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The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

• mandmandam 5y ago
  I had a hunch going in that the authors would fail to break down how much more lonely the poor have been compared to the wealthy. 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.
  • anotherman554 5y ago
    Poor people are often forced to have roommates, live with their parents, or otherwise maintain relationships for economic reasons. I wouldn't expect poor people to necessarily be more lonely.
    • mandmandam 5y ago
      Ah yes, nothing like being forced to live with strangers and parents to solve loneliness. Seriously? If you care to look, there is actually a lot of research pointing that the pandemic affected the poor's ability to voluntarily socialize compared to the wealthy. If you think about it, it's incredibly obvious. And yet these authors didn't mention the idea once. That's unconscionable, if unsurprising.
      • anotherman554 5y ago
        Roommates are not necessarily strangers. If you are arguing living with parents doesn't decrease loneliness over living alone... I'm going to argue that's a non intuitive argument. That doesn't mean you are wrong necessarily but it does mean I'm probably going to question it. As far as I can tell this hasn't really been studied, at least this paper from 2019 on loneliness says "There is virtually no literature that looks at socioeconomic status as the independent variable." https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=csoc_theses https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... It does appear to be an issue with older adults I suppose: https://www.healio.com/news/psychiatry/20210324/socioeconomic-status-and-other-factors-predict-older-adults-loneliness-during-pandemic https://www.healio.com/news/psychiatry/20210324/socioeconomi...
        • mandmandam 5y ago
          I'll say this again - it's completely absurd to ignore the issue of class / wealth inequality when considering access to social situations that decrease loneliness. And it's dumb beyond words to write a fucking Harvard paper on loneliness and not mention wealth inequality once. I don't believe these statements need to be backed up by science to be self-evident, and worthy of research. That's a tautology, and a dumb one.
  • CMay 5y ago
    I'd strongly question having confidence in the wide applicability of the results in respect to class or wealth, much less loneliness which one would guess skews higher than a random sample due to their data source being Mechanical Turk. Both this paper and another paper it links to make it a point to state possible concern with getting their data this way. Aside from that, there are several important factors you would want to account for and the more you want to split out the data to isolate influences the larger the sample size you need. Their total sample size was only ~950, making each nested subset sample size progressively smaller than that.
• mp3k 5y ago
  Its the system. Gosh I hate the antichrist.
• jbrun 5y ago
  It's a bit paradoxical. I have a tech company and most staff want to come to the office 1 day a week. Getting them to come is very tough. Many of my staff and friends don't want to have kids, make no effort to find a partner and find all sorts of excuses. Netflix, the internet and these things are part of the problem, but I have no clue what the solution is. There is only one way to not be lonely - be with people who care about you. That requires an investment of time and of your emotions - something many people seem unable or unwilling to do. You have to get out into the world and invest in others.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    I think the key insight in your comment is that adulthood takes a kind of social maturity and that we have crashed a lot of institutions that have developed over centuries and millennia, and that people (including everyone) don't quite yet fathom the degree to which they were a part of the social fabric. I wish education and homes were a bit less expensive, I feel a bit for Gen Y/Z as they've been through 2 existential crisis and definitely have some legit beefs, but on this one, I think they should be coming into the office, joining social groups. Political polarization, and not vaxx polarization is part of the problem, sadly every brand on the Internet that communications anything is a bit part of the problem, some more than others.
    • panaffa 5y ago
      I used to read the newspaper everyday and cared about societal issues. After this pandemic & the response to it, I've lost all faith and excitement about society. My loneliness will only get worse
      • jollybean 5y ago
        The 'newspaper' is not a source of social issues, it's all political, particularly in the US. Your community is. Also, the global response to the pandemic has been the most amazing thing in human history: we have never been so rapid and coordinated. Never have international institutions worked together across the globe in concert like this. We had a vaccine crated before the disease even hit the West, we tested and manufactured over several months. Vax hesitancy is understandable, although the anti-vax stuff is terrible, it's mostly been an American thing. Even the coordinated economic measures, as crap as they are ... were on the whole good. If this were 50 years ago, we would be dying at 5x the rate and the Fiscal Policy / Central Banks I don't think would have reacted and we would be in a terrible recession with serious calamity. It would have been destructive globally, maybe even leading to war.
• newaccount2021 5y ago
  people are married to work, get their gratification from porn and buying things downside: no one to talk to
  • dfxm12 5y ago
    people are married to work Yeah, a few of the other comments assume that the office is the only place you can find companionship. That's an issue. Just like it's smart to set up boundaries between your WFH area and your rest and relaxation area, you need a set of friends outside of your coworkers as well.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > buying things I definitely see this.
    • panaffa 5y ago
      I buy things to fill my own emptiness. Currently the most exciting thing in my life is waiting for my stupid meaningless iPad to ship.
    • turbinerneiter 5y ago
      I currently struggle to buy anything that would have a positive effect on my happiness. I got a motorcycle two years ago, and while I do pretty few miles, it provided quite some happiness (going on Saturday rides with a friend, general added feeling of "freedom" because of having a way to escape the city and also do short trips I usually would fret about which public transport to take or if it makes sense to use carsharing). Another thing that comes to mind is my Vacuum cleaner - I spent money on a cordless Dyson and I can clean my small flat in 15 minutes now (robot doesn't make sense due to the size). I have the budget to buy some live improving stuff, but I don't see anything.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • frontman1988 5y ago
• mp3k 5y ago
  The other 69% of adults learned how to play early in their life.
  • omgwtfbbq 5y ago
    I suppose they also learned arithmetic.
• vertak 5y ago
  It says in the abstract that this data is preliminary, and the size of the sample was 950 American adults. I don’t think we can take much away from this study, except that it deserves further investigation.
• papito 5y ago
  What's striking to me is that it also deepened the supply of assholes. One would think that after one year under effective house arrest people would be happy to see others and be nicer to each other, but the opposite is true.
  • goldenchrome 5y ago
    You think people would be nicer to others if they were prevented from socializing, a basic human function, and taught to fear their fellow man—for two whole years?
    • papito 5y ago
      I don't translate the possibility of someone being infected into my personal attitude toward them. I go out of my way to be nice to service industry people, and tip them extra-well too.
      • goldenchrome 5y ago
        It's nice that you don't seem to be affected by the propaganda, but most others are. This makes society difficult to live in for everyone.
  • mlac 5y ago
    I think people expect other people to be on edge, and some people are on edge, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the first time I’ve been out in more than a year, and you’re going to be a jerk? NO! I get to be the jerk!
• 0des 5y ago
  We are victims of our own comfort. It's easier to stay home in our filter bubbles unchallenged. People don't know how to socialize these days, it's easier to flick idly through facebook. Awkward conversations with strangers don't happen anymore, because the second a familiar conversation with the bartender ends, everyone reaches into their pockets and retreats back into their digital security blankets. Try having a conversation with someone, and count how many seconds it takes for them to pull out their phone, and instead of correcting them on it, just talk babble and watch as they scroll. There is no intent in the scroll, it is just idle time and a slow drip of stimulus to the frontal lobes. 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.
  • strikelaserclaw 5y ago
    absolutely, most humans are hardwired to seek path of least resistance, since our environment changed rapidly, the path of least resistance for many is indulging in fast foods and becoming obese, indulging in the fast food of social interaction through social media and becoming disconnected, unhappy etc... Technology and order seems to at once statistically lower human suffering and seems to increase spiritual suffering.
    • 0des 5y ago
      Thanks for the reply, you hit the nail right on the head. Your comment also inspired an interesting thought, that "diet" is not just what we eat, it's what we consume in general, which includes content. I had not thought of that before.
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    As a youth, I remember being strongly instilled that neither politics nor religion were appropriate topics for "polite conversation". Instead you generally talked hobbies, plans, family, etc. Conversations are a bit of a puzzle. You are trying to identify the overlap of two parties interests. Now I see a lot of people who start right out of the gate with politics and immediately become hostile when you disagree on some small element. I don't even mind politics or political debate, but political opinions aren't a substitute for personality.
• disambiguation 5y ago
  > The report is based on an online survey of approximately 950 Americans in October 2020. Because of certain data limitations, the data should be considered preliminary. More information is available in the report’s methodology section. - 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?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• peruvian 5y ago
  The loneliness crisis is tough because it can make someone feel like there's something wrong with just them. Walking the streets on a weekend night, all you see is groups of friends at sold out restaurants, people on dates, events, etc.
• api 5y ago
  One of the things I blame is the decline of youth culture. When I was in high school and college (late 90s - early 2000s) we had all these youth "scenes" like goths, ravers, gen-X style hippies, garage band scenes, hip hop, underground punk, and so on. 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.
  • panaffa 5y ago
    Reality interesting! I agree as a GenZ. I had no space that fascinated me. The Internet meant I was aware of many things I possibly shouldn't have been at a very young age. So it's harder for me to get excited about some rave or concert that's probably on YouTube. Frankly you'd be surprised at how much of my life is just 1. Computer and 2. Waiting to get back to computer.
  • 5y ago
• kiwih 5y ago
  The loneliness crisis is what I have been wondering about lately amongst the greater push (especially within tech circles) to 100% work-from-home arrangements. Personally, although I enjoy WFH once or twice a week, I know that for me I must go in the other three days or else I do start feeling chronically lonely - even though I live with my wife and another flatmate. 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.
  • api 5y ago
    The loneliness crisis long predates the acceleration of telework adoption during COVID, and the job has never been peoples' primary place for socializing.
    • azemetre 5y ago
      How can a place where you spend over a 1/3 of your life NOT be a place for socializing? A large amount of Americans date coworkers and office relationships are absolutely the norm: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/one-in-three-americans-has-dated-a-co-worker.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/one-in-three-americans-has-d...
      • vorpalhex 5y ago
        Not the parent but I'll do my best to make a good counter argument. The job should not be your place of socializing. People have opinions, make jokes, have bad days, get upset at each other, misbehave and so on. These things are fine, they are human. However, these things aren't appropriate for work. My coworkers don't get to choose me, they are stuck with me. I try very hard to be mild, polite and gentle at work. That is very much not who I am as a person. My friends know this and are fine with it, but they also get to choose to be my friend (or not). I literally feel like I can't have a real friendship or genuine social interaction at work. I might exchange pleasantries and try to make polite small talk, but it's not worth the risk of making someone else feel alienated or offended.
• mp3k 5y ago
  Just don't be poor and have sex.
  • dahak27 5y ago
    Is there a correlation between wealth and loneliness? I could definitely imagine it being effect for the poorest in society but I wouldn't be surprised if, once you've reached a threshold of being able to keep your head above water, money and loneliness had very little relationship if at all
    • mp3k 5y ago
      Yes Its about time. If you dont have time for your relationships they fade away. So if you must work, thats lots of time not invested in your contacts.
    • User23 5y ago
      Also being sufficiently poor. If you and everyone you know live off government assistance then that leaves plenty of time for social activities.
    • lvass 5y ago
      There is. Middle class has it worst IIRC.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• anoplus 5y ago
  The long 2020 lock-downs taught me the importance of having a regular amount of social interactions, even at workplace. I have fairly limited social life. I actually reached a state where I felt my brain doesn't fire, like a car barely starting. Now I value any social life much more. I see it as nutrition.
  • mp3k 5y ago
    Wonderful point of view. Thanks
• panaffa 5y ago
  I'm a young GenZ adult. Just woke up and got depressed seeing this headline because it reinforces what I've experienced & felt. Loneliness is inherent to the human body and soul (unless perhaps we get Neuralink or AI friends someday). I am deeply sad over all the social fantasies I never had and probably never will now that I'm a working adult.
  • panaffa 5y ago
    Saw that my above comment in which I opened up about my loneliness got down voted. This is why I withdraw from society and experience loneliness. Loneliness is the fundamental nature of my existence; it is a deep spiritual feeling that is both tragic yet freeing. Read about Buddhism they understand how to redirect loneliness in a positive direction.
  • mellavora 5y ago
    Hey, you have my sympathy and understanding. And I've certainly been through some dark times mentally, and those often had strong elements of loneliness -- the kind that people say they 'battled my way through' as if fighting your self gets you anywhere and also assuming that it is somehow wrong or unacceptable to be in a dark place, i.e. it must be battled, or that the battling is what gets you to a different mental place... So I get that from where you sit, you see that > Loneliness is inherent to the human body and soul But I've come to see that if that is true, it is only true in the way that there are shadows on a sunny day. The shadows let you know that the light is shining. The inherent nature of all life is love. It can be damn hard to find sometimes, and ego and modern western culture seem bent on destroying it, but it is there.
    • BeaverFirewall6 5y ago
      Certainly. I do have friends and family who show me love, and I try to do the same. We're all inconsistent and imperfect in showing this love, and that is okay, but I think part of the problem is that our current way of life almost sociopathically doesn't value exploring and expressing love between ourselves, especially between strangers. Not sure whether there should be any cause for optimism that this societal structure will change soon.
• schnevets 5y ago
  Transitioning from a college internship to my first job, I had an excellent boss/mentor who explained the importance of my first salary. Studies proved a clear correlation between first salary and overall earning potential; obviously, workers will gain experience, change roles, and may make dramatic changes over their working life, but that first step in the professional world made a clear impression. 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?
  • helpfulmandrill 5y ago
    TIL that my career was doomed from the beginning! :)
• scandox 5y ago
  I think choice is a big part of the problem. 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.
• elbasti 5y ago
  One of thing that is obvious to me is the bizarre cultural norm that, in the US, people are expected to move away from home at the age of 18 and then relocate more-or-less permanently far away from family and childhood friends. 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.
  • 5y ago
• dcoo 5y ago
  I often come back to this quote by Vivek Murthy, former and current Surgeon General of the United States: "During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness."[0] Always strikes me that the issue was so noticeable even four years ago. [0]: https://www.vivekmurthy.com/post/2017/10/10/work-and-the-loneliness-epidemic-harvard-business-review https://www.vivekmurthy.com/post/2017/10/10/work-and-the-lon...
• MockObject 5y ago
  Humans were designed to live in extended families and tribes, our entire lives with the same, close population. Hermitage is a rare, unnatural lifestyle, historically reserved for the few dedicated to spiritual quests, not the masses.
• mountainboy 5y ago
  The pandemic public policy reaction has deepened an epidemic of loneliness. ftfy.
• chasd00 5y ago
  you only get what you give. No matter how perfectly designed your city is or your status as homeowner/renter you're going to have to actually walk up to someone and say "hello". I feel like a lot of people want companionship pushed to them in the same way an app pushes data.
• swayvil 5y ago
  Maybe that's the point. We are being fed propaganda that is clearly designed to divide us. And the lonely individual is the ultimate easily-conquered unit.
• jokoon 5y ago
  I'm okay with people having their own bedroom, but not their own kitchen and living room. 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.
• paul7986 5y ago
  Anyone else find dating to be different in the pandemic ... like it's harder to connect with people then before? 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).
  • floydian10 5y ago
    I do. I mean, you do need to be in a good place to be able to connect, mentally and emotionally speaking. I can barely keep existing friendships these days.
    • paul7986 5y ago
      I've went offline in the past five months to connect with people .. church/play in their band and meetup.com. Church has been the most fruitful in terms of making a new friend and their friends. Online dating is a joke with a good amount of friends (casual ones ive known through work & school) all saying it's hard to connect with people on a deeper level then just a date and a hookup. There's always something better to swipe right on and the one your interested in is interested in another whose not that interested in them but another and so on. My view of it ...one view at least.
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  get a puppy
• phone8675309 5y ago
  > I have a tech company and most staff want to come to the office 1 day a week. Getting them to come is very tough. 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.
  • alexpetralia 5y ago
    Absolutely. I've often felt like an outsider in places full of people, and an insider with just a single friend. I think it's about tribal affinity.
  • bettysdiagnose 5y ago
    Indeed living in Germany taught me that sometimes it's better to be alone than to be around people who make you feel alone. It's not sufficient to simply be around people, it can absolutely be actively counter-productive. Coming up against several stereotypically cold Germans who seemed barely able to even acknowledge my at least positive and non-zero value as a human being took a while to get used to...
• menomatter 5y ago
  How do they define loneliness? A lot of people are alone but content. Also the older I get the harder it becomes to maintain friendships. People move on socially, financially and geographically.
  • scandox 5y ago
    "Solitary" is what you're referring to. Loneliness is by definition a sad condition: "sadness because one has no friends or company."
    • panaffa 5y ago
      Good distinction. I spend time with enough people. Loneliness as I feel it is despair at not being deeply understood and unconditionally loved. Which by the way is practically impossible and an inherent flaw of the human design.
• cryptodan 5y ago
  I came here to post my thoughts, but I agree with everything mentioned. Here in baltimore it's about fear of being a victim of violence.
• mymythisisthis 5y ago
  Volunteer. Join a group. Hang out at a hackerspace. Enrol in adult ed.
  • thedougd 5y ago
    Adding to your list, social sport leagues. They're relaxed and welcoming of the less athletic and include 'easier' sports like dodgeball and kickball.
    • vel0city 5y ago
      Social sports leagues are also good to help encourage a decent bit of activity as well. For those who have a hard time being motivated to go to the gym and exercise regularly it can be incredibly beneficial to have a group to play some kind of sport with as a habit. Personally I have a hard time being motivated to go to the gym but having a group to encourage you to come out and play a game its a lot easier to be motivated. You don't have to be good to have a good time.
• dfxm12 5y ago
  Looking at the key recommendations, there appears to be a policy aspect playing into this as well. If you feel lonely, consider this at the polls - Who is advocating for social infrastructure and having a commitment to more than ourselves, including those who are vulnerable? 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.
  • dave78 5y ago
    What about the policy aspect of telling people to isolate at home, avoid friends and family and other social gatherings, etc. for nearly 2 years now? I'm not a fan of making everything a political issue, but since you went there - I see one group of politicians actively trying to cut us off from each other (well-intentioned or not) with venue closures, capacity limits, travel restrictions, event cancellation, recommendations to avoid gatherings, etc. and the other side trending more towards encouraging people to get back out there in the world and start interacting again.
    • dfxm12 5y ago
      State lock downs in the US generally lasted on the order of months (some amount of time between March-May of 2020), not years. If you're under the impression that you're still under a stay at home order and you can't see your family, or if you think your local music venue isn't putting on concerts, I would urge you to verify if that's truly the case. I mean, you can watch a football game on Sunday and see this. Also, treating a reaction to a global pandemic like it's an evergreen policy plank is disingenuous.
      • swayvil 5y ago
        Everybody you see now is a potential infectious disease vector. And when everybody is wearing a mask, faceless, it sorta takes the human out of human-interaction. And those guys not wearing masks, they're all filthy trumper qanon goblins. So ramp up the fear for that. An obedient citizen rolls his eyes in terror.
  • 5y ago
• cglan 5y ago
  My general opinion as a young adult is that both the design of our cities and suburbs (making general hanging out a huge chore) and the past two years which have forced many people to be anti social have been devastating. The most social times for me are always when my friends are easily accessible through walking. 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.
  • singhrac 5y ago
    Sometimes I'm surprised by how shockingly unwalkable certain areas of Manhattan are. Why are the residential areas of Hudson Yards so terribly unfriendly to people who want to "hang out"? Because all of the third places [0] are purely commercial, rather than a mix of commercial and social. European cities do this much much better. At least in New York there are plenty of parks (including a mix of commercialized like Domino Park and the High Line and more raw, like parts of Central Park and west side near the river). I can't imagine being in a city with poor public design, like SF. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
  • dfxm12 5y ago
    ...This included 61% of young people aged 18-25 and 51% of mothers with young children. Going from college, surrounded by people looking to socialize, to who-knows-what, is quite a transition. I bought my house near public transit options and within walking distance of entertainment/recreation options on purpose. I know that's not always easy to find, but like you say, a significant part of this is a policy choice, not just because of public transportation, but zoning could play a part in it as well. The city I live in has since given grants to businesses building along public transit routes and it is having a positive effect on people being out and about.
  • panaffa 5y ago
• throway20211207 5y ago
  Severe chronic pain is how I'd describe the loneliness I've experienced during the pandemic. Im alone 80-90% of any given day and it's by far the most painful experience I've ever had, even with strategies to actively manage it (I work at coffee shops, attend church, and am very active in a sporting community) 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.
  • penjelly 5y ago
    > 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. agreed. it seems community & family life has been trending downwards for a long time and lately its in a steep dive. You could try VR chatting (seems like you covered the normal bases already), i dont think its dystopian if used sparingly. I know there are tons of lonely souls who use that as an outlet for expressing themselves & ideas, or feeling closer to others while watching movies/gaming.
• deft 5y ago
  Society sucks. Everything we do ends up only making conditions worse, perhaps its time for a radical new way of living.
• boh 5y ago
  Loneliness isn't a problem. It's a necessary unpleasant state that promotes social activity akin to sleep pressure that forces you to sleep. The problem is that people are addicted to social simulacra (via social media) rather than actual social activity and so only accomplish temporary relief from the feeling of loneliness while retaining the state of loneliness (like binge drinking coffee instead of actually sleeping). 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.
  • onion2k 5y ago
    Is the article arguing that internet comms and social media is a substitute for face-to-face socializing? You seem to be arguing about a point that isn't being made. Loneliness definitely is a problem if a pandemic makes socializing in person effectively impossible. We need people to be able to overcome their loneliness, temporarily not in person, so they don't risk spreading a lethal virus around.
  • dogleash 5y ago
    >Loneliness isn't a problem. This is a weird bone to pick. It's similar to saying "obesity isn't a problem, overeating is." Like, yeah, sure, you can frame it that way if you want. But what utility have you added? So that you can build up to the conclusion that lonely people ought to go socialize properly? That's pretty tautological advice there mate.
    • rkk3 5y ago
      I think they just want to rant about the evils of social media.