A good friend of mine from HS got married when he was still in college, and they waited a few years after graduation to have kids. He and his wife are still together; and their kids are coming up on HS age. So it can and did work out even among people I know, though he was certainly an outlier.
Another good HS friend was in the "no clear career goals" camp and drifted around a bit after college, and getting married seemed to have forced him to actually get his shit together so he could put food on the table.
Which is to say that there can also be some good that comes of it. Though these were both deeply religious people, so probably everyone in their life was telling them to make it work.
And it's not just college that causes people to miss the "sweet spot" but the fact kids are often moving away from home to attend college. And then moving away from where they attended college to start a career. So everything in life up to that point has a built-in time limit, and every time the timer resets you have to rebuild your social life from zero.
It's going to be strange to see how things continue to develop with regards to social circles in the future due to the widespread presence of social media and the Internet.
I mean admittedly we've already had at least a decade or two to see how some of it plays out, but it's definitely been evolving at a faster and stranger pace than I ever could've anticipated. Not that it's necessarily a "bad thing", but it is rather strange and sometimes unpredictable.
And I'm still not sure if it's been a more positive or negative thing for those who grew up developing social circles and finding dates in person at a local level. Especially since some of those negative aspects can be attributed to design decisions made by the companies creating and managing online apps and platforms.
In either case it's certainly not been the easiest thing to try and adapt to.
A good friend of mine from HS got married when he was still in college, and they waited a few years after graduation to have kids. He and his wife are still together; and their kids are coming up on HS age. So it can and did work out even among people I know, though he was certainly an outlier.
Another good HS friend was in the "no clear career goals" camp and drifted around a bit after college, and getting married seemed to have forced him to actually get his shit together so he could put food on the table.
Which is to say that there can also be some good that comes of it. Though these were both deeply religious people, so probably everyone in their life was telling them to make it work.
And it's not just college that causes people to miss the "sweet spot" but the fact kids are often moving away from home to attend college. And then moving away from where they attended college to start a career. So everything in life up to that point has a built-in time limit, and every time the timer resets you have to rebuild your social life from zero.
That would have been unusual 100 years ago.
It's going to be strange to see how things continue to develop with regards to social circles in the future due to the widespread presence of social media and the Internet.
I mean admittedly we've already had at least a decade or two to see how some of it plays out, but it's definitely been evolving at a faster and stranger pace than I ever could've anticipated. Not that it's necessarily a "bad thing", but it is rather strange and sometimes unpredictable.
And I'm still not sure if it's been a more positive or negative thing for those who grew up developing social circles and finding dates in person at a local level. Especially since some of those negative aspects can be attributed to design decisions made by the companies creating and managing online apps and platforms.
In either case it's certainly not been the easiest thing to try and adapt to.