If true, then people are losing focus on what's important. Half of my family is extremely conservative. Half is very liberal. We get along great at family gatherings, because we just agreed that discussing politics is less important than family relationships.
Maybe that will play out over the next couple years, now that the latest political developments seem to have really stretched the boundaries. Perhaps we will collectively decide it just isn't worth it to squabble. If we get super lucky we will realize we are being played, and we'll join together and turn on those who are driving the division.
One of the most important skills I learnt as a kid, from my family, is learning how to disagree without taking it personally. My parents couldn't possibly be more different from my sister and I. They also encouraged us to have meaty discussions and debates, everyday at the dinner table. Over the years, we've had some very passionate and spirited debates, but they were entirely focused on the issues. Not the people behind the issue. We learnt how to disagree violently, while still showing warmth and love for the person behind the disagreement.
As a teenager, I thought this was the default in society. It was only after leaving home and going to college, that I realized it was the opposite. Whereas my family took disagreements as an opportunity for lively debate (and a bit of fun in the process), too many people take disagreements as an insult and a personal affront. One can only hope that this tide will swing back around the other way.
Any study like this will have the interesting caveat that the presence of smartphones at a formal, traditional family gathering might itself produce effects. That is: maybe family gatherings are getting shorter because so many people would rather play with their phones than listen to Uncle Joe's story about high school football. Again.
How could a researcher using smartphone location data control for that?
No comparison to 2015 data? Maybe Thanksgiving always shorter for this group.
This is pretty unfortunate if accurate given that the political "opinions" causing the rift, on both sides, are likely held by people whose political knowledge extends to roughly the start of the current election cycle and no further.
And at the root of this division lies the mainstream media.
Then researchers used that mobile tracking data to see who visited strip clubs the Friday after Thanksgiving. They contacted those people to see how much they would pay for them not to tell their wives about it. You know, for science.
"The smartphone data included 21 billion “pings” of devices in November 2016, each recording the location of a given smartphone at a specific time. It was provided by SafeGraph, a company that collects location data and other information from partners, including developers of mobile applications."
Well that is certainly interesting. This comes out to 70 pings for every smartphone in November. I am assuming dataset they've got is limited to U.S. only, there is a single cell phone per person, and there are 300 million people in U.S. (both are minor underestimations).
Now I am wondering what other information is available for purchase and how it is used.