| ▲ | toomuchtodo a day ago |
| Decline in religion + third spaces combined with socioeconomic system expectations of a 40 hour work week + two incomes needed to live comfortably. Places and time for community and social activities has declined, and so social activity has as well. If more social time is desired at the macro system level, people need to have more leisure time (shorter work week, higher wages, good quality of life with more free time broadly speaking) and more third spaces to meet and socialize. Citations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 |
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| ▲ | returningfory2 a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Is there a citation for the decline in third spaces? I read such a claim often. But in my part of the US (Brooklyn NY) the number of third spaces like coffee shops and pottery studios is booming. |
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| ▲ | dansquizsoft 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Brooklyn isn't very representative of the majority of middle America | | |
| ▲ | Barrin92 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | there's diners and bars in every corner of middle America. What's changed, I think, is the level of striverism among young people. In this thread you have multiple people saying they can't go out without paying 200$ or ordering 8$ beers. If you're in your 20s or 30s just go bar hopping in whatever the rundown part of your town is like people used to instead of going fine dining. A movie ticket, inflation adjusted, costs the same as it used to for decades. Normal people just took it for granted that they had to smuggle some beers into the cinema rather than turning the whole evening into some hundreds of dollars spending spree. |
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| ▲ | hobo123 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Part of it may be high rents. I read that rents increased a lot because of fashion stores. They make so much revenue per hour that more traditional stores (like the laundry, the washing machine store, the sewing store, the tabletop games store, and maybe cheaper cafes and restaurants just can't compete. | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Does it count as a third space if you have to pay for it? Coffee shops and such don't feel like good third spaces to me, because I don't always want to spend money just to exist | | |
| ▲ | returningfory2 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Does it count as a third space if you have to pay for it? Yes, third spaces/places include places you need to pay for. | | |
| ▲ | iamnothere 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | You were downvoted but you are correct. Some classic examples of third spaces are English pubs and Dutch coffee houses. That third spaces include commercial spaces does not imply that “free” (tax or donation funded) third spaces should not exist. Parks and museums are also great third spaces. | | |
| ▲ | TFNA 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | While in many countries cafes and pubs served as real third places in the past, rising rents (and other costs) have led many establishments to discourage people from lingering. At my old haunts, loud music is now played to get customers moving on, and the very second you're done with your drink the wait staff will swoop down and ask if you want to place another order (i.e. a hint to pay more or get out). Compare this to earlier times when it might have been common and socially acceptable to sit for hours on a single purchase and just shoot the shit with fellow townspeople. | | |
| ▲ | iamnothere 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is also true, especially in busy areas, but sometimes going to a different neighborhood changes things (depending on the city). |
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| ▲ | ryanchants 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Home is the first place, work/school is the second place, the third place is everything else. |
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| ▲ | astura a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | When I was a kid kids used to just hang out. We'd take a bus, ride bikes, or walk to the mall, the park, the woods, fast food restaurant, record store, dollar store, etc and just loiter. Nobody had any money to buy anything, but boy we'd browse and loiter. Sometimes we'd just walk for hours. We'd walk miles and miles and miles just to sit at a table at Burger King with a single small fry between our group and hang out there. Children don't do that anymore; they basically don't leave the house because they have the Internet. They communicate through texting and Discord so they don't even have to "hang out." Beyond the social change, when I was a young adult most malls went 18+ (unless accompanied by parents/guardians) and most other businesses nowadays allow teens to loiter the way we use to. Businesses want people in and out once they are done. Even if business allowed it, most parents don't allow their kids to leave the house unattended anymore. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | legister's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091295 mentions it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone Additional citations: https://ibs.colorado.edu/new-research-on-disappearing-third-... https://www.aei.org/domestic-policy/americas-third-places-ar... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13538... https://esl.uchicago.edu/2023/11/01/third-places-what-are-th... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/business/third-place-mean... NYC is a thriving city of 8.5 million people and one of the most economically active cities in the world, so your experience may be different than say, Gary, Indiana. | | |
| ▲ | returningfory2 a day ago | parent [-] | | Thank you! I skimmed these citations and I remain unconvinced. But I think really answering the question would be a real research project, not a HN back and forth :) The first citation's relevant highlight is "All categories of third places experienced widespread closures from 2019 to 2021" which is obviously a COVID phenomenon and not a cultural trend. They admit so much. Data from that period I would say is generally irrelevant to discussing wider cultural trends. In fact a query to Gemini says that the number of independent (not chain) coffee shops is growing at 3.2% across the country and it gives this citation: https://www.locationscloud.com/research-report/us-coffee-sho... The other Science Direct article says "Third places _may_ be closing in neighborhoods across the United States" (my emphasis). The remaining articles seem to be opinion articles without hard data. They focus on the hypothetical problem of third places going away. In fact the AEI article talks about zoning which cannot possibly be of relevance to any decline in third places given that zoning is becoming less restrictive over time in the last decade. |
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| ▲ | pvab3 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| An enormous portion of my social life is through my church. Bible studies, committee, small groups, Sunday schools are the main structures things, and then you make friends through it and start having other people over and hanging out with them. I don't know what my social life would look like without it. |
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| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | At least in the US, people are leaving the church (at least the more conservative ones) in droves. I saw recent numbers that over 40% of people who were raised LDS are no longer in adulthood, for example. Tying religion to politics was probably a bad idea for both religion and politics. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | SoftTalker a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The 40 hour work week is most assuredly not new in the past 30 years. The households where both parents work full time probably have increased in that time, but I'd say you have to go back closer to 50 years to really get to a time where it was still somewhat common for a housewife to be home all day with the kids. |
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| ▲ | geodel a day ago | parent | next [-] | | This 40 hr/week need to be combined with 1) Increasing job/economic insecurity. 2) Prices rising faster then income for majority of population. 3) increasing commute time around employment, activity hubs 4) kids activities/sports are now taken as seriously as work project deliverables. Previously it could be just gifted kids in school teams now with pay-to-play a lot more kids are involved in "serious sports". | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't know about the sports. It's probably more serious now. Youth soccer is a whole thing that didn't exist at all when I was a kid. But lots of kids played Little League or basketball or football back then (1970s). "Travel" teams were probably not as common, but I was not a sports kid so I don't have a lot of direct experience. There were also swimming lessons, music lessons, Cub Scouts, a lot of other kids activities. It wasn't all just hanging out at home. | | |
| ▲ | treis 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Youth sports are pants on your head crazy these days. Like most things you don't have to go nuts but so many families do. |
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| ▲ | astura a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Dual income earners hasn't even increased that much, 44% in 1967 to 53% in 2011 - https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140602.htm | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I think there's this fictional idea that families in the past didn't struggle with money and need both parents to work. My father worked full time and my mother worked about 30 hours a week when I was a child (1970s). | | |
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| ▲ | swingandamiss a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| regarding the 40 hour work week, I wonder what "always on" is doing to impact social activities. Meaning, you work 40 hours in the office, then you go home and get online and work a few more hours each night. |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo a day ago | parent [-] | | The constant aggregate dopamine demand and chasing activities is certainly not helping, imho. "Work, home, doomscroll, repeat." |
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