New Scientific Study Determines That After A Certain Age, Saturdays Definitely Aren’t For The Boys Anymore

Getting old is just a fact of life. You either embrace it or you fight the inevitable, like bailing water from a toy bucket on a sinking ship. If you love visualized data, here’s a pretty fascinating chart here from the folks over at Quartz. The older you get and the more focused you get on your career and goals, the less time you spend with friends and parents. In fact, most of you adulthood past the age of 25 is spent with co-workers, a partner, children, and — to the delight of recluses like myself — alone.

Just goes to show you that after a certain age — usually a little past your mid-20s — Saturdays aren’t really for the boys; They’re for trips to Costco and power-washing your shed and building swing sets from Home Depot for your kids. You know, all that other important stuff that make a well-lived life a well-lived life, besides time with your friends.

Horray, adulting!

A few conclusions from the study

Some of the relationships Lindberg found are intuitive. Time with friends drops off abruptly in the mid-30s, just as time spent with children peaks. Around the age of 60—nearing and then entering retirement, for many—people stop hanging out with co-workers as much, and start spending more time with partners

Others are more surprising. Hours spent in the company of children, friends, and extended family members all plateau by our mid-50s. And from the age of 40 until death, we spend an ever-increasing amount of time alone.

Those findings are consistent with research showing that the number of friends we have peaks around age 25, and plateaus between the ages of 45 and 55. Simply having fewer social connections doesn’t necessarily equal loneliness. The Stanford University psychologist Linda Carstensen has found that emotional regulation improves with age, so that people derive more satisfaction from the relationships they have, whatever the number. Older people also report less stress and more happiness than younger people.

Don’t be scared, youngins! just because you’re alone doesn’t mean you’re lonely!  It’s just a natural life cycle of growing up. Nothing wrong with all of the me time, all the time. That’s why hobbies like fishing get so much more important to you the older you get.

But in the meantime, jnjoy crackin’ those cold ones with the boys while you can.

Here’s the chart and here’s the link to the full story.