4 ms·

The invention of the screen probably did more than anything else to curb sex. 100 years ago, what was a couple likely doing for entertainment at 10 PM on a Sat

The invention of the screen probably did more than anything else to curb sex. 100 years ago, what was a couple likely doing for entertainment at 10 PM on a Saturday? What about now?

jll29 3y ago
Mobile phones! I'm always shocked how couples on dates in restaurants don't talk but each attends to their own screen. Governments will need to switch off the signal on Saturday nights to ensure survival of the population (looking at World Bank fertility statistics increases the concern raised in the article). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
- sgt 3y ago
  I hear about this but generally I experience that people put away their phones when engaging in conversation. My wife included, especially during dinner. Perhaps this behavior is more common for those aged 35+ ?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tjoff 3y ago
    Sure, but you stifle a lot of avenues to start a conversation when you look at your phone. And you raise the bar for conversations to be worthwhile. Which becomes a problem when a lot of high-quality conversations start from mindless small talk.
  - Hugsun 3y ago
    It's not a given. Many people pick up the phone at the slightest pause or hope to not have to put down the phone for the conversation. It's known as phubbing and is detrimental to a good conversation.
xyzzy123 3y ago
The world was not an entertainment-less void before TV & computers. There were social gatherings, reading, writing, radio, games, thinking, hobbies and crafts, etc. Most people probably went to bed earlier though.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  And yet someone more than a decade older than me once told me they were a hippie and slept around in their youth "...because TV went off the air at 9pm and there was nothing else to do."
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  I mean, I grew up in the 90s and it was absolutely an entertainment-less void compared to today. At night TV channels would go off air or be replaced by some QVC ads. There wasn’t netflix, if you were lucky your parents had 3-4 VHS tapes. Internet was only a thing rich kids had. Hobbies were for older people. If you were young and wanted to be entertained you would go hang out with your friends, go ride a bike, or go to the mall. All of these were fairly social activities.
  - usrnm 3y ago
    I also grew up in the 90s, and I spent time reading books. A lot more fun than most shows you can find on Netflix today
  - watwut 3y ago
    I also grew up in 90ties and TV played movies till like 2 am. And oddly, it resulted in more variety of things I have seen, because algorithms today tend to restrict offering to the variations of the same. A lot of my schoolmates had hobbies or things they did after work.
watwut 3y ago
People do not compare these stats with actual reality of 1924 or 1824 or whatever. They kind of create imaginary past world that will confirm what they want to conclude and that is basically about it. In 1924, you would not be hanging around alone as an unmarried couple all that much for example. And you fairly often lived in much more crowded housing situation. Unmarried parenthood was a big deal back then and anticonception was not exactly easy to get or trustworthy.
- hobs 3y ago
  The difference being that the majority of people were married and having kids decades earlier, so people were still having sex, just in the boundaries of social acceptableness. My own grandmother told me how she married my horrible grandfather at 19 because she was 1) Horny and 2) Was not allowed to have sex with anyone until she got married.
  - peteradio 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - watwut 3y ago
    But that is the thing - unless you study some specific place and time, all these are guesses. Because there were periods of rich where people married a lot ... and then there were periods and places where many people were single and unable to marry for various reasons. We were not multiplying exponentially all the time. And while in some village you would be married at around age of 16, in cities it was often much later. With men, oftentimes after military service which could take 7 years. Or after then amassed proprties, which easily meant sometimes before 30. There was sex with prostitues, but that one was also profoundly unsafe, the likelihood of STD was not exactly small.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
swalsh 3y ago
Technology has been quite detrimental to humanity if those of us in tech want to be honest with ourselves. It could have been amazing. We told ourselves it was going to connect us, and we were all going to be smarter.. but instead we abuse tech like junk food. Instead of social media enhancing our lives it causes young girls to have poor unrealistic self images. Bullying etc. Apps like tiktok have eliminated our attention spans. Young men play video games instead of going outside. Instead of kids taking advantage of having vast access to knowledge, they watch low effort youtube videos. Parents let them do it because they're just as addicted to tech. You don't have to go out of your house to go shopping, or work, or even play. We lost all local communities from church, to the office. We live in a dystopia where we spend all day connected to devices. And now there's AI. We ALL need to go on a tech diet. Find the good stuff, and keep it, and treat the rest like junk food.. which is fine to have once in a while, but the moderation is key.
- FredPret 3y ago
  We involved into a technological environment. Fire and rock tools were both used to create us. No tech, no humans. Modern tech is what saved us from the dour prophecies of the Malthusians. A little bit of screentime sure does beat infant mortality, polio, hunger, and the global wars we used to have.
  - swalsh 3y ago
    "A little" That's the key
    - FredPret 3y ago
      > Technology has been quite detrimental to humanity if those of us in tech want to be honest with ourselves. It could have been amazing. We told ourselves it was going to connect us, and we were all going to be smarter.. Tech has been amazing for the past 100-150 millennia and couldn’t possibly be seen as detrimental in aggregate. We are in fact smarter and more connected too. The side effects are barely worth mentioning.

The invention of the screen probably did more than anything else to curb sex. 100 years ago, what was a couple likely doing for entertainment at 10 PM on a Saturday? What about now?

jll29 3y ago

Mobile phones! I'm always shocked how couples on dates in restaurants don't talk but each attends to their own screen. Governments will need to switch off the signal on Saturday nights to ensure survival of the population (looking at World Bank fertility statistics increases the concern raised in the article). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

sgt 3y ago
I hear about this but generally I experience that people put away their phones when engaging in conversation. My wife included, especially during dinner. Perhaps this behavior is more common for those aged 35+ ?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tjoff 3y ago
  Sure, but you stifle a lot of avenues to start a conversation when you look at your phone. And you raise the bar for conversations to be worthwhile. Which becomes a problem when a lot of high-quality conversations start from mindless small talk.
- Hugsun 3y ago
  It's not a given. Many people pick up the phone at the slightest pause or hope to not have to put down the phone for the conversation. It's known as phubbing and is detrimental to a good conversation.

xyzzy123 3y ago

The world was not an entertainment-less void before TV & computers. There were social gatherings, reading, writing, radio, games, thinking, hobbies and crafts, etc. Most people probably went to bed earlier though.

DoreenMichele 3y ago
And yet someone more than a decade older than me once told me they were a hippie and slept around in their youth "...because TV went off the air at 9pm and there was nothing else to do."
oceanplexian 3y ago
I mean, I grew up in the 90s and it was absolutely an entertainment-less void compared to today. At night TV channels would go off air or be replaced by some QVC ads. There wasn’t netflix, if you were lucky your parents had 3-4 VHS tapes. Internet was only a thing rich kids had. Hobbies were for older people. If you were young and wanted to be entertained you would go hang out with your friends, go ride a bike, or go to the mall. All of these were fairly social activities.
- usrnm 3y ago
  I also grew up in the 90s, and I spent time reading books. A lot more fun than most shows you can find on Netflix today
- watwut 3y ago
  I also grew up in 90ties and TV played movies till like 2 am. And oddly, it resulted in more variety of things I have seen, because algorithms today tend to restrict offering to the variations of the same. A lot of my schoolmates had hobbies or things they did after work.

watwut 3y ago

People do not compare these stats with actual reality of 1924 or 1824 or whatever. They kind of create imaginary past world that will confirm what they want to conclude and that is basically about it. In 1924, you would not be hanging around alone as an unmarried couple all that much for example. And you fairly often lived in much more crowded housing situation. Unmarried parenthood was a big deal back then and anticonception was not exactly easy to get or trustworthy.

hobs 3y ago
The difference being that the majority of people were married and having kids decades earlier, so people were still having sex, just in the boundaries of social acceptableness. My own grandmother told me how she married my horrible grandfather at 19 because she was 1) Horny and 2) Was not allowed to have sex with anyone until she got married.
- peteradio 3y ago
  [flagged]
- watwut 3y ago
  But that is the thing - unless you study some specific place and time, all these are guesses. Because there were periods of rich where people married a lot ... and then there were periods and places where many people were single and unable to marry for various reasons. We were not multiplying exponentially all the time. And while in some village you would be married at around age of 16, in cities it was often much later. With men, oftentimes after military service which could take 7 years. Or after then amassed proprties, which easily meant sometimes before 30. There was sex with prostitues, but that one was also profoundly unsafe, the likelihood of STD was not exactly small.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

swalsh 3y ago

Technology has been quite detrimental to humanity if those of us in tech want to be honest with ourselves. It could have been amazing. We told ourselves it was going to connect us, and we were all going to be smarter.. but instead we abuse tech like junk food. Instead of social media enhancing our lives it causes young girls to have poor unrealistic self images. Bullying etc. Apps like tiktok have eliminated our attention spans. Young men play video games instead of going outside. Instead of kids taking advantage of having vast access to knowledge, they watch low effort youtube videos. Parents let them do it because they're just as addicted to tech. You don't have to go out of your house to go shopping, or work, or even play. We lost all local communities from church, to the office. We live in a dystopia where we spend all day connected to devices. And now there's AI. We ALL need to go on a tech diet. Find the good stuff, and keep it, and treat the rest like junk food.. which is fine to have once in a while, but the moderation is key.

FredPret 3y ago
We involved into a technological environment. Fire and rock tools were both used to create us. No tech, no humans. Modern tech is what saved us from the dour prophecies of the Malthusians. A little bit of screentime sure does beat infant mortality, polio, hunger, and the global wars we used to have.
- swalsh 3y ago
  "A little" That's the key
  - FredPret 3y ago
    > Technology has been quite detrimental to humanity if those of us in tech want to be honest with ourselves. It could have been amazing. We told ourselves it was going to connect us, and we were all going to be smarter.. Tech has been amazing for the past 100-150 millennia and couldn’t possibly be seen as detrimental in aggregate. We are in fact smarter and more connected too. The side effects are barely worth mentioning.