Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015)

Re:Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) by codingdave on Sunday November 26, 2017 @08:09PM (#15784084)

Sounds like we lived differently than you did -- My parents had people over to play cards and other games on many nights. Or we would go over to someone else's house. On nights when it was just the family at home, we played card games and board games. We also went for bikes rides, went out for ice cream, went on hikes. We threw frisbees, played soccer and football, on the weekends, we'd go skiing, fishing, camping. We spent many evenings out with our own friends as well, once we turned about 7 or 8, and the neighborhood kids would all run around in a pack together. As for knowing what everyone else is up to, photos would come in the mail, along with letters. When we did get together, slide shows would ensue. Phone calls were the primary way to keep in touch with family and friends, and my older relatives still maintain a weekly call with everyone in the family.

Sure, TV as a time waster also existed. And most people did spend some nights watching it. But it was not all night, every night. At least not for the majority of people.

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Re:Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) by lmm on Monday November 27, 2017 @10:11AM (#15787859)

> On nights when it was just the family at home, we played card games and board games. We also went for bikes rides, went out for ice cream, went on hikes. We threw frisbees, played soccer and football, on the weekends, we'd go skiing, fishing, camping. We spent many evenings out with our own friends as well, once we turned about 7 or 8, and the neighborhood kids would all run around in a pack together.

I'm pretty sure I'm doing more of that with Facebook than I would without it. Hiking trips, cycling trips, spontaneous picnics, parties, trips to a concert - Facebook makes it easier to organise those things, and means you stay in better touch with people with more common interests. Pre-Facebook it was easy to do the common things that a critical mass of people liked, but much harder to do any kind of slightly niche social activity.

The time that I spend on Facebook is time that would have been wasted otherwise (mainly on my commute). It's not taking away from quality time.

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Re:Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) by rayiner on Sunday November 26, 2017 @08:19PM (#15784127)

The average household in 1985 was watching 7 hours of television per day. I don't imagine that left much time for board games and bike rides.

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Re:Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) by codingdave on Sunday November 26, 2017 @08:51PM (#15784258)

Why did you ask what people did before Facebook, if your intent was simply try to discredit a genuine response with statistics?

Do the math. 17 hours per day with the TV not turned on. And even the hours it was on doesn't mean the whole family was watching. Let also consider how many people watched the news every night, and stayed up for Carson. And an hour of TV after school was probably the norm. Soap operas also were popular in the 80s. Tack on an hour of MTV somewhere in the day, and that just about accounts for the average even before we consider how we spent our evenings.

There was plenty of time for all kinds of things.

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Re:Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) by rock_hard on Monday November 27, 2017 @01:54AM (#15785371)

Not if you discount 8h for sleeping!

Then you only got 16h left...minus 7h of watching TV leaves 9h...most people work 8h and in 1985 had a 40m or so commute to work...if you are still counting: we just hit about 0!

Sorry...that’s how statistics work. That not to discount cute edge cases of families playing cards with their neighbors and having ice cream...it’s just not the reality for the majority of the population :(

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Re:Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) by codingdave on Monday November 27, 2017 @03:18AM (#15785660)

You are thinking per person. The statistic is per household.

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