Estimates on the count of close friendships, amount of acquaintances, dating, sexual activity, etc - all falling.
People have fewer and fewer relationships, and even fewer close or intimate relationships. "Third places" are in decline, demand-induced - social activity takes place "in person" less and less, and more and more of it moves "online".
If your idea of "human experience" is "close relationship in person" or "group activities offline", and not something like "a friend chat group with memes and games, most of them never met in person", "social media posting", "parasocial relationship with a streamer" or "public Minecraft and Roblox servers", then "human experience" is on decline by just about any metric available.
Those aren't new trends either. They predate things like companion/roleplay AI chatbots - which seem popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha in particular.
How that new thing shakes out is still unclear, but modern AIs are probably the closest thing to a "human experience" one can get without involving a human at all. So there's even more room for the metrics to fall now - regardless of whether "hanging out in a streamer's chat" counts as "human experience" to you.
alt Hacker News
Estimates on the count of close friendships, amount of acquaintances, dating, sexual activity, etc - all falling.
People have fewer and fewer relationships, and even fewer close or intimate relationships. "Third places" are in decline, demand-induced - social activity takes place "in person" less and less, and more and more of it moves "online".
If your idea of "human experience" is "close relationship in person" or "group activities offline", and not something like "a friend chat group with memes and games, most of them never met in person", "social media posting", "parasocial relationship with a streamer" or "public Minecraft and Roblox servers", then "human experience" is on decline by just about any metric available.
Those aren't new trends either. They predate things like companion/roleplay AI chatbots - which seem popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha in particular.
How that new thing shakes out is still unclear, but modern AIs are probably the closest thing to a "human experience" one can get without involving a human at all. So there's even more room for the metrics to fall now - regardless of whether "hanging out in a streamer's chat" counts as "human experience" to you.