People are less spontaneous now than they used to be

[LittleMissUnreasonable]

I was born in the 80s, grew up in 90s and this is something I've just realised. People seemed to have much more time back then than they do now. Previously if you wanted to chat to someone, you'd give them a call on the landline, no scheduled "are you free next week for a call".
People would pop around and 9/10 someone would be in to offer a cuppa and a chat. Even meeting up, it was a case of "shall we meet in town at 12 on Saturday?" Now it's hard arranging to meet friends with a month's notice as everyone seems to be busy

What happened? I know I'm probably looking back on the 90s with misty eyes, but things just seemed a lot more..social

I was born in 88 and Saturday's were spent visiting relatives some with no notice, some we'd ring a couple of hours before just to check if they were free.

None of my relatives worked as much as myself and my friends do now. I vaguely remember my uncle putting in some overtime to pay for a big holiday but his wife at the time didn't work. At the weekends I don't want to be spontaneous, I want to get on top of the housework and then get outside. I see people all week whilst being cooped up in an office.

I do agree with this.

The internet has changed our lives completely but I’m not convinced the good outweighs the bad. I’m so glad it wasn’t around when I was a teenager.

I think a some of the scheduling is down to people pretending they are soo busy and are so important that they need to book things weeks in advance, while in reality they are so bloody anxious they can't step out the door unless they have 72 hours notice.

I was a teenager in the 90s and I actually think the internet would have made me a lot happier.

If you're the sort of kid who (like me) has fairly niche interests that aren't really shared by their school friends etc, the internet is really the only place you can immerse yourself, talk to likeminded people, feel like you're part of a community etc. One of my hobbies as a teenager was writing horror fiction and I had nowhere to talk about that, learn, get feedback etc. I was also really into old cult tv shows and films and stuff which none of my friends (lovely though my friends were/are) were interested in. There are a couple of Facebook groups I'm in now and YouTube channels I follow related to hobbies and interests that would have been absolutely brilliant for me when I was a teenager.

I grew up with the beginnings of social media. MySpace was the first social media for us in secondary. We would go to the school computer lab and spend our time talking and discussing what we were putting on our MySpace pages not knowing we were learning to code. Facebook came out my first year of uni. Mates and I would go to parties from other unis to meet new people and socialise (we were at a smaller, private uni). I remember what life was like before social media and like a pp said, if you’re someone into niche things, especially as a teenager it was great to find like-minded individuals to discuss such things without being dubbed weird, awkward, or in other words, not normal which is isolating.

I’m glad I grew up having it the way I did than not having it at all or only knowing of its existence.

I still rather have it than not. I wouldn’t have learned half the things I know now which would have been time-consuming and costly to learn by travelling somewhere else.

The only things that has changed really imo is expectations and people being more honest about them whether people like it or not.

I think there's a bit of misty-eyed glow going on here in terms of how great it was or how common. Although I think some of the more spontaneous stuff probably did happen, but I think there were a lot of reasons that are less realistic today.

For example, I think people's communities were physically smaller. My friends now are quite spread out - I wouldn't just drive by Friend A's house because frankly, it's too far. Similarly, we don't all meet at the pub on a Friday because we'd be coming from all over. And a similar, but slightly different version of that, is that my friends aren't all friends with each other. I can have a friend from work who lives say 25 minutes from me so we can become good enough friends to meet up on weekends, but she's not popping down to my local on a Tuesday night spontaneously. Our networks are all bigger and there's less overlap basically - when I first moved to London, I moved to an area with lots of my uni and school friends had congregated so yes, we regularly would spontaneously meet up at the pub across the road. Because we'd all just walk down and it was good to have other randoms turning up. But those same friends have now moved further away and it becomes more complicated.

I also think finances were different. On the one hand, people didn't have a lot of "Stuff" or whatever, but I think there was a bit more disposable income. DH and I don't pop down for a pub lunch on a Sunday with the kids and hope to see other local families there because frankly, a pub lunch for the four of us at our local would cost a minimum of £30 a head. £120 is more than half my weekly shop. And we're not exactly on the breadline - money is a bit tight at times but overall, we're living a pretty good life and not massively struggling.

The other thing is, I think, age. My DC are getting a bit older and I'm finding that we're slipping slightly back into a more spontaneous lifestyle. Partly because as a result of having children and living in the same area, we do actually have more local friends than a few years ago. It's also easier as we're not exhausted all the time and we can bring the DC or leave them at home easier. So these days, it's not entirely uncommon for me to randomly ring a mate and suggests her and her family come over to ours for a spontaneous Friday night BBQ or for someone to contact me and ask if I want to go for a drink that night and I can just go, in a way I couldn't when the DC were smaller.

As a child (1970s) we would just turn up at a friend's house 'can Julie play?'. No pre-arranged play dates.

I think the restaurants wanting bookings even though they have empty tables is around staffing levels .

I think some of it is that we live further from the people we socialise with. My ex boyfriend had family nearby and they would drop in lots. My aubts an uncles were all miles away so it was totally different.

And if it's a neighbour dropping in it's not a big deal if you are busy. If the people have to travel it is. So people plan more. And hence the social norm shifts more towards planning.

Sure, if your friend lives on the same street and/or when you were older. DS was lucky enough to have two friends in our very close neighbourhood. They would just turn up to play or he'd pop over there. DD on the other hand, doesn't have any friends that are close enough for her just to wander over and hang out.

DS is now 12, he travels quite far to hang out with friends and ditto them to come to ours. They organise it themselves.

Yes I was thinking of primary age and TBF DS was friendly with a child in our cul de sac and they would just pop round each other's houses . School friends though was always pre-arranged as they would go back to each other's house after school. Think they got their own phones Y6 (so 10 years ago)