Did you know our country is in an antisocial revolution?  We don’t “hang out” anymore.  In my day it was referred to as “riding around.”  That’s what we did whenever we could get the car for the afternoon.  We would load it to the top with friends and then find more friends in other cars to meet up with. The chit-chat, singing with the radio and laughs didn’t stop.  According to “Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out” in The Atlantic, American teenagers reduced their face-to-face socializing by 45% from 2003 to 2022.  My goodness, riding around was the bane of our parents’ lives.  Little did they know it contributed significantly to our growing into happy, social adults.  We were doing them a favor. That was our teenage years.

If you back up to pre-elementary or elementary years, I can positively tell you our moms never arranged a play date for us in their lives.  We worked like gangbusters every summer morning getting our chores done.  We practiced our piano.  We got dressed, combed our hair, brushed our teeth and then approached Mumsy Wumsy to go outside to play.  We had a whole neighborhood that rode bikes, played ante-I-over, ran through the irrigation water, built clubhouses, went on excursions to Little Jungle and a million more things.  No parental planning involved. We didn’t need it, nor did we want it.  

The article in The Atlantic goes on to identify “digital screen time” as the primary culprit in depriving us of social interaction.  Now that is television as well as iphones.  Another significant trend to jump out of the data “…is that Americans have traded people for pets in our social time.  The average time that Americans spend with their pets has roughly doubled in the past 20 years…”  Now, I’m not against pets, but we all need some people time!  

How does this apply to the senior population?  Well, I think it is up to us to teach these younger folks how to Hang Out.  So, grab a grandkid, pat Fido on the head and leave him home, pick up Grandma Red, tune into 60s Gold and go have some fun.  Life is Good!