“The disappearance of golfers over the past several years is part of a broader decline in outdoor activities — including tennis, swimming, hiking, biking and downhill skiing — according to a number of academic and recreation industry studies.”

So where are we spending our time?

I travel outside the US to Europe and Asia and thats where i meet people who i find more interesting and interested in having me as a friend. Most young Americans, i believe, just dont have good social skills and i think there must be a more deep-seated psychological reason for the lack of many meaningful friendships than ipods or demanding work.

That’s definitely one thing, but there’s more:

If you go away for too long, things can pile up: emails, voicemail, bug reports, and problems of various sorts. Then you come back and management wants to give you new work on top of all that. If you spend time trying to catch up at the expense of the new stuff, you can be seen as irresponsible or slow.

Another thing is that in some environments, taking vacation can be seen as a sign of weakness or even laziness. You can argue that you should “just quit” those type of places, but not everyone has that luxury, especially in an economic environment like this.

Under system where many people are one job loss or sickness (due to lack of low cost health care) away from ruin, these things serve as powerful disincentives to not kowtowing to management’s every desire. That means avoiding vacations. That means staying late and working weekends. That means being on call 24/7 even if it’s not technically part of your job description. All that adds up to a lot less time for social interaction.