I was just looking at some upscaled old footage of NYC. Interesting thing: If you watch a video of the US at that time, the median age is 22! It's closer to 40 now. And indeed, the videos clearly show a much younger population. I wonder if it'd startled a time traveler how old we are. - ThreadSky

zachweinersmith.bsky.social • 7 days ago

I was just looking at some upscaled old footage of NYC. Interesting thing: If you watch a video of the US at that time, the median age is 22! It's closer to 40 now. And indeed, the videos clearly show a much younger population. I wonder if it'd startled a time traveler how old we are.

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zachweinersmith.bsky.social•7 days ago

Likewise, I was just reading a novel from about 1910, which describes roving bands of young people all over the place. Some of this is the greater amount of autonomy kids used to have, no doubt, and some of it is that there was no iPad or TV or whatever. But it's also sheer quantity.

rmd1023.bsky.social•7 days ago

Before hormonal birth control for women was legally and easily available, having kids was a pretty regular side-effect of marriage which meant much larger families.

1greenmantle.bsky.social•7 days ago

plus kids left school earlier , my dad left at 14, most kids in my class left at 16 now the vast majority leave education at 21

robinbobcat.bsky.social•7 days ago

Remember: everyone smoked. A lot.

lmccj.bsky.social•7 days ago

I wasn't alive in 1910 but in the 60s every family on the block had at least 5 children (one family had 10), no one had air conditioning, 1 family had a tv set, and our mothers cooked three meals a day from scratch. There were no man-caves, rec rooms or finished basements. Outside was all you had.

colemanridge.bsky.social•7 days ago

People didn't run off to the suburbs to have children then. One of the striking things about the East Village is how many public and Catholic schools there are, and how close together. Some are abandoned, some repurposed. There used to be a lot more children here.

colemanridge.bsky.social•7 days ago

Also, of course, in 1910 Margaret Sanger had not yet started pointing out that having too many children too close together ruined women's health and eventually killed them. Information about contraception was prohibited as pornographic under the Comstock Act.

whitewaterlawyer.bsky.social•7 days ago

Here's a page saying the birth rate as measured in births per thousand people
has dropped by half in decades

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cOQn

so this makes more sense than I expected, smaller share of 22 year olds today than in 1980s.

sinalana.bsky.social•7 days ago

As a space traveler rather than a time traveler, yes it is startling to see all the kids and teens when I travel out of Japan

drinkcoffeerun.bsky.social•6 days ago

Every time I travel to the US I am shocked by how many old people there are. The "boom" part of the boomers doesn't feel as obvious in Europe. It's more obvious why they have so much influence in the US, after visiting.

andyrs313.bsky.social•6 days ago

Life is too f-ing long. All of my grandparents openly longed for the grave, long before it took them.

hentaikid.com•7 days ago

The time traveller would come from a future, therefore, older population.

But they have great cosmetic surgery.

Actually that reminds me of Moorcock's Dancers at the end of time, the protagonist going back to 19th century England realises everyone looks like they do because they have no choice.

kpleopold.bsky.social•7 days ago

Immigration, birth control, less opportunities for women in the workforce back then so more of a focus on marriage/child rearing, improved public health means fewer child deaths and less pressure to have big families, lotsa stuff changing demographics.

davidyul.bsky.social•7 days ago

Not sure if it's cause or effect, but the bottom of the population pyramid for the US tightens noticeably as birth control pills make their way onto the scene, which will give a higher mean age for the population as a whole. But it's a noisy signal since immigration plays a large role too.

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