By this I mean in the sense of going outside more often and maybe not being as socially isolated, weird, or paranoid as some might find people nowadays.

43 comments

  1. No. The invention that separated and isolated people wasn’t the internet. It was the automobile.

  3. I live across a secondary school, ages 12-18.

    I never see them talking to eachother, all they do is sitting on their phones. When I went to school, we talked, played games whatever we did. Before internet and phones we were more social.

  4. Absolutely, often making small talk was the best option to pass the time in a line, on public transport, an airplane, a waiting room. Now we barely acknowledge each other if we do at all. Not everyone did, but it was much more common to have short conversation with a stranger at some point in the day.

  7. When I was a kid, you could literally pick up the phone and invite a friend over to play….seems like nobody does that anymore even though we are all tied to our phones.

  8. Yes, we went outside, played, got into more trouble than parents thought possible, played video games, knew that if we said something stupid to someone we were more than likely getting decked (internet muscles didn’t exist). We watched TV, movies, news. Called people on the phone to talk instead of a text, went over to friends homes to see if they were home. Everything was done in person for the most part.

  9. I’m not sure about that. More is questionable. But, in terms of quality, abso-fucking-lutely. We communicate so much through body language, intonation, timing, and eye contact. I do notice a flatness and lack of connection with younger folks. But, in their defense they are quick to say they have strong friendships. Maybe sending memes back and forth is enough. I can’t relate because I have so many visceral memories of social events in person.

  11. Depends.

    I’m in my forties now, but back in high school I was horrifically shy person. It was weird for me because I wasn’t shy in grade school and junior high, but looking back, I grew up the smallest school in the city, and transitioning to a huge high school where the student body was made up of ALL the larger schools in the area – it was a really tough transition for me.

    I have a son in high school now, and honestly, there are times I see him chatting with friends on his phone, and I’m like man, it would have been a lot easier for me to open up to people if I could have warmed up to them over texting or whatever. We’re talking teens here, so obviously there’s room for things to go terribly wrong, but…I’ve reconnected with a lot of former classmates over FB the last couple decades, and I think it would have been a more positive experience for me.

    At the same time, I think the internet has allowed a lot of nerds with niche interests to find each other, connect, and feel less weird. So I think…as a whole people are probably less likely to be literally out there and social, but it might all kind of balance out.

    I do know malls and arcades are basically dead, so there’s that as well.

  12. I’m 35, so kind of like the middle of the millennial pack. I remember for the first 8 years of my life we had no internet till we moved houses and got AOL. People around my age are kind of like the tail-end, the very last generation to remember briefly growing up in a time pre-Internet. By the time I was in middle school we were playing Counter-Strike.

    People have more phones now but talk less.

    Kids may be outside but are shut in, locked onto their phones.

    We add so many people to social accounts, but socialize less in person.

  13. Definitely. Pre 90s, it was perfectly common for most kids to be completely unsupervised and just be home when the street lights came on.

  14. Twenty years ago, a weekend night at home alone was really, really, mind-numbingly boring. So yeah, there was a big incentive to go out.

  15. Everybody was outside.

    You couldn’t keep me inside. Get home from school (half the time I didn’t even go home after school), maybe chill for a bit, catch a show or just drop off the backpack, then it was out the door.

    Even as an introvert, with a ton of personal hobbies, I still got bored in the house after a while and I would spend hours just walking and riding my bike around, exploring neighborhoods and seeing sights. Same with all the friends. Hanging out with friends while walking the train tracks or exploring an abandoned building, adventure was everywhere. Boredom was the start of a new hobby.

    We were constantly meeting up at different houses and parks. Once we started driving, we off to all the places the parents probably didn’t want us hanging out at.

    Adults would go do things to socialize. Even if it was just hanging out on each other’s porches. Like another poster said, it was very common to exchange a few words with people while waiting around anywhere.

  16. Yes, and the difference is huge. Country folk were a lot kinder as well. I wish i could undo what the internet and misinformation has done to people out here.

  18. yes. you kinda had to be. look around you at the number of people breaking their necks staring down at their phone all the time. yeah we didn’t do that before. we made small talk. we made eye contact. we picked up on subtle body language cues because we engaged with each other.

    it’s getting weird, people. unplug and put your toes in the grass.

  19. A lot of them were

    I got the internet when I was in middle school as did about half my friends. By the time we were in high school almost everyone had it. However, cell phones weren’t quite ubiquitous yet and the ones that existed were big and blocky. So you would call around to find out where everyone was hanging out and ride your bike, skate or drive over there.

    There was no real hanging out online aside from ICQ and AOL chat. That was less a group chat and more you talking to a few people at night when you were supposed to be asleep. There were lots of phone calls though.

    Text messaging cost money per text after a couple hundred so you might text important info, but you weren’t chatting with anyone that much. It was more like “We’re at Drew’s place playing Tekken 2, come over.”

    So mostly we hung out and drove around. Gas was comparatively cheap back then. Less than a dollar a gallon when I started driving and everyone would pitch in a buck or two to fill my car up so we could go cruising around listening to burned CDs and smoking clove cigarettes.

    Because all we did was hang out and talk there were so many inside jokes. Each friend group would have their own ones and when a friend invited you over to hang out with a different crowd there would be lots of laughs where you had no idea what was funny.

    Lots of hooking up happened because bored teenagers with nothing to do will find something to do. When there aren’t parents in the house that something to do will often be each other.

    We ended up going a lot of random places in search of somewhere without parents. One night my friend called me to tell me the guy she had just started dating said we could hang out at his parents carpet store. So we got someone’s older brother to get us beer, picked them up and spend several hours playing music over the pa and hanging out at a carpet store at 11pm. At one point my two other friends and I discovered a tank of helium the business had used for promotional balloons. So we did the only sensible thing and started singing the Wizard of Oz song We represent the lollipop guild outside the bathroom door where our friend and her new boyfriend were hooking up. Moment successfully ruined.

    But essentially yes, people were far more social on average because there was no other choice.

  20. I noticed a huge change after the pandemic. Whatever smartphones and social media were doing to people really accelerated in 2020.

  21. I was born in 81 and had a taste of both sides.

    The good was that life was actually more slow. News travelled slower and we had led to focus on. Large families were common due to the boomers from the post war era. Many people had six or more aunts and uncles from a single parent.

    The bad was that life was going to be hard if you walked to the beat of a different drum. It was hard to find communities for your niche interest and being a jock was the highest status a guy could reach in school. Racism was very common, even in the 80s, homophobia was rampant and gender roles were very specific. You had a path in life and almost everyone followed that path. Many people worked at one company for their entire lives.

    Nowadays, life has more freedom and you have more choice, but it’s too much choice for some people. We are processing our trauma more but we also have chased trauma and victimhood and forgotten all about accountability.

    If I had the choice, I’m not sure what world I would pick anymore. If I could have the late 90s with the mix of technology and no smart phones, I think that was the perfect era.

    I don’t think the internet did much other than connect people and bring a better world. I think smart phones are what ruined us and I wish they didn’t exist.

  26. I wouldn’t say “more social”. Maybe “more present.”

    If anything, we’re more social today, but our audience is different. Broader. Less focused. Right now, I’m socializing with all of you, while on the shitter at work. That’s not something that existed at the turn of the century.

    That comes with its pros and cons. It’s great that I can have a conversation with classmates that I haven’t seen in a decade who are scattered across the country from the comfort of my own bed. But it’s potentially detrimental to the conversation I’m *not* having with my wife who’s right there next to me.

    It’s tempting to say “adults used to converse with their neighbors.” But you know what? I know half the families in my neighborhood. I see them and converse with them in an almost daily basis. But we also coordinate parties and events on Facebook. When I was a kid, my parents would send us out, and we’d knock on doors to ask if friends could come out and play. That still happens today, but I’m more likely to send a message to the parents, and see who’s available to play before they head out.

    I’ve also lived in a neighborhood as an adult where I NEVER saw a single neighbor outside. It was lonely. But I can’t generalize either way.

    TLDR: we’re social creatures. Always have been, and always will be. The Internet has expanded who we socialize with, and people often choose that over the people right in front of them.

  27. I was never home. Always out with friends somewhere. We didn’t even plan it. You just showed up at the usual spots and there was someone to hang out with.

  28. It’s so hard to say anecdotally because I was a different age and relationship status back then. People change socially as they age. So it’. hard to say how much the Internet actually changed things. On one hand there was no Zoom. And you couldn’t easily text people. So if you DID want to interact with people, you usually had to do it in person. But on the other hand, without texting and social media, you might never even meet people or maintain a connection at all. So.. dunno.

    I think the Internet allows people to self-isolate if they want to. But I don’t think it’s necessary. You can just as easily use the Internet to facilitate IRL interactions. Dating sites, for example. My dating pool was TINY before the Internet. I was never one to just approach random women.

    I will say that as a CHILD I definitely was outside more. But I think that has more to do with parents being super protective and less to do with the INternet. Do kids even go outside to play by themselves at all anymore? My street (well, sidewalks) as a kid was full of kids playing. Now neighborhoods are silent.

  29. hard to answer this one for me personally because i’m 34 so i remember the world before the total domination of the internet but i was really young. because i was young, i felt like life was necessarily social because of school. i do think kids were more social without a lot of social media and smart devices. the other day i was just thinking about how, when i started college and would hangout with people there were no distractions. like no one was checking their phone or anything and social media was limited to when you were at your computer and it was primarily facebook and myspace. it really felt like you were more in the moment with people.

  30. People were more ____ before the internet.

    Insert just about anything good in the blank to form a true statement.

  31. Yeah, dude.

    Technology will be our death. Literally and figuratively. I ain’t talkin’ about no AI either… Death via pollution making this shit.

  33. You ride your bike to your buddies house just to see if he was home lol. Keep going until you found something. Option B was sit at home and watch whatever mom and dad wanted to watch. 🚲

    Then wander around the neighborhood until you found another group doing the same thing. Being bored was an adventure!

  35. Yes and differences of opinion on politics and religion could be discussed on merit, conversation was a talent and you did not answer a phone while dinner was served. But

  36. Honestly, I can only speak for me and say my experience was not much different before and after the internet. I visited a friend once a week usually, just like now, I spent most of my leisure time watching TV (which is basically what I do now with streaming), I have a work schedule instead of going to school… I really can’t pinpoint how my life is appreciably different.

  37. Yes. Absolutely. The fact that young people born today can’t fathom how socializing used to be so different is evidence how screwed we are.

  38. Yes. I grew up in the “pre social media” and post social media worlds, childhood to adolescence. As a kid there was more of a sense of community. I remember my parents having conversations with strangers, people were more open. Huge block parties, tons of kids running around. Neighborhood was swarmed for Halloween, kids in the daylight/evening. Then teens partying at night. Social media, high speed internet and dumb-phones have altered society considerably.

  39. Yes. Not “the internet” so much as “smart phones”. There were still plenty of socially isolated and weird folks, but… it’s just creepy to watch 100 kid exit class already on their smart phones before they even clear the door.

  40. Yes, before we had computers we would go outside for fun – usually other kids would too and you made friends. I still socialize with people randomly when out shopping and whatnot but the only folks that engage in conversation are usually older than me

  41. I was still socially awkward before social media and the internet. I just read books in public instead

  42. This is antidotal but I remember the day socializing changed. It was the day in 2006 the Wii was released. I owned a dive bar in a small college town that had a big reputation with emerging bands.

    After a couple years of successful shows, we were seeing the local live music scene growing even the high schoolers here. They were packing the little coffee house, friends basements, anywhere they could put on shows. I decided to do an all ages show early evening with some of the local high school bands even though I wasn’t going to make any money off of it.

    Nobody showed up. The bands didn’t end up playing. The spent at least an hour calling all their friends that normally showed up but they were too busy with their new Wiis. Social media was really starting to grow at the same time and I saw a dramatic change in the nightlife after that.

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