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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions.

This article says that the trend has started since 2013. In what way has American individualism changed since then? I would say it hasn't. How could American culture shift that much in less than 10 years in this specific span? I don't buy that explanation without more thorough study.

American individualism has existed far longer than the data in this article. We've been sitting in cars by ourselves since the mid-century. I am most skeptical about easy and simple explanations like the one you're describing.

For one thing, I'm looking through the data and I'm struggling to find the data that the chart is representing: https://www.bls.gov/tus/database/tustabs.htm

Is anyone else able to find it?

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"I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions."

Definitely, especially because the article seems to avoid the elephant in the room. The US is amidst full on class warfare, the transfer of wealth from the poor and middleclass to the wealthy has been staggering, we never recovered from the 2008 crash, only rich people did.

The rich are grinding us to pieces and honestly I just dont think most of us have the energy to socialize anymore. Wages are less, no one has much money to spend on recreation, everybody is stressed about rent, healthcare, and their bosses being assholes and making them do the job of 3 people.

There are certainly other factors at play here but avoiding talking about this factor just torpedoes any intelligent discussion of ANYTHING related to quality of life in the US.

I was thinking about this as well.

In short, spending time alone could also have to do with being beat down by work. Long hours, lower pay, worse benefits. Statistically, America's lower class is getting poorer.

I have to think it's easier to get together with friends and family more when you have more free time and disposable income.

But even this speculation is a jump to conclusions. I am very wary of articles like this that are quick to assign cause.

We had class warfare before, and collectivistic action (i.e. unions, strikes) was a logical and (somewhat?) successful solution to improve quality of life. Individualism as the underlying trend prevents those classic solutions and therefore individualistic solutions have to be found: Instead of just collectively asking for x% more salary, society tediously defines and articulates new instances of discrimination (which are ultimately violations on the individual level). Fixing various internal injustices leads to friction and is probably mostly a wealth transfer from different tiers of middle and lower classes. The powers that be therefore applaud and encourage individualism and thus further strenghten this trend.

American individualism has existed for a long time, but trends continue and accelerate. Recent trends to increase individualism:

- Influencers, streamers introduced and established 1-n relationships in society, somewhat replacing more organic 1-1 connections. People start mapping classic relationship-type emotions on what Onlyfans gives them.

- High quality smart phone cameras brought the selfie, the concept of frequently broadcasting a high quality picture of myself, rather than a more natural slice of life moment, picture of a group doing something, relying on another person to be available and willing to take a photo.

- continuing decline of newspapers and other general-audience media, replaced by chose-your-own-bubble media

- online dating becoming widespread, making people more selective, less patient to deal with random encounters; more random rejection, ghosting.

- the pandemic

- homeoffice

> We've been sitting in cars by ourselves since the mid-century.

Before that we've been riding horses by ourselves.

Before that we walked by ourselves.

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