People are eating up the new dinner parties discourse on X after a user pointed out the frequency of these get-togethers has declined. While their initial numbers were off by quite a bit, there’s no denying that the tradition of gathering with friends for a home-cooked meal feels like a thing of the past, at least in the United States.
As the post went viral, discourse around who can afford the money or time necessary to host or attend a dinner party started making the rounds.
Why don’t people have dinner parties anymore?
X user @ichthys30 on Sunday pointed out how weird it is that so few people seem to attend dinner parties anymore, citing some misremembered statistics.
“You know something weird?” they asked. “The number of people reporting going to dinner parties at least once per week has fallen 90% since 1950. Actually it fell 90% by the 1990s. Just weird, since there’s no law against dinner parties. You can just ask your friends to come over for dinner.”
In a follow-up post, this user corrected their facts, citing an article in The Atlantic about the declining social activity among average Americans.
“In the 1970s, the typical household entertained more than once a month,” the article reports. “But from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, the frequency of hosting friends for parties, games, dinners, and so on declined by 45 percent, according to data gathered by Robert Putnam.
“In the 20 years after Bowling Alone was published, the average amount of time that Americans spent hosting or attending social events declined another 32 percent.”
Screen time replaces in-person social time
The report by Derek Thompson blames increasing screen time for the drastic decline of the dinner party. He cited TestFit co-founder Clifton Harness, who designs new housing development layouts for the modern age.
“In design meetings with developers and architects, you have to assure everybody that there will be space for a wall-mounted flatscreen television in every room,” says Harness. “It used to be ‘Let’s make sure our rooms have great light.’ But now, when the question is ‘How do we give the most comfort to the most people?,’ the answer is to feed their screen addiction.”
In a 2016 report examining screen time among adolescents across 30 countries, researchers reported a “sharp increase” in hours spent on the computer even as TV viewing decreased slightly, even before the drastic rise in smartphone use. In 2022, a meta-analysis found that screen time increased across all age groups over the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although most people use their phones and computers in part to socialize from a distance, there is evidence suggesting this doesn’t boost our social and psychological well-being as much as in-person hanging out. This may have something to do with that much-discussed “loneliness epidemic.”
‘Not everyone is privileged enough’
While substituting online chatting for in-person socializing may be partially to blame, X users offered multiple other explanations for the dinner party decline in the comments. Some pointed to the increased cost of living, making groceries more expensive and forcing people to work more hours to get by. This doesn’t leave much energy for parties of any kind.
User @nichellecueto complained that “not everyone is privileged enough to spend extra to host or get food and not everyone is privileged to have all the time in the world.”
At the same time, it’s become drastically harder for younger generations to afford a house where you might have the space for a dining table.
“I think a big factor in this is that most young people are either living with parents or renting flats with flatmates and no dining room which makes dinner parties a bit less comfortable,” said @robynp3xxx.
Then again, maybe the problem is “woke.” Some commenters complained about friends with dietary restrictions, preferences, or allergies making cooking difficult for groups. There is also no shortage of types who blame women for wanting to work to survive instead of staying home and making dinner as though we live in a fictional version of the 1950s.
This led others to suspect that the original post might have tradwife vibes.
“Not this tradwife dog whistle almost getting me,” said @mollymulshine. “I need to get off this app!!!”
Who is still throwing dinner parties?
Although screen time is increasing everywhere, the dinner party may still hang on in some parts of the world. Users from other countries like South Africa and France report that the tradition remains.
“Years ago I read a cute memoir by an Aussie who married a Frenchman and moved to Paris,” wrote @larissaphillip. “It was like a survival guide. There was a chapter on dinner parties.”
“She said that in Paris, at a dinner party, you must have an opinion. It didn’t matter what your opinion on a topic was; you must have one and you must be prepared to argue it. It was better to have a crazy or terrible opinion than none. Only a boring guest would have no opinion.”
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