by glennericksen on 12/7/21, 2:05 PM with 239 comments
by jbrun on 12/7/21, 2:47 PM
by 0des on 12/7/21, 2:59 PM
It also doesn't help that every news broadcast and TV show is somehow furthering agendas that divide us, or polarize topics into idealogical tribal warfare.
by throway20211207 on 12/7/21, 3:54 PM
The social backdrop of life is family and community, that's what you come home too. I divorced just before the lockdowns started and have no family in my city. I don't believe in extrovert/introverts and spent several years developing my social skills so I do meet people quite easily and have a good group of friends. But even the best friend groups as a working adult can't replace community band family life.
I have two points of reflection:
1. Every decision we make corporately as a society seems to weaken or impede family and community life. From how we build our cities to how we respond to pandemics. I have no solution other than try and buck the trend.
2. I offer my sympathies to anyone else feeling lonely. I hope we can persevere and eventually find meaningful social lives filled with loved ones.
by cglan on 12/7/21, 3:10 PM
These days getting people to come over is so difficult and the lack of good public transit options make a 3 mile distance a ridiculous endeavor. Combine that with the stress of the past two years and public policy that continues to fail on a global level over this (when will it end) even my more extraverted friends have become anti social. It's hard to get out of that rut when you're in it. I've made do with the understanding that I'll have to push myself to hang out with people to the point of burning out in order to forge strong friendships but it's not ideal.
by boh on 12/7/21, 4:02 PM
Regardless of the hype, social media is a poor substitute to physical human interaction and is more anti-social than it seems. I'm sorry, but Internet friends you've never met aren't your friends. They won't support you in the ways that really matter, they won't know you as you are rather than how you portray yourself. Internet communities have the capacity to broker relationships but those relationships have to flourish outside of those communities to endure.
Loneliness is good. It forces you to do the unpleasant, inconvenient and potentially risky act of actually getting to know someone and include them in your life. People need to allow themselves to feel it so they can act on it and truly relieve it instead of wallowing in digital emotion machines that simulate human interactions.
by kiwih on 12/7/21, 2:51 PM
One thing that I worry about is that one side effect of being lonely, as noted in this report, can be depression: and this depression can lead you to isolate yourself further, only increasing the loneliness.
That said, I have another friend working for a web developer who only began full WFH during the pandemic, and now says they'll never go back. They've told me that they don't feel lonely at all. Different strokes for different folks.
by anoplus on 12/7/21, 2:55 PM
by dcoo on 12/7/21, 3:20 PM
[0]: https://www.vivekmurthy.com/post/2017/10/10/work-and-the-lon...
by api on 12/7/21, 3:02 PM
The standard formula was music plus style plus some kind of group bonding activity like dancing, playing music, going outside, etc. Drugs were pretty often involved too, but not always and even in drug-heavy scenes like raves there was a sizable "straight edge" faction.
This was basically how all the young people who were not "jocks" or into other official activities (of which there is a limited selection) would meet one another and socialize.
Maybe I just don't know, but this stuff really seems dead. I've spent some time digging out of curiosity and I've never found a hint of anything similar today. It seems like it all moved online into social media and now instead of dancing all night in warehouses or going camping to hear a band people just stare at phones and have their brains sucked out by "engagement" (addiction) maximizing algorithms.
So social media seems like one thing that killed it, but I also think police crackdowns motivated by standard issue drug war freakouts were a factor too. (Irony: the replacement, algorithmically curated social media, is much more addictive than a lot of the drugs I remember people doing back then.)
So now there's the people who are into the mainstream standard stuff and... what? Social media? 4chan?
I shudder to think of who I would be without rave culture in late high school and college. I'd probably be dead of suicide or one of these hate-ridden incels or pajama Nazi CHUD types. I'd put my money on suicide.
Edit: my philosophy with my kids is that screen time is okay as long as their lives are full of a lot of other things. I don't think screens are the problem per se. I was also into hacker stuff when I was a kid and spent a lot of time in front of screens. The problem is the absence of enriching social activities, not the presence of a screen. I do selectively ban certain things though, like YouTube, that are particularly toxic.
by phone8675309 on 12/7/21, 2:58 PM
I’ve never felt more lonely in my life than working in an office full of people, and I know that’s a sentiment shared by most of my friends. I don’t think working in an office is the major factor in this.
by schnevets on 12/7/21, 2:55 PM
Based on these stats, I wonder if loneliness and social connection has a similar "first step" between 18-25. This is the time people establish habits that they maintain for their entire lives. Does an early accumulation of "social currency" (for lack of a better term) mitigate loneliness-linked misfortune?
by swayvil on 12/7/21, 4:34 PM
We are being fed propaganda that is clearly designed to divide us.
And the lonely individual is the ultimate easily-conquered unit.
by MockObject on 12/7/21, 3:45 PM
by elbasti on 12/7/21, 3:22 PM
To my American friends this seems totally normal, and suggesting something different is ridiculed.
An obvious consequence of this is that American adults have 3 or 4 "social fabric ruptures" as they grow up:
1. When they turn 18 they move far from home to go to college temporarily. They develop a new group of friends, at the expense of being far from family & home.
2. When they turn 22 they move to Big City for a job. Probably _not_ where their parents live, and almost certainly not where their college friends live.
3. There's another (optional) move to Different Big City in late 20s
4. Finally they marry and in their early 30s they move to Suburb (leaving their Big City friends behind).
The result of this is an absolutely frayed social fabric. Not only do people leave their friends behind just as they start to develop deep friendships, they do so in an environment where building new friendships is harder (because they keep getting older).
If one wanted to design a system that maximized unhappiness, it would be pretty close to this! Of course Americans are lonely! They keep leaving their family and friends behind!
There's two reasons for this, imho.
Firstly, the cultural norm of "the real college experience" requiring dorms, facilities, football stadiums, etc. Being a commuter student in the USA is weird at best at most colleges, and certainly the good ones.
Secondly (and perhaps most importantly), is a set of policies (transit, zoning) that make the places where old people/families want to live different from the places young people want to live. This results in the 30-something move to the suburbs, but it also results in the 18-something move to the city or ~disneyland~ college campus: of course you don't want to be a commuter student if your parents live in the suburbs: there's nothing to do! You can't drink, you can't party, you can't do anything.
This social norm has a whole other series of consequences besides just loneliness. Financially:
- It's inefficient at best and ruinous at worst: Not only is sleep-away college expensive, it also creates a rat race between schools for bigger/better facilities resulting in runaway costs.
- Young adults entering the workforce don't live at home, which means they don't create a savings cushion to help them buy their first home in their late 20s (compounded with college debt due to the point above)
- Families with kids often end up far from grandparents/family/trusted friends, further increasing the financial "overhead" of just living.
by scandox on 12/7/21, 3:21 PM
We have too much choice about the people that we have in our lives and the basis of our interactions with those people. We're much more reactive than we like to admit - therefore having people in our lives who cause us discontent or even trouble can actually be a very good thing (within reasonable limits). However, once we have the choice (freedom of movement, a world of connected people just like ourselves, no dependence on "local" community) we naturally choose to exclude those people. We're engaging with or waiting on an ideal and painless social group.
It's somewhat analogous to being able to always choose what to listen to or what to watch. You never get any surprises. You are rarely challenged. The stimuli are weak.
by papito on 12/7/21, 3:07 PM
by paul7986 on 12/7/21, 5:22 PM
Dating was never real easy for me, but wow since Dec 2020 to now ive went on 20 to 30 dates to new friend meetups (bumble bff) and really nothing materialized. I've even started talking about it with recent dates (since Sept) and meetups cause they bring it up themselves.
I thought it was my age which is a factor for sure but those expressing the same sentiment are 15 to 20 years younger then myself. I'm in my mid 40s. Even though we express the same struggle no connection is made (IDK).
by mandmandam on 12/7/21, 2:50 PM
Sadly, I was correct. They really didn't mention wealth or inequality once.
Class pervades every aspect of America's problems so deeply that it's almost invisible, but that is no excuse to ignore it. Especially when we're talking about Harvard research, and especially when we're talking about a pandemic that has dramatically exacerbated wealth inequality while extremely disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities.
by mountainboy on 12/7/21, 3:51 PM
ftfy.
by cryptodan on 12/7/21, 2:58 PM
Here in baltimore it's about fear of being a victim of violence.
by chasd00 on 12/7/21, 4:07 PM
I feel like a lot of people want companionship pushed to them in the same way an app pushes data.
by peruvian on 12/7/21, 3:00 PM
by menomatter on 12/7/21, 2:58 PM
by disambiguation on 12/7/21, 2:59 PM
- what's the baseline? How many people feel lonely on a good day? How has it changed since then?
- "online survey" is there a selection bias skewed towards those that are more inclined to identify as lonely?
- how does this correlate to how many young adults have a SO / are married?
by deft on 12/7/21, 4:02 PM
by panaffa on 12/7/21, 3:04 PM
by mymythisisthis on 12/7/21, 3:08 PM
by vertak on 12/7/21, 3:05 PM
by jokoon on 12/7/21, 5:14 PM
I will never understand why it's okay to live in places where is possible to have no human contact for weeks.
Individualism sucks, and that was brought to us by the war on communism.
by newaccount2021 on 12/7/21, 2:48 PM
downside: no one to talk to
by dfxm12 on 12/7/21, 3:09 PM
On the flip side, be wary of those pushing personal liberty above all else and those who are trying to damage public health campaigns and institutions like health care and education.