Online contact and teen social development

 

I just ran across a few group posts on Reddit about people not being successful at dating, attributing causes to that.  One guy said that he experienced early childhood trauma, and took a decade of therapy to get over that, and couldn't act naturally in dates or relationships as a result.  Fair enough.

My son is just starting into that kind of range, or really getting far yet.  He's 15, so it's still in a normal time-frame, to be on the fence, or just sorting out early interest.  I commented that online contact now must make it all much harder, because his friends don't hang out with him "in real life," and that's only going to be more of a factor in his 20s, that he might experience most of his social contact online.  It's not helpful for real-life forms of contacts, like dating.

I just saw a graph online that clarifies what I was getting at:

this was cited from here, which includes some odd right wing leaning spin

I would imagine this is really limited to "in real life."  He would spend a couple of hours talking to friends while playing online games last semester, daily, which of course impacted his studies and his grades.  In 2013 someone in his age range would have spent over two hours with friends daily, and the average in this graph dropped down to 40+ minutes.

Would that relate to covid, since it's apparently ending in 2020?  Maybe.  But it was around an hour in 2019, prior to covid, and the graph was showing clear annual decline.

For my age group that's not even a half an hour a day, in 2019, and that was under 40 minutes for the entire range, since 2003.  I get it; contact with friends can really drop out in your mid 30s.  A similar pattern of decline has been happening for the 25 to 34 age group though.

Of course this relates to generational differences, in addition to patterns that affect all of society; from 2003 to 2020 the people at each age range shifted over time.  This theme reminds me of the death of malls in the US, how less people want to go hang out in that particular public space.  It's easier to shop online, and in some cases safety issues come up, but overall people seem to be more focused on experiences at home, on watching streaming content, or spending time online.

Back to my son a discussion point came up about encouraging him to go to a school dance, or not, about letting him make his own decisions versus emphasizing that these really are once in a lifetime sort of social opportunities.  He's just not spending that much time with friends in real life.  He tries to arrange more, hiking outings, playing basketball in a park, or they gather to eat sometimes, but his friends are either busy or just not on that page.

He plays a sport; that helps (swimming).  It's time spent with other kids, and it's relatively social, even though there is training to be done.  As far as I know participation in sports isn't in steep decline; the kids still do that.

One point that made me think all this through, in a different light, is how some of my friends in college were fairly undeveloped socially, not having experienced much or any dating at that point.  Most of them pulled it together, and eventually did end up marrying.  It would be harder if someone wasn't in the habit of participating in real life social interaction at all; the starting point would be different.

Of course one theme that comes up is that online dating apps are making things worse instead of better, that patterns of how people match, or don't, makes it harder to meet people.  A broad range of commentary puts the blame for this on women, for most trying to match with a small percentage of the guys.  To some extent this must happen.  The broader conclusion that women are ruining dating I'm not so sure about.  I suspect that this trend for people to socialize mostly online is more of a cause than all women now only choosing a narrow subset of men.  It gets repeated though, surely making it seem more likely to be true.

I think I've mentioned interesting, novel, and odd forms of patterns of relationships being described online before, like in this graphic version, by a "Hoe Math" channel:

This kind of thing is bordering on misogyny, reducing dating habits and women's preferences--or really men's too--down to a simple series of patterns.  This content creator has given this some thought, but I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't done much actual dating.  If you actually go through it parts do match normal, typical experience though.  

It just probably wouldn't be helpful, since a short summary is that it blames women for putting too much emphasis on physical attractiveness, even though it says roughly the same thing about men.  Maybe people do tend to date and marry people who are generally as physically attractive as them, but it sets aside all the rest about sharing interests and worldview, or personality types matching or conflicting.

So where does all this leave my son?  We encourage him to participate in sports, and activities and groups, and hopefully he will build up social experiences and skills that help him in the next stage of his life, in college and beyond.  How much he dates and whether he attends any one sort of function doesn't matter as much, but to an extent it all connects.

I really am concluding that too much time spent online, even in social contact in online gaming, probably is negative.  15 to 24 year olds might really average around a half an hour of contact with friends now, and that's not much.  It seems to clearly be decreased by lots of people who don't spend any time with friends, in real life. 

This is a very common theme on Reddit too, that someone, male of female, is in their late 20s, reconsidering why they've barely dated at all, or never have, and don't hang out with friends, and have trouble placing meaning in their lives.  Of course all that isn't just due to online games and streamed entertainment; causes are complex.  Someone who experiences normal working hours and a long commute has no time to meet with friends five days a week.

Mostly this post is about sharing that "time spent with friends" reference, and some thoughts on that, versus arriving at actual conclusions in relation to it all.