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In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. Suburbia

In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. Suburbia and the decline of third places probably play a far greater role in this demographic. It's a common trope on here to lament on how the Anglo cultures don't value family ties strongly enough. I'd argue not overly valuing family ties has been a big competitive advantage of the Anglo cultures for centuries, eg. moving for opportunity (improved social mobility), ability to connect with outsiders, couple pairing across cultural/geographical boundaries, prerequisite to a high trust society, etc. What really needs to happen is we need to figure out ways of facilitating friend formation/maintenance in this brave new world of the internet and atheism. We are going to need some new social technologies to really combat this. One interesting recent social technology out of china https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3152758/meet-dancing-grannies-loud-glorious-staple https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pas 2y ago
So, people moving away is not new and not surprising, and happens all over the world, it's basically the main driver of urbanization. What's new was (rich) people moving "back" (to suburbs for the American Dream, and nowadays to have kids). Though it's better than what used to happen - which was lots of kids, and high infant mortality, plus poverty driving kids to find jobs in cities, where bad living conditions and factory work awaited them. (And in the 20th century company towns around mines and factories.) People growing up, flying out of the family nest, and finding friends was a normal part of late teenage years. What's new on top of that is more people are trying to do it again in their 20s after higher education, and again after settling down to have kids, and ... The good news is that we have the social technology of ... affordable safe high density cities, with parks and high-rises (plus the obligatory blackjack and hookers too!) ... where people can be next to their new and old friends at the same time ... oh my! Also https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/the-myth-of-the-loneliness-epidemic https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/the-myth-of-the-loneliness...
- grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
  It's easy to blame the decline of organized religion, but it curiously coincides with the same time-frame in which the car was invented and modern suburbia sprung up. Having to move to allow for a family is definitely a new and worrying phenomenon. My gut feel is that having to maintain close family ties and living with parents until adulthood are an adaption to poverty, poor social mobility, and low trust society. People will rationalize it but given opportunity they'll act in the exact same way as the rest of us (just look at urbanization in China). Thanks for the article, wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the loneliness epidemic is a statistical artifact of bad data.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    I suspect close family ties and living with parents was the default throughout human prehistory. Our Hunter-gatherer ancestors were probably not leaving their tribe behind and moving away. It's only since the industrial revolution that people have been leaving their birth family behind en mass.
    - grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
      I think in any low trust environment where social mobility outside the group is poor, sticking together based on blood lines probably was the default for sure. However I think there's plenty of evidence that migration and intermingling between tribes occurred frequently. If only as social practices to prevent inbreeding. Probably a bunch of bride kidnapping sadly but also young males leaving to seek opportunity isn't an exclusively modern phenomenon.
      - Wytwwww 2y ago
        > also young males leaving to seek opportunity isn't an exclusively modern phenomenon. True but as far as we can tell it was usually (if not entirely exclusively) done through the same social networks that existed locally [unless you were leaving to murder/rape/rob people]. Unless they really, really had to you only moved to another city/location because you had a cousin, uncle etc. or someone else there you had some ties with. Outside of organizations like the church or the army (and even then) a complete outsider was at an extreme disadvantage (relative to today).
dsign 2y ago
> What really needs to happen is we need to figure out ways of facilitating friend formation/maintenance in this brave new world of the internet and atheism. We are going to need some new social technologies to really combat this. I wonder how in your opinion atheism enters in the picture? My first guess (of your reference) is that certain religions frighten people into remaining in a marriage they would otherwise not be in. My second guess is that religion fills a social glue role by virtue of getting people together to worship or do other community things. In my own opinion, part of the problem is that we are not atheist enough, and we still believe in the god-mandated union of a man and a woman, properly enclosed by walls, to bring forth children, as the only way worth living. Yes, there are pockets of resistance to the idea, but too little and too late. By far and large all parents out there are pressing their children to marry and have kids, so that there are grandchildren to fill those golden years. And there is mass media of course, which by far and large does the same. But I suspect that, left to their own devices, a lot of young people may choose to stick to their childhood friends of their same sex or otherwise, and employ one of the myriad ways humans can achieve sexual fulfillment. And since I'm on the topic, our species had sex for bonding long before it had religion, language, and the Internet. It's a pity that after the agricultural revolution and the newly found greed for land, God declared that technology suitable only for establishing property rights and for growing the military might of the tribe.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  I think your second guess is what was meant. Doing church things is a social occasion, a place to meet people and make friends.
  - grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
    From the perspective of my original comment, more than anything church is just a formalized social occasion. Repeated social contact, and proximity seems to be critical to friendship formation. Wasn't commenting on family formation etc.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  > their children to marry and have kids, so that there are grandchildren to fill those golden years Which seems to benefit everyone long-term, though (on average/societal scale anyway). I mean what alternatives are you suggesting? Communes? State run child breeding and education facilities? If your issue is with monogamy, well that has proven to be the most stable system and seemingly facilitated most of human progress (at least in the more successful societies). > a lot of young people may choose to stick You do have a point, it's certainly not necessarily optimal from the individual perspective. Problem is that most alternatives might not be sustainable over several generations so they just die out. Probably not exactly what you're thinking about but e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
motorest 2y ago
> It's a common trope on here to lament on how the Anglo cultures don't value family ties strongly enough. I'd argue not overly valuing family ties has been a big competitive advantage of the Anglo cultures for centuries, eg. moving for opportunity (improved social mobility), ability to connect with outsiders, couple pairing across cultural/geographical boundaries, prerequisite to a high trust society, etc. That line of reasoning is just plain sad. It boils down to "everyone might be miserable, but someone else is getting rich so it's good." What makes it specially sad is how anglo culture's economic advantage spawns from the outcome of WW2, not this misplaced sense of sacrifice.
- Retric 2y ago
  US had world’s largest economy well before WWII. It initially took first place in 1880 before going back and forth until 1900 when to firmly took the lead for a century. https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/how-did-united-states-become-global-power https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/how-did-united-state... It was a huge country with lots of natural resources like oil, gold, coal, etc.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- afpx 2y ago
  Well, that's a very self-defeatist attitude. I can see how it can make someone sad.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Why are you calling that Anglo-Saxon culture? You're clearly talking about the US, not the UK or France... You're not even talking about the whole US, or the majority, just the culture in the larger cities. Even within the US it isn't the people that were born here who traveled the farthest and learned a new language for an opportunity. This conversation is very surreal.
- themacguffinman 2y ago
  "anglo cultures" already had quite a lead before WW2, hard to miss that the previous superpower was the British Empire. The outcome of WW2 elevated America, there's no relationship there to broader anglo culture. Quite a stretch to jump to "everyone might be miserable". Immigration from Latin American and other non-anglo countries is on a scale where it shapes American and British domestic politics, difficult to conclude that those immigrants are searching for the misery of anglo cultures that they can't find at home.
bobmcnamara 2y ago
> In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. I grew up in a Midwestern shithole. My older friends leaving, and knowing I was was going to leave too, didn't help.
nox101 2y ago
what is your definition of "high trust society". I don't consider the USA a high trust society having lived in Japan and Singapore. In Japan and Singapore, I trust that others won't steal my stuff. I trust that I won't be mugged. I trust that my packages won't be stolen. I trust that my car will not be broken into. In the USA and Europe I trust none of that. I've had cars broken into 5 times, bikes stolen 5 times, car stolen once. Reports of people stealing packages. I know I can't trust people at a coffee shop not to steal my laptop while I go to the restroom. Friend have had wallets stolen stopping to take a picture. etc..... This means I trust no one in the USA or Europe. So to me, the USA an Europe are low trust societies.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The USA is a large place. I've had bikes stolen (last case 40 years ago - the bikes were left outside unlocked for 5 years and only once were any stolen), but that is all from your list. In every place I've lived some of my neighbors never locked their doors when they left. I have always known people who just leave their keys in their car when they leave it. I lock my front door, but the garage doesn't have a lock and there are some expensive things in there. Which is to say I find the US is a high trust society where I live. I know there are other places where things are much worse.
- phil21 2y ago
  The US is slowly (rapidly?) devolving into a low-trust society. What used to be pockets of low-trust are spreading rapidly by my estimation. It's been sad to watch it slowly get worse every year. It goes for all things, not just petty/street crime though. Everything from business owners not prioritizing doing good work and building local reputation, employees slacking off as much as possible, investors demanding extreme profits at the expense of everyone else, corporations shipping out entire towns worth of industry to foreign countries, on down to actual crime itself. It certainly wasn't all roses in the past - but it's a marked change from even my youth. Civic engagement is easy for anyone to see, and that would also be such a symptom.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
vlunkr 2y ago
Might teenagers feel less isolated if they had family around though? I grew up with tons of cousins my age and that was always a part of my social life. Doesn’t matter that I wasn’t 18
steve_adams_86 2y ago
> In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. But it’s more than a single generation thing. If you live for 18 years in a family that has only recently put down roots in a new place, you won’t have family around, unlikely to have as many family friends around, etc. Community will likely be sparse and colder. You essentially get a generational social debt put onto kids, over and over. It appears that cohesion is lost, pro-social behaviour decreases, focus on less social activity increases, and so on.
- diordiderot 2y ago
  In the American South community is as easy as picking a church and going to your kids public school sporting events. Are there problems, of course, like all societies. But it's easy and it works.
  - genghisjahn 2y ago
    Same thing works in Philadelphia.
  - xocnad 2y ago
    This presupposes both an interest in religion and organized sports.
    - achierius 2y ago
      At least w.r.t. the latter point, you shouldn't need to be interested in sports to be interested in your kid's sporting events. Spoiler: nobody likes t-ball, but they do like their kids enough to go to the t-ball games anyways.
    - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
      [dead]
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      >This presupposes both an interest in religion and organized sports. Sorta but not really. Lots of people just fake it for the community aspects.
asdasdsddd 2y ago
dancing grannies is definitely not a result of social technology haha, but yes, old people culture in china is top tier
CMCDragonkai 2y ago
I think coliving is going to come back into vogue.
- qnleigh 2y ago
  I wish it would. Perhaps it will with rising costs of living and housing.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pas 2y ago

So, people moving away is not new and not surprising, and happens all over the world, it's basically the main driver of urbanization. What's new was (rich) people moving "back" (to suburbs for the American Dream, and nowadays to have kids). Though it's better than what used to happen - which was lots of kids, and high infant mortality, plus poverty driving kids to find jobs in cities, where bad living conditions and factory work awaited them. (And in the 20th century company towns around mines and factories.) People growing up, flying out of the family nest, and finding friends was a normal part of late teenage years. What's new on top of that is more people are trying to do it again in their 20s after higher education, and again after settling down to have kids, and ... The good news is that we have the social technology of ... affordable safe high density cities, with parks and high-rises (plus the obligatory blackjack and hookers too!) ... where people can be next to their new and old friends at the same time ... oh my! Also https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/the-myth-of-the-loneliness-epidemic https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/the-myth-of-the-loneliness...

grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
It's easy to blame the decline of organized religion, but it curiously coincides with the same time-frame in which the car was invented and modern suburbia sprung up. Having to move to allow for a family is definitely a new and worrying phenomenon. My gut feel is that having to maintain close family ties and living with parents until adulthood are an adaption to poverty, poor social mobility, and low trust society. People will rationalize it but given opportunity they'll act in the exact same way as the rest of us (just look at urbanization in China). Thanks for the article, wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the loneliness epidemic is a statistical artifact of bad data.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  I suspect close family ties and living with parents was the default throughout human prehistory. Our Hunter-gatherer ancestors were probably not leaving their tribe behind and moving away. It's only since the industrial revolution that people have been leaving their birth family behind en mass.
  - grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
    I think in any low trust environment where social mobility outside the group is poor, sticking together based on blood lines probably was the default for sure. However I think there's plenty of evidence that migration and intermingling between tribes occurred frequently. If only as social practices to prevent inbreeding. Probably a bunch of bride kidnapping sadly but also young males leaving to seek opportunity isn't an exclusively modern phenomenon.
    - Wytwwww 2y ago
      > also young males leaving to seek opportunity isn't an exclusively modern phenomenon. True but as far as we can tell it was usually (if not entirely exclusively) done through the same social networks that existed locally [unless you were leaving to murder/rape/rob people]. Unless they really, really had to you only moved to another city/location because you had a cousin, uncle etc. or someone else there you had some ties with. Outside of organizations like the church or the army (and even then) a complete outsider was at an extreme disadvantage (relative to today).

dsign 2y ago

> What really needs to happen is we need to figure out ways of facilitating friend formation/maintenance in this brave new world of the internet and atheism. We are going to need some new social technologies to really combat this. I wonder how in your opinion atheism enters in the picture? My first guess (of your reference) is that certain religions frighten people into remaining in a marriage they would otherwise not be in. My second guess is that religion fills a social glue role by virtue of getting people together to worship or do other community things. In my own opinion, part of the problem is that we are not atheist enough, and we still believe in the god-mandated union of a man and a woman, properly enclosed by walls, to bring forth children, as the only way worth living. Yes, there are pockets of resistance to the idea, but too little and too late. By far and large all parents out there are pressing their children to marry and have kids, so that there are grandchildren to fill those golden years. And there is mass media of course, which by far and large does the same. But I suspect that, left to their own devices, a lot of young people may choose to stick to their childhood friends of their same sex or otherwise, and employ one of the myriad ways humans can achieve sexual fulfillment. And since I'm on the topic, our species had sex for bonding long before it had religion, language, and the Internet. It's a pity that after the agricultural revolution and the newly found greed for land, God declared that technology suitable only for establishing property rights and for growing the military might of the tribe.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
I think your second guess is what was meant. Doing church things is a social occasion, a place to meet people and make friends.
- grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
  From the perspective of my original comment, more than anything church is just a formalized social occasion. Repeated social contact, and proximity seems to be critical to friendship formation. Wasn't commenting on family formation etc.
Wytwwww 2y ago
> their children to marry and have kids, so that there are grandchildren to fill those golden years Which seems to benefit everyone long-term, though (on average/societal scale anyway). I mean what alternatives are you suggesting? Communes? State run child breeding and education facilities? If your issue is with monogamy, well that has proven to be the most stable system and seemingly facilitated most of human progress (at least in the more successful societies). > a lot of young people may choose to stick You do have a point, it's certainly not necessarily optimal from the individual perspective. Problem is that most alternatives might not be sustainable over several generations so they just die out. Probably not exactly what you're thinking about but e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

motorest 2y ago

> It's a common trope on here to lament on how the Anglo cultures don't value family ties strongly enough. I'd argue not overly valuing family ties has been a big competitive advantage of the Anglo cultures for centuries, eg. moving for opportunity (improved social mobility), ability to connect with outsiders, couple pairing across cultural/geographical boundaries, prerequisite to a high trust society, etc. That line of reasoning is just plain sad. It boils down to "everyone might be miserable, but someone else is getting rich so it's good." What makes it specially sad is how anglo culture's economic advantage spawns from the outcome of WW2, not this misplaced sense of sacrifice.

Retric 2y ago
US had world’s largest economy well before WWII. It initially took first place in 1880 before going back and forth until 1900 when to firmly took the lead for a century. https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/how-did-united-states-become-global-power https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/how-did-united-state... It was a huge country with lots of natural resources like oil, gold, coal, etc.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
afpx 2y ago
Well, that's a very self-defeatist attitude. I can see how it can make someone sad.
whatshisface 2y ago
Why are you calling that Anglo-Saxon culture? You're clearly talking about the US, not the UK or France... You're not even talking about the whole US, or the majority, just the culture in the larger cities. Even within the US it isn't the people that were born here who traveled the farthest and learned a new language for an opportunity. This conversation is very surreal.
themacguffinman 2y ago
"anglo cultures" already had quite a lead before WW2, hard to miss that the previous superpower was the British Empire. The outcome of WW2 elevated America, there's no relationship there to broader anglo culture. Quite a stretch to jump to "everyone might be miserable". Immigration from Latin American and other non-anglo countries is on a scale where it shapes American and British domestic politics, difficult to conclude that those immigrants are searching for the misery of anglo cultures that they can't find at home.

bobmcnamara 2y ago

> In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. I grew up in a Midwestern shithole. My older friends leaving, and knowing I was was going to leave too, didn't help.

nox101 2y ago

what is your definition of "high trust society". I don't consider the USA a high trust society having lived in Japan and Singapore. In Japan and Singapore, I trust that others won't steal my stuff. I trust that I won't be mugged. I trust that my packages won't be stolen. I trust that my car will not be broken into. In the USA and Europe I trust none of that. I've had cars broken into 5 times, bikes stolen 5 times, car stolen once. Reports of people stealing packages. I know I can't trust people at a coffee shop not to steal my laptop while I go to the restroom. Friend have had wallets stolen stopping to take a picture. etc..... This means I trust no one in the USA or Europe. So to me, the USA an Europe are low trust societies.

bluGill 2y ago
The USA is a large place. I've had bikes stolen (last case 40 years ago - the bikes were left outside unlocked for 5 years and only once were any stolen), but that is all from your list. In every place I've lived some of my neighbors never locked their doors when they left. I have always known people who just leave their keys in their car when they leave it. I lock my front door, but the garage doesn't have a lock and there are some expensive things in there. Which is to say I find the US is a high trust society where I live. I know there are other places where things are much worse.
phil21 2y ago
The US is slowly (rapidly?) devolving into a low-trust society. What used to be pockets of low-trust are spreading rapidly by my estimation. It's been sad to watch it slowly get worse every year. It goes for all things, not just petty/street crime though. Everything from business owners not prioritizing doing good work and building local reputation, employees slacking off as much as possible, investors demanding extreme profits at the expense of everyone else, corporations shipping out entire towns worth of industry to foreign countries, on down to actual crime itself. It certainly wasn't all roses in the past - but it's a marked change from even my youth. Civic engagement is easy for anyone to see, and that would also be such a symptom.
- Apocryphon 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

vlunkr 2y ago

Might teenagers feel less isolated if they had family around though? I grew up with tons of cousins my age and that was always a part of my social life. Doesn’t matter that I wasn’t 18

steve_adams_86 2y ago

> In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. But it’s more than a single generation thing. If you live for 18 years in a family that has only recently put down roots in a new place, you won’t have family around, unlikely to have as many family friends around, etc. Community will likely be sparse and colder. You essentially get a generational social debt put onto kids, over and over. It appears that cohesion is lost, pro-social behaviour decreases, focus on less social activity increases, and so on.

diordiderot 2y ago
In the American South community is as easy as picking a church and going to your kids public school sporting events. Are there problems, of course, like all societies. But it's easy and it works.
- genghisjahn 2y ago
  Same thing works in Philadelphia.
- xocnad 2y ago
  This presupposes both an interest in religion and organized sports.
  - achierius 2y ago
    At least w.r.t. the latter point, you shouldn't need to be interested in sports to be interested in your kid's sporting events. Spoiler: nobody likes t-ball, but they do like their kids enough to go to the t-ball games anyways.
  - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    [dead]
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >This presupposes both an interest in religion and organized sports. Sorta but not really. Lots of people just fake it for the community aspects.

asdasdsddd 2y ago

dancing grannies is definitely not a result of social technology haha, but yes, old people culture in china is top tier

CMCDragonkai 2y ago

I think coliving is going to come back into vogue.

qnleigh 2y ago
I wish it would. Perhaps it will with rising costs of living and housing.