Twitter is a big waste of time, but occasionally you find something interesting. I recently saw a tweet with a chart from Our World In Data. It shows who people spend their time with as they age.
As you can imagine, who we spend time with changes a lot throughout our lives. The chart below groups time spent into different categories: time with family, friends, etc.
This data is not available for other countries; it would have been interesting to see how this graph looks for non-Americans.
Time spent changes as we grow older
As teenagers, we spend most of our time with friends and family. In our 20s, this drops sharply and is replaced by time with partners, children, and coworkers.
The 40s is a time for significant changes – time spent with children drops off and time spent alone shoots up. Both these lines keep diverging after that. Although we instinctively know that children will one day go on to live their independent lives, it is still revealing to see how quickly this transition happens.
The 50s is time for another big change – time spent with coworkers falls and is largely replaced by time spent with partner. People spend most of their professional life with coworkers, but it is interesting to see how quickly that time drops off after retirement. In fact, it is the lowest line later in life.
As a society, we are obsessed with professional success. But choosing the right partner is much more important. Professional success cannot compensate for failure at home, especially later in life.
Which lines are important?
The biggest revelation for me was how much time people spend alone in their 40s and beyond; and how little time is spent with friends and family.
My 20s and 30s were focused on professional success, and I lost touch with several friends. The time spent with friends has been some of the happiest time in my life, and I am hoping I can move that line up in the future. One of the benefits of Financial Independence is the ability to change your life based on what is important to you.
In the constant pursuit of money, it is easy to forget what is most important in life. Which line is important to you, and what are you doing to move it up?
PS: Even though I find Twitter a waste of time, I am still on Twitter 🙂 Here is the link for my Twitter account
will be good to have a follow up article with ideas on how to reduce the time spent alone in later years