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Sociability Collapse

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Clarissa

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We had a big event at the student center today. Activities, games, prizes, music, dancing, free food. I’m one of the organizers, and I can confidently say that it was a great success.

One thing strikes me as curious, though. About 90% of students who came up, struck up conversations, played the games, laughed, won prizes, socialized, etc were international students. And we aren’t a mega attractive destination for international students. It’s not that we have an enormous crowd of them. We have many, many more American students. And they were there but kind of skulking in the background, not approaching, not participating.

We are experiencing a collapse of sociability post-COVID. These American students are hard-working, honest, bright. But they didn’t get to socialize freely in their formative years, and the result is there. Nobody discusses this except people in education because we see it every day. It’s a serious problem, and let nobody claim otherwise.

20 responses to “Sociability Collapse”

  1. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    “and let nobody claim otherwise.”

    Evidently those three people who downvoted your post before I could upvote it think the opposite. I wonder why.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I don’t know what it is that people disagree with. I’m describing something I personally observed for several hours today. Everybody who was there with me had the same experience.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Happens to me a lot on the internet: I relate an *actual experience* that I *actually had* and get a ton of downvotes. The internet is full of people who think we should NOT be telling Our Truth, I guess.

        But of course, on Clarissa’s blog, three is the magic number for that *one* really OCD reader who made three accounts just so they/them could downvote things more than once. 😉

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  2. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    One of the 100 reasons we need to bring back contra-dance as part of normal education and socialization.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I can’t begin to imagine the discomfort. But it’s a necessary discomfort.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Tell me about it! I do not like touching people who aren’t family, and I have like fifteen left feet when I try to dance. And still… there’s a *reason* social dancing in large groups is a human universal. Ritualized group interaction, coordination. It’s part of being *human* and almost certainly necessary for the proper healthy social functioning of people in community.

        My favorite aunts and uncles were all avid square dancers and bridge-players. I think it kept them sharp. We lost something huge and dreadfully important to civilization when we gave those things up.

        Liked by 1 person

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      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Maybe they could start with the hokey pokey and work their way up?

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  3. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    It could simply be that domestic students already have their social networks so they don’t need to come to social events organized by their academic departments (which in my experience are kind of cringey anyway). International students are desperate to make friends so they show up to all kinds of events.

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    1. Stringer Bell Avatar
      Stringer Bell

      Student center events are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to social events. They’re by definition not cool. The moment I made friends in grad school I stopped going to those things.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      This was happening right where everybody goes to lunch. In front of Starbucks. Everybody goes for coffee and everybody goes to lunch. But it’s one thing to stand in line at Starbucks, staring at your phone and it’s a very different thing to come up to people and start talking.

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        Agree in general with your observations. Don’t know if it’s covid or cellphones or both, but younger people really don’t seem to socialize as much and the data bears this observation. Fewer friends, less frequency of dates, increasing age of first sexual experience, etc.

        Liked by 1 person

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          It’s COVID, #MeToo, BLM. People are afraid to say anything aloud. It’s impossible to connect with others or be spontaneously sociable when anything can be interpreted as a microagression.

          I can’t be sincere about what I believe with anybody around me except for one person. It’s hard enough at my age but for young people it must be even worse.

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    3. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “domestic students already have their social networks”

      That’s probably part of it, but traditionally in the US having a social network has never precluded casual social encounters with those outside of it. Even non-sociable me could chat pleasantly with people I didn’t know at department organized events.

      American openness to friendly, casual encounters with strangers has always been one of the defining features of the country. If that’s gone…..

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  4. Nonna Maus Avatar
    Nonna Maus

    I don’t think the unsociability of the local students is linked to covid — unless their same age international students came from countries with much more lax covid protocols. IIRC, many countries were much more draconian than the US and for longer periods.

    Perhaps international students are a group that already self selects for openness to experience or interest in your department over the median student in their countries or the local students?

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    1. Old Reader Avatar
      Old Reader

      This was the observation I was going to make. Covid restrictions were harsher especially in Africa than in the US. So if these were those types of international students, there’s no way it had to do with COVID than with the other mentioned issues of self selection and a tendency for international students to typically be more open to new campus experiences.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        In which parts of Africa? And how is it possible to implement lockdown measures in a continent where most of the population lives in a communal setting?

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s not my department’s event. It’s a large University-wide event. Which doesn’t negate your original point but it’s a big deal that I organized this and I want my accolades. 🙂

      Nobody at the university knew we existed before I became Chair and now we are front and center in university life. I’m proud of being able to do this because it’s a gargantuan effort to organize something this big.

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    3. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s not my department’s event. It’s a large University-wide event. Which doesn’t negate your original point but it’s a big deal that I organized this and I want my accolades. 🙂

      Nobody at the university knew we existed before I became Chair and now we are front and center in university life. I’m proud of being able to do this because it’s a gargantuan effort to organize something this big.

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    4. tatosotele Avatar
      tatosotele

      Bingo! I asked both my current (Norway) and last year’s (Germany) high school senior exchange students what they thought might explain this. Each, independently, said that the sample is skewed. The foreign students self-select for being open to new experiences, willing to “give anything a whirl”, etc. If you took a random sample of students in their European home countries, each said the results would resemble the American students.

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  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Interesting take.

    https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-devouring-mother-of-the-digital

    Technology is not only a problem for its addictive, personality-warping properties. Today’s teenagers deal with another problem that is entirely novel in the human experience. They are essentially always being watched and recorded, surveilled by their classmates, their teachers, and their parents with an unblinking thoroughness the Stasi could only have aspired to. Their every action and utterance risks being captured and broadcast before the Internet’s millions of merciless eyeballs. Make the wrong sort of joke and your life can be ruined forever.

    Under such conditions, it’s better to be the grey man – to fade into the background by being as unremarkable and dull as you can make yourself. Have you noticed the disappearance of visible subcultures? Only a generation ago, high schools contained a rich ecosystem of youth subcultures that could be identified at a glance: skaters, goths, jocks, wiggers, stoners, punks, and so on. Being noticed, and noticed as different, was the entire point. Now? They all seem to blend together, with the tranissaries as the sole exception. The latter are essentially hall monitors. Their hideous fashion blares out the License to Cancel conferred by their 0072 genders, which both teachers and classmates had best respect. As for the rest? Better to go unnoticed. It’s safer that way.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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