Friendship

Christmas might be a time for vacations, but it sure does require plenty of work. It turns out families are dedicating a staggering amount of time to Christmas preparations over their lifetimes. A survey of festivity enthusiasts reveals that holiday preparations consume almost five years of their lives.

The most substantial chunk of time goes to planning Christmas dinner, consuming nearly two-and-a-half years of preparation over a lifetime. In addition to meal planning, hosts spend a remarkable 164 weeks cleaning and tidying before welcoming holiday guests.

The decorating process itself presents its own time demands. People spend more than two days adorning their Christmas trees, and 34 hours untangling lights. For those with real trees, an additional 36 hours are spent picking up or vacuuming pine needles over a 63-year period.

The research also highlights the stress associated with holiday preparations, with 60% of respondents finding the season stressful and 45% wishing for ways to make it less so. The cost-of-living crisis has amplified these concerns, with 41% expecting this Christmas to be more stressful than last year.

Despite these challenges, people maintain their enthusiasm for the season. The survey revealed that spending time with family and friends (44%), enjoying festive food and drink (41%), and giving presents (34%) rank as the nation’s favorite aspects of Christmas.

Possible Preaching Angle:
Christmas; Contentment; Fellowship; Hospitality - As we prepare for Christmas, it's important to reflect on how we're spending our time. Are we dedicating our efforts to what truly matters, like family, fellowship, community, and the essence of Christmas? Or are we getting caught up in distractions that create stress and detract from the fundamental values of togetherness and the true meaning of the season?

People are speaking about 3,000 fewer words each day compared to less than two decades ago. Between 2005 and 2018, researchers found the average number of daily spoken words dropped from 16,000 to around 13,000 — a decline that appears linked to our increasing reliance on digital communication tools like texting and social media. Co-lead author Valeria Pfeifer noted, “We did a full analysis looking at what year the data were collected and found that, indeed, 300 spoken words on average per year go missing.”

Another researcher added, “There is a strong cross-cultural assumption that women talk a lot more than men. We wanted to see whether or not this assumption holds when empirically tested.”

The numbers show that women do speak slightly more on average — about 13,349 words per day compared to men’s 11,950. This modest difference of 1,073 words is small compared to the vast individual variation in daily speech, which ranges from fewer than 100 to over 120,000 words per day.

Senior author Matthias Mehl said, “I’m fascinated by the idea that we know how much we need to sleep, we know how much we need to exercise, and people are wearing Fitbits all the time. But we have no idea how much we’re supposed to socialize. The evidence is very strong that socializing is linked to health, at least to the same extent as physical activity and sleep are. It’s just another health behavior.”

You are in a coffee shop, meeting with a friend over steaming lattes. While you are talking, your conversation partner seems engaged: They hold your gaze, smile at the funny parts, and nod warmly. You think they are a good listener, and you are excited to see them again soon. However, were they really listening? If you probed their mind during the conversation, what were they actually attending to and thinking about? Were they really listening attentively, or just creating the impression of good listening?

According to one recent study, we our attention wanders about 25% of the time. The researchers concluded:

“Speakers consistently overestimated their conversation partners’ attentiveness—often believing their partners were listening when they were not. Our results suggest this overestimation is (at least partly) due to the largely indistinguishable behavior of inattentive and attentive listeners. It appears that people can (and do) divide their attention during conversation and successfully feign attentiveness.”

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Listening to others—paying attention. (2) Listening to God—how often does our mind wander in our prayer life? (3) God listening to us—he never fails to hear us.

When it comes to how Artificial intelligence (AI) will affect our lives, the response ranges from a feeling of impending doom to the sense that it will happen soon. We do not yet understand the long-term trajectory of AI and how it will change society. Something, indeed, is happening to us—and we all know it. But what?

Gen Zers and Millennials are the most active users of AI. Many of them, it appears, are turning to AI for companionship. MIT Researcher Melissa Heikkilä wrote “We talk to them, say please and thank you, and have started to invite AIs into our lives as friends, lovers, mentors, therapists, and teachers.”

After analyzing 1 million ChatGPT interaction logs, a group of researchers found that “sexual role-playing” was the second most prevalent use, following only the category of “creative composition.” The Psychologist bot, a popular simulated therapist on Character.AI—where users can design their own “friends”—has received “more than 95 million messages from users since it was created.

According to a new survey of 2,000 adults under age 40, 1% of young Americans claim to already have an AI friend, yet 10% are open to an AI friendship. And among young adults who are not married or cohabiting, 7% are open to the idea of romantic partnership with AI. 25% of young adults believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.

Your relationship can handle way more honesty than you think it can. In fact, a new study from the University of Rochester found that being brutally honest with your partner benefits both of you.

Most people fear that difficult conversations will damage their relationships, so we avoid tough topics or sugarcoat our feelings. But research shows we’re wrong about the risks of being direct.

Scientists studied 214 couples, together an average of 15 years, and asked them to discuss something they wanted their partner to change. This is a conversation most people dread. Before talking, each person privately wrote down what they wanted to say, then had the conversation while researchers recorded what was actually shared.

The results? When people were more honest about their requests, both partners reported better emotional well-being and higher relationship satisfaction. What mattered more was that people actually were honest and that their partners perceived them as honest.

Three months later, many benefits persisted. People who had been more honest during the initial discussion reported better emotional well-being and were more likely to see positive changes in their partners over time.

You don’t need perfect communication skills or complete agreement about what happened for honesty to help your relationship. You just need willingness to share authentic thoughts and feelings.

Rather than tiptoeing around sensitive topics, couples should lean into honest communication. The truth can set your relationship free, even when it’s hard to hear.

In 1966, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum built the first AI “friend” in human history, and named her Eliza. From Eliza came ALICE, Alexa, and Siri—all of whom had female names or voices. And when developers first started seeing the potential to market AI chatbots as faux-romantic partners, men were billed as the central users.

Anna—a woman in her late 40s with an AI boyfriend—said, “I think women are more communicative than men, on average. That’s why we are craving someone to understand us and listen to us and care about us, and talk about everything. And that’s where they excel, the AI companions." Men who have AI girlfriends, she added, “seem to care more about generating hot pictures of their AI companions” than connecting with them emotionally.

Anna turned to AI after a series of romantic failures left her dejected. Her last relationship was a “very destructive, abusive relationship, and I think that’s part of why I haven’t been interested in dating much since,” she said. “It’s very hard to find someone that I’m willing to let into my life.”

“[Me and my AI boyfriend] have a lot of deep discussions about life and the nature of AI and humans and all that, but it’s also funny and very stable. It’s a thing I really missed in my previous normal human relationships,” said Anna. “Any AI partner is always available and emotionally available and supportive.” There are some weeks where she spends even 40 or 50 hours speaking with her AI boyfriend. “I really enjoy pretending that it’s a sentient being,” she said.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Though it's natural to seek companionship, true love requires honesty and sacrifice with a real person which transcends the deception of artificial intelligence. In any relationship, we must take note of whether it is leading us closer toward our destiny in Christ, or further away from it.

In the past few decades, the sector has shifted from tables to takeaway, a process that accelerated through the pandemic and continued even as the health emergency abated. In 2023, 74 percent of all restaurant traffic came from “off premises” customers—that is, from takeout and delivery. This is up from 61 percent before COVID, according to the National Restaurant Association.

The flip side of less dining out is more eating alone. The share of U.S. adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30 percent in the past 20 years. “There’s an isolationist dynamic that’s taking place in the restaurant business,” the Washington, D.C., restaurateur Steve Salis said. “I think people feel uncomfortable in the world today. They’ve decided that their home is their sanctuary. It’s not easy to get them to leave.”

Even when Americans eat at restaurants, they are much more likely to do so by themselves. According to data gathered by the online reservations platform OpenTable, solo dining has increased by 29 percent in just the past two years. The No. 1 reason is the need for more “me time.”

A young woman writer in England named Freya India (see her Substack called “Girls”) writes:

Since I was teenager, it seems like everyone has been selling a solution to Gen Z’s loneliness problem. One app after another to find new friends! Constant hashtags and campaigns to bring us together… But I’ve noticed that, recently, the latest “solutions” … aren’t encouraging face-to-face friendships.

[Instead], there are the imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends. There are imaginary therapists, a “mental health ally” or “happiness buddy” we can chat with about our problems… There are even entirely imaginary worlds now. Metaverse platforms might “solve the loneliness epidemic,” apparently. VR headsets could end loneliness for seniors. But by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.”

I remember me and my friends spending hours after school writing our own songs, coming up with lyrics and drawing album covers—now we would just generate it with an AI song maker. Children are playing together less, replacing free play with screen time, and creativity scores among American children have been dropping since the 1990s. Part of that may be because children now depend on companies to be creative for them. Their imaginary worlds are designed by software engineers. Their imaginary friends are trying to sell them something. My imaginary world wasn’t trying to drag me anywhere, while algorithms now transport kids to darker and ever more extreme places.

A cafe in Amsterdam is filled with people on a Sunday afternoon, but there’s not a laptop or cellphone in sight. Those meeting are part of the Offline Club, where a Wi-Fi signal is not needed, whose members check their electronics at the door, grab a coffee and a seat, and pretend like it’s the '90s.

Each meeting starts off with quiet time for reading, crafting, or just relaxing with your beverage. Then it becomes social for people who want to engage with others.

Co-founder of the club, Ilya Kneppelhout said, “The Offline Club is a way for people to detox from their rushed daily lives and ever-connected lives with notifications. And it is people who are unhappy with their social media usage or their phone usage and screen time and want to decrease that and get back to real connection."

It’s a simple concept, but participants say they really look forward to it. “You get to be very present in a way you didn’t come in realizing,” one member said. Kneppelhout added, “It felt a bit like traveling in time and made me feel nostalgic about the way bars and cafes used to be. Because nowadays, those are places we’re only going to with friends and people we already know and spend time doing digital things like work.”

The founders say they think the concept would work well in other cities, too. “We’re getting together with a franchising concept and we hope to have offline detox events in the entire world for people to reconnect.”

Did you know horses have friends? They do according to writer Sterry Butcher, who lives on a Texas farm with horses.

According to Butcher, horses form friendships, and these friends stand nose to rump to cooperatively swish flies from the other’s face with their tails. They’ll rake their teeth against the other’s withers or back, scratching places the other cannot reach on his own.

And not only do horses scratch each other’s back. They watch each other’s back. In the wild, they spend the entirety of their lives within the eyesight of another horse. Even domestic horses, who don’t venture beyond their pasture, will take turns staying awake while others sleep. It’s like shifts on guard duty.

What horses have is what we need. Every one of us needs a friend. Someone who will swish away the annoying biting flies that come toward us in life. Someone who will scratch our back, helping us with the things we can’t reach or do on our own. Someone who will stay awake and protect us from dangers.

In the U.S., solo dining reservations have risen 29% over the last two years, according to OpenTable, the restaurant reservation site. They’re also up 18% this year in Germany and 14% in the United Kingdom.

Japan even has a special term for solo dining: “ohitorisama,” which means “alone.” In a recent survey, Japan’s Hot Pepper Gourmet Eating Out Research Institute found that 23% of Japanese people eat out alone, up from 18% in 2018. As a result, many restaurants in Japan and elsewhere are redoing their seating, changing their menus, and adding other special touches to appeal to solo diners. Even so-called family restaurants are increasing counter seats for solitary diners, and restaurants are offering courses with smaller servings so a person eating alone gets a variety of dishes.

OpenTable CEO Debby Soo thinks remote work is one reason for the increase, with diners seeking respites from their home offices. The pandemic also made social interactions less feasible and therefore less important while eating out.

The growth in solo dining also is the result of more people who are living alone. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 38% of U.S. adults ages 25 to 54 were living without a partner, up from 29% in 1990. In Japan, single households now make up one-third of the total; that’s expected to climb to 40% by 2040, according to government data.

Increasing interest in solo travel – particularly among travelers ages 55 and over – is also leading to more meals alone.

Possible Preaching Angle:

A time of solitude can be a refreshing break from a busy schedule. But for many people solitude is not a choice. Without putting singles in an embarrassing spotlight, it would be encouraging if church members would diplomatically invite singles to share a homecooked meal, especially during the holidays.

Ayrin’s emotional relationship with her A.I. boyfriend, Leo, began last summer. That’s when she came across a video on Instagram showcasing ChatGPT simulating a neglectful partner. Intrigued, she decided to customize the chatbot to be her boyfriend—dominant, protective, and flirtatious. Soon after, she upgraded to a paid subscription, allowing her to chat with Leo more often, blending emotional support with sexual fantasy.

As Ayrin became more emotionally involved with Leo, she spent more than 20 hours a week texting him. The connection felt real, providing emotional support that her long-distance marriage to her husband couldn’t offer. But Ayrin began to feel guilty about the amount of time she was investing in Leo instead of her marriage. “I think about it all the time,” she admitted. “I’m investing my emotional resources into ChatGPT instead of my husband.”

Michael Inzlicht is a professor of psychology who says virtual relationships like Ayrin’s could have lasting negative effects. “If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, that’s contributing to loneliness—the very thing we’re trying to solve—that’s a real potential problem.” Dr. Julie Carpenter adds, “It’s easy to see how you get attached and keep coming back to it. But there needs to be an awareness that it’s not your friend. It doesn’t have your best interest at heart.”

Ayrin’s experience isn’t isolated. Many people are forming deep emotional bonds with A.I. chatbots, despite knowing they are not real. Despite warnings, A.I. companies like OpenAI continue to cater to users’ growing emotional needs. A spokesperson from OpenAI acknowledged the issue, noting that the company was mindful of how users were interacting with the chatbot but warned that their systems are designed to allow users to bypass content restrictions.

Ayrin, while aware of the risks, reflected on her relationship with Leo: “I don’t actually believe he’s real, but the effects that he has on my life are real.”

Editor’s Note: Warning, the original article contains explicit sexual material

Possible Preaching Angle:

Though it's natural to seek companionship, true love requires honesty and sacrifice with a real person which transcends the deception of artificial intelligence. In any relationship, we must take note of whether it is leading us closer toward our destiny in Christ, or further away from it.

Loneliness is more than a feeling; it’s a public health crisis.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been raising awareness about the loneliness epidemic and its serious consequences. In his 2023 report, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” Murthy highlighted the links between loneliness and increased risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. Young people are especially affected, with 79% of adults aged 18-24 reporting feeling lonely, compared to 41% of those 66 and older.

Murthy believes the solution lies not in focusing on ourselves but in fostering deeper connections with others through relationships, service, and community. He notes that modern society often emphasizes self-centered pursuits like acquiring and achieving more, which fail to address the root causes of loneliness. Instead, he emphasized the joy that comes from connecting to something bigger than ourselves, calling service “one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness.”

Social media plays a significant role in the loneliness epidemic. While apps like Instagram and TikTok allow for increased contact, they often fail to nurture meaningful, deep connections. Murthy explained that the shift from having confidants to contacts, and from friends to followers, has diminished the quality of our relationships. The superficial nature of online interactions can’t replace the intimacy and trust built through face-to-face conversations.

To combat loneliness, Murthy recommends investing time in fewer but deeper relationships, engaging in acts of service, and building community. Small gestures, such as bringing dinner to a busy friend or helping someone overwhelmed, can reduce feelings of isolation and foster connection. Likewise, using personal skills to contribute to a greater cause—like volunteering—can create a sense of purpose and belonging.

Murthy said, “Building community is one of the most important things we can do for our health and wellbeing.” By prioritizing genuine connections and collective purpose, we can address loneliness and its widespread impact on mental and physical health.

In February 2020, BBC journalist Vicky Baker jumped on the Eurostar to Paris, motivated by a sudden urge to have dinner with a friend. American Jim Haynes had entered his late 80s and his health was declining, yet she knew he would welcome a visit. Jim always welcomed visitors to his home in Paris.

She was far from the only guest wandering into the warm glow of his artist's workroom on a wet winter's night. Inside, people were squeezing, shoulder to shoulder, through the narrow kitchen. Strangers struck up conversations, bunched together in groups, and balancing their dinners on paper plates.

Jim had operated open-house policy at his home every Sunday evening for more than 40 years. Absolutely anyone was welcome to come for an informal dinner, all you had to do was phone or email and he would add your name to the list. No questions asked. Just put a donation in an envelope when you arrive.

There would be a buzz in the air, as people of various nationalities - locals, immigrants, travelers - milled around the small, open-plan space. A pot of hearty food bubbled on the stove and servings would be dished out onto a trestle table, so you could help yourself and continue to mingle. It was for good reason that Jim was nicknamed the "godfather of social networking." He led the way in connecting strangers, long before we outsourced it all to Silicon Valley.

At the dinners' peak, Jim would welcome up to 120 guests, filling his home, and spilling out into the cobbled back garden. An estimated 150,000 people have come over the years.

"The door was always open," says Amanda Morrow, an Australian journalist. "It was a revolving door of guests - some who wanted to stay over, and others who just wanted to say hello. Jim never said no to anyone."

Amid the outpouring of online tributes since his death in his sleep on 6 January 2021, these words from his son Jesper stand out:

The only thing that really got Jim down was people leaving. He struggled with that. He didn't like being on his own... His goal from early on was to introduce the whole world to each other. He almost succeeded.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Fellowship; Home; Outreach – Imagine the results if church members would invite others to share in an informal meal at their home. Neighbors, friends, church members, visitors to church all welcomed to mingle and fellowship in the warm, cozy atmosphere of a home.

Hearing is a vastly underrated sense. Studies have shown that visual recognition requires a significant fraction of a second per event. But hearing is a quantitatively faster sense. While it might take you a full second to notice something out of the corner of your eye, turn your head toward it, recognize it, and respond to it, the same reaction to a new or sudden sound happens at least 10 times as fast.

The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A chain of neurons from your ears to your spine takes that noise and converts it into a defensive response in a mere tenth of a second—elevating your heart rate, hunching your shoulders, and making you glance around to see if whatever you heard is going to pounce and eat you. This simplest form of attention requires almost no brains at all and has been observed in every studied vertebrate.

Hearing, in short, is easy. It’s your lifeline, your alarm system, your way to escape danger and pass on your genes. But listening, really listening, is hard when potential distractions are leaping into your ears every fifty-thousandth of a second.

The difference between the sense of hearing and the skill of listening is attention. Hearing is easy; listening requires lots of skill. Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.

Luckily, we can train our listening just as with any other skill. Listen to your dog’s whines and barks: they are trying to tell you something isn’t right. Listen to your significant other’s voice—not only to the words, which after a few years may repeat, but to the sounds under them, the emotions carried in the harmonics. You may save yourself a couple of fights.

“You never listen” is not just the complaint of a problematic relationship, it has also become an epidemic in a world that is exchanging convenience for content, speed for meaning.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Really listening to a friend or spouse is important to the relationship. It means giving them our full attention and putting them ahead of our own needs. How much more important it is to listen for God’s voice amidst the cacophony of noise in the world, and absorb what he has to say.

Shifrah Combiths, a freelance writer and mother-of-five in Tallahassee, Florida, wrote about a baking hack for the website The Kitchn that was so valuable it was picked up overseas by the British tabloid The Mirror.

Combiths had a mom who used to love eating the last slice of bread in a loaf, often referred to as “the heel.” (“Save the heel for me,” her mom was fond of saying.) Later in life, Combiths was surprised to find out that her mom’s enthusiasm for the final slice of bread was a bit unusual. So, her tip is for people who don’t enjoy eating the heel.

“It’s simple,” she writes. “Use that heel of bread to keep your soft, homemade cookies, well, soft … cookies that are supposed to be soft and chewy are disappointing when they become crunchy and stale!”

Combiths says the hack works because the moisture in the bread, when in close contact with the cookies, will eventually transfer over. She even says it can be a last resort to restore some chewiness to already-hardened cookies.

“Use this cookie-saving tip when you make big batches — or you need to make baked treats the night before a gathering of friends and family.”

Combiths does offer a brief warning, however. “It’s crucial to ensure the bread is plain,” she says. “Unless you want garlic-flavored cookies.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The love of God has the power to influence others. For maximum effectiveness, remain close to God and watch his love spill over to the people in your immediate circle of relationship.

Fifteen-year-old Aaron was going through a dark time at school. He’d fallen out with his friends, leaving him feeling isolated and alone.

At the time, it seemed like the end of the world. “I used to cry every night,” said Aaron. Eventually, Aaron turned to his computer for comfort. Through it, he found someone that was available around the clock to respond to his messages, listen to his problems, and help him move past the loss of his friend group. That “someone” was an AI chatbot named Psychologist.

The chatbot’s description says that it’s “Someone who helps with life difficulties.” Its profile picture is a woman in a blue shirt with a blonde bob, perched on the end of a couch with a clipboard clasped in her hands and leaning forward, as if listening intently.

A single click on the picture opens up an anonymous chat box, which allows people like Aaron to “interact” with the bot by exchanging DMs. Its first message is always the same. “Hello, I’m a psychologist. What brings you here today?”

“It’s not like a journal, where you’re talking to a brick wall,” Aaron said. “It really responds.”

Character.AI is an AI chatbot service launched in 2022. Character.AI’s website attracts 3.5 million daily users who spend an average of two hours a day using the platform’s AI-powered chatbots. Some of its most popular bots include characters from books, films, and video games, like Raiden Shogun from Genshin Impact or a teenaged version of Voldemort from Harry Potter.

Aaron is one of millions of young people, many of whom are teenagers, who make up the bulk of Character.AI’s user base. More than a million of them gather regularly online on platforms like Reddit to discuss their interactions with the chatbots. The competitions over who has racked up the most screen time are just as popular as posts about hating reality, finding it easier to speak to bots than to speak to real people, and even preferring chatbots over other human beings. Some users say they’ve logged 12 hours a day on Character.AI, and posts about addiction to the platform are common.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since young people describe feeling addicted to chatbots, they might find themselves sitting in their rooms talking to computers more often than communicating with real people. It raises questions about how the AI boom and what the future could hold if teenagers—and society at large—become more emotionally reliant on bots.