6 ms·

Interesting how 12th-graders are as lonely as they where in the 70s & 80s (almost no difference). What happened in 2006 that made loneliness drop so much?

warent 8y ago
Hmm... Facebook was opened to the public near the end of 2006. No idea if there's a correlation or if it's even possible to find one.
lskopwol 8y ago
Probably advent of instant messengers made them feel less lonely, culminating around 2006-2008 when modern social networks really took off, but peaking in today's result of every post on fb/twitch/instagram engendering social anxiety and thus 'loneliness'.
- bencollier49 8y ago
  I reckon you're right. This was peak Yahoo Instant Messenger time, and it launched in 1998, just before the graph starts moving downwards.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    Really? I feel like peak instant messenger time was around 2001 or so... I wonder if it has to do with how old we are?
    - gowld 8y ago
      Peak for you was likely when you were a teen. But overall? In 2001 computers weren't ubiquitous nor portable. Middle-class kids were on IM on their desktops and maybe laptops for max a few hours per day. Now kids have phones for IM all day and night.
      - cortesoft 8y ago
        The grandparent comment was saying that 2006-2008 was peak instant messenger, and people using messengers on phones were certainly not common during those years.
  - tdurden 8y ago
    It is a shame YIM is gone now; I lost contact with a lot of people where that was our main form of communication.
- Vagantem 8y ago
  True - I can still hear that MSN "new message" sound echoing in my head..
- niftich 8y ago
  This time was indeed marked by the high popularity and increasing interop between classic IM networks, and the rise new networks. Some choice dates: - 2005-09: Meebo launches offering web access to AIM, WLM, Yahoo - 2006-02-07: Google Talk integration inside Gmail goes live - 2006-03: Nielsen/Netratings survey for active users: AIM 53M, WLM 27M, Yahoo 22M - 2006-07-12: seamless interop starts between Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger - 2006-09-26: Facebook opens up to everyone (not just colleges) - 2007-02-14: Gmail opens up to everyone (not just invite-only) - 2008-04-06: Facebook chat goes live - 2008-04-19: Facebook overtakes Myspace in Alexa ranking - 2008-07-11: iOS App Store launches, AIM for iOS released - 2008-08-26: Facebook hits 100 million active users - 2008-09-23: Android 1.0 launches More (and sources) in my earlier posts [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114518
jacobush 8y ago
FB+iPhone?
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > iPhone I doubt it. How many high school seniors would have owned one soon after its release? Too much of an early-adopter luxury item. I'd be curious to know when smartphones actually started became ubiquitous among older teenagers.
  - jfaat 8y ago
    I graduated HS in 2007. I think I had 2 friends with iPhones, in an affluent town in Connecticut. My first smartphone was an iPhone 4 in 2010. It was still probably another year before smartphones were ubiquitous amongst my friend group.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      The 3GS came out in 2009 and that's more or less the model that made it clear the iPhone mold of smartphone was the future. (I got a Treo in 2006 but that was still very much in the carrier walled garden on phones.) However, as others have said, feature phone texting was pretty widespread in the second half of the 2000s, IM was widespread, and social media was really starting to take off. You can quibble about exact dates but it's pretty reasonable to take somewhere around 2008 as the year for online communications hitting some sort of collective inflection point.
      - jfaat 8y ago
        I would agree that online communications hit AN inflection point around that time, and I don't think I said anything to refute that. I do think there was a more important one soon thereafter, because IM isn't what made me feel like my social life had moved primarily into the virtual space. It was several years after this, more like when Instagram took off. It was not until then that it became common for someone, or a couple, to be looking at their phone throughout dinner (I worked in food service throughout college), or for an entire group of people sitting around in the same room all interacting through their phones. Facebook, and other social platforms around 2008 set the stage for this but I think it's not until the smartphone got great cameras, fast internet, etc. that it became more convenient for us to interact through them. I think it's an important distinction. I was not quibbling, just providing an anecdote. I used AIM/MSN from a feature phone in 2007 and used SMS heavily prior to that.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
You can download the data for the chart. It's actually 2007 if you don't eyeball it. I think we're probably seeing Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. The great recession made loneliness less important to them or less apparent to them. Pretty cool actually. This kind of thing is probably unaccounted for in many similar studies.
- vonseel 8y ago
  That’s still a year before any of us really felt the Great Recession. I was in my first year of college back then..
- the_jeremy 8y ago
  I doubt that the start of the recession impacted teens this much. I think it's more likely the rise/fall of certain social media (yahoo/AIM/FB/idk) than relating to them missing physiological needs, especially given most teens are not fending for themselves.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    I was graduating high school around then. It definitely did impact teens that much. Net job growth was negative by 300K+ for over a year. More than 800K jobs were lost in November 2008 alone. Lots of stress at home, and you're more than old enough to notice. So you start reading the news, where you find lots of people were speculating about if not a great depression at least a lost generation. Graduating into GFC was terrifying. I'm sure some were sheltered from it or blissfully unaware, but many were very aware.
    - gowld 8y ago
      > So you start reading the news not most teens. Even with 1 year of economic stress, that's not going to suddenly make kids take a mature emotional perspective and feel less lonely.
  - b_tterc_p 8y ago
    This seems very strange to me. The idea that a dramatic macro economic downturn is less likely to to effect personal beliefs than early Facebook? I know most teens aren’t paying for food and rent but if your parents lose their job or their house that feels like it’s going to hit hard.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

warent 8y ago

Hmm... Facebook was opened to the public near the end of 2006. No idea if there's a correlation or if it's even possible to find one.

lskopwol 8y ago

Probably advent of instant messengers made them feel less lonely, culminating around 2006-2008 when modern social networks really took off, but peaking in today's result of every post on fb/twitch/instagram engendering social anxiety and thus 'loneliness'.

bencollier49 8y ago
I reckon you're right. This was peak Yahoo Instant Messenger time, and it launched in 1998, just before the graph starts moving downwards.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  Really? I feel like peak instant messenger time was around 2001 or so... I wonder if it has to do with how old we are?
  - gowld 8y ago
    Peak for you was likely when you were a teen. But overall? In 2001 computers weren't ubiquitous nor portable. Middle-class kids were on IM on their desktops and maybe laptops for max a few hours per day. Now kids have phones for IM all day and night.
    - cortesoft 8y ago
      The grandparent comment was saying that 2006-2008 was peak instant messenger, and people using messengers on phones were certainly not common during those years.
- tdurden 8y ago
  It is a shame YIM is gone now; I lost contact with a lot of people where that was our main form of communication.
Vagantem 8y ago
True - I can still hear that MSN "new message" sound echoing in my head..
niftich 8y ago
This time was indeed marked by the high popularity and increasing interop between classic IM networks, and the rise new networks. Some choice dates: - 2005-09: Meebo launches offering web access to AIM, WLM, Yahoo - 2006-02-07: Google Talk integration inside Gmail goes live - 2006-03: Nielsen/Netratings survey for active users: AIM 53M, WLM 27M, Yahoo 22M - 2006-07-12: seamless interop starts between Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger - 2006-09-26: Facebook opens up to everyone (not just colleges) - 2007-02-14: Gmail opens up to everyone (not just invite-only) - 2008-04-06: Facebook chat goes live - 2008-04-19: Facebook overtakes Myspace in Alexa ranking - 2008-07-11: iOS App Store launches, AIM for iOS released - 2008-08-26: Facebook hits 100 million active users - 2008-09-23: Android 1.0 launches More (and sources) in my earlier posts [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114518

jacobush 8y ago

FB+iPhone?

CharlesColeman 8y ago
> iPhone I doubt it. How many high school seniors would have owned one soon after its release? Too much of an early-adopter luxury item. I'd be curious to know when smartphones actually started became ubiquitous among older teenagers.
- jfaat 8y ago
  I graduated HS in 2007. I think I had 2 friends with iPhones, in an affluent town in Connecticut. My first smartphone was an iPhone 4 in 2010. It was still probably another year before smartphones were ubiquitous amongst my friend group.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    The 3GS came out in 2009 and that's more or less the model that made it clear the iPhone mold of smartphone was the future. (I got a Treo in 2006 but that was still very much in the carrier walled garden on phones.) However, as others have said, feature phone texting was pretty widespread in the second half of the 2000s, IM was widespread, and social media was really starting to take off. You can quibble about exact dates but it's pretty reasonable to take somewhere around 2008 as the year for online communications hitting some sort of collective inflection point.
    - jfaat 8y ago
      I would agree that online communications hit AN inflection point around that time, and I don't think I said anything to refute that. I do think there was a more important one soon thereafter, because IM isn't what made me feel like my social life had moved primarily into the virtual space. It was several years after this, more like when Instagram took off. It was not until then that it became common for someone, or a couple, to be looking at their phone throughout dinner (I worked in food service throughout college), or for an entire group of people sitting around in the same room all interacting through their phones. Facebook, and other social platforms around 2008 set the stage for this but I think it's not until the smartphone got great cameras, fast internet, etc. that it became more convenient for us to interact through them. I think it's an important distinction. I was not quibbling, just providing an anecdote. I used AIM/MSN from a feature phone in 2007 and used SMS heavily prior to that.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

You can download the data for the chart. It's actually 2007 if you don't eyeball it. I think we're probably seeing Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. The great recession made loneliness less important to them or less apparent to them. Pretty cool actually. This kind of thing is probably unaccounted for in many similar studies.

vonseel 8y ago
That’s still a year before any of us really felt the Great Recession. I was in my first year of college back then..
the_jeremy 8y ago
I doubt that the start of the recession impacted teens this much. I think it's more likely the rise/fall of certain social media (yahoo/AIM/FB/idk) than relating to them missing physiological needs, especially given most teens are not fending for themselves.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  I was graduating high school around then. It definitely did impact teens that much. Net job growth was negative by 300K+ for over a year. More than 800K jobs were lost in November 2008 alone. Lots of stress at home, and you're more than old enough to notice. So you start reading the news, where you find lots of people were speculating about if not a great depression at least a lost generation. Graduating into GFC was terrifying. I'm sure some were sheltered from it or blissfully unaware, but many were very aware.
  - gowld 8y ago
    > So you start reading the news not most teens. Even with 1 year of economic stress, that's not going to suddenly make kids take a mature emotional perspective and feel less lonely.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  This seems very strange to me. The idea that a dramatic macro economic downturn is less likely to to effect personal beliefs than early Facebook? I know most teens aren’t paying for food and rent but if your parents lose their job or their house that feels like it’s going to hit hard.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]