Everyone Secretly Hates Going Out, Study Says

By Harry Cheadle

There has never been a more unrealistic show on television than Friends. The fantasy it sells its audience on—that six people in their 20s can get together regularly without any sort of apparent planning—is a bald-faced lie. Can you imagine the group texts, the email chains, the interlocking commitments, the sheer complexity of organizing a six-person gathering at a coffee shop? If it wanted to make any effort at realism, Friends should have been a show about six people calling each other, leaving messages, and making excuses so they could stay in their apartments and watch TV. 

Last week, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released the American Time Use Survey, an annual look at how people spend the precious minutes of their short lives. Mostly, people sleep (almost nine hours a day on average), work (just under eight hours on days they work), and watch TV (a bit under three hours). A scant 41 minutes of each average day are spent socializing in person with other humans, a number that's fallen by 9 percent over the past decade. Does this mean that society is falling further away from the everyone-kicking-it-all-the-time paradise of Friends? Or that we're talking to people online rather than in person now?  .....Read More

My Take - At my age - I'll be 70 in a couple of weeks - I find I don't enjoy company any longer.  We used to have big cookouts every year.  I used to love company, I don't even enjoy old friends much any more.  And I'm not interested in making new friends as they can be a lot of work...and trouble.  The reality is many of these "old friends" were irritating in many ways and as we approach middle age we act on that, and don't do much with them any longer.  As we get older we just stop seeing them at all, and don't necessarily miss them.  I find that leaves us with a few friends we really cherish - but if we see them too much they'll start to irritate us too. 

In our early years we have the tendency to define ourselves by our friends, starting at a very young age.  Then as we get older we define ourselves by our married friends and then our married friends with children.  Then our children go through that insane period known as puberty and become teenagers and we have our hands full......and we're middle aged.  We no longer need friends to define us - we know who we are and don't much care who others think we are.  

Now I hate leaving my home.  If I could get away with it I would never leave, unfortunately I have to work and shop occasionally.  But if I could - I would never leave my home and be as happy as a clam.  I'm just surprised so many are of the same mind as I, especially since I have a wife - a Master Diver I might add - that loves to go.....anywhere!