How the Internet has Changed Relationships
It's not that Netflix is better than fulfilling friendships
Hey normal subscribers, this is a departure form my normal content about Galesburg. I still intend to write more about our town, but I also have ideas on other subject matters. So if you aren’t interested in this other content then I totally understand, no obligation to read this post.
Just recently Spotify dropped its year end Wrapped feature for its users. It shows you your top songs and artists for the past year and even includes a little graphic you can share on social media. It’s a fun little thing to look at to have a little nostalgia for the music you listened to over the past year.
It’s also cool because you can see what everyone else has been listening to. But as the years rolled on I’ve noticed that most everyone else’s Spotify Wrappeds have almost no songs, bands or artists that I have even heard of. It may just be that I’m not hip to the whole music world, but there’s something else.
No longer shackled by just what’s played on the radio, we now live in a world of extreme musical abundance. We can listen to music that perfectly matches our interests, which leads us all to have niche musical tastes. From the standpoint of a music listener this is actually fantastic! We can now listen to more music that is more closely aligned with what we like. But with us listening to ever more niche music, it makes it harder for us to find common interest in our music, at least for some. For me personally my taste in music is one of the last things that I’ll socialize about, because I know what I listen to isn’t what most people listen to. Hell, most people don’t listen to what most people listen to apparently.
Internet has changed Socialization
There has been a lot of talk over the last decade or so about the effect the internet has had on friendship, socialization, and relationships of all types. There was a recent episode of the Plain English with Derek Thompson podcast that featured the guest Bryce Ward who is an economist who studies aloneness and loneliness.
From the metrics it’s clear, people are indeed spending less time with friends while at the same time spending more time alone on the internet. This is a continuation of a phenomenon described in the famous book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, that people are shying away from communal activity and moving toward more individualized ones.
But there’s a way this is all talked about that rubs me the wrong way. From looking at the time-use data you’d think people are just making the choice to watch more shows and spend more time on their phones. As if people were given the explicit choice between fulfilling time with friends and watching their shows, they’d just choose their shows. This is the same basic idea in an infamous piece in The Economist that asserted that video games had gotten so good that young men were deciding not to work. Years after the article with a better economy the employment rate for young men ticked up back to normal. It turned out that it wasn’t so much that young men were choosing video games over a job, but that the job opportunities were not great so they instead filled their time playing video games.
I think there is something similar going on with the rising aloneness, or at least a similar error being made in the analysis. I don’t believe that it’s people making the conscious choice to spend more time on the internet over friendship and relationships, but that the internet has changed how we interact with human connection and what we want out of it. The changes I will describe can come from the internet in general regardless of device. While mobile phones and other devices can have specific influences on this trend as well I won’t be discussing them here.
More Niche less Zeitgeist
One thing that has made it slightly harder to socialize is that our shared culture has fractured wildly. Like mentioned in the opening section, I can look at other people’s Spotify Wrapped cards and not see a single song or artist or genre that I listened to or even heard of. This makes it hard to talk about music because there is so much fracturing of taste. Everyone is now listening to niche music and whatever part of the mainstream they enjoy.
Why does this matter for friendship and relationship? One common ingredient for relationships of any kind is some sort of shared past or common interest. There has to be something in common to spark the interest in continuing to socialize with someone else, especially friendships. Not all friendships form from common interests, but it can at the very least be a way to break the ice with someone and have some sort of pre-built shared past that they didn’t forge together.
When I hear about previous eras of television I am always astonished at the numbers. Seinfeld in its last 4 seasons in the late 90s had an average viewership over 30 million people per episode. The final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 had an estimated 106 million viewers, nearly half the US population at the time. These were massive cultural phenomena, everyone was watching it or at the very least aware of it. They were so huge that nobody could really avoid them.
With shows that massive and well known it was relatively easy to strike up a conversation about them. The day after a new episode of Seinfeld came out there was a good chance you could talk with a complete stranger about it. It was so ubiquitous that the chances of someone having seen it were pretty high.
Nowadays, being able to talk about our entertainment is not nearly as easy. There are just so so so many movies, shows, songs, albums, articles, books, podcasts, and internet videos to watch. There has never been such diversity of entertainment that has been available to us to fill our limited time. And it turns out we’re consuming way more media than we ever were.
But with that abundance we have less that is shared, fewer common touchstones. When I talk with friends and acquaintances I am constantly struck by how they are deeply into shows, movies, videos, or music that I have never even heard of. There are shows out there with massive dedicated followings that I don’t even know exist. I remember at the end of 2021 Barack Obama put out his year end lists for his favorite books, movies, and music I was shocked that I recognized maybe only 10% of what he had selected, having never heard of the rest. The New York Times just put out its list of Best Movies of 2022 and I only recognized one of them. Maybe the main takeaway of this section is that I’m just living under a rock, or that there are just so many options out there for entertainment and culture products that it’s hard to even hear of it all.
Our niche tastes make it harder for us to be able to socialize across shared interests because the possible interests we have are much more infinite than they ever have been. Despite the fracturing of entertainment products to fit our ever deeper niches we still desire to have deep connections with people who have similar interests, and that makes it really hard for us.
Seemingly in the past when there was less available media to consume there were many people with what we could call “imperfect” interests. Sure they took interest in sports or movies or shows, but if they had the more expansive set of options we do now they wouldn’t have been nearly into their previous passions. So the abundance of the internet hasn’t necessarily come to replace friendship, but makes it somewhat harder to form.
The bar has been raised.
We know more about how people perceive us
There has been endless ink spilled about how the internet and social media can give people depression and anxiety by showing them really successful, beautiful, or talented people who we as mere mortals cannot compete with. We feel bad because we see someone that has something we want that we don’t or can’t have. We then create unrealistic expectations for ourselves and feel that it’s really only our personal deficiencies getting in the way.
But there is an inverse phenomenon that is less reported but I believe provides an undercurrent of anxiety around social engagement, especially for the younger folk. This is sometimes called “cringe”. The basic idea is that you see someone who does something that is socially embarrassing, and you feel bad about yourself because you see yourself in that person. The anxiety comes from seeing yourself in the person doing the transgression and the fear that if you aren’t careful you will be the person doing the transgression without realizing it. It’s not like the other example where the other person has something you want, it’s seeing someone else doing something that you don’t like about yourself. (If you want a more in-depth explanation to Cringe I can’t recommend this video by YouTuber ContraPoints highly enough)
On Reddit.com one of the most popular subreddits is r/AskReddit. It’s a place where people post questions and then the general public give answers. As a lover of takes and ideas I used to read these threads obsessively. After a while I started to know what kinda questions were very popular and which ones I really liked. By far some of the most popular threads were some form of “Guys, what do girls not get about being a guy”, “Girls, what’s the creepiest thing a man has said to you”, “What do you really like about the opposite gender”, “What do you want the other gender to know”, “What sucks about your Gender”, and on and on in similar fashion. I would eat these threads up because I’m curious about how other people's lives work and what they find acceptable. In some ways I would read these because I wanted to be a better person.
But if you read everything people have to say about other people and work it into your model for how you interact with the world, you’ll quickly find a problem. That problem is that there are people who find issue with almost everything you can possibly do in your life, whether the action is meaningful, ordinary, or a total non-issue ordinarily.
With this information it can be a massive weight on your shoulders if you let it. The information that anything you do, any identity you have, or even anything you don’t do or don’t identify as may make people upset at you. That can be a lot of weight on your shoulders that even minute actions could be affecting others in a way you don’t intend.
How does this relate to issues making friends and relationships? In order to make human connections, you in some ways have to put yourself out there at least a little bit. You have to act in an authentic way, start a conversation, or express feelings to someone without knowing if they’ll reciprocate. And if you do those and the other person doesn’t like it then that stings bad. You can feel like you failed to read the situation correctly. Younger folk especially are afraid of failure these days, and failing at a social interaction can feel extra humiliating. In the friendship space there may be a desire to somehow know you’re going to be safe pursuing the friendship, to know that it’s not going to be cringe to try to become friends. But we don’t get those assurances beforehand, we can’t research a potential friend fully like we’re researching the best non-stick pan on the market.
Being exposed to other’s opinions can heighten our own expectations of ourselves in a relationship context. If anything we want to save ourselves from being the inspiration of a post talking about something we did that the other person didn’t like. Or at the very least this can be the case for people who are more prone to anxiety. (Of all the sections this one was most controversial amongst those who I had read over this piece, so some people feel this heightened anxiety while others are unaffected.)
So not only is it that we have more diffuse interests that make it harder to find common ground for relationships, but the expectations we place on ourselves have heightened. The internet has exposed us to more points of view that can make it feel like it’s harder to fit in as an upstanding member of society. That makes it tougher to form relationships.
But there’s still more, because the quality of relationships we want has increased.
Our Relationship Standards have Risen
So to recap, the internet has exposed us to greater niched content, making it harder to have collective shared cultural touchstones. Then the internet has exposed us to other’s unfiltered thoughts on our behaviors, which can lead to anxiety and raise the bar of what we expect of ourselves in our connections with others.
But let’s say we get through the first two hurdles, you find someone with enough common interests and you get over your own personal anxieties to start hanging out with someone on a regular basis. But this person does some things you don’t like. They don’t text you back as much as you want, sometimes they’re a little shitty to you, and their beliefs about society don’t match up with yours.
Now in a previous era all of these small issues could and would generally be ignored, the differences weren’t too big a deal or they were hardly discussed so were never known. Along with having greater expectations for ourselves in possible relationships we now have greater expectations for how that relationship is going to operate.
If you ever read the subreddit r/relationships, people will post about their issues that they're having in their relationship to get other’s thoughts about what to do in their situation. It’s a cliche at this time but a good number of threads the main advice is “leave this person, no longer have this person in your life, with this person in your life like this you are not going to be happy”.
We are no longer content with people who just happen to be in our lives. We now require that our friends and partners share our beliefs on a much wider array of issues than we did before. We want people who align with us in political beliefs and general outlook on life. We also expect our friends and partners to fit into better patterns of behavior than we did before.
It seemed like when I was growing up there was a greater acceptance of people who were assholes, shitty people, and less acceptance of people expressing identities outside the conservative cultural norm. Now it’s the opposite, we as a society tend to be more accepting of people who are different than us but not if someone is a shitty person.
People have learned that they no longer want to accept being friends or in a relationship with someone who is mean or shitty to them. They don’t want to be in a relationship or friendship with someone who doesn’t share their beliefs. What we want in our relationships has increased, the demand for higher quality has come because the internet has told us that we don’t have to put up with bad relationships. Our relationships can have as many good or bad parts as we want or tolerate. With the internet exposing us to a wider range of what’s possible, people are tolerating fewer of the bad things and wanting more of the good things.
And I suppose it isn’t new that people want good relationships in their lives, but in previous eras there seems like there was just a lot more “well that’s just what you’ve got to put up with” or “they’re my friend so I gotta stick by them, what else am I going to do?”. Hell, not even too long ago divorce was much more frowned upon and even illegal. It was believed that once you chose a life partner you stayed with them no matter how incompatible you ended up being. Even if that person made you miserable you were supposed to stay with them for some yadda yadda greater good. We now know that divorce is better for people overall, that being in a relationship that doesn’t work isn’t good for anyone, even kids. Sure the idea of finding a life partner and staying together through thick and thin is a nice idea, but if the relationship is unbearable for one or both people then what’s really the point?
But in previous eras, there was another factor that kept people in relationships that is seemingly gone now.
The Perceived Abundance of Possible Relationships
If anything the internet has brought an age of information abundance. Along with that we have an abundance of opportunities for human connection that were never possible before. It is theoretically possible to connect with any human being anywhere on the planet, as long as you both have an internet connection. This means that we perceive there to be a nearly infinite abundance of potential partners and friendships that we could theoretically enjoy.
This even extends beyond people who are deliberately seeking relationships on the internet, but to our lived lives. There is no longer the belief that we have to make do with the people immediately in our lives, if we don’t want to socialize with them then we don't. We have the perceived possibility to find relationships outside our immediate social network.
This abundance however is hard to fully realize. Meeting people and forming relationships online is still very tricky. Conversation and socialization are not owed in a similar manner to in-person relations. Like if you are invited to a party, you are able to socialize with every single member of the party if you want. Part of the social contract of a party is to talk to people, and if you are there everyone is on equal footing to be able to approach you to start a conversation. It would be massively impolite to completely ignore someone at a party and not acknowledge them if they were trying to talk to you.
On the internet, socialization is different. Let’s say you find a community online of people you feel are similar to you, have similar interests, and behave in ways you find acceptable. You can start messaging people to try to foster some sort of relationship. But the fact of the matter is that none of those people owe you a response, not a single one. There is no social etiquette that if someone messages you that you have to respond in similar fashion to someone approaching you in real life. There is no obligation to respond. If the message doesn’t hit right or the person isn’t feeling right about you then the relationship won’t materialize, there will never be a message back.
Take for example the popular dating/hookup app Tinder. Both men and women have their issues with it. On its face Tinder offers up the idea that there are so many people out there wanting relationships or to hookup. The stream of faces can feel endless. But what most men end up finding is that while there are many women wanting to hookup and have relationships, most women don’t want that with them specifically. And what women find is that there are many men wanting to hook up with them or have relationships, but most aren’t men with the qualities they are looking for. So while Tinder is an amazing experience for some people, for many others it is not.
So while there is a massive abundance of possible interactions and connections made possible by the internet, in a practical sense it can be hard to realize any of these potential connections. Purely online relationships may even have a higher bar for what counts as acceptable. It enables you to find someone so specific to your needs and desires, but that process of finding them can be like finding a needle in a haystack the size of the whole world. While in the past our immediately available relationships were subpar to our needs and wants(whether we knew it or not), we now have the promise of relationships that fulfill all of our needs and wants, but we have to look longer and harder for it
And lots of this has to do with perception. In the past there was the perception that the number of possible relationships you could get into were more limited, so you were more willing to make compromises on what you wanted. On the flip side, with the perception of relationship abundance we are willing to shop around and wait and reject relationships that don’t fit what we are wanting.
We can shop around and find what we want
Going back to my throwaway line about shopping for a non-stick pan for second, in a previous era I would have put up with an inferior nonstick pan because there were only so many options. I would have had what was available to me in the stores around me. I could shop around, but going around town and comparing pans takes time and effort. Even then there wasn’t a real good way to know which was better. Maybe the $18 pan at Walmart is truly the best but I buy the $45 pan at the more expensive store because I think a higher price necessarily means better quality. I couldn’t just go onto Wirecutter and figure out what the best pan was, I would have to test it myself. Maybe I would’ve been discouraged and just settled for a cast iron pan instead, which costs less and isn’t exactly what I wanted but functionally does similar work to what a non-stick pan can generally do.
This is similar to our possible relationships. We now know that we can find the best possible relationships for us. We can find the knowledge to help us fully realize what we want in relationships. The possibilities are endless but unfortunately there isn’t a Wirecutter article to tell us the persons most compatible for us to be friends or partners. Maybe we go with what’s immediately available to us, maybe we spend lots of time and energy finding exactly what we want. The choice is daunting, but the infinite possibilities are hard to resist.
IN CONCLUSION
The internet has changed how we approach our relationships. It is not so much that Netflix is a substitute for fulfilling connections with people, but it is a substitute for relationships we now deem as subpar. Our standards for starting a relationship are higher, and our expectations in our relationships are higher. When we aren’t able to achieve these higher relationship desires we then instead fill our time with content on the internet.
Sometimes I look at my relationships with my closest friends. My main group of friends is a group of guys I first started hanging out with in middle school (I’m now 27 btw). We have our shared history and over time they have become my best friends. I couldn’t imagine how my life would be now without them, but almost certainly it would be worse. But I can’t help but think that if I met all of these guys now at this time in my life, I don’t know if I’d form friendships with them. While we are friends and do have some common interests, over time our individual interests have grown in different directions. We all like our niche interests, and sometimes a majority of the group will be into something while I or someone else in the group isn’t that into it. There is a good chance that if we met today we wouldn’t be friends even if we weren’t any different as people.
Developing relationships is hard, whether it be friendships or life partners. But this trend towards aloneness seems to me to be more an unconscious change in the choices we make regarding our relationships. The bar for entry has increased and the bar for maintaining a relationship has increased. It may not be the case for everyone but I can definitely see this among more online younger folk. It’s not that we want fewer friends and relationships, but what we deem minimally tolerable has increased significantly due to the internet. Some of us are rejecting potential relationships, and some of us are being rejected. The internet has given us the information to be better consumers and practitioners of human relationships, but we’re still figuring out what a world with that greater understanding looks like.