Why have screens replaced socialising?

The past 20 years in high-income countries have been marked by two troubling declines: in deep social connection, and in reading. There is growing acceptance that modern digital technologies are probable contributors, but disagreement about exactly how and why screens have pushed more wholesome and meaningful activities out.

One frequently told story is that these shifts are in large part the result of corporate greed and capitalism. The price of spending an evening in the kinds of places where people socialise — bars, pubs, restaurants, entertainment venues — has risen steeply, leading them to stay at home instead and therefore socialise less. Or the decline in reading is partly due to books becoming too expensive.

This argument isn’t baseless. Using the detailed item-level inputs to inflation data, we can create bundles of the costs of services associated with going out or staying in. True enough, the costs of food and drink consumed away from home and of going to events have climbed about 20 per cent more than overall inflation since 2000; the prices of groceries, TV, video and the internet have trailed overall inflation.

But if this is just a story about going out becoming too expensive, we would expect to see a couple of other things. First, presumably some of that socialising has shifted from expensive out-of-home settings into people’s homes. And second, presumably people are eschewing all expensive out-of-home activities, not just social ones.

Neither turns out to be true. The decline in time spent socialising with friends turns out to be much larger in cost-free settings such as people’s homes. As recently as 2013, Americans spent three hours a week with friends at one another’s homes or in other free spaces like parks — today that has almost halved. As Derek Thompson puts it, we are witnessing the death of hosting.

Meanwhile, the shift away from costly out-of-home settings is almost exclusively confined to socialising. Visits to the gym are on the rise, but only when made alone. The common pattern is not avoiding expense or excursion, it’s avoiding company.

The other complicating factor is revealed by a closer interrogation of what’s going on with screen time. If we again use price data to assemble a “screen time price index” of the plethora of digital entertainments at our disposal today, a fascinating story emerges.

When calculating how the prices of goods and services have changed, statistical agencies try to adjust for changes not only in price but in quality. A product with a price that remains stable while its quality doubles is recorded as having halved in price as far as the CPI is concerned.

What we find here is that the quality-adjusted screen time price index is down 39 per cent since 2000, but that change is overwhelmingly a function of improvements in quality, not declines in prices paid for devices, subscriptions and so on. So the steep rise in screen time over the past 20 years has led to a 52 per cent rise in real-terms spending per person on digital technology.

What seemed at first like a story of screen time outcompeting socialising and reading thanks to a widening advantage on cost, now looks more like digital technology winning out through the sheer force of unparalleled convenience and attention capture, even if that comes at a mounting financial (let alone social) cost.

Screens have replaced socialising not so much by offering a truly better or cheaper experience, but by essentially eliminating the modicum of effort and risk of minor awkwardness or social disappointment that come with arranging or attending a hang-out. Having friends over could be a 10/10 experience, but the house would need sorting out, and what if they have other plans? Scrolling and streaming may only be a 6/10 by comparison but it’s a guaranteed 6: no risk, no effort. It’s the same for reading. Getting lost in a great book is one of life’s great experiences and incredibly cheap at the price, but it demands effort.

The question is whether knowing that the decline in socialising and reading is more about convenience than affordability is reassuring. If it were just about price, we have plenty of tools for dealing with that. Asking people to perpetually fight temptation and put long-term gains above short-term pleasure has a much weaker record.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch