According to Evans, several trends are driving this global decline in coupling. Smartphones and social media may have narrowed many young people’s lives, pinning them to their couches and bedrooms. But they’ve also opened women’s minds to the possibility of professional and personal development. When men fail to support their dreams, relationships fail to flourish, and the sexes drift apart.
If I had to sum up this big messy story in a sentence, it would be this: Coupling is declining around the world, as women’s expectations rise and lower-income men’s fortunes fall; this combination is subverting the traditional role of straight marriage, in which men are seen as necessary for the economic insurance of their family.
Interesting article. To your personal point, that is great. It's hard when you're a teenager but being confident in who you are is so underrated. Without it, it's so easy to be molded by others into something you're not, or to be jealous of "perfect" lives of others, or constantly in self-doubt.
There are certainly an infinite number of reasons why relationships and/or marriage are so much different or delayed now. I think the main culprits are a combination of internet/social interaction mixed with the cultural shift in expectations for women and men. Perhaps relatedly, how expensive it is now for anything (college, house, kids) and the necessity for dual careers...which both delays marriage and kids, and also really, really strains marriages when someone (usually the woman) has to sacrifice her career identity, at least for a bit.
