Since when did family stay local? In the boonies perhaps, but when I was young, we regularly spent hours of a weekend stuffed in the car visiting assorted aunts and uncles and other family in the back of beyond. And most of my friends had family all over the place too.
Agreed that where once you knew most people in your street, and looked out for one another, that had died long before the internet came along. I think it was TV that did it. When I was young, my parents regularly used to go out with friends and neighbours, but by the time I left home they were just spending every night glued to the box.
The back and beyond was probably 20 or 30 miles in a slow car on roads that are not what they are today, with no aircon on a hot day and steamed up windows on a wet day
. To visit those that made a few quid and moved out a little
. It just seemed like a chore to a kid used to playing out with mates, you were alone or only with siblings, told to sit and behave, it all made it not what you wanted to do.
TV had something to do with it too, along with the internet, remember when everyone would gather to watch one programme, a football match, then go back to normal ?
Going out with friends and relatives, work colleagues, you knew every one in the pub or social club, those you did not know, you soon did, go in a pub now, and alone, you stay alone, in a group, you chat amongst the group, in a room of strangers.
Places you would talk to others, make new friends, maybe meet the opposite sex, are just faceless people staring at phones, the internet has giving us this, it tells us we do not need to go out, it will deliver everything to us, tells us we need the latest tech to keep up, so we can isolate even more with it.
We are bombarded with ads, aimed specifically at us, we are told we do not need to speak to companies to get customer service, just use an app.
Be honest, how many see an incident, an ambulance coming for an elderly or sick neighbour, walk past or look out of the window and let it go out of your mind?
Eventually the only people going out will be to go to work or school, the streets will be owned by delivery minions, dating and meeting partners has already changed to online, try chatting up someone you are seen as a weirdo or nonce
, bit by bit, we are being conditioned to total reliability on the internet, paying up front for everything, then having a fruitless time consuming battle when it does not match the description, is stone cold, or does not work, when it could be sorted in minutes face to face or on the phone.
Most of us are guilty of accepting and sleep walking into this, because the internet tells us it is the way to go, it is easier for our busy lives, because we have to work long hours to pay for everything the internet tells us we need, all the time feeding big business with more profit.
If you really believe society has not changed with the internet, that we isolate ourselves because of it, then it really is working how those making money from it intended