Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out—and Why It Matters
02/27/24 • 70 min
3 Listeners
Today’s episode is about the extraordinary decline in face-to-face socializing in America—and the real stakes of the country’s hanging-out crisis.
From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent.
Eric Klinenberg is a sociologist and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of several books on the rise of living alone and the decline of social infrastructure. His latest is _'_2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed.' And he's not afraid to challenge the popular notion of an epidemic of loneliness in America. “There is no good evidence that Americans are lonelier than ever," he has written. Today, Eric and I talk about teens and parenting, the decline of hanging out, why America sucks at building social infrastructure, and why aloneness isn’t always loneliness.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Eric Klinenberg
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today’s episode is about the extraordinary decline in face-to-face socializing in America—and the real stakes of the country’s hanging-out crisis.
From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent.
Eric Klinenberg is a sociologist and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of several books on the rise of living alone and the decline of social infrastructure. His latest is _'_2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed.' And he's not afraid to challenge the popular notion of an epidemic of loneliness in America. “There is no good evidence that Americans are lonelier than ever," he has written. Today, Eric and I talk about teens and parenting, the decline of hanging out, why America sucks at building social infrastructure, and why aloneness isn’t always loneliness.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Eric Klinenberg
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Previous Episode
"We’re Seeing a Fundamental Reorganization of Work in America"
Today’s episode is about arguably the most important economic statistic out there: real (or inflation-adjusted) wage growth. For much of the last few years, many people's real wages have declined. But for the last few quarters, real wages have been growing. In fact, they've grown so much for the poorest workers that several key measures of inequality are falling, and the Black-white wage gap is shrinking. But many Americans still don't seem to buy the idea that things are getting better. Today's guest is Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst—one of the world’s top researchers on minimum wage policies and pay. He says things are happening in this economy that we haven't seen since the 1950s or 1960s. "We're seeing a fundamental reorganization of work in America," Dube said.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Dr. Arindrajit Dube
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Next Episode
Why the "Need for Chaos" Is Eating American Politics
Today’s episode is about one of the most interesting pieces of research I’ve read in the past year. It's an idea called "need for chaos," and the truth is that I literally cannot stop thinking about it as I follow American culture, politics, and media. Very briefly, it is the observation that many Americans today embrace conspiracy theories and nihilistic burn-it-all-down messages, not because they are partisans of the left or right, but rather because they've become hopelessly cynical (sometimes for very good reason!) about all elite and all major institutions of power. Today’s guest is the Danish political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who coauthored the paper that introduced this idea.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Michael Bang Petersen
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Links:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/need-for-chaos-political-science-concept/677536/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Featured in these lists
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/plain-english-with-derek-thompson-202813/why-americans-stopped-hanging-outand-why-it-matters-45714103"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to why americans stopped hanging out—and why it matters on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy