alt Hacker News> It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. ... I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.
It's worth noting that not everything that's good for you is enjoyable, especially in the moment.
Avoiding everything that's a "drag" means staying alone, passively consuming easy media, not exercising, eating hyper-palatble junk food, getting obese and probably depressed, etc.
> I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones.
While I agree that those cloying clickbait articles/videos idealizing random pre-smartphone teen photos and videos are obnoxious (as someone who grew up in that era). I think the modern emphasis on mindlessly reducing "friction" is going to prove ultimately unwise, though probably uncorrected as generational turnover causes people to forget what was lost, and certain degradation gets redefined as "normal" and accepted.
> My parents were always busy and exhausted.
So are modern parents, and all indications are they are more exhausted.
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> It's worth noting that not everything that's good for you is enjoyable, especially in the moment.
100%.. people tend to understand this much better with physical exercise.
Social connections have as much of an impact on mortality as e.g. smoking [1].
Yes, quitting smoking, working out, and talking to people is not pleasant - it is also healthy and good for you.
I think the examples you listed (doomscrolling, being sedentary, junk food) are related but distinct to ‘avoiding friction’. My perspective is it’s about quality, not the form; even if they correlate.
I don’t enjoy going to the gym, but I love swimming and hiking, and love that. I haven’t worked out in a gym for years, I don’t want to, and I’m quite healthy and reasonably active.
Some people are just introverts, and I think the ‘optimal’ amount of IRL time is different for every individual. Much like my gym vs swimming example; quality social interaction can take many forms; some of my closest and most meaningful friendships over decades have been based on games (voice calls; discord chats; hanging out in person sometimes and going on trips together sometimes), and that works for me; and I don’t think I’m missing anything.
Prioritise genuine human and social interaction, and for introverts, get out of the comfort zone once in a while (being a hermit is not good). But whatever form that takes is secondary to the quality and how it fits your personality and quirks.
Avoiding everything that is a drag is almost an axiom for most young people in the modern world... any sort of discomfort is obviously wrong and something to avoid. It's almost a sin to suggest someone should do something that might bring them temporary discomfort even if it's good long term.
> Avoiding everything that's a "drag" means staying alone, passively consuming easy media, not exercising, eating hyper-palatble junk food, getting obese and probably depressed, etc.
I always wonder if people say these things actually believe it.
Like are there people who really prefer junk food over good food even in the moment, or have to get their will power up to read a good book?
It just seems a sentiment that is so foreign to my exisetence.
I've been interested in this for quite a while, and have read a fair bit about it as a phenomenon. I think that pursuing comfort and convenience to the point that it's actually harmful is sort of a big factor in a lot of societal change the last several decades in many developed/Western countries. As a European/American dual national I think it's a particularly strong current in American culture, personally.
An accessible intro is Michael Easter's book The Comfort Crisis, which, while a little pop-sciencey, explores the idea that making our lives more and more comfortable (across various axes) creates a feedback cycle that shrinks our comfort zones, making some of the more rewarding (but potentially challenging/uncomfortable) things in life seem unthinkable.
For me this was a bit of a "once you've seen it you can't unsee it" kind of thing. Letting convenience be your primary metric for success often produces totally unsatisfying results, anywhere from how you build cities to the way you eat a meal.
The arc of the original World of Warcraft (broader social impacts aside) is an interesting microcosm to explore: players continually asked for convenience features that would simplify the most tedious aspects of the game and reduce social friction (organizing groups, traveling etc), but as they made things more convenient over the years, many people found that the game actually began to lose something important. The response culminated in a very successful re-release of the original, inconvenient, game after 15 years.