Agreed - my social life has frequent gatherings only because my wife is, despite working and having kids, extremely motivated to meet up with friends. If she didn’t have that motivation we probably wouldn’t be seeing anyone, and if she weren’t working then that could compensate.
Yes, and I think that's basically what happens; people go out to eat together instead. The article is talking about the "death of hosting", which refers to having people at your home. Several explanations in the comments here place the blame on things like smartphones, and I'm presenting an alternative explanation.
I think the point of the article is more about meeting with others at all, as opposed to it specifically being at home. So hang out with friends outside!
I did debate in the 00s though and my experience differed - it was already a highly technical affair that didn’t really require strong communication skills, but rather was more about playing logic tricks to be technically “correct” and saying so much that your opponent couldn’t counter all of it during rebuttals. That was enough to get me into the final playoffs at the national championships, and to this day I’ve been told that I focus too much on being “right” rather than being empathetic or persuasive, so debate was not the social panacea that it might have once been.
Yeah, you describe the ruined debate that was created during the late 70's early 80's and never recovered any of the positive aspects of the former debate skill set.
Dinners don’t necessarily have to be big though. My wife hosts friends over all the time but usually it’s still small intimate affairs, like average 1-2 people (and their kids if they have any) - don’t need to invite everyone at once. Maybe it’s more normal here in Japan to do small groups - when my American friends come visit they always come in giant groups and it makes everything logistically challenging (which my wife also complains about, alongside the fact that it’s impossible to have a deep conversation when 12 people are in the room).
Plus they also don’t have to be polished. Don’t bother cleaning up the house and order a pizza, and everyone will still have a good time. Or just go out to a restaurant and not worry about any of that.
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