Just a quick comment to say this sample doesn’t seem representative to me:
Anecdotally, a large number of the most dedicated and promising longtermist EAs I know heard about EA in high school (at a workshop I ran for a small group of newish longtermist EAs, if I remember correctly about ⅔ raised their hands when asked if they’d heard about EA before age 18)
In the EA survey, for people who said they were 5⁄5 engaged, the median age at which they first heard about EA was 22 (mean 24). So a majority of the most engaged EAs became involved later than high school.
This is also matches my anecdotal experience, where university age seems more common than high school.
When we plotted average engagement against age first involved, the peak was at 20. People who first got involved at age 18 were less involved on average, and had a similar average level of engagement of people who first got involved at age 40 [edit: see my comment below]. It’s hard to know what to draw from this (younger and older people probably get less engaged because the community is less well set up for them), but I think it means we don’t have clear evidence that it’s better to reach people younger.
When we plotted average engagement against age first involved, the peak was at 20. People who first got involved at age 18 were less involved on average, and had a similar average level of engagement of people who first got involved at age 40.
Just for the benefit of people who haven’t seen the graph, we also split this by cohort (which year they first heard of EA) and there was no cohort for which the peak was younger than 20.
It’s hard to know what to draw from this (younger and older people probably get less engaged because the community is less well set up for them)
I think the fact that we see this effect across cohorts is some evidence for age (when they got involved) itself driving the effect. People who joined (when they were young) in earlier cohorts will be at least in their early 20s and maybe almost 30 by now. So you might think that they will now have been in EA during the ages which, ex hypothesi, the EA community is better set up for, and it seems like they are still, on average lower in self-reported engagement. Of course, it could also be that how well the EA community is set up for you when you first hear of it is really important, and so people who first hear about it earlier than university age never recover, but it’s not clear to me what the mechanism would be there.
Of course, we are talking about a relatively small group of people who first hear about EA at these young ages: about 15% first heard of EA when they were younger than 20 (but that comfortably includes university age), but <5% first heard of EA when they were younger than 18 (and this is probably an over-estimate because age-first-heard is calculated from reported year when people first heard and their date of birth, so there’s a bit of wiggle room as to exactly how old they were when they first heard.
Eli Rose helpfully looked more into the data more carefully, and found a mistake in what I said above. It looks like people who got involved in EA at age ~18 are substantially more engaged than those who got involved at 40. People who got involved at 15-17 are also more engaged than those who got involved at 40. So, this is an update in favour of outreach to young people.
Also, to be clear, are your original comment and this correction talking about the same survey population? I.e., EA survey takers in the same year(s)? Rather than comparing the results for different survey populations?
How do people who first got involved at 15-17 or 18 compare to people who first got involved age 20-25 (or something like that)? So “unusually young” vs. “median” rather than “unusually young vs. unusually old”?
People who first got involved at 18 (or 19) are about the same as people who got involved at 21 (i.e. a little bit lower than the peak at 20).
People who first got involved at 17 are about the same as people who first got involved 22-23.
For people who first got involved 15 or 16, the confidence intervals are getting pretty wide, because fewer respondents joined at these ages, but they’re each a little less engaged, being most similar to those who first got involved in their mid-late 20s or 30s respectively.
In short, the trend is pretty smooth both before and after 20, but mid to late 30s it seems to level out a bit, temporarily.
You might want to open these images in new windows to see them full size.
And finally, this is visually messy, but split by cohort, which could confound things otherwise.
We’ll be presenting analyses of this using EAS2020 data in the Engagement post shortly.
Ultimately I care about impact, but the engagement measures in the EA survey seem like the best proxy we have within that dataset.
(E.g. there is also donation data but I don’t think it’s very useful for assessing the potential impact of people who are too young to have donated much yet.)
A better analysis of this question should also look at things like people who made valuable career changes vs. age, which seems more closely related to impact.
Just a quick comment to say this sample doesn’t seem representative to me:
In the EA survey, for people who said they were 5⁄5 engaged, the median age at which they first heard about EA was 22 (mean 24). So a majority of the most engaged EAs became involved later than high school.
This is also matches my anecdotal experience, where university age seems more common than high school.
When we plotted average engagement against age first involved, the peak was at 20. People who first got involved at age 18 were less involved on average, and had a similar average level of engagement of people who first got involved at age 40 [edit: see my comment below]. It’s hard to know what to draw from this (younger and older people probably get less engaged because the community is less well set up for them), but I think it means we don’t have clear evidence that it’s better to reach people younger.
Just for the benefit of people who haven’t seen the graph, we also split this by cohort (which year they first heard of EA) and there was no cohort for which the peak was younger than 20.
I think the fact that we see this effect across cohorts is some evidence for age (when they got involved) itself driving the effect. People who joined (when they were young) in earlier cohorts will be at least in their early 20s and maybe almost 30 by now. So you might think that they will now have been in EA during the ages which, ex hypothesi, the EA community is better set up for, and it seems like they are still, on average lower in self-reported engagement. Of course, it could also be that how well the EA community is set up for you when you first hear of it is really important, and so people who first hear about it earlier than university age never recover, but it’s not clear to me what the mechanism would be there.
Of course, we are talking about a relatively small group of people who first hear about EA at these young ages: about 15% first heard of EA when they were younger than 20 (but that comfortably includes university age), but <5% first heard of EA when they were younger than 18 (and this is probably an over-estimate because age-first-heard is calculated from reported year when people first heard and their date of birth, so there’s a bit of wiggle room as to exactly how old they were when they first heard.
Eli Rose helpfully looked more into the data more carefully, and found a mistake in what I said above. It looks like people who got involved in EA at age ~18 are substantially more engaged than those who got involved at 40. People who got involved at 15-17 are also more engaged than those who got involved at 40. So, this is an update in favour of outreach to young people.
Also, to be clear, are your original comment and this correction talking about the same survey population? I.e., EA survey takers in the same year(s)? Rather than comparing the results for different survey populations?
Yes, these are all based on analyses which I did on EAS 2019 data.
How do people who first got involved at 15-17 or 18 compare to people who first got involved age 20-25 (or something like that)? So “unusually young” vs. “median” rather than “unusually young vs. unusually old”?
People who first got involved at 18 (or 19) are about the same as people who got involved at 21 (i.e. a little bit lower than the peak at 20).
People who first got involved at 17 are about the same as people who first got involved 22-23.
For people who first got involved 15 or 16, the confidence intervals are getting pretty wide, because fewer respondents joined at these ages, but they’re each a little less engaged, being most similar to those who first got involved in their mid-late 20s or 30s respectively.
In short, the trend is pretty smooth both before and after 20, but mid to late 30s it seems to level out a bit, temporarily.
You might want to open these images in new windows to see them full size.
And finally, this is visually messy, but split by cohort, which could confound things otherwise.
We’ll be presenting analyses of this using EAS2020 data in the Engagement post shortly.
I’m going to leave it to David Moss or Eli to answer questions about the data, since they’ve been doing the analysis.
Is engagement the thing you want to optimise for over impact or are the two highly correlated for you?
Ultimately I care about impact, but the engagement measures in the EA survey seem like the best proxy we have within that dataset.
(E.g. there is also donation data but I don’t think it’s very useful for assessing the potential impact of people who are too young to have donated much yet.)
A better analysis of this question should also look at things like people who made valuable career changes vs. age, which seems more closely related to impact.