Youth & the Waning Era of Wanderers (1)
We cannot wander, we can only wonder.
Very often, on nights out, or when I was simply exploring a city, seeking whatever social revelry there was to be had, I noticed that usually there aren’t people actually out.
Whether in the empty clubs, quiet pubs, or streets deserted by 10pm, there is a general lack of people, despite a large presence of students in many of the cities. Even with plenty of great venues and variety, including London, Edinburgh, and many big cities in the US famous for their nightlife. Even at major festivals and days with pleasant weather. The nonstop slew of catastrophic events broadcasted over the news historically would have increased people’s proclivity towards socializing and intimacy. We are too numb for it now.
I can’t help but dwell on how young people today choose to spend their time. From the vibrant social scene of the early 2000s to the more subdued gatherings of today, it seems most of the young’s time and energy has fallen into the Internet.
Code, data and software are more real to us, in a sense, than the grass and trees of our genesis. How much time have you spent on your smartphone today compared to how much time you’ve spent walking on the grass? Even the way our teeth are shaped comes from the grass-imagine what changes must be taking place in us the way we are integrated into technology today.
During times were character-building, resilience and social fluency should have been inscribed into out understanding, we have instead stayed at home, communicating through the lens of social media. Such a downward trend may snowball, since there will be fewer people for those who are socially motivated to, well, socialize.
In 2000s young adults could be seen doing social activities like parties, concerts, and clubbing. The nightlife was bustling, filled with a palpable energy as friends gathered in person to create lasting memories.
The share of high school seniors who gathered with friends in person “almost every day” dropped from 44 percent in 2010 to 32 percent in 2022, according to Monitoring the Future, a national survey of adolescents.
By the mid-2010s, social media, streaming services, and gaming had changed the game. Young people increasingly favored online interactions, leading to a significant shift in how they socialized.
In 2018, a Pew Research study revealed that 51% of teens preferred socializing online rather than face-to-face—a clear sign of changing preferences.
Today, kids who are spending five, six, seven hours a day on social media. Nearly half of the nation’s teens now say they are online “almost constantly,” according to Pew Research. More than half say they are effectively addicted to social media and would have a hard time giving it up.
In times when young people should be making connections, they are no longer learning how to interact, cope and navigate the social environment that makes up our world. Take for instance the decline of nightclubs in London and the United Kingdom in general.
In 2006, London thrived with nearly five hundred nightclubs, setting the stage for the UK’s nightlife boom. Little did we know that by 2010, the scene had reached its zenith, with over ten thousand clubs lighting up the country. Today, over the entire UK, less than a thousand remain, marking the end of an era.
While nightclubs and other party venues collapse, the digital medium thrives. The rise of dating apps has transformed how young people seek relationships. While these platforms offer new opportunities for connection, they’ve also contributed to a decline in-person dating since 2019. It’s extra surprising when you consider the liberation of women in the past two decades.
In modern culture, women are no longer getting married in their early adulthood. They are engaging in more casual hook-ups and same gender relationships. Still, dating apps in general are less beneficial to hetero men.
Today, many young cis heterosexual men report feelings of loneliness, isolation, and involuntary celibacy. Young men also make up the biggest group in ‘Not in Education, Employment, or Training’. All this can be considered with the cultural shifts going on globally; for example, in Japan, around 40% of young men have never been on a date. It’s similar in South Korea, and the US, as well as the UK, are catching up too. As the newer generations continue to be weighed down by the pitfalls of social media, dating apps and surveillance capitalism, new coping strategies must be employed.
The prevalence of social media and dating apps has led to a form of “algorithmic sexual selection” wherein potential partners are reduced to a handful of variables, simplifying the complex nature of attraction into data points. This has created an environment where some feel overwhelmed by options, yet isolated in their search for meaningful connections.
At the same time, apps do making it easy to meet new people now. There are meet ups, friend and dating networks, social media platforms that share frequent events.
Social media however is often balkanized and a particular subgroup may be attached to these events.
To be blunt, sometimes you just won’t quite find your people from one of these random apps. Without precise figures, it’s worth noting that actual dating, courting, whatever you want to call it, is not what it used to be.
In the near future, I’d like to analyze people’s dating stories and sentiments from over time to see if there’s more evidence for or against these trends. Right now, the data is scarce, but we can see more recent statistics for the purposes of this letter.
2023: Only 30-40% of young adults go out on dates regularly. (Seeking Blog, Pew Research Center)
As I write this, sitting in a café, I can peek into a microcosm of how people choose to spend their time and attention. Most people take only short breaks from their smartphones, unless they are present with friends, family and so on. Many are working on laptops or readings books. Before the omnipresence of the personal computer/smartphone, people would have to occupy their time exclusively with conversation. The exceptions of include people reading or working with paper and pen, but still, consider the hours passed where people had no phones to distract them.
Perhaps the issues of my own love life can’t be reconciled with theory and analysis. Find out in part two of Youth & the Waning Era of Wanderers.