Author’s Note: I want to offer my thanks to the readers for all of the positive comments and messages about my last two articles, The Insular Thanksgiving and Ben's Holiday Gift Guide. Longtime readers will know I sprinkle these atypical pieces in here and there amid the usual content about the economy, real estate, and statistical trends. If I had the bandwidth (i.e. time), I would write two separate weekly columns. The first would be the usual
I think you nail it with this comment Ben: "Whether it is growing up with a reliance on screens in lieu of traditional face-to-face interactions or the loss of social skills due to pandemic isolation, young people are more reluctant to enter into long-term relationships including marriage than those of previous generations."
It's observed that children in orphanages are more empathic towards others. Children with parents are more socially isolated in single purpose dormitory suburbs and the decline in the birth rate means that they are unlikely to find playmates locally and may well be prevented by anxious parents, and more so with anxious single parents, from looking for them because the street can be a dangerous place. Females may be more empathic, males less so. And males that are not socialized via childhood contact with other males even less likely to be empathic. I think this shows up in your prison system.
I think you nail it with this comment Ben: "Whether it is growing up with a reliance on screens in lieu of traditional face-to-face interactions or the loss of social skills due to pandemic isolation, young people are more reluctant to enter into long-term relationships including marriage than those of previous generations."
It's observed that children in orphanages are more empathic towards others. Children with parents are more socially isolated in single purpose dormitory suburbs and the decline in the birth rate means that they are unlikely to find playmates locally and may well be prevented by anxious parents, and more so with anxious single parents, from looking for them because the street can be a dangerous place. Females may be more empathic, males less so. And males that are not socialized via childhood contact with other males even less likely to be empathic. I think this shows up in your prison system.