The article recounts several anecdotes that hint at causes but stops short of authoritatively declaring a set of reasons (and answer its own headline). But the key point seems to be that social settings like high school and college result in the acquisition of most of one's friends, and as that group of friends goes their separate ways and people settle down to focus on themselves, work, or starting a family, there are fewer settings to get to know new people. But this is an unsatisfactory conclusion -- if every new family, every fresh-on-their-own adult, every new arrival in town within the same age and peer group experiencing the same social decline, why is this phenomenon so widely unsolved, and not self-correcting?
My hypothesis is that cultural changes have caused interactions with strangers to be largely perceived as unwelcome. When interactions do occur and aren't immediately dismissed, they're mentally filed as one-off events not requiring a follow-up -- talking with the person next to you on a plane, or striking up a conversation in the store.
There is a wide continuum of behaviors and interactions between courteous banter and harassment. This isn't the usual lament about how people don't talk to each other; this is the lament that people don't talk to each other because we don't want to be bothersome to others, even if sometimes we wouldn't mind being talked to.
The fact that 'friend dating' is now a real phenomenon, where people explicitly consent to having a mutual conversation, potentially pre-selected by interests and appearance, lends credence to this hypothesis.
My hypothesis is that cultural changes have caused interactions with strangers to be largely perceived as unwelcome. When interactions do occur and aren't immediately dismissed, they're mentally filed as one-off events not requiring a follow-up -- talking with the person next to you on a plane, or striking up a conversation in the store.
There is a wide continuum of behaviors and interactions between courteous banter and harassment. This isn't the usual lament about how people don't talk to each other; this is the lament that people don't talk to each other because we don't want to be bothersome to others, even if sometimes we wouldn't mind being talked to.
The fact that 'friend dating' is now a real phenomenon, where people explicitly consent to having a mutual conversation, potentially pre-selected by interests and appearance, lends credence to this hypothesis.