You make really good points about social media obviously not being a direct substitute for in-person friendship on an hours-to-hours basis, despite the media obsessively looking for the key under that streetlight. But I wonder if there isn't a more subtle thing happening here with social media displacement, namely, that it's not "displacement" per se but rather contentedness.
Humans have a certain drive for social connection. We get bored. We get lonely. We want to talk to people. We eventually get so annoyed with loneliness that we get up the courage to walk up to that kid in school and say hi. Kids are simply doing that less, with no obvious replacement in terms of time spent. So maybe we shouldn't be trying to do a "calories in, calories out" type analysis with socializing and instead we should start asking whether different forms of social interaction affect that drive for connection in different ways.
I wonder if TV, games, social media, etc. serve to mollify that drive more efficiently than actual in-person hangouts do, such that we can sate the hunger for social connection in less clock time per day than actually meeting up in person would take. With the downside that such efficient connection has a sort of empty-calories effect; it "fills up" our immediate socialization drive, but it's less efficient at giving us the type of friendship nutrients that foster deep connections and stave off depression.
tl;dr it's not that the meaning of friends has changed but that internet friends are fake friends, and teens increasingly have primarily internet friends.
"The meaning of the word "friend" has changed, substantively and steadily over time, for American teens."
It's interesting to me that you say this. Different cultures define the word 'friend' more strictly than others. Americans are widely known for using the word 'friend' very casually: to them, it basically means "acquaintance I like". Maybe immigrants and first-generation Americans have a more strict definition in mind when responding to the survey. The % of the population who are first generation Americans has been greatly increasing so it could partially explain the results. I wonder if there is a correlation.
"Americans are simply not making friends in school and, consequently, are spending less time with their (non) friends outside of school."
You make really good points about social media obviously not being a direct substitute for in-person friendship on an hours-to-hours basis, despite the media obsessively looking for the key under that streetlight. But I wonder if there isn't a more subtle thing happening here with social media displacement, namely, that it's not "displacement" per se but rather contentedness.
Humans have a certain drive for social connection. We get bored. We get lonely. We want to talk to people. We eventually get so annoyed with loneliness that we get up the courage to walk up to that kid in school and say hi. Kids are simply doing that less, with no obvious replacement in terms of time spent. So maybe we shouldn't be trying to do a "calories in, calories out" type analysis with socializing and instead we should start asking whether different forms of social interaction affect that drive for connection in different ways.
I wonder if TV, games, social media, etc. serve to mollify that drive more efficiently than actual in-person hangouts do, such that we can sate the hunger for social connection in less clock time per day than actually meeting up in person would take. With the downside that such efficient connection has a sort of empty-calories effect; it "fills up" our immediate socialization drive, but it's less efficient at giving us the type of friendship nutrients that foster deep connections and stave off depression.
tl;dr it's not that the meaning of friends has changed but that internet friends are fake friends, and teens increasingly have primarily internet friends.
"The meaning of the word "friend" has changed, substantively and steadily over time, for American teens."
It's interesting to me that you say this. Different cultures define the word 'friend' more strictly than others. Americans are widely known for using the word 'friend' very casually: to them, it basically means "acquaintance I like". Maybe immigrants and first-generation Americans have a more strict definition in mind when responding to the survey. The % of the population who are first generation Americans has been greatly increasing so it could partially explain the results. I wonder if there is a correlation.
"Americans are simply not making friends in school and, consequently, are spending less time with their (non) friends outside of school."
Younger generations are making less friends. This is something that is pretty well-documented at this point: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/8/1/20750047/millennials-poll-loneliness