Enshitification is such a perfect word

and then the constant upgrading. I just want to put a song on but no... I need to upgrade my player first, then I need to log in to my account but forgot the password so need to got through the multi step verification process... it's hard to be bothered anymore. I couldn't even dream of then allowing time for kids

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Grande_Yarbles@reddit

God yeah, it's all such a nightmare. Everything has an app now, and they force you to sign up in order to start the warranty or be able to use some basic functions. But guaranteed after a few months it'll suddenly stop working and that'll waste an hour or more of your time trying to log in again and then troubleshoot errors, Googling to find dozens or hundreds of other people wasting their time trying to deal with the same issue.

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tempo1139@reddit

and just gotta love how 'user support' has degenerated into just being referred to end-user forums in the hope someone might be able to answer your question

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_sam_fox_@reddit

the enshittification

👌

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greevous00@reddit

Yup. I see this so clearly, and now I feel like I was collaborating with the enemy (I'm in tech).

Basically we have taken 1,000,000 places where the "user interface" was "call someone and set stuff up," and turned it into brain surgery. So I'm sure data quality is much much higher now, because you're actually putting in your own data, but it WASTES YOUR TIME. So now we're increasing data quality for something that probably nobody cares about, and in the process we're wasting time.... multiply that times 10 different interactions per day, and what you realize is that you've effectively become a part time employee for everyone you in theory are a customer for.

Enshitification is precisely what it is.

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Dis_Miss@reddit

The push to eliminate labor costs for the company just means the customer has to do more of the labor.

AaronTheElite007@reddit

Yep. Working all day. Come home. Help wife cook. Feed the family. Clean up. Sit for an hour or so (play guitar, read, or draw. In bed at 10. Do it all again tomorrow.

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ronnie-james-dior@reddit

Nailed it. Grinding from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm when the kids go to bed. Too tired to do anything except pass out in front of the TV

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Mile_High_Kiwi@reddit

It's definitely a grind. Our relationships have suffered, too. I recall my parents being more social in the 80s, lots of big parties, and meals out. We have a big friend group, but we hardly see each other these days due to the grind. And like last weekend, we were sick and postponed a get-together with friends. The next free weekend is like 3-4 weeks away. Everyone is under the pump.

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AaronTheElite007@reddit

Oh definitely. My wife and I have one or two good friends that we never see. Just a text or call here and there. No real interaction… it’s burning me out

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UsherOfDestruction@reddit

Did your mom work? I think that was the key for my experience growing up. My dad worked and my mom stayed home. She took care of all the house stuff including finances. The only things my dad was responsible for around the house were trash and repairs/home improvements. So when I was in school, my dad was working and my mom was working on keeping the home running. It all got taken care of during that time. When we were all home together it was purely leisure time.

I'm going to have to disagree with that. At some point the middle class decided they wanted to share in the luxuries normally reserved for wealthy people.

For instance, we were solidly lower middle class, my father was a lineman for the phone company and my mother on the occasions she worked was a sales clerk at a department store or a bank teller.

Our house, while not a true Leavitt Brothers house, was built in that style. A Cape Code, built on a poured concrete foundation, no basement. When they bought the house it was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house ( no ensuite bathroom, that was for rich people), with the second floor unfinished. As my parents had children, my father finished a bedroom upstairs, and then the other bedroom, and the finally a bathroom.

He did most of the work himself, the plumbing was done with the help of a neighbor for a case of beer.

We had one car, a used Ford Country Squire Station Wagon. My father took public transportation to work so my mother could have the car. We didn't get a second car until my oldest brother started to drive, and that was a used Ford Pinto.

We had a subscription to the daily paper and Reader's Digest. No cable TV or streaming services.

Ask yourself:

Does each child in a family need their own room?

How many bathrooms does a family of four need?

How many separate hair care and skin care products are in those bathrooms, and how much are we willing to spend on such products?

How well-equipped is the family kitchen and how many meals are prepared in it each week? How many meals are purchased from restaurants?

What kind and quantity of clothing hangs in the family closets?

What type and frequency of personal care services are purchased? Do we believe we need massages, manicures, body waxing, Botox, facial fillers, acupuncture, chiropractic services, and psychological therapy?

Is the home and yard maintained by family members or hired professionals? Are home improvements completed as family projects, or do we not even own a toolbox?

If the family dog gets cancer, do we euthanize or pay for chemotherapy?

How frequent are vacations? Do they require airline tickets or a full tank of gas in the car?

Doing such a direct comparison reveals that almost every aspect of family life for the average American has become "better" in the acquisition sense, but also more complicated, expensive, and burdensome. We made our choices, but perhaps we should encourage the kids to consider that their choices don't have to trend in the same direction as ours.

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WinterMedical@reddit

You gotta take care of the dog man.

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SuzQP@reddit

Yes, but by what measures do we define appropriate care? Alleviation of suffering or the same medical standards as for a child?

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Backsight-Foreskin@reddit

Does each child in a family need their own room?

I shared a bedroom until I was 15 years old. At that point my two older brothers had moved out. My parents also bathed 2 kids at once.

How many bathrooms does a family of four need?

We had a family of 6, parents and 4 boys. The second (upstairs) bathroom wasn't added until my oldest brother was in adolescence. One of the sticking points over adding a second bathroom was my mother saying, "If you think I'm cleaning 2 bathrooms, you're crazy".

How many separate hair care and skin care products are in those bathrooms, and how much are we willing to spend on such products?

We had a bar of Dial soap and a bottle of Johnson's shampoo. My mother going to the beauty parlor once a week to get her hair done was her big extravagance.

Is the home and yard maintained by family members or hired professionals? Are home improvements completed as family projects, or do we not even own a toolbox?

One year my father spent a week of his vacation time putting a new roof on the house, of course his four sons "helped" out. My job was picking up any dropped nails.

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Sorchochka@reddit

We had a bar of Dial soap and a bottle of Johnson’s shampoo. My mother going to the beauty parlor once a week to get her hair done was her big extravagance.

First off, the equivalent of getting your hair done at the salon now costs around $200.

But plenty of women had a ton of products. My mom was a single mom. She was able to afford and own a townhouse with a secretary’s salary. She had special shampoo/conditioner, mousse, hairspray, gel, a couple perfumes, etc.

ancientastronaut2@reddit

This is in So Cal and they are 1240 sq ft 3 bed, 1.5 bath houses. And they rent for $4k/mo.

My kids rent a 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment for $2800. It's over half their take home.

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Diane1967@reddit

And we didn’t get into debt like they do nowadays either. It’s all about keeping up with the Joneses

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Mean_Fae@reddit

My dad literally got all our stuff from the Bargain Finder.

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UsherOfDestruction@reddit

We lived in a society where men worked and women stayed home and took care of the household. When we rightly realized women should not be defaulted into that role, they started joining the working world in much larger numbers. However, men did not then leave the working world in any significant numbers. So you had more people working and individual households with larger incomes. That increase in household income allowed people to pay more for housing and over the years that cost kept increasing as supply dwindled.

Given that some 50% of marriages ended in divorce during my formative years, I would venture that this was completely impossible. You've completely ignored single parent households.

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UsherOfDestruction@reddit

Not at all. Single income households as the norm does nothing but help single parents. As a single parent would you rather have to exist in a world where most other households have two incomes or also have one income like yourself? Yes, you're not gonna have the free time benefits a two parent/couple household has, but your quality of life will be able to be similar. Currently you get both the negatives of everyone having more money than you AND not having any free time.

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ShutYourDumbUglyFace@reddit

You literally said "what we should have done is realize that someone, anyone should be home."

This is not possible for divorced parents and completely ignores why people did not divorce at higher rates before the 1970s.

Further, your hypothesis is that households with two working parents contributed to the increase in expenses, but the number of households with two parents was declining, so wouldn't the increase in two-parent working households be offset by the number of single-parent households?

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Helpful-Passenger-12@reddit

We have to fight it now because it's ridiculous to expect everyone to work low wage jobs for long hours and not have an actual life.

Youth sports when I was a kid were super cheap, even later band or marching bad was also . Now you have crazy fees, required individual trainers or coaches, select teams that cost money, etc... Band fees are now stupid expensive.

I really think our society lost out on a lot when we went to dual income households as the norm. We should have gotten rid of the idea that it had to be the woman who stays home, but some adult in a family needs to have the time to maintain things at home so nights and weekends are just for having fun.

Average worker pay was $12,513 in 1980 (about $50,000 today). Average across the board all education levels.

The median salary for top 100 CEOs in 1980 was $183,000 ($688,000 in 2024). CEO to average worker pay ratio was 42:1 in 1980. by 2020 it was 351:1.

Houston, we have a problem.

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JanaT2@reddit

What are you busy doing? Cut back some.

I work hybrid so that helps having more time. I try not to work overtime. I can do some housework on my break. My husband only has a 20-25 minute commute so that also helps. No kids.

I cook dinner most nights and so we sit and eat watch a show or sports. I read or whatever . He goes up to bed early so I have some alone time to relax.

I don’t over schedule because I need a lot of downtime.

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JoeRega@reddit (OP)

I work remote so that helps, BUT, I am also he only person at my job who does what I do. This leads to some late-night meetings and unplanned overtime.

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JanaT2@reddit

I understand. There goes your free time right there ☹️

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Von_Quixote@reddit

pacododo@reddit

It's not just you. My mom always had time to read, my dad relaxed and read the newspaper in his chair when he came home. Weekends were usually taken up by seeing more family. My mom didn't work outside the home but she did take care of six kids and the house. Dad was a truck driver.

Now, our kids have a ridiculous amount of afternoon commitments, we both work, my job often requires evenings and sometimes weekends. We are pretty good at sharing housekeeping chores. Adding in 40+ extra hours to our schedule, being way more involved in our kids lives than our parents were, and time wasted on screens, makes for less time for hobbies.

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Pink_Floyd_Chunes@reddit

I had this good teacher in HS. Whenever someone came in to say why they needed to miss class, he would say, "Whatever's important." Often the kid would ask if it was okay that he or she miss his class, he would simply repeat it, "Whatever's important."

I tell this story because you said your kids have a ridiculous amount of afternoon commitments. What if they didn't? What if they only did their favorite activity per the season? On days when they don't have activities, they could come home and do a chore or two, you know, because people in families contribute. I'm just trying to help you reduce that extra 40 hours of work you and your spouse are having to do!

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DragYouDownToHell@reddit

My Mom watched TV while she was doing things, cooking, ironing, etc. My parents probably spent little time watching TV together. Maybe about the same as I do with my gf now. An hour a night.

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GoddessOfOddness@reddit

Log for one week how you spend all your waking hours.

Street_Roof_7915@reddit

Add into that that none of my kids friends live near her. We just got a similarly aged kid in the neighborhood this year. So if we weren’t driving her somewhere, she was home playing on electronic things.

And she ended up wanting to do stuff. So now she does 3 radically different things (a sport; drama; music) and it takes up a ton of time because it’s all squeezed into afterschool.

CitizenChatt@reddit

Funny. Everyone saying Mom stayed home and Dad worked (this was my experience too) yet we call ourselves the latch key kid generation.

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Pink_Floyd_Chunes@reddit

I think it depends on whether you are early or later GenX. I'm the earliest GenX ('65), so I had a stay at home mom, and a dad who worked in an office.

I think we also forget that life was kind of basic back then. In 1969 we got our first color TV, there were 5 TV stations. We had a stereo that played only records and the radio. We had one car. Kids played outside, or inside with friends from the neighborhood on rainy days (or out in the garage). Even though we had a stay at home mom, we still had a very free-range childhood. We could ride bikes up to a mile or so away without letting her know where we were. We ate dinner together every night. Once in a while, when McDonalds came to our area, we would go out for hamburgers or for pizza at Pizza Hut, or a better local place called Pietro's.

Adults in the 70s socialized with neighbors and friends by going to each other's houses for card nights, barbecues, or cocktail parties. Families celebrated birthdays for the kids by getting together to do that - but we all lived closer together than now.

Another thing is we didn't buy a lot of stuff. We had decent clothing, good enough housewares, quality appliances that cost a lot up front but lasted for decades, and our furniture was similar - it all lasted a long time, and you would get it re-upholstered if it needed it. Hell, I still have the Danish modern end tables from my childhood home. They have a couple of rings on them, but are so well made.

My mom got new clothes the most, because she was the one who needed to be more up-to-date for occasional dinner parties and company functions. My dad had a couple of good suits he wore for these, and they were fairly modest. I think living within our means was very much a value my folks lived by and instilled in us.

By the 80s, kids had walkmen or some kind of headphones that provided more "alone time". Cable TV added a lot more stations, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax. More distraction, basically. Designer jeans came out and that spurred on this prestige mania we still see today (lease a BMW lately?)

All of the extras we have now that seem so essential are, at least in my opinion, why so many people are working so much and feeling the financial and time pinch. I recommend some of the minimalism subs here. You don't have to go super extreme to get benefits from the lifestyle.

I feel like we are just driven to distraction by so much, and nearly NONE of it is necessary. Food, clothing, shelter, health care. Those are NEEDED. everything else is extra. Reduce the extra to take your time back. Time is worth a lot more than we are paid by any job.

You get one life. If you ever have a health scare, you'll be surprised how quickly you realize this.

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UsherOfDestruction@reddit

We're pretty split as a generation honestly because our youth is when these changes were happening. My parents were silent generation so much more traditional. Xers with Boomer parents were more the latch key kids. All my friends had younger parents than me and were latch key kids.

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snipe4fun@reddit

I have plenty of time but too much stuff to do.

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tkrynsky@reddit

I think also less things could happen instantaneously. You had to plan ahead of time to hang out, and time was just more flexible. Seems like these days you’re accountable down to the minute, reachable anytime, etc……true alone time is much harder to get

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I can't believe you seriously think that you have less time in a day than anyone else does. You've got the same 24 hours - that's the definition of a day.

Everything you do is a choice, from having kids, to earning an advanced college degree, to keeping a house spic 'n' span, to taking a nap. Before vacuum cleaners, people used to hang up rugs and beat the dust out of then. Did people have less time then? Sure, if you have more money than the next guy, you can pay someone to beat your rugs for you. This is not because you have more time - it's because you have more money. Some people simply earn (or inherit) more than me or you.

I think your true complaint is about not being wealthy enough to do things you want, instead of things you have to.

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grumpycrumpetcrumble@reddit

It's not true because some people have to spend time taking care of disabled loved ones or managing their own diseases. This was one example I came up with after one second of thought and empathy for my fellow humans.

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Cyrus_Imperative@reddit

Surely you're not accusing me of lacking empathy? Everybody's got chores and challenges. If you were my child, I'd drive you to school and enjoy it. I'd do your laundry. You had kids, so you have to take care of them. Don't you enjoy that? Did you think you'd have the same amount of "me" or "alone" time after having kids? Did you not think that through?

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RCA2CE@reddit

I get way lazy

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Cowicidal@reddit

I hate to say this, but it could also be that you're getting older and slowing down so less things get done. I have to remind myself daily to keep my pace up when doing everything from washing dishes to even just taking a shower. When I do things "fast" now it almost feels like "rushing" when in the past that was just likely my normal speed.

But ever since the early-'80s trimming of the top-tier tax rate and subsequent creation of the 1%, all of that is gone. Now both adults need to work just to be able to afford necessities. Home ownership is out of reach. Retirement is an unattainable dream. And nobody has any time to actually do what makes them happy because we're all in survival mode.

Audit your time! Just like with money, you can be surprised where it goes and see stuff to cut out.

And multitask when possible - I bring my daughter to dance, and then I have 45 minutes of reading or knitting time :) I could drive home and do laundry or something, but screw that!

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MyriVerse2@reddit

I've got nothing but free time.

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mjohnson414@reddit

I make it a point to shut my laptop at 5pm and I don't open it again until 8am the next morning. Evenings are for myself and my family. Weekends too. There will always be more work to do.

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emmsmum@reddit

I feel the same as you, my mom did work, as did dad, she did inside chores, he did outside. My parents didn’t read or have hobbies 🤣 but they did seem to have time for whatever else it was they wanted to do. Honestly I think the outdoor stuff was my dads hobby…but mom loved to shop. I also feel like I want to do all these things and run out of time…and then I get upset. I dunno. Time is definitely weird as fuck. Like, I’m at work, and 15 minutes feels like and hour, I’m at home trying to get shit done before work and it’s going by so fast it’s literally as if someone sped up the clock. I know it’s just the illusion of time…but god it feels that way.

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Quirky_Commission_56@reddit

I make time to do the things I love. I’m still a voracious reader, and I adore baking and cooking meals from scratch in addition to doing word puzzles and drawing doodles of our cats.

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Urbaniuk@reddit

Five cats! Respect.

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kaslokid@reddit

Another factor not mentioned enough is the time spent in the Digital world. It's constant, ever pervasive and munching up huge amounts of time.

Cooking is gone. We make one huge meal on Sundays and it lasts all week.

Daily cleaning is gone. Once a week now.

VolupVeVa@reddit

Did your mom work outside the home? Full time?

My grandparents had the life you describe but only grandpa worked outside the home. Grandma spent the first half of every day doing housework and laundry, relaxed for her "stories" in the afternoon, then worked on preparing, serving and cleaning up after dinner. The "free time" was really only there because they could survive on one income and the other person was the domestic worker keeping the home functional.

Free time is important to me, so I have purposely planned my life to allow it. I sleep about 9-10 hours and work 5-6 hours, so that leaves me 8-10 hours of free time per day. More than enough to play guitar, go mountain biking, read, and such.

semi-retired over here boss, part time gig at a motorcycle gear store in Ky..

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ManyLintRollers@reddit

I dunno; my parents both worked, so they were always lamenting not having time to do the stuff they wanted to do. My dad was a salesman, so his income was directly correlated to how much time he spent out on the road making sales calls. He usually left for work at 7 AM, and got home around 7 PM...and on the weekends, he'd often be working on ad layouts for his clients. He did like to draw and paint, but didn't have much time to do it.

Mom worked part-time, but she worked seven days per week because she got a shift differential for working weekends. She worked evening shift, so she was around during the day, but she was either doing housework or yardwork, prepping dinner, or running errands and doing the food shopping. Her hobby was gardening; she tended to be a bit lax about the housework but her garden was always gorgeous.

My parents did relax by reading and watching TV. I think the internet and our phones have eroded our attention spans so it's hard for us to sit down and focus on a book these days. And we certainly waste more time on our phones or on the internet than our parents did, simply because neither of those existed back then.

I think the 24/7 availability by email adds to the perception that we just don't have any spare time. Even though I generally don't respond to work emails or calls outside of working hours, just the fact that they exist sort of adds to the feeling of perpetually being busy. That is something our parents didn't have to deal with.

The other factor is that if you have school-aged kids, people definitely spend a lot more time shuttling them around to activities than when we were growing up. My kids are grown up and moved out, but I remember thinking "you know, my parents never had to do all this!" My mom took me to my violin lesson once a week, and my dad took me to my youth orchestra rehearsals on Monday nights - but today, it seems like every kid is doing sports, dance, foreign language lessons, music lessons, etc. every night of the the week; and it seems like parents feel obligated to go to every kid sports event, which was not the case in the '70s and '80s.

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InternationalBand494@reddit

I’m on disability. I have nothing but free time

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swandundee@reddit

are you busy?, or is it make work, so you dont feel guilty

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H3lls_B3ll3@reddit

I have time now. My son is grown and I'm single. I've just moved into my first place of living alone since I was 20. Some minutes I don't feel like doing anything, but most nights I read or paint- and I do ignore a lot of housework.

Their contribution to household tasking is minimal, so they don't account for me having time to myself.

My wife is far busier. She wants to be in charge of bills, shopping, etc. We have a woman come clean the house once every 2 weeks, but between those cleanings, we both vacuum and dust as needed.

I am able to partake in hobbies when I choose to get off my ass.

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OldBanjoFrog@reddit

My dad worked long hours and often traveled for work. When he was home, he would be usually too exhausted to do any activities. He did go biking with some friends on Saturday mornings sometimes.

My mom worked while we were at school. I often came home to an empty house. After letting myself in with a key I wore around my neck, I would get a snack, and I would run the streets with my friends while my sisters did the same. My dad usually got home around 7:30pm or 8pm. My mom, usually around 6-6:30pm. As long as we got home around the time the streetlights came home, we were ok. Sometimes my mom would leave a note telling us she would be home late, and that there was food in the fridge.

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HandleAccomplished11@reddit

Yes. I'm a "stay at home" dad, and have seemingly zero time left over at the end of the day. With two kids under 12, cleaning, my part time work, and cooking there's very little time for hobbies anymore. I keep thinking this will change when the kids get older. Right now as soon as school is out, I become chauffeur, they have so many activities. I guess the difference is when I was a kid I had less organized activities and could walk to the few I had by myself.

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sharkycharming@reddit

I have plenty of me time, but I designed my life that way. No kids, no partner. If I didn't have to eat and have health insurance, I would surely get rid of the full-time job, too.

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DeezSaltyNuts69@reddit

sounds like poor planning on your part

There's the same amount of time there always has been

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EnergyCreature@reddit

M46 here. I feel like a lot of ppl are experiencing this. My wife (F47) and I have a lot more free time than most of our friends our age. I feel it's a mix of decisions we made at a young age and a lot of stuff that we just said no to over the years.

These are my hobbies

Dancing
Reading comics
Cycling
Board games
Video games (though only when playing locally with others)
Trivia
Karaoke
Archery

Part of is that we had kids very young. So they are adults now. We are actively involved in our youngest child's life but for the most part she's set and on her path.

We don't bring work home with us and if we do (rare) we give each other heads up. We don't have many bills. We rent and live in a nice place in a great location with low cost. So we can walk out of our house and be at a hobby spot in under 20 minutes walking. Had we bought a home like many of our friends we would be stuck like so many of them are far away from hobbies and very little energy to leave their home, travel...find parking...pay for gas...that shit wears on you.

The friends and family that we see often are the ones in a similar boat. Either they never had kids or had them young. The rest we have to catch up with on certain days and often they hard haggard with life stuff pulling them down.