# When in history did people stop knowing their neighbours? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 10, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248 "2011-08-10T20:17:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/21 "2011-08-11T02:42:22Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The dawn of the TV era. > > Talk to anyone who has an adult when TV became common in their area. Everything went from knowing neighbors really well, having neighborhood get-togethers each week, etc. to people staying inside and watching the boob tube. > > This is nothing to do with urbanization. I’ve heard farming relatives talk about this too. > > So, generally early to mid 1950s in most of the US. It went well beyond the 50’s. We knew every person on the block I lived on as a child (60’s) and many of the people on our block in the 70’s in community we moved to. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/22 "2011-08-11T08:50:19Z")
Another factor is the change, in some areas, from local shops to big malls, and the arrival of the fridge and freezer. If you, and your neighbours go to the same few shops in your neighbourhood several times a week, possibly daily, you’ll meet with them, chat and the shop keeper will get all the gossip. If you drive to a huge shop once and twice a week, not so much. And even if you do some buying locally the whole experience of shopping has changed and chatting in the store may not be as common. This will vary a lot with the size and flavor of a community though. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/23 "2011-08-14T20:48:03Z")
> [@gallan](#): > > Why do we make the assumption that it’s abnormal to know your neighbors? I’ve never lived in a neighborhood where we didn’t at least have a contact sheet passed around with everyone’s name and phone number on it. And my current neighborhood has quarterly potlucks where we actually get permission from the city to block off the street and set up tents and folding tables in the middle of the road. Granted, I don’t think \*that’s \*particularly normal, but I’ve always believed it was pretty normal to at least know your neighbor’s names. > > For the OP, I’d ask if you’ve ever actually gone over and introduced yourself to your neighbors. Wow! Where in the world do YOU live that everyone’s so chummy??? You sound like my mom, “why don’t YOU go introduce yourself to your neighbors?” Like I haven’t tried over the years? I’ve tried. I’ve gotten mostly blank looks and an occasional wave when we’re both out getting the mail. Invite them in for coffee? ‘Too busy, no thanks.’ Invite them over for a barbeque? ‘No, I don’t THINK so.’ Comment on their garden? ‘Thanks,’ they say as they go inside their house. I’ve chatted a few times with the other mom across the street until the day a moving van pulled up outside her house and they were gone, without a word, that afternoon. Oh, and I’ve gotten a blank look and the door shut in my face! When talking to the little kid in the yard, the parent comes running out, grabs the kid’s arm, and hustles him inside… Now I say nothing and we’re all invisible. We’re out shovelling our driveways at the same after a snowstorm, in total silence. I often wonder if I should keel over if someone would notice and bother to call 911…Maybe it’s the houses and the suburbs. In the small village where my mom has lived for 60 years, you can’t set foot out the front door without her neighbors coming out to yak at the same moment. Go out to the car to get something - here comes cousin Al. Go out to get the trash can, there’s old Brewster next door doing the same thing. Raking the front? All of a sudden, everyone is out raking! It’s like Eastenders, all the relatives and neighbors milling about getting in each others business. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/24 "2011-08-14T21:45:03Z")
It depends a lot on demographics. When I was a kid, there were tonnes of kids on the streets around the family home. Consequently parents got to know each other through kids coming and going. Nowadays there are fewer kids, still know many neighbours, but a lot of houses here are rented by more transient people than used to live in them so you get to know fewer of the new neighbours. ---
**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/25 "2011-08-14T23:06:48Z")
Maybe it’s because we’re from the same place, but I was thinking the same thing An Gadai (sorry, can’t work out how to do a fada) said: renting versus owning. When I was renting, it didn’t seem important to get to know the neighbours, because after all we were going to move on within a couple of years anyway. Now that we own our place, on a street where almost everyone else does too and where people tend to stay put for a long time, I know most of the neighbours. Here in Ireland, I get the impression that our parents’ generation were very likely to buy a house the second they got married (which was earlier than my generation gets married), so that sense of permanence kicked in. My generation is more likely to rent, or to own an apartment rather than a ‘home’, so the permanence thing doesn’t happen to the same extent. I’ve also had the opposite experience from WhyNot: now that we’ve got Widget, I’m constantly getting talking to other parents. I’ve made a couple of actual friends through the kids running around the same park or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/26 "2011-08-14T23:31:41Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > Maybe it’s because we’re from the same place, but I was thinking the same thing An Gadai (sorry, can’t work out how to do a fada) said: renting versus owning. Alt Gr + vowel = áéóíú ---
**Author:** ![gallan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ee59a6/32.png) [@gallan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallan)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/27 "2011-08-15T17:02:35Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > Wow! Where in the world do YOU live that everyone’s so chummy??? This has been my own personal experience everywhere I’ve lived. California, Oregon, and Washington. I’m not saying it’s the norm though. And the OP is right in that I’ve never lived in an apartment. > [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > My generation is more likely to rent, or to own an apartment rather than a ‘home’, so the permanence thing doesn’t happen to the same extent. This is a really good point! People used to buy houses to live in them, and then pass them along to their children. Doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. At some point we stopped thinking of houses as places we live in and started thinking of them as commodities to be bought and sold and profited from. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/28 "2011-08-15T17:40:00Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I agree that it’s about urbanization. In an urban area, there is so little privacy in the physical sense that we build strict walls of privacy in an intellectual/emotional sense. We pretend not to notice our neighbors’ comings and goings, and we give them lots of “space”, and expect it in return, because we don’t have any actual space of our own. > > My SO moved into a Chicago apartment with me after living 25 years in a true Small Town where everyone knows everyone. He knows the names of our neighbors and their relationships and a bit of the drama between them and our (crazy) landlord and such. I can’t remember a word of it, even when he tells me about it. I’ve trained myself NOT to know, after more than a decade of apartment/city living. The longer he’s here, the less time he spends in front of the window watching the world and trying to keep up with the neighbors’ business. This is kind of interesting, because I grew up in Chicago, and, when I was a kid through high school, I knew most of my neighbors, and this was not unusual. I’m not talking just immediate neighbors, I’m talking I could go down the block and tell you who lives in every house and the such, and there was kind of this (somewhat annoying, but also charming in a way) small town feel where everyone kind of knew everyone else’s business. But this wasn’t apartment living–this was detached housing. Now, after 10 years away, I’ve returned back to my old neighborhood and have been here for the last seven years. I still barely know anyone here, and it feel weird to me. I know some of the old timers who have been here, but most everyone else, I haven’t the faintest clue who they are, what they do, what their names are, anything. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/29 "2011-08-15T19:22:17Z")
One reason it may seem like times have changed is because you have changed. When you are a child you are generally restricted to your on block and maybe a few adjoining blocks. When you get older and start being allowed to go to school on your own your neighborhood expands, perhaps to include the whole little town, village or discrete area of a town. It appears that you know everybody and everything that’s going on because you world is actually very small and there really isn’t that much to know. Your parents know a lot of the same people and things that you do because they are involved in keeping track of you. Then you grow up and move. If you move to a new town and don’t have kids right away you will start to feel detached from your neighbors and seek out people who share your interest; not just the people you were forced to associated with as a child. If you don’t move and start having kids right away you can become one of the more established family and you may wonder how anyone could not know their neighbors. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/30 "2011-08-15T22:47:46Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The dawn of the TV era. I’m with you; I don’t think it has anything to do with urbanization but technology. TV started it but it has continued with Walkman/iPods, smart phones, etc. There’s less reason today to know your neighbors. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/31 "2011-08-16T00:56:31Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Alt Gr + vowel = áéóíú American keyboards don’t have an Alt Gr. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/32 "2011-08-16T01:38:43Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > American keyboards don’t have an Alt Gr. I know, but eclectic wench is in Ireland, hence presumably has same keyboard type as I do. ---
**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248/33 "2011-08-16T13:42:11Z")
Yep, I have Alt Gr. áéíóú. Ignorance fought, also me no longer stuck feeling like an eejit when I feel the need for an accented vowel. Thanks 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-history-did-people-stop-knowing-their-neighbours/592248.md?page=1)