realigned priorities. Nobody Inknew when young had houses either.
Look, it’s not obviously bad to me that young people party less. Blame gaming, blame some resurgent conservative cultural values, blame the internet or even laziness. Maybe the youth today just have better things to do, and that okay. Binge drinking, drugs, and stupid decisions aren’t necessary good investments in time, and many, many, friends from back in the day didn’t survive it. Like less kids smoking cigarettes, maybe this is a good thing (for them and all of us).
But it’s ridiculous to try and turn this behavioral trend into some manifesto on housing inequality. Give me a break.
Eh, I feel like my (and most peoples) main exposure to house parties was in HS and college when basically no one owns their own home. Rented apartments, houses and family homes seemed to work fine then, I can't really think why that wouldn't be the case now.
Note the age-group with the biggest drop is 15-24, its not like the average 18 year old owned their own home circa 1995.
> People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party without a big home, a yard, a big kitchen, etc. Small apartments are for small get-togethers that probably don’t register as parties.
This is baffling to me. Most of the parties I went to in high school, college, and my 20s were in people's tiny apartments, small rented houses, and small yards.
Maybe expectations changed? Now it seems more like people feel the need to get ready before going out, to bring something, to pre-coordinate to arrive with a group of friends, to have a lot of space, to have everything pre-cleaned and ready to be the background in photos, and maybe even to have a meat and cheese platter that gets posted to social media. It seems there's much less willingness to just go places, be cramped, and just hang out.
I agree that owning real estate doesn't seem a big issue to me, but urban design does: I lived on both sides of the pond and in the USA getting to a party usually involved driving somewhere. That means organizing to go there with a group and a designated driver to stay sober, or getting a taxi (too expensive, when I was young). In Europe, I could just get on my bike and show up by myself. That lowers the barrier to entry considerably. As far as I can tell, urban sprawl in the US has made it even more car dependent today than when I was growing up.
That reminds me of an article I can't find anymore on the plight of the American poor couple trying to raise a child in a gasp 900sqft. Uh, check real estate sqft averages around the world?
I never was much of a partier as a teen but I've been to a few, and they were all in flats ranging from much smaller than an American house to literally one room sometimes with 15 people in it. Had no problem falling asleep drunk on somebody's kitchen floor or on a couch in a room with a bunch of other people.
Even in the US a dorm room (a tiny, rented place) is a stereotyped party location.
Oh and ofc numbers are wrong. The houses in the US are bigger than ever and homeownership rate is smth like 60%.
This is such weird reasoning. When you're young and throwing parties where you're implicitly inviting a whole lot of people who you don't know, they will be bringing random chaos and you want to appear judgement proof and have it be someone else's property getting accelerated wear and tear. By the time you own a house with a yard, you're only inviting people you already know, with maybe one layer of transitive trust. Perhaps this focus on owning a house as the first step to doing anything points to the real problem though?
Jeez, youngish people feeling left out on investing into real estate see it as root of most of problems this world is facing now.
Sorry but can't agree, as do most folks here backing up with some hard data. That 'glass is half-empty' approach to daily life ain't healthy long term, ever thought about that?
This is just absolute total nonsense. Normal people do own real estate. Lots of people rented back then and do now. Friends were “far away” back then too, they took their cars, bummed rides, took buses, whatever. Where do they sleep? Where do you think they slept back then? The floor, the couch, the lawn, or they didn’t sleep at all and just went home in the morning.
I'm not saying this isn't part of the problem, but my experience has been different. When I was in my 20s, my friends and I all lived in apartments and had parties fairly often. I recall that when I was a kid in the 90s my parents often went to small house parties as well. Now, in my 40s, neither I nor anyone I know ever goes to parties despite us all owning houses and cars and living fairly close to one another.
My theory is that people have fewer parties because people have gotten flakier about attending larger social events. It is much easier to cancel plans at the last minute with a text or a social media DM, and people always seem to want to keep their options open. We've moved to getting together only with one other couple/family at a time b/c any time we try to have larger group events half of the invite list will cancel the day of.
No, owning a house does not give you more license to throw a party. Not owning a car never stopped anyone determined to go to a party. A place to sleep? What kind of party are you imagining in your head? One where people travel hundreds of miles and need a hotel? Your take is ridiculous. People party in small apartments all the time, I've been to hundreds. I took the bus there many times, or got rides from other friends going to the party, and now ride-sharing is a thing. Sleep?? That was never, ever part of the equation. I know it's a tired cliche, and usually used as a troll, but I can confidently say that you obviously don't get invited to many parties.
Most homes in the US are mortgaged. More likely the banks, which ultimately means the depositors, who are just as likely to be everyday average people (the wealthy normally keep their wealth in things like businesses), own most of it.
Spending all of your time studying in high school and college is your best hope at landing in the vanishing middle class. With decreasing job security as well as hyperinflation, continuing that work ethic into your 20s and 30s is quite reasonable. Everyone is too exhausted to party.
Purely anecdotal, but I was recently reflecting at the current trend of people posting really extensive morning routines. Waking up, meditation, yoga, gym, shower, eating breakfast, meal-prepping,....having a whole day before your day starts. While they should impress you with their healthiness and discipline, I just thought how utterly lonely and sterile most of them look like. And you're completely done after work if this is your morning, you can just go to bed and repeat the same the next day. I found it quite sad, actually.
I mean everything you listed there could be done within 2 hours if you do it all at home. Not sure what the big deal is, you wake up at 7 and you’re ready for the day by 9.
But oh yea maybe laying in bed for an hour doom scrolling on your phone before you finally get up is a more efficient use of time.
Well, the loneliness coming through on those posts might just be from the fact that the people that are posting on social media like that are, in fact, lonely and looking for connection. I have a pretty extensive morning routine of practicing music, sitting for meditation/pranayama, food, shower all before work, and then Muay Thai or yoga or strength training in the evening. I just don't post it on social media because I don't have social media. I still go out to see music/art and friends etc, but I also live in NYC where it's easy to do that.
I'm also wondering if the rising political polarization is at least in part caused by the "antisocial" phenomenon. If you're not exposed to a spectrum of political worldviews through being involved with all these people you randomly met back in the day, it becomes easier to dehumanize the people you disagree with. You also never have to listen to their talking points, because you can just block them out online.
The talking points themselves have got much worse. So many things are now mainstream, especially in racism, that would have been kept out of "polite company" previously. It's not that social media has made people less aware of other's political views, it's made them more aware, which is why they hate each other. Entire accounts exist (libsoftiktok) for the purpose of exposing people to views which they will hate, so they can get angry and ramp up their rhetoric.
It feels ridiculous not to mention car dependence and the things that enabled it: restrictive zoning, parking minimums, the car lobby.
In the last 50 years, the US has bulldozed dense, mixed used housing that enabled community and tight knit neighborhoods. More economically/socially viable housing (read: an apartment on top of a business) has literally been banned in much of the US. Ensuring that there's a large plot of asphalt to house personal vehicles that are ever increasing in size is baked into zoning laws (though some cities have finally banned parking minimums). Suburbia sprawls, literally requiring most of the country to own a car.
I would love to see some data on this, but my intuition is that everyone is physically farther away as a result, which weakens their general connection and likelihood to party together, and makes it harder for them to get to/from a party in the first place.
There's other feasible side effects too like less savings due to the cost of owning a car (I've seen estimates of the US average exceeding $10k/yr), or expensive housing exacerbated by all of the above - less space for housing due to roads/parking (and the cost rising as a direct result of a developer needing to include parking), and rising taxes to finance more and more infrastructure: suburban sprawl means more roads, pipes, electrical lines, while contributing significantly less economic value (Strong Towns has done some great graphics on how much dense urban areas subsidize their sprawling single family home filled counterparts).
According to the US Census Bureau, the median house age in the usa is 1980.
I live in a 1960 house of the type that is supposedly illegal, although every house in my suburb built since then has had building codes and planning regulations forcing walkability.
Cars are forced for specialization. I had a 20 mile each way commute to an absolutely horrible neighborhood but a very high paying job. I am in walking distance of some minimum wage manual labor jobs. I can't afford to work at those minimum wage manual labor jobs and live here, and a car is incredibly cheap compared to my higher income.
No one can explain why an architectural movement peaking in 1950s-1970s had no effect on socialization for decades until the smartphone era. Multiple entire generations lived in "soulless car filled suburbs" and socialized wildly according to the data in the article... until smartphones...
There's an entire mythology built around the idea that any new problem that occurs began coincidentally with the construction of suburbs in the 1950s, even if the new problem didn't appear for the first 75 years of suburban living.
But that hasn't changed much between the 80s and now. It was bad then and it is bad now. So I don't see it being a significant factor for change in socialization on that timescale.
It feels ridiculous to bring up car dependence in an article about 1980-2020 social trends, when the US was car-dependent the entire time, and the big drop was in the 2010s in particular.
Is 1 in 25 bad? I am more 1 in Inf... I mean I don't know what counts but I am happier to do things that are not a party. Examples: go to events in the city, restaurants, sunday lunch at relatives, work socials, school parent socials.
Even in my 20s I went to... the pub! Mayhe a nightclub. To me parties are more school age/university thing and are a great way to have a good time on a budget. Just some drinks and a speaker required.
If I were to try and pinpoint one of the leading causes of this issue myself, I would personally say that Americans have an outdated and ineffective model regarding its use of addictive substances or what I like to now call "Brain Hacking" systems as they are not necessarily just physical substances anymore.
Recreational drugs cause unbelievable havok within communities where they are unleashed. Its well known that such drugs have chemical compounds capable of "hacking" our physiology and causing a whole host of negative effects while ensuring the user stays addicted.
I consider these "Brain Hacking" systems just the same as I consider social media like TikTok and Instagram. They both are designed specifically in ways to entice users to be addicted without any concern for the harms they cause.
It baffles me that simply because it is not a physical substance it gets treated as less dangerous than the harder substances.
We keep seeing these issues in America when its very clear that similar things would occur if we made recreational substances as common as water and just as accessible.
Revenously addicted people, dont party, they dont socialize, they retreat from society, and stop forming deeper releationships. It is no surprise that this is creating issues for us.
Americans have always been the world's leading consumer of drugs, and now that we have digital drugs, they are more accessible and in demand than ever. So much so that the cartels desinging and pedeling these products, are basically the most powerful companies in our society.
Socializing in most Western countries used to be built entirely around an addictive mind altering substance, alcohol. Despite its many flaws it was extremely pro-social. Other drugs had their own party scenes.
It does seem like there's something wrong with that data; I find it somewhat implausible that the average parent was only caring for their child for 1.7 hours a day in 1985; even if you assume that all of the tween and teens were free-range and only got an hour or two of parenting a day, little kids have always required nonstop attention to make sure that they're not actively dying.
Although... the infant mortality rate in the US has dropped by more than 50% since 1985, so who knows...
> Burrowing into the appendix tables of the American Time Use Survey, she unearthed the fact that just 4.1 percent of Americans said they “attended or hosted” a party or ceremony on a typical weekend or holiday in 2023. In other words, in any given weekend, just one in 25 US households had plans to attend a social event.
There's a huge difference between not hosting or attending a party and not attending a social event. "Party" has very specific connotations. If I go out bowling with my friends or have a game night, I don't call that a party, but it is certainly a social event.
Anecdotally a lot of families we see in my social circle can be reliably split between single income and dual income households. We see the single income folks far more than we see the dual income folks, which tracks with this article. If I come home from work and my wife says “Sarah and family are coming for dinner tonight”, I know that my wife has tidied up the house, coordinated food and all I have to do is pour some drinks and maybe cook something on the grill (that has already been purchased and prep’d). If no one has done that? Far less likely I would see that same family that night.
Being stay at home parent is extremely isolating. It is most lonely thing one can do. You spend ovwrwhelming majority of the day completely alone. No collegues to bump into you and talking with you. If the stay at home parent does not actively organizes meetups, they are completely alone until partner comes home ... after he talked with people at work.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadLike with World Wars there's been a generational impact that changed how people relate to one another. The tribal momentum, of one monkey teaching the next, gets lost.
I know two other people that know of Richman, four if you count my wife and son who I made listen to him!
edit: had to add Richman was a big influence on the Talking Heads :)
My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list where our phone numbers are listed (and where we find these other parents' contact info).
Something happened with the culture of getting kids to play with each other outside of school hours, and I don't know what it was. COVID lockdowns definitely delayed it from starting for our kids, but I know these parents are mostly in my generation, and we certainly played more together.
We live in the suburbs, so it's not a car creep problem - at least, no more than it was 60+ years ago when the numbers were better. When I ask the parents who stay, they tell me a vague mix of weekend junior sports leagues, visiting relatives, and just being really tired after working all week. They're lame excuses: spending time with kids constantly is _also_ really tiring.
Kids having regular playdates would encourage more familiarity among the families and trust in letting kids play unsupervised with each other. Often I take them to the main playground, and it's virtually empty. I can't believe I'm the only one in the community who's unhappy enough about this to try and change it.
Kids were not driven to playdates 60+ years ago. They would play with other kids living nearby. Parents would not organize their playdates either.
> When I ask the parents who stay, they tell me a vague mix of weekend junior sports leagues, visiting relatives, and just being really tired after working all week. They're lame excuses: spending time with kids constantly is _also_ really tiring.
I do not seen how these are "lame excuses". Seems like valid things that lower your availability and also valid reasons to want to you remaining time for own rest.
> Often I take them to the main playground, and it's virtually empty. I can't believe I'm the only one in the community who's unhappy enough about this to try and change it.
60+ years ago, 6 years old kids would go to main playground on their own. Partly it is that kids are much less independent these days ... and partly it is that their own rooms are much more fun. So, kids want to stay at home because it is good enough and parents do not want to sit bored on playground.
When I was a kid, I could be relatively sure that if I went outside on a random day, there would be other kids playing outside. So, all the kids went outside most days to play.
I _could_ send my kid out to play and there _are_ other kids in the neighborhood, but almost all of them are inside playing video games. At best there might be some kids going on a walk with their parents.
If my oldest kid wants to interact with with his friends, his best bet is to get on fortnite, which he does most days _and he doesn't even like fortnite_.
These days, the school day is longer and more parents drive their kids to and from school, so extra effort is required for kids to get back together.
We decided to break from the trend and return our kids to more of a free-range kid paradigm, risking the disruption to our working schedules, this year. It sounds good in theory, but you are left with the realities of every other child friend being wrapped in camp schedules, as well. It took a lot of proactive discussions with other parents to convince them to keep their kids at home and accessible. But you're still left with the dual income problem, so you find yourself hiring a sitter to oversee and shuttle.
The result is an improvement over the 100% booked compartmentalized camp situation, but without the same level of independence that I experienced and have come to credit with really advancing my own personal development as a child.
I really wonder what the less involved, less intentional approach would be - hope your kid figures it all out for themselves?
Why do you think this is? Because it's very true for me too -- not only play dates but also just regular socializing, like hangouts, game nights, happy hours and bar dates, cookouts, holiday, parties, etc. I feel like I'm always the first one to text or call somebody. It makes me question what other people are doing.
Find me community like this anywhere in America these days. Immigrant communities perhaps? Most Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.
“ It seems that the original modern American swingers were crew-cut World War II air force pilots and their wives. Like elite warriors everywhere, these “top guns” often developed strong bonds with one another, perhaps because they suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military. According to journalist Terry Gould, “key parties,” like those later dramatized in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, originated on these military bases in the 1940s, where elite pilots and their wives intermingled sexually with one another before the men flew off toward Japanese antiaircraft fire.“
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-at-dawn/201211/n...
The only reason I have become a staple member of my little dead-end, working-class street is because I don't email/text, and last summer I spent outdoors building a tinyhome (that all the passersby watched/asked about).
"How do I get ahold of you?" they used to ask... "Simple," I'd say, "just knock on my door between noon through sunset" [my calling hours, to use the historic term, posted by my doorbell]. Haven't even used my phone but a handful of times this 2025 — turned off entirely since early May — & my social life is what I want it to be, I am not alone any more than I wish to be.
I moved here two years ago, and already know everybody on my street (24 dwellings, total); it's primarily rentals, so when there is a new U-Haul I make sure to bring over a beer/conversation (typically a week after moving in — so they can settle/adjust/remember).
Before living in this working-class neighborhood, I lived in the nicer parts of towns... and honestly, these working-class people are nicer and more giving/understanding/decent than anywhere else I've ever lived (e.g. Westlake Hills [near Austin]; West End [Nashville]; Barton Hills [ATX]; Lookout Mountain [Tenn]).
Stop doing everything on your phone. Start being neighborly.
Example: multiple neighbors and I have jointly-purchased a nicer lawnmower, instead of each buying our own simpler pusher.
¢¢
I miss it a little bit, like I enjoy being social for a couple of hours two or three times a week, but not much more. But a bunch of people like me makes for a poor social situation since it is hard to get everyone's social levels aligned.
That said, party culture had been excessive in the past and it was impoverishing to many people. I and others my age more wisely do without, which leaves us with money for things that are more important than one offs.
Young people aren’t becoming homeowners at the same rate, so there’s a sense of transience to their living situations that make forming neighbor communities seem like a waste of time.
People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party without a big home, a yard, a big kitchen, etc. Small apartments are for small get-togethers that probably don’t register as parties.
Likewise, the larger someone’s home is, the more likely it is to be location in an area with low population density and little to no public transportation. Congrats, you can throw a party, but who are you inviting? All your friends are far away. How can they get there? How long can they stay? Can you accommodate them sleeping there? You aren’t friends with your neighbors who can party easily. You are friends with people on the Internet who are strewn about the world.
And of course, if you live in a major city with lots of friends, small apartment strikes again.
This is part of the reason we have seen the rise of more public events like conventions. There’s a hotel involved. It’s a multi-day event worth traveling to. A lot of people you know will be there. It costs everyone some money, but it’s not out of the realm to go a few times a year. Best part, nobody’s home gets trashed!
This is only true in some HCOL places ands big cities. Plenty of people own homes.
My own personal theory? Music sucks now, ha ha.
The home ownership rate has been 64%, plus or minus about 1%, for the last 45 years.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S
If you look at a graph of home ownership in the US by cohort at various points in time (see, e.g., https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership...), while the rates are somewhat lower, between the highest point and the lowest point the difference is at worst 10 percentage points.
This sentiment strikes me a lot more as people in their 20's complaining that they're poor because they don't have the financial resources of someone in their 40's, despite having more resources than the latter did at their age.
This complaint - we don’t have nice houses so we can’t party - is unintentionally emblematic of the root issue in misaligned expectations and excuses for realigned priorities. Nobody Inknew when young had houses either.
Look, it’s not obviously bad to me that young people party less. Blame gaming, blame some resurgent conservative cultural values, blame the internet or even laziness. Maybe the youth today just have better things to do, and that okay. Binge drinking, drugs, and stupid decisions aren’t necessary good investments in time, and many, many, friends from back in the day didn’t survive it. Like less kids smoking cigarettes, maybe this is a good thing (for them and all of us).
But it’s ridiculous to try and turn this behavioral trend into some manifesto on housing inequality. Give me a break.
Note the age-group with the biggest drop is 15-24, its not like the average 18 year old owned their own home circa 1995.
This is baffling to me. Most of the parties I went to in high school, college, and my 20s were in people's tiny apartments, small rented houses, and small yards.
Maybe expectations changed? Now it seems more like people feel the need to get ready before going out, to bring something, to pre-coordinate to arrive with a group of friends, to have a lot of space, to have everything pre-cleaned and ready to be the background in photos, and maybe even to have a meat and cheese platter that gets posted to social media. It seems there's much less willingness to just go places, be cramped, and just hang out.
I never was much of a partier as a teen but I've been to a few, and they were all in flats ranging from much smaller than an American house to literally one room sometimes with 15 people in it. Had no problem falling asleep drunk on somebody's kitchen floor or on a couch in a room with a bunch of other people.
Even in the US a dorm room (a tiny, rented place) is a stereotyped party location.
Oh and ofc numbers are wrong. The houses in the US are bigger than ever and homeownership rate is smth like 60%.
Sorry but can't agree, as do most folks here backing up with some hard data. That 'glass is half-empty' approach to daily life ain't healthy long term, ever thought about that?
My theory is that people have fewer parties because people have gotten flakier about attending larger social events. It is much easier to cancel plans at the last minute with a text or a social media DM, and people always seem to want to keep their options open. We've moved to getting together only with one other couple/family at a time b/c any time we try to have larger group events half of the invite list will cancel the day of.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S
Add in the odd issue of younger people not getting their drivers licenses or owning/having access to a car.
It could be anecdotal but I've seen this in a number of locales across the country. Curious if there's hard numbers on it.
Most homes in the US are mortgaged. More likely the banks, which ultimately means the depositors, who are just as likely to be everyday average people (the wealthy normally keep their wealth in things like businesses), own most of it.
But oh yea maybe laying in bed for an hour doom scrolling on your phone before you finally get up is a more efficient use of time.
I'm also wondering if the rising political polarization is at least in part caused by the "antisocial" phenomenon. If you're not exposed to a spectrum of political worldviews through being involved with all these people you randomly met back in the day, it becomes easier to dehumanize the people you disagree with. You also never have to listen to their talking points, because you can just block them out online.
In the last 50 years, the US has bulldozed dense, mixed used housing that enabled community and tight knit neighborhoods. More economically/socially viable housing (read: an apartment on top of a business) has literally been banned in much of the US. Ensuring that there's a large plot of asphalt to house personal vehicles that are ever increasing in size is baked into zoning laws (though some cities have finally banned parking minimums). Suburbia sprawls, literally requiring most of the country to own a car.
I would love to see some data on this, but my intuition is that everyone is physically farther away as a result, which weakens their general connection and likelihood to party together, and makes it harder for them to get to/from a party in the first place.
There's other feasible side effects too like less savings due to the cost of owning a car (I've seen estimates of the US average exceeding $10k/yr), or expensive housing exacerbated by all of the above - less space for housing due to roads/parking (and the cost rising as a direct result of a developer needing to include parking), and rising taxes to finance more and more infrastructure: suburban sprawl means more roads, pipes, electrical lines, while contributing significantly less economic value (Strong Towns has done some great graphics on how much dense urban areas subsidize their sprawling single family home filled counterparts).
Even in my 20s I went to... the pub! Mayhe a nightclub. To me parties are more school age/university thing and are a great way to have a good time on a budget. Just some drinks and a speaker required.
Spurious. This has likely always been true unless you live with said friends.
Recreational drugs cause unbelievable havok within communities where they are unleashed. Its well known that such drugs have chemical compounds capable of "hacking" our physiology and causing a whole host of negative effects while ensuring the user stays addicted. I consider these "Brain Hacking" systems just the same as I consider social media like TikTok and Instagram. They both are designed specifically in ways to entice users to be addicted without any concern for the harms they cause. It baffles me that simply because it is not a physical substance it gets treated as less dangerous than the harder substances.
We keep seeing these issues in America when its very clear that similar things would occur if we made recreational substances as common as water and just as accessible. Revenously addicted people, dont party, they dont socialize, they retreat from society, and stop forming deeper releationships. It is no surprise that this is creating issues for us.
Americans have always been the world's leading consumer of drugs, and now that we have digital drugs, they are more accessible and in demand than ever. So much so that the cartels desinging and pedeling these products, are basically the most powerful companies in our society.
Although... the infant mortality rate in the US has dropped by more than 50% since 1985, so who knows...
There's a huge difference between not hosting or attending a party and not attending a social event. "Party" has very specific connotations. If I go out bowling with my friends or have a game night, I don't call that a party, but it is certainly a social event.
https://archive.is/Uyrys#selection-2109.17-2109.48