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Anon is a fact checker (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Is it normal to talk to friends more than once a week? That seems like a strange standard imo. Even my besties and I touch base maybe once or twice a month at most, and see eachother once every 4 to 6 months.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    That sounds normal to me, but it’s worth noting that when we were under Covid lockdown, I didn’t understand how so many people freaked out about it. I’ve always been sucky at social interactions and pretty much always felt lonely as a baseline. It’s like I’d been training for lockdown my entire life. Seeing others lose their minds trying to live the way I’ve always lived was quite awkward.

    Which means for many people, your/my standards for social contact are way too infrequent. I don’t know what an average measurement would be, but it’s clear that our “normal” can’t be most people’s “normal.”

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Is it normal to talk to friends more than once a week?

    Yes. It's very normal to talk to several friends per day, and to see several friends each week. Rotating through one's universe of friends, that might mean that there are a few friends you talk to at least a few times per week, some that you talk to a few times per month, and a some that you talk to a few times per year. And maybe you actually meet up in person a few times so that you're still seeing friends in person every week.

    That level frequency isn't necessary, but it's kinda shocking to me that your comment suggests that you find it surprising that many other people are doing this.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I think that level of interaction might be normal in adolescence and even young adulthood, but by the time you're working, living on your own, and maybe have a family I really don't think most people talk to their friends that often.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I'm in my 40's, and I have children. My wife and I both work full time jobs that require regular travel and responsibilities outside of normal business hours.

    I have probably 5-10 chat threads in different apps that I maintain with different friend groups. Some are just stupid meme exchanges, but they're also a regular way to keep in touch with people about their kids, jobs, families, hobbies, goals, etc. But I communicate with dozens of friends on any given day.

    My mom also demands regular grandchild content on a constant feed so I actually keep in touch with my family better than when I didn't have kids.

    I have a standing neighborhood parent/kid meetup once a week where my kids get to play with their neighborhood friends while we parents hang out at some local restaurant. We text each other the day of to coordinate a place, and then maybe 3-5 of the families (out of a group of maybe 6-8 regulars and 2-4 fringe participants) will show up on any given week. This is on top of the occasional dinner party on the weekends. We don't make it to every event, but we are averaging more than one meetup per week with our friends with kids near our kids' ages.

    I'm also friends with people at work. I have a standing monthly happy hour with work friends I've kept in touch with, even as people have taken different jobs or made other career changes.

    I also do an annual camping trip in the summer with one group of friends, and an annual ski trip with another group of friends. It's only once a year for each, but there's also a lot of value in 48+ hour meetups, sitting around with downtime throughout, just catching up and talking around a fire or something.

    My parents had church when they were my age. I don't. But I still try to schedule regular things on the calendar to stay plugged into different groups. It's important to me, and it didn't come naturally, but these are things my friends and I implemented in our 30's when socializing started requiring coordinating calendars. Especially once the friends' wedding weekends dropped off and seeing out of town friends required coordination without an actual occasion to celebrate.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    My parents had church when they were my age.

    There's the thing I think many of us have been missing. I expressed to my group of gamers that our multi-table Friday night one-shot group was our version of church before the pandemic broke out. We don't have a community and we don't trust the greater institutions, and it's driving us mad because we are fundamentally social creatures. We need that time together in a shared experience. It doesn't matter what you're doing together, but it's what we live for. Sports, church, board games, art, it doesn't matter in specific. What matters is the community.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That's awesome and it sounds like it works for you, but I suspect it isn't the norm. I could only find data for 50+ year olds, and among them only 24% talk to friends daily. That seems about right for my adult friends group - I get the sense that a quarter of them are very social and the rest are too busy to socialize that often.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    among them only 24% talk to friends daily

    I think it's fair to infer that a big chunk of the 76% are still talking to friends at least once a week, at least 1/7 as frequently as the 24%.

    I don't mean to say that talking to friends at least once a week is the only way to be friends, or that it represents a majority of friendships (although maybe it might be). The part of the original comment that got me to weigh in was the idea that speaking once a week with friends was unusual or strange. That, I think, underappreciates how it can be feasible and maybe even desirable to keep in more regular contact with multiple friends.

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