If cultural pundits can invent an Anthropocene Epoch then a Digital Epoch makes even more sense. In 2000, only in Japan did you see people on trains four inches from other humans chatting other humans on other trains, most of whom they'd never meet. Now that is everyone in the developed world.
COVID-19 changed a lot of things, at least in the short term. In California, you could get a pot brownie on your way to a tattoo parlor but not get a haircut, and unless you were the Governor you couldn't eat in a fancy Napa restaurant with your friends unmasked. Since most Californians are not wealthy elites(1), it may be why so few people are eating in restaurants. They are instead eating at home and having more conversations at the dinner table, according to a new paper.
The "study" is not a study in way the public thinks of scientific studies(1), it is only a survey and therefore in the EXPLORATORY pile rather than the science one but while it is subject to recall bias, it is not going to be outright lying, like people willing to take political polls. The survey of 517 U.S. parents was taken in May of 2021 using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Assuming participants told the truth about their socioeconomic status and other criteria the authors created to believe the survey was representative, they sought to find out if more ate dinner together, using a 1-5 scale.
Just over 60 percent claimed that 14 months into the pandemic they were eating together more.
There were still lots of negative outcomes, but extended lockdowns and mandates may have added stress, as did an election year when one party claimed the government was rushing a COVID-19 vaccine through the approval process and endangering lives - until they won, then they took credit for it, and then the losing party claimed the vaccine their chief executive rushed was endangering lives.
Basically, there are so many confounder that even for psychology the results are 'believe them if you want to believe them' rather than being evidence-based, but one positive aspect is likely valid; 83 percent of those who experienced more meals together as a family expected that to continue.
(1) The government says they have made people so poor 45% of the public now needs free health insurance and an executive order to lower the electricity costs his government panel raised 100% during his time in office
(2) Though we are in a world where biology has been overturned in the name of social justice so if enough cultural pundits wrap themselves in that flag, maybe surveys will be science. If you believe plants are little people, so weedkillers that only act on a biological pathway in plants cause human cancer, or that 7 of the 12,000 PFAS chemicals found in nature are giving you a disease, you probably already think surveys are science.
Thanksgiving Science: Did COVID-19 Revive Family Dinners?
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