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by csw-001 1565 days ago
>> The reasons behind this are not "people are anti-social or introverts," but more a result of living in a world (especially in the US) where people move away from their family, change jobs frequently, often work freelance/gig jobs where hours don't align, get divorced, and live alone (28% of Americans live alone).

I'd never thought about systemic root causes this way. Thank you for frame this out at a social systems level.

I grew up in a medium-sized town where a lot of people, and most business people, were part of social organizations like Elk's Club, Rotary, bowling leagues, VFW, Knights of Columbus, softball teams, etc. I watched those social organizations wither as our city grew exponentially (from a surge of transplanted Californians driving our local tech renaissance and enjoying the relatively low property values), which seemed odd - more people should mean more members in these clubs? The way you frame it seems to explain this observation though - so many people moving in, dislocating the job market, being so far from family, etc. A by-product was the the death of those social clubs. Or maybe just the death of the existing social clubs I, as a local, was used to people joining as they came of age in our business and social community.

And of course, I eventually moved for school.... So I left my local Rotary Club and softball team...

1 comments

Another relevant statistic here is the general decline in membership in those kinds of clubs and associations. As Robert Putnam called out in “Bowling Alone,” men are more affected by these changing trends in some ways, since men are socialized to be “self-sufficient” (despite lots of evidence that there is not really a biological difference in need for connection nor in ability for empathy).