People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward.
My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or grandparents did it: They went to church/temple/synagogue, they went to PTA meetings, they talked to their neighbors, they were in clubs, they went to the same bar.
So I think doing things that get you out of the house, consistently the most important part:
1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors, invite them over for dinner or bbqs, make small talk. How towns are constructed now is a hindrance to this (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches).
2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week.
3. Join social clubs / ethnic organization. The polish or ukrainian clubs, knights of columbus, elks, freemasons. Go every week.
4. Join a club / league. Chess club, bowling league, softball league, golf league. Tech meetups, DnD Night etc. But you have to talk with people and try to elevate things to friendships.
When I was a computer nerd in the 2000s, I noticed people used to like to hang around and chat, but I mostly didn't.
Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore.
When you get off social media, real life becomes far more interesting. The problem with addiction is that it's so stimulating that everything else is boring. You have to let your mind reset.
Let me tell you about real life. I’m a caregiver and leaving the home is simply not an option. Short trips to the store, a walk around the block, maybe, if it’s before sundown, provided the person I’m caring for is in the right mental state to be left alone for 45 minutes. If there were neighborhood pubs that might be a thing to do if I drank. Getting off social media is great for those lucky enough to have the option, but with an increasing number of people getting into their dementia years, many with no savings to afford respite or other forms of care, social media is going to be the only option for a lot of people like myself. It’s better than nothing.
Tip of the hat there, it’s a very selfless thing to commit to caregiving. From a 50kft view, we have an aging demographic globally, and the bet seems to be robotics- hopefully they will get good enough to help meaningfully in this capacity. What happens to an economic system predicated around having more kids (GDP growth) is another concern.
First, sorry for what you're going through. Also, your situation is definitely an outlier that I can't focus my main efforts on. Maybe someone else is meant for that. But I'm curious, why not have friends over? Is anything like this possible?
I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too.
Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with.
The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them.
I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts.
I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car.
just find a hobby that involves other people. any kind of team sport, r/c airplanes, shooting, bird watching, the options are pretty endless. You'll meet other people, make friends, and not be so lonely.
> just find a hobby that involves other people... shooting,
Ok that one made me chuckle just from the initial reading of the wording.
I don't disagree though, I do competitive bullseye, and it is definitely a communal thing. Many old guys at the range in particular seem to be there for 99% talking at you, and 1% actual shooting related stuff.
If I'm going to the range for a set of three position, a 120-shot session by myself takes like 2.5 hours including setup and teardown. If there's talkative-old-guy at the range, then I'm there for 4 hours, and I don't even make it through 60 shots lol.
Which is fine for someone like me who is a competitive shooter but not like really trying to be the absolute best, I don't mind spending 60 minutes doing bullseye and 180 minutes chatting about whatever. The actual competitive shooters at the range though, they'll either have someone screen talkative-old-guy for them, or just otherwise make it clear that they are Serious and not to be bothered.
'Making friends' doesn't occur by just being in proximity to people.
Quite likely at the end of the night they'll return to their lives and you won't be invited to interact with them again until the next meeting. That's if you're not excluded from existing club cliques - I've gone to many different meetings and come away at the end feeling more alone.
"Activity partners" are pretty easy to find. What's harder is getting them to make the transition to deeper friendship where you spend time together outside of the activity.
Thankfully social media is getting so much worse so fast it's making this easier and easier. HN is the last social media platform I still participate in... and I suspect that might not be for too much longer.
I recently logged onto Facebook and Instagram to update my 2-factor auth settings after having too many notifications of malicious login attempts. It was incredible to see what a transformation has happened there, it's like going to a decaying suburban shopping mall with only a few stores left open (and sort of sad to see the remaining users so continually desperate for a drop of approval from some imagined community).
Reddit is mostly bots, astro-turfers and people so brainwashed it's hard to tell the difference. I remember disagreeing with people on there (this in the pre-Digg migration era) you would get interesting divergent points of view. Now it's like people are reading from a script.
Twitter used to be my strongest addiction, but it's almost unbelievable how big a transformation has occurred since it became X. It's almost a parody of everyone's dystopian social media fears.
HN has obviously held up a bit better, but the AI driven mass hallucination impacting this community, combined with the increasingly aggressive manipulation of the home page, is continually making logging out for good seem like the best option.
> Reddit is mostly bots, astro-turfers and people so brainwashed it's hard to tell the difference. I remember disagreeing with people on there (this in the pre-Digg migration era) you would get interesting divergent points of view. Now it's like people are reading from a script.
It's hard to classify Reddit as one thing, the communities are all so different.
The subreddit for my town has led to several new friends that I meet with in person. Most of that came from coming together to advocate for something at a city council meeting or similar, where there was a directed meat space purpose. Getting together for hobbies like hiking or other things happens once in a while too.
On other, technical subreddits dedicated to digging deep into details, there are few bots. It's all real people with shared interests. Reddit is far better than most forums that I frequent for finding those communities.
The few times I have been swarmed by bots on Reddit was when I touched on a topic where, say, Russia had a strategic interest, then the subreddit would get tons of new commentators from other subreddits, which was the indication of bots. Fortunately the mods took swift action when this happened, becuase my god the discourse is awful when bots flood the zone with their babble.
> Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore.
A lot of the events and spaces I go to have people who hang around and chat.
I agree that internet use has had an impact, but I think it's easy to underestimate how much situations change as you grow up. Now that I have kids, it seems like we're always ending up in spaces where people are hanging out and chatting. As far as my kids know, that's just the way the world works.
I thought the same up through college, then I graduated and suddenly spontaneous socialization ended. I had to change my habits to go find other people.
And yet this looks very different from what 40+ years back looked like for adults so it's not just about growing up, there was other massive changes in our society.
For example the number of kids we had in the past dramatically affected 'forced' socialization.
The post war suburbanization that forced us to spend huge amounts of time on the road.
Things like TV that took entertainment from a group activity to a single person event.
>Things like TV that took entertainment from a group activity to a single person event.
TV was the visual replacement of radios, and both used to bring families together for tv events… I remember lots of instances of that as a child.
It also brought people together at work. Everyone used to watch nearly the same things, and even up to 15 years ago, there’d at least be groups you could find in your office who was watching the same things you did, and could engage in water cooler talk.
Now theres so many shows on streaming networks, and you can watch whenever, so its all fractured.
Usually countries don't go to war over actual principles such as these but for self-interest. That's what I was getting at. Scare quotes indicate the position of the concept within public-facing rhetoric for an Opium War style operation (which would presumably be about profit, control and so on, the usual).
I feel like the idea social media prevents socializing in real life is a bit of a straw man.
I've made many friends over the years through platforms like Instagram, some in countries I don't even live in, and we've met many times in person.
Of course that won't necessarily work for everyone but the point I'm trying to make is that social media isn't some one way street that won't return value.
People are seeking multiple things on social media. One common one is connection. I am in Mexico dealing with family business. I am in a rural area. My Spanish skills are developing but are still weak. I can have light conversation here, but I can't deeply connect. My desire to use social media has drastically increased.
But I only want to engage with my friends. Every platform feeds me various flavors of rage bait mixed in with my friends' content. Some of my friends groups have moved to chats on other less public platforms like Discord, Signal, or Whatsapp. But that's not the same experience. And a lot of the people I like to engage with aren't moving over to those platforms.
We all thought maybe social media would evolve into something good... but it was enshitified. So maybe part of the solution here is to develop a tool that offers that connection without the whole being exploited aspect?
I know the feeling but my impression is that interacting with people that are strictly internet friends is a proxy to the real thing, the same way watching porn is a proxy for the real thing. When you spend X hours talking to people on the Internet you're spending at least less X hours talking to people IRL and building the sense of community that we now feel thinning away.
I know people that are internet famous and are terminally online all the time. I'm pretty sure it must feel like they're accomplishing something but for somebody IRL not familiar with the game they're playing their life looks very weird socially.
My current mindset for this is that social media should only work augmenting my real world social life, not take what's left of it away from me.
> (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches)
You can turn the garage into a hangout spot. A neighbor has a full bar with communal table plus TV for sports and he opens up the garage door once a week on a schedule (Sunday game day or whatever depending on the season) and whenever he feels like it on work week evenings. As people pass by we invite them over and after a few months everyone knows that when the garage is open, they can come over for a drink and to shoot the shit. Low pressure social interactions that often turn into weekend outings, regular poker games, etc.
Now years later we get impromptu block parties when he brings out the grill onto the driveway. It’s done wonders for our community in an otherwise unwalkable SoCal suburb.
This works wonders. I did it accidentally. In March 2020 when my gym closed, I started working out every night in the garage. After a couple of weeks a neighbor who I only ever said "hi" to wondered by and asked if he could join since his gym was closed. After a while more showed up, and now I have like 12 people every day show up. One Friday someone brought a bottle of whiskey and we hung out after the workout and now weekly happy hours are a regular occurrence. The neighbors who don't workout stop by after the workout for happy hour. It's almost become expected and folks schedule their weeks around it so that they can be there for drinks in the evening. As a super introvert nerd, I never thought I'd be the center of community in my neighborhood.
This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing unless I was warmly encouraged to join in, that's how I've been turned into a social outcast in my youth. I know some people who for a fact feel the same way.
Maybe one solution is therapy, to help massage them out of their shell, to help them learn to be vulnerable and unafraid and friendly. But many of them refuse to go to therapy for whatever reason also.
These are things I will be running into as I try to resolve this. I have already encountered a young man named Daniel who remembered me, and told me that he was hospitalized, and that the thought of me and my sign helped him get through it. I'm dealing with people on all spectrums of mental health.
In fact, maybe that's kind of the point. I'm trying to reach out to people who refuse to go to therapy, who have internal thoughts berating them all day long, and I have the unique opportunity of helping them through the darkness and into the light of the truth, that they are valuable and lovable, if only people saw the true them, and trusted them to become that.
Yep. I grew up in the era of ‘stranger danger’. We were explicitly taught as kids to fear strangers and socialising. We were taught “don’t be rude and butt in to conversations uninvited”, etc.
Still, something else is off. In the 90s, the Internet was a way to expand your social circle. So many friends made on IRC groups that moved into real life.
Nowadays yeah, commenting on Reddit and chatting to friends in message groups does feel like socialising, even though you might go two weeks without seeing anyone other than coworkers, cashiers (maybe) and Uber Eats delivery drivers.
> This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing
Part of it I think is to endure the uncomfortable for a bit.
I felt really uncomfortable in social settings, and still do sometimes. But I forced myself to ignore those feelings. Now I'm at a point that if people think I'm weird or whatever then that's their problem.
I try not to be rude, be considerate and such thing, I'm not totally unhinged. But I am much more relaxed about just being me. Sometimes it doesn't work, but often it's all good.
on my son's bday i drug our firepit out to the front yard and setup some chairs for my wife and I to welcome his friends as they arrived. Maybe a dozen people in our neighborhood walking their dog or out for a run just dropped by to say hello and talk. I guess the fire looked very inviting (it was a chilly evening). I'm going to start doing it regularly, it's an easy way to meet people in your community.
The common retort is that these don't exist any more, but in my experience they're all over. If you have kids you start seeing them everywhere, too. They're not as classically romantic as an ancient Greek agora, but there are plenty of spaces. During the summer I'm probably at a different space 5 days a week with the kids after school.
I think the real problem is that some people forget how to go places. It's so easy to do the routine of work -> dinner -> screen time -> sleep -> repeat that time vanishes from people.
Whenever I hear people, usually young and single, complain that their 8 hour job leaves 0 hours in the day to do anything and they're too tired on the weekends to go out, it's always this: Their time is disappearing into their screens, which makes it feel like their only waking hours go to work. I try to give gentle nudges to help give people ideas, but none of them really want to hear that it's something they can change. It's just so easy to believe that life has thrust this situation upon us and there's nothing we can do about it.
> The common retort is that these don't exist any more
Usually when I see the retort, its also with the understanding that 3rd places need to be free, or essentially free. If theres a significant expectation of money being spent in order to spend time there, its not really a “3rd place” by the intended definition. (Thats the argument I’ve seen)
That has never really been part of the definition. If you look at that Wikipedia article a couple comments up, I only see two examples (i.e. stoops and parks) that are free, and I think parks are a stretch because conversation is not a primary reason for most people going there.
Also, people forgot how to find places. If you're driving a car, places speed by too fast to see or remember (and it's dangerous to spend too much time looking at them). On Google, places are actively hidden from you for the sake of making the map look "cleaner". Every time I go downtown (on transit, not by car) I notice new shit that just doesn't exist on the map unless you specifically type in the name to get Google to admit that it exists.
I noticed this the first time I took a walk by myself to the town center rather than letting my parents drive me there. You know the routine: drive to the mall parking lot, go and get the thing you're looking for, drive home. Well, I didn't have my own car and figured I could walk there (about an hour, so probably 2-3km, in a country that uses sidewalks). It's basically magical how much stuff you notice that you would just ignore when in the car, even as a passenger.
No it doesn't. I live in a planned neighborhood in the suburbs. I can walk to a branch of my local library, a few restaurants, a bar, a bookstore, I even get my haircut in my neighborhood. And even if none of that existed, nothing has stopped me from being friends with my neighbors, or the parents of my kid's friends. The suburbs are a different model with tradeoffs, but they're also useful for periods and phases of life different from the ones served by urban settings.
A planned neighborhood is technically by definition not suburban sprawl, as sprawl requires a lack of planning. On the other hand, I'd argue if you can do all of that (and said walking distance is under a mile[0]) you're not even in a suburb, you're in a dense enough location to be a town or small city. Unfortunately thanks to American zoning and planning it can be very difficult to know what your home area is actually considered and it makes this type of anecdotal evidence not particularly useful[1].
[0] A mile is essentially the farthest the average person will comfortable walk versus driving a car for travel that does not require carrying anything back. Once you add in carrying things (e.g. groceries) it drops to half a mile. Anything less dense than that and people won't want to walk, anything more dense than that and you're into standard city planning.
[1] Assuming you're American of course and obviously I'm not about to ask you to dox yourself, considering this type of thing can vary right down to the neighbourhood level.
I live in probably the most walkable city in the world, but there are millions of lonely people here as well. From any of my observations, I can’t pinpoint to one single problem.
It might be a composite effect of different things contributing to the easiness of being alone. Cultural skill that overtime gets eroded, and as less time people spend among others, it becomes even harder to go back.
This. I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community. Community is a function of distance, broadly speaking.
Suburban sprawl is not going to be "fixed" in anyones lifetime. But it doesn't have to be limiting. I grew up in a very typical suburban style neighborhood in the 1970s. Tract homes, lots of cul-de-sac streets. But neighbors talked to one another, kids played together, there were summer gatherings in those cul-de-sacs on the 4th of July or Labor Day.
Don't think you have to live in some idealized fantasy land to go talk to your neighbors.
I live in a suburban neighborhood with a couple bag ends, our neighborhood is pretty social. couple of neighborhood bbqs a year, kids all playing together every day, dinners, etc. It is quiet and not a lot of traffic with long term residents. I am not 100% on what exactly the key is for a town is, I think style matters, but Ive been in walkable neighborhoods without a good community, and non-walkable neighborhoods with one.
I'll say that when I was a kid, the neighborhood was still as it was originally built, no sidewalks. Didn't stop anyone from socializing, didn't stop kids from biking around.
The city added sidewalks there in the '00s or so, but when I go back there I almost never see anyone using them.
I think the trend of isolation and loneliness is not really related to infrastructure or stuff like "walkability." Those things are pretty minor obstacles.
How big were the lots? How far of a walk was the closest bar, grocery store, cafe? Do you have to walk onto someone's property to talk to them if they are sitting on the porch?
I lived in a car dependent burb for 20+ years and would rarely, if ever, run into my neighbors out on the town. Living in a walkable neighborhood in a medium-low density city for under a year and I regularly run into my neighbors.
Standard 0.25 acre suburban lots. No markets, cafes, or anything like that it was a bog-standard subdivision. There was a small park sort of centrally located but that was really the only ammenity. Supermarket was a few miles away. Nobody walked there, cars to go anywhere. Neighbors still knew one another, at least on the same streets. Kids met at school, figured out where each other lived.
I knew cul de sac was french for bag end, or end of sack or whatever the translation was. One time reading lord of the rings after learning Tolkien explicitly avoided french loan words, I realized Bilbo living at Bag End is kind of a joke. Its just saying Bilbo lives in the cul de sac.
For what it's worth, many (most?) countries have most of their people living in places that are not sprawling suburbs. It's worst in the "Anglosphere" countries (US/Canada/Australia) within the last 50-70 years, but it's absolutely not a fantasy land. It's the way things were everywhere before 1940, and most places still are today.
I say that because it is fixable, if we let ourselves fix it...
Your point stands though, even in a fairly antisocial layout of a suburb, you can still usually make friends with a decent number of people nearby.
Our lopsided emphasis on individualism, our definition of economic efficiency that does not include the mental health value, these have been detrimental to our connections, roots, community, family etc.
We said, let the mom and pop stores die, their replacements provide the same value but more efficiently. Let community bonds die they intrude upon our individual destiny.
But we did not correctly account for the value provided by those that we chose to replace. So it is not surprising that we find ourselves here.
Could it have played out any other way ? I doubt it. Our world is an underdamped system, so we will keep swinging towards the extremes, till we figure out how to get a critically damped system. The other serious problem is that the feedback system is so laggy, that's a biggy in feedback control loops.
The world has become a much bigger place. You used to know who to avoid, the default was someone was acceptable. Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person.
> Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person.
This seems a wild generalization to make, though I guess "be suspicious of newcomers" is a little biologically hardwired. What's your epistemology for believing "newcomers" are "the ones to avoid"?
This reads like that pattern where people assign blame for all issues to whatever thing they happen to not like. The US is the least individualistic it has ever been, but there was much more community and less loneliness in the past. That make it pretty obvious that the issue here isn't "individualism".
I do this. Even to the point where I go to church yet am openly agnostic. Takes the right church, I enjoy a good pastor and message even if I don’t technically believe it can be rooted in morality or philosophy and I can filter out the religious aspects. I could do without the singing but that’s my wife’s favorite part.
The thing is, church works for this because it’s an agreed upon and set time of the week. It’s also a broad group of people. Having friends of all ages is beneficial. I prefer it to a hobby group or our parent groups where we are all very similar in many aspects, although I do those too I just feel like their impact is less on building my own character.
It’s hard to lose what has been lost in the macro sense and then go from 0 to 1. A social movement like “screen free Saturday” or something would be ideal. Kids had to prearrange where to meet, where the teens will party (they don’t party anymore yall!), arrange logistics, and deal with being bored during some part of the day (underrated life skill, as a busy adult I love being bored, but hated it when young). I just recently explained to my kid how TV worked in the 80s. You couldn’t pick what to watch and there were very few times when cartoons were on. You either watched the news or MASH with the adults or found something else to do out of boredom.
You're answering the question, "In a loneliness epidemic, what can I do to be less lonely?" Your answer is to use self discipline (which is hard) to get out of your house consistently, a decent answer to that question.
To actually fix the loneliness epidemic, you'd have to get everyone else to do that.
In the 20th century, getting out of the house consistently was the easiest way to interact with other people. Now, you can interact with lots of other people (in a less satisfying way) without leaving your house. What's going to fix that?
How do we get everyone to eat better? How do we get everyone to get enough sleep? How do we get everyone to exercise more? "Just tell them to do it" won't work. "Why don't we all just put our phones away?" won't work. We'd need a policy.
(My best guess: in the US, mandate that health insurers pay for therapy, and provide therapy at low/no cost in countries with national health care.)
I was with you up until you said policy was the solution. No, action must come first. Policy needs people to agree on it, and can take a long time to enact. Action can be done now, and allows experimentation and disagreement. I am looking for actionable solutions that I can experiment with as one lone individual with time to spare on Sundays.
> People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward.
This is the wrong model:
Sitting (alone) at home and working on program code or reading scientific textbooks does have a reward. Many things for which you go outside of the house or where you interact with other people have a much lower reward. So you rather loose a rather decent local optimum, and if you don't know very well where to look outside for something really good, you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.
I think by "reward" in the context of this discussion on loneliness, OP may have meant the opportunity to meet people, make friends, perhaps hit it off with someone and land a date, if you're single. Not that it's entirely useless/detrimental to spend time at home reading or pursuing whatever solo hobbies you happen to have.
To be sure, there certainly are many introverts who are perfectly happy on their own with no need to get out and meet people. More power to them! But there are many that crave human connection, even if they happen to have many intellectual interests and for these types of individuals, they would be well served at least carving out some portion of their time to get out of the house with the explicit aim of meeting people. And yes, not every such outing will lead to lifelong friends or meeting your next soulmate, but it's a numbers game.
My son is comparing every alternative to what he can accomplish by staying home and practicing guitar. However, we are trying to start an anime theme song cover band (e.g. "Upstate NY's most energetic opening act") for which he's going to play Bass, Rhythm or Lead as needed and I'm going to be the Kitsune/Band Manager/Mascot.
> you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.
That's a sense of risk and caution that gets too comfortable for some people to compete with over time. If you don't build yourself better options, all you want to do is sit at home and do the thing that guarantees a reward. Then you get in your car and move about the world in a way that you feel is guaranteed to protect you from conditions, other people, but really is dangerous. You bet only on certainty, and outcomes are predictable, but they're not compatible with not being lonely
What a stupid take, but it showcases the underlying problem: there is no loneliness issue, there is a "me me me" issue.
Friendship is a two way contract: you add something to someone's life and they will consider you their friend, they add something to your life, making them your friend.
Of you "optimize" for your own and only your own benefit, nobody is going to be your friend.
But reducing loneliness is just a means to an end. My point is that there exist a lot of rewarding things that you can do alone at home, which may give you a hapiness malus because of the loneliness, but also a happiness bonus because you like the activity.
If a solution to reducing loneliness shall be sustainable, it better increases the happiness or rewardingness overall, too. Otherwise you see loneliness as a problem, but see the alternatives as being the worse options, i.e. by rational choice, the loneliness will not be reduced.
In my experience, this is the key. “90% of life is showing up.” If you are around the same people every week, for whatever reason, with even a minimal amount of openness and friendliness, you will get community.
based on the work of Robert Putnam is an essential backgrounder on the topic.
Yet, if you're concerned about Gen Z, 2-4 are aspirational at best. Churches, clubs, live music events, and every other group my son attends have a lot of people who are 35+ and children that tag along but the 18-30 demo is almost absolutely absent at events away from the local colleges and universities. [1] It's quite depressing for someone his age who is looking to connect with his cohort in person.
Leaders of groups are somewhere between outright hostile, completely indifferent, or well-meaning but unable to do anything about the "cold start" problem.
I'm sympathetic to the argument of Ancient Wisdom Tradition (AWT) practitioners that secularism is to blame, but my consistent advice to anyone is you can control what you can control and that secularism would not have encroached as much as it has if AWT organizations weren't asleep at the switch if not doing the devil's work for him.
Personally in the last year I've found a lot of meaning being an event photographer for this group
where I know you can find some people in the 18-30 hole because I read their age off their bibs.
My son is doing all the ordinary things and I am supporting him in all the ordinary ways but I do believe extraordinary times require extraordinary methods.
I can't advise that anyone follow my path but I felt a calling to shamanism two years ago which recently became real, I "go out" as
who is a "kidult" and who embodies [2] the wisdom, calm and presence of a 1000-year old fox who's earned his nine tails. In one of the worlds I inhabit I'd call this a "platform" for gathering information and making interventions as it builds rapport and bypasses barriers and the social isolation of Gen Z is my top priority for activism in my circle of influence.
[1] ... and our data there seems to indicates that Asian students seem to be OK and white kids, if they do anything at all, drink.
While this is true, it's worth mentioning that a regular coffee machine small talk in the office is not building any relationships. At least that's how I experience it. It can start one, but won't automatically make one.
I can go for a coffee and routinely get dragged into 30 min conversation about politics, or cars, or weather, or any other subject I literally don't care about. All the good relationships begin with finding a niche topic between 2 people.
It doesn't have to be an office - young people just need to get out and engage with the world in whatever way works for them. I tell this to my teenagers all the time. They are used to our nice house in the woods, 10 minutes outside of town, where their old parents work remotely and relax at home. But I remind them that this is a good place for our old age, not their youth. I spent my 20s exploring the world, climbing mountains, meeting new people, making mistakes, learning, and growing. They would be happier if they likewise got out and explored... hopefully with fewer mistakes.
But there is far more to the world than offices, so while I agree 100% with the sentiment, I'd broaden those horizons.
For sure. I would have been in real trouble if covid had happened when I was 20. The few times I tried to work remotely it took a matter of just a few days to go stir crazy. The office was a good environment for me (it helped that it was legitimately a good environment with good coworkers, not everyone has that).
As a family man with a wife, two kids, two cats, and a dog ... working from home is no big deal for me now. I prefer it. I got lucky that we did not get forced into this until I was in a position to handle it well.
I agree with this take. I'm definitely not friends with everyone I've worked with in person, but some of the most meaningful post-college friendships were formed by socializing with the people in the office (or people I met through socializing with office friends).
Yep, I met my wife at an office party - she didn't work for the company, just stopped by with someone who did
And not just the office friends that come from it -- I spent an hour a day on the bus, grabbed lunch around town, was downtown when work wrapped up and ended up at a nearby bar/restaurant, went to shows because I was downtown, etc.
Just being forced out of the house led to SO MUCH MORE.
Now I work from home and while we do travel a lot, we barely ever leave the house when we're home. We didn't make a single new friend for like 5 years (and we are a VERY social couple, generally the center of most of our friend groups). We've only just now started making new friends again now that our daughter is a toddler and getting us out of the house -- and it is incredibly refreshing
It's not just willingness, as the OP mentions, being forced out of the house lots of things happen, some of them social. Having everything in the house, from work to shopping to entertainment is a convenience that could even save you some money, but it has a cost down the line.
This as well. You need to learn to talk to people, socialize, handle adversity, etc. Sitting at home and your only real connection to the outside world being an echo chamber like facebook or whatever cannot be good for us
Absolutely, I agree. Some of the people I had the sharpest debates with and didn't always agree with had way more impact on who I am today than the softer acquaintances. Most of them definitely made me a better person in the end, even if we weren't really "friends".
And yeah, even just having the basic daily connections can be a dopamine hit.
Sure, but what about the people who don't do this? Those who sit at home all day, scrolling away, drinking themselves to death, wondering why life is so lonely.
The only time you ever see such people is when they're walking to the grocery store. How do you reach out to them to let them know about these ideas or encourage them to try it? Especially when they're filled with discouraging thoughts?
What if all they need is one single person to say hi? How can I find them, reach them? This is what I'm asking.
> What if all they need is one single person to say hi?
Then say 'hi'. By definition they're not going to seek you out nor are they going to be findable so you're only option is to say hi to everyone and hope one sticks.
edit: heh i hope you're not talking about me, i walk to the grocery store regularly by myself. It's how a take a break from work and get some exercise. i'm fine :)
To me that seems like not saying hi, rather a device to shift the risk of engaging off of you. Don't be scared. Just say a few banal words to people you don't know every day and gauge their reaction, start a conversation if you like and they seem to be up for it.
We need the Tiktoks of the world to realize their responsibility: users get addicted to the apps in order to numb their feelings of loneliness. So we'd need an intervention within these apps that makes them unbearable for the lonely, combined with a healthier way to engage with loneliness.
Imagine TikTok asking you "you've scrolled for 30 minutes. You might be in a loneliness spiral. Write down the name of someone you would like to be closer to."
TikTok does in fact remind you, quite often, that you've been scrolling for a while, and suggests taking a break. Last year, for most of each day, I would just ignore this and keep scrolling. I'd see it so many times each day. That wouldn't change if they added a suggestion like writing a name down. I'd still ignore it, and I think most people in the same situation would too. But when I was at the store, or walking to the store, that's when someone could have found a way in, and been able to get me to make a connection and open up.
You just have to become the most friendly ultimate host in the world. Start up random conversations with those people at the grocery store or on the street and invite them to your bbq you are having this weekend.
But ultimately, if a man is sitting in his kitchen and its on fire. Its up to him to run out. No amount of reaching out will help until he decides to make the change.
A somewhat cynical response given the frequency of this topic/question being posted here and on other social media platforms. Add a weak "/s but not really" if you want:
People sitting at home living on apps and watching TV who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else who was at home on an app and watching TV deciding to get out and meet someone else.
The people who have friends.. already have friends. Those who don't are numerous social cycle iterations in on that.
And how long before those people just end up talking about TV shows anyway?
> who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else
I can't imagine going to a general "group social event" like a party and making a connection. I'd end up just sitting there being bored until I left. I don't have the personality to just strike up a conversation about nothing with some one I don't know. But I do somewhat often go to events that revolve around my hobbies. There, I already have a connection with the strangers, through the hobby, and I have something to talk about or listen to. I've met plenty of new friends that way.
Nonsense. It's fine to be boring, and to have boring friends. This expectation that you need to be travel influencer or a deep philosopher in order to have anything to talk about is an artifact of social media.
I'm old enough to remember what socialization was like pre-Internet. And by curated social media standards, it was really boring. It was also great.
This is good advice for your friends and family, but a bad answer to the question. "How can we solve the obesity epidemic? Stop eating so much and get some exercise." Well sure, but this misses the big picture. We built a social infrastructure that encourages a sedentary, solitary life. We shouldn't be confused by physical and emotional health implications. We can expect some people to be proactive about it, but we can't expect that of everyone.
I think what makes this good advice especially difficult is that it cannot be one-sided. When everyone is letting doom-scrolling replace their social interaction, then one person won't easily solve their own problem by going out to socialize. We need a broader solution, probably a cultural shift away from using technology as a crutch to avoid other people. Maybe the current younger generations will evolve a balance.
Yes, for years now I’ve had this creeping feeling that it’s a social version of the prisoners dilemma: if you’re the only one that puts down the phone (or gets off social media, etc) then you’re just left behind. It’s a coordination problem.
I think that there are a lot of people that are kind of waiting for other people to pitch something to do. Maybe you want to call them type A and B, leader and follower, I think of it as the Host and Attendees. The more of the Hosts the more things that will be happening, so trying to become a Host is just creates more opportunities.
Agreed. I'm not sure how it happened, but it feels like we've experienced a societal shift where a large number of people now expect and wait for other people to create nicely packaged solutions to their (real or imagined) problems. From social apps to medicine to play dates to curated vacations, too many people are unwilling to face "the great unknown" that is just going out and seeing what happens, warts and all. Somehow the ability of boomers to make conversation with strangers has become a meme instead of a norm - they're good at it because they practice it.
> 1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors
There are people who find this satisfying. However, you don't typically choose your neighbors. Don't be afraid to eschew spending time on this in favor of groups you deliberately choose based on common interests.
You might not choose your neighbors but, like your family, they're a part of your life anyway. You can choose to build bonds with them (rely on them to water plants, pick up packages, borrow spices) or create your own little world.
You can also find these things elsewhere—I know someone whose dry cleaner cat sits for her—but your relationship with your neighbors can still really affect your life.
I see this as quite a problem in the US. The default place a lonely person has to go is usually a church - where you can expect a modicum, possibly even a seeming profusion, of welcome. This is their hook. They provide automatic acceptance - of sorts. This is also how the right wing fascist regime convinced people to let Trump take over the country - propaganda through the churches.
The only other options people hear about are 'join a club.' Interesting clubs aren't that easy to find. Hanging out at the local pub has obvious downsides, though I guess it sorta works in some countries.
We need more ways for people to casually meet others that aren't trying to manipulate you or program you with religious doctrine...
1. fair
2. did this but they are all 80+
3. ok
4. not that good at anything, too old for most groups. gym no one talks with anyone. bjj was the best for this, since its more older and mostly men
5. remote work ruined my mental health
As far as 2 goes: As far as churches go. The type of church matters a lot. If you go to a Universalist Unitarian, or progressive Lutheran Church, yeah itll probably be 80+. Evangelical/Baptist, Latter Day Saints, Orthodox, Catholic (more traditional parishes) all are significantly younger. The more conservative the denomination the younger the congregation. The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture. This also tracks to Judaism, with Reformed Synagogues being much older than Orthodox. I am not sure and haven't seen numbers of Islam, Buddhism, etc. i the US.
For 4: You don't really have to be good for like a rec league kickball, or beer league golf. Gyms are better if youre doing classes though I think, like BJJ or wrestling.
> The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture... The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture.
And yet many young Evangelicals have deconstructed and dropped out of those conservative congregations over the last 20 years or so. They couldn't bridge the cognitive gap between the conservative political stance of their church and what they read in the bible.
My experience is similar. I think there is a combination of "some gyms are more social" and "some people are good at breaking the ice with strangers". On social media, I frequently hear people say stuff like: "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym." I am not doubting their story, but it doesn't happen to me.
> remote work ruined my mental health
I'm sorry to hear it. I'm not here to start a holy war about remote work. Can you share some details? For me, remote work has me very quickly "falling apart" -- showering at 2PM or not at all. Going to the office forces some structure into my life and everything else flows from that. To be clear: I understand that a lot of people love remote work.
> "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym."
Their definition of "a friend" can wildly vary from yours. Especially if such relationship is cultivated only at the gym. I'd hardly call it "friendship".
I'd say particularly if you're an atheist. I've always been atheist, but fascinated by churches and religions regardless, because no matter what you believe, it's hard to refuse the proof that the ideas themselves are powerful and helps people a lot of the times. Why is that? Best way to find out is to talk and engage with those who have these different ideas, probably where they are the most comfortable.
Doesn't mean you need to forget all the horrible impact it has had too, and how much better humanity would probably be without it, or even continue thinking about ideas how we could finally get rid of it once and for all, without violence.
Also, probably different in different parts of the world, but in many places churches are just purely architecturally/visually beautiful and historically interesting buildings. Some of them have really interesting acoustics too, and organs. Many interesting stuff at churches :)
It's not even just an atheist issue. You have to have spiritual beliefs that value the specific repetitive church rituals so as not to be bored out of your mind.
If you agree with the entire comment, except just that line, do you upvote or not? I think maybe that's why :) If that line was the only thing in the comment, the reaction would probably have been different.
I always said science is kind of like a religion in a way. Wonder if that's closer or further from some truth than "technology". Interesting perspective nonetheless.
I think part of the problem is the stuff you’re suggesting. I think everyday life needs to happen organically and if everything is scheduled and regimented and needs to be planned for, it’s very hard for the vast majority of people to actually accomplish. In the past the way, this worked was you went to church which was societally and peer enforced. People need to have marriages that last a lifetime. It’s my opinion that marriages that are a partnership without any sort of hierarchy like we had in the past are essentially doomed to fail except in a small percentage of cases. You need to have kids with stable homes that can go out on the street and be outside all day without fear of crime. Extended families need to live close to each other so there are a lot of folks raising kids and approaching life’s every day problems together. You need to shut off indoor sources of entertainment like social media and video gaming. You need to have a solid education system that is factual and science based, and only lets kids get through on the basis of meritocracy so they can be good informed citizens, and not vote for populist nonsense like we currently have. In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say is people cannot act on what’s best for them but society can put enough peer pressure on everyone for everyone’s good. This might be very hard to listen to in an individualistic society like ours and I don’t even know if I would want to live in this society, but I believe that if that’s the only option, everyone is better off.
I'm also in this group, so I have a few theories as to what causes it and how to fix it.
For one thing, I was severely traumatized as a kid, which delayed a lot of my social skills. I'm catching up but not all the way there yet. When my social battery is full, I can do pretty well, but if I'm even a little down, it's basically impossible to act normally.
I also had it hammered into me as a kid that nobody wants me around, nobody could ever love me, I'm a failure, a burden, a creep, a weirdo, and nothing but a bothersome nuisance that nobody would ever want to spend 30 seconds alone with. I'm trying to reject these thoughts, but it's difficult when you have nobody to talk to. It's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I wonder how many people have the same issue. I've made a few friends in person, but I rarely get to see them.
Well I've started doing public surveys in my nearby big city, and documenting the results. I just hold out a posterboard that says "how alone do you feel"[1] or "have you ever been in love" etc, and hold out a marker, and people come up and take the survey. At first I did this out of sheer loneliness and boredom. But I have done it for enough months that some people have come up to me and told me that I've helped them, or that they look forward to my signs.
I'm trying to reach those people who feel the way I feel have no way of connecting with anyone, or at least feel that they don't. Do you have any new ideas of how to achieve this?
Since I was a small child, my grandfather used to beat me savagely and shake me and pin me to the ground, screaming that the devil was inside of me and that I would never be capable of loving or being loved. This was literally beaten into me. He'd beat me with the buckle end of the belt, like a whip, hitting my face, arms, whatever he could. He'd keep beating me until I couldn't cry anymore, telling me that men are not supposed to cry, and that it was his responsibility to teach me not to cry. I flashback at least once a day to it.
But, he was wrong. I love a lot. So much that sometimes it's unbearable. I cry all the time. Sometimes out of pure love for someone. And there are people who I think love me. Of course the doubt is permanently sewn in. But my heart goes out to you, seriously. I love you just for existing and being yourself, and I hope you're okay. We're not alone. Email's in my bio if you ever want to talk.
I appreciate the sentiment, but knowing that it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.
That's actually the exact problem I'm facing, so it's incredibly relevant.
A year ago, I was talking to the local Catholic priest (I was donating some religious statues that I had effectively inherited), and it came up in conversation that I was going through a rough time. He went in for a hug, and it felt so absolutely empty and disingenuous. I accepted it merely to avoid a scene, but it was absolutely not welcome or meaningful.
When I'm out in the city, I want to reach out to those people who put that they feel "100%" alone just like I do. I wrote in the article some of my thoughts and feelings on this, and some things I tried and didn't try.
But ultimately, that's the gap I want to bridge now. We have a thing in common. How do we go from there? (Not you and me, but me and a stranger who has the same problem as me that they want to solve.) What do I say next? What's the next thing we can do in that interaction, or maybe a later one if I ever see them again? This is my question to myself, what I'm wondering in this whole post.
> it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.
Man, well said. People who "over engage" are doing it out of a sense of kindness, but you're right that it feels hollow and is really just about them.
I think the solution to this is basically what you're doing. Build small connections via whatever engagement mechanism you can and let them organically grow into meaningful ones. Jumping from zero to pretending you have a meaningful connection is exactly why those gestures feel hollow. There is no shortcut, it takes time.
Sounds like you're making those initial connections with your signs, which I think is great.
I've posted this thought a few times in different ways, but in my experience, community is found and then built.
Regularly sharing space with others is the way to start finding community. I think your surveying is an example of that. The next step is when the interactions begin taking place outside of the regular time/place, as evidenced by your epilogue.
What I haven't posted before is anything about how to successfully create those connections. Maybe we get lucky and someone will share our taste in music or movies or what have you, and the connection will be almost effortless. But to increase the rate of connection, I've found that learning to ask good questions is key.
We can learn a lot from popular interviewers like Terry Gross, Johnny Carson, or James Lipton. But to provide some direct tips: Lead with open-ended questions (i.e. not "yes or no"). Ask follow-up questions. Share a little bit while asking questions (e.g. "I'm not really into X music, more Y. Where would I start if I wanted to listen to X?")
Of course, sometimes friendships just aren't meant to be. It's tough, and can feel like a waste of time to have made the connection, but I've been surprised multiple times when a conversation that seemed like a slog of a one-off led to fruitful friendships later.
Traumatic childhood almost always messes with how one attaches with people. A small exceptional fraction somehow manage to remain unaffected.
When attachment styles get warped, behaviors that were a self protective behavior in childhood, become self-defeating behaviors in adult life. The person is quite oblivious to all this because those behaviors and fragile modes of attachment feel perfectly normal -- it is like growing up in a different g (acceleration due to gravity).
It feels like - I am right, it's the others who are wrong, unfair, greedy, needy, flakey, stupid.
For me this book [0] was very helpful for understanding what's going on in and around me
I like this poster thing. Anything that gives people a little connection to those around them.
I sometimes sit on my front step and play guitar. 9/10 people ignore me but usually I'll have one or two nice conversations with a neighbor, and have made a couple friends this way. It helps that I live in a dense walkable place with lots of people who are similar to me.
I've done sidewalk art with my kid. Between Spring and Fall last year, I'd make a new drawing every time it rained. Rarely was there a day without chalk on my sidewalk.
I did it to play with my kid (and learn a little Japanese by writing the title in kanji), but another outcome was talking to neighbors. I keep to myself and have been told I'm difficult to approach, but people often come up and compliment the drawings. One lady said that, when walking with her granddaughter, she makes sure to see what's new on my sidewalk. It's been a very "low risk" way to put myself out there. I draw without anyone looking, and chatty people come to me while I'm in the yard.
Helping people like you are seems like an amazing start. Maybe try to get a pyramid structure going where you teach people to help other people and then they teach people and then it’s a movement? But at all times a low level of effort so there is no pressure other than just holding up a sign or a marker.
I’ve found the hardest thing is breaking the ice and the sign / marker normalises a low stakes interaction where one participant can walk away at any time
Best way to solve it is to recognize that it's intentional and start calling it the anti-social epidemic instead. If we keep calling it loneliness then everyone thinks its something that is happening to them, instead of something they are doing.
Spending time in parts of Latin America or western Europe or east Asia and then coming back to the US, you can see a lot of ways in which we've built loneliness into the fabric of US culture.
It goes beyond car culture. It's probably illegal to build a cafe within walking distance of your neighborhood or into the first floor of your apartment complex.
Americans get an idea of how bad we have it when we go on vacation, but we don't see it as something that can be built at home.
I've been working on something called Open Enough Design (OED). The core idea: most rooms force a binary choice between total isolation (the bunker) and overwhelming exposure (the stage). Neither works. What works is a dial you can adjust.
In my book "Leave the Door Open" I suggest simple, high leverage moves anyone can do. Three examples of practical moves that cost nothing:
-Turn your chair to face the door instead of a wall. Your nervous system relaxes when it can see who's coming.
- If you live alone, open your door or window four inches for an hour. The sounds of life beyond your walls remind your body you're not alone on the planet.
- Put out a second chair. Even if no one visits. It shifts your internal posture from "no one is coming" to "I'm expecting life to enter."
Small changes, I know. But the room shapes you as much as you shape it. It's a virtuous cycle.
I write about this at oedmethod.substack.com if you want to go deeper.
All of the replies so far are suggesting ideas for an individual but seem to be missing the real crux of the matter...
Yes, you'll be less lonely if you join a group, get out of your house, etc... But how do we actively incentivize that? Social media and whatnot have hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to find ways to suck you in and monopolize your time.
While "everyone should recognize the problem and then take steps to solve it for themselves" is the obvious solution, it's also not practical to just have everyone collectively decide they need to get out more without SOME sort of fundamental change in our society/incentives/etc
Intentionally choose community and the effort it takes to build and cultivate it [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. People are work, but you cannot live without community [6].
Why, you ask? Because your comment seemed like you had read only the title and nothing else I wrote here, and wanted to contribute off the cuff links you had stored up. And you barely even bothered to summarize any of what they contain. I've been reading this book by Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy ever since you linked it, and it's definitely got some great insights into it, that mirror my own thoughts and struggles with this. But in your comment, it felt like a mere afterthought. And maybe that's fine, maybe that's fair, you're a busy guy and have your own stuff to do. It's not against the rules or general moral code to write a drive by comment. But it just feels like a low effort comment. Which is why I wanted to downvote it. And now that it's surfaced higher than mine, it just feels like pouring lemon juice on a papercut.
Are you serious right now? I don't mean this in an insulting way at all, but I can see why you're dealing with loneliness. Take some time to self reflect and figure out why you lashed out here(seriously, really think about it or show some friends this dialogue without context and ask what they think, in person). Like the commenter, I hope you find you find your community, but you are far from the path. Your attitude is fixable, nobody is playing down the problems here and instead people who were in your shoes empathetically showed you a way out, but you need some serious self reflection.
In case it's not clear, original replier's comment here is absolutely correct and it doesn't necessarily have to be in a religious pretext (re: the church article), that's just a palpable example for most people. Neighbors, community centers, hobbies, etc-- these all require work on everybody's end and you must commit to these relationships to create a semblance of something to revolve your life around in lieu of drowning in loneliness.
For sure, my church citation wasn't about religion specifically, but that the decline in third spaces in general and a lack of community can be directly connected to early deaths and deaths of despair.
Church does not have to be a church of faith, it can well be a church of reason.
What matters is that people with shared values get to spend time together on a regular basis without getting into status games that might eventually show up no matter what the church.
I've tried a few types of churches of reason and they are pretty sad, honestly. Hard core, dedicated, non-religious person here, so I'm not saying that people should go to Church, but I've never seen anything approximating a Church of Reason that would have satisfied my (admittedly minimal) social desires.
I hear you. For me things that have worked are those that are built around a hobby -- travelling to the wooded hills, astronomy, music recitals, caring for strays / abandoned pets.
I wrote that comment back when he had only one or two links, and this post had 4 comments anod 2 points. I stand by what I said: I wish I could have downvoted it for being a low effort drive by comment.
To be blunt: what you said was completely out of line. You were mad that he wasn't responding to your other comment (why wasn't it in the OP if you wanted people to read that stuff before responding?). You then got mad that his comment was voted higher than yours (again, putting all that in the OP would've fixed that, not to mention complaining about vote counts is straight up childish).
Just take the L man. You lashed out for no good reason, the person you responded had a hell of a lot more grace and tact than you showed this entire exchange, just learn from it and move on.
You asked how to solve the loneliness epidemic. I provided citations and recommendations. Are you asking me how to be the person you need to be to make bids for friendship and connectivity to establish community? And where to find people you can have an opportunity to make connections with? I can do that too.
> I'm trying to reach those people who feel the way I feel have no way of connecting with anyone, or at least feel that they don't. Do you have any new ideas of how to achieve this?
Go out and find people looking for other people. Volunteer and find events and gatherings scoped to building connections between people. Third spaces are in decline [1] [2], or in some places, non existent. This will be work. It will not be easy. You will need to work on managing the feelings of rejection and shallow people not genuinely interested in you or building a friendship (boundaries are important in this regard; have them, communicate them, and enforce them). Success is not assured. But your only choices are to try or not.
From your comment:
> I also had it hammered into me as a kid that nobody wants me around, nobody could ever love me, I'm a failure, a burden, a creep, a weirdo, and nothing but a bothersome nuisance that nobody would ever want to spend 30 seconds alone with. I'm trying to reject these thoughts, but it's difficult when you have nobody to talk to. It's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I wonder how many people have the same issue. I've made a few friends in person, but I rarely get to see them.
In regards to this you commented, I highly recommend therapy if you can access it. It will help. This is an unnecessary burden to be carrying through adult life, and a professional might help unburden you of these feelings. The healthier you are emotionally, the easier it will be to create and maintain interpersonal relationships.
Does all of this suck? Oh yes, certainly. But we play the hand we're dealt to the best of our ability. Good luck, in as genuine terms as I can communicate in text. If you feel like I can provide more value with more questions you might have, I will do my best to help.
(tangentially, I recommend replacing "idiot who doesn't understand anything" with something more like "I am early in my journey to understand, but I look forward to the experience"; love yourself first, we are all learning and sharing for the portion of the timeline we share, and it is okay to not know if we continue to want and try to learn)
I agree you (OP) must work on developing a positive view of yourself. Maybe therapy. Don't overlook clergy even if you're not religious. Religion is as much about fellowship and how to live a fulfilling life as it is about worship. Some churches (e.g. unitarian) are quite inclusive and are much more spiritual than dogmatic.
But you will find it much harder to attract friendships if you come across as needy or wanting to unburden a lifetime of problems on your new prospective friend. Not to say a longtime friend can't eventually handle some of this, but it's not a good way to start off.
I would say avoid groups that are focused on personal success or networking. These tend to be full of people who are looking for an angle or benefit for themselves, not people genuinely trying to develop friendships and connections with a community.
I'm a highly secular person and I see people constantly say things like "spiritual but not religious/dogmatic" and I cannot figure out what that is supposed to mean. What does it mean?
>In regards to this you commented, I highly recommend therapy if you can access it. It will help. This is an unnecessary burden to be carrying through adult life, and a professional might help unburden you of these feelings.
I'm not the GP, but I have the same experience to them. I have been in therapy and on psychotropic medication my entire adult life, that's 2.5 decades. I'd love to know when exactly the "unburdening of these feelings" happens.
It might never happen for some, and that is terribly unfortunate (but not a reason to not make the attempt). I have no solution for that part of the human condition besides sympathy for bad luck.
I'd like to assert here that "community" can exist online as well. It's not just people staying indoors; it's about how they interact with what others write and whether they even care that another person wrote it. It's about things like coming to recognize usernames and build trust.
Of course, LLM generated content threatens that, so things have gotten worse.
Since it's a societal problem, but solved on the microlevel of one person at a time, it seems the way to have a broader effect is to show the value of having connection with other people over the value of not.
Overcome any addictions (scrolling, gaming, etc.) that stand in the way would be easier if the goal was clear.
Overcoming attitudes and defensive beliefs (too many cliques, they won't talk to me...) go away when you can either recall a time when you had friends or know others who do.
Convince people it's better (in their own value system) to be social, have friends of all kinds, and let them know their value and meaning increase by being a friend, I think you'd have a hard time stopping people from becoming social.
I don't have a full answer, but a couple thoughts:
1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you.
2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will.
Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side".
> the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill
I agree. It's one reason I still come to HN and it's one of the few places I bother to comment (and the only place with more than a few dozen users). The moderation and community culture against trolling makes it a generally positive experience. I do still need breaks sometimes, though, for a few months at a time.
I'd love an online community where everyone was having discussions only in good faith. Zero trolling. I can dream.
This is so tough, though, because the things happening in the world really, genuinely, do matter and its very hard to realize that our passive emotional reaction to them is not meaningful, probably actively bad for us. If I could snap my fingers and do one thing, I'd obliterate social media from the face of the earth.
I would also argue that even people who I like a lot and have known for many years can be very different "people" online than in person. It's sometimes shocking the dichotomy. I try to remind myself and others to ignore some of the online weirdness and focus on the in person interaction.
Whatever else you think of Bluesky, it's a place where trolling and doomerism are rejected. The nuclear block (and a culture of block, don't engage) does wonders for denying actual trolls an audience, and secondarily for permitting people to do the virtual equivalent of walking away from someone who's behaving badly. In particular, doomerism about Trump is minimized there the same way.
It cannot be solved, at least not in the way I think people want it to be.
We’re lonely because we are wired to avoid rejection and uncomfortable social situations, and because technology has given us hundreds of alternatives to sitting in the mess of connecting with people.
You can only solve it in your own life - by being courageous and spending more of your time in the physical world than in the digital one, willing to gro through the shitty feelings that come with being a human trying to meet other humans.
You cannot solve it for other people. There’s no sexy solution here. Meetup.com or whatever dating app or tech platform or not for profit will not fix it, because it takes individuals choosing the hard path and that will never happen en masse.
It's a twofold problem, I believe. People are lonely because of fear of rejection and also actively avoid new people out of caution and high standards.
So two people who are otherwise lonely will make no effort to connect.
I think social networks have done a tremendous amount of damage to our collective psyche. Because on the web, you can single-click permanently block someone and never see them again. If you are admin of a group this person is in, you can also ban this person and prevent them from interacting with members of the group (in the group, that is, you cannot control private messages, but by banning someone from a community you are effectively isolating them), and I think we haven't considered how much power we are giving to random Reddit mods due to this.
I do believe high standards are behind a lot of the dating issues. Dating pools are so large that people hold out for the right combination of the things they find desirable--except they're never going to find that because they don't have exactly the right combination to attract that "perfect" match.
I can't help but think that in 1910, both the concept of "fear of rejection" and "high standards" would have made no sense to people at the time. Yet I would agree that they are valid concepts today. We have to explore why these two concepts exist and why they did not exist in 1910. It seems valid to call them side effects of something bigger, what the bigger is I don't know. I don't see how society can address these two issues without addressing the other issues that lead to the existence of these.
> So they sit on social media all day when they're not at work or school. How can we solve this?
The naive solution is to place blame on the people who are influenced by the most advanced behavior modification schemes ever devised by humans. Kinda like how the plastic producers will push recycling, knowing they can shift blame for the pollution away from their production of the pollution, because people love blaming. You'll see commenters here telling us that the answer is for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get out, get involved in their communities under their own willpower. These ideas are doomed from the outset.
The real solution is already being enacted in a number of US states and countries[1]: legally restricting access to the poison, rather than blaming the people who are at the mercy of finely honed instruments of behavior modification when they're unable to stop drinking it under their own willpower.
Taking something away by force is not the way to encourage someone to do something else. This is carrot or stick mentality. The city added benches and chairs in all the parks to improve the quality of our third spaces, as an example of social infrastructure.
Not for everyone but if you can, get a dog. Dogs are icebreakers. People like to meet a cute dog. They won't know your name at first but you will be "Fido's Dad" or "Dave's Mom". Other dog owners will greet you and so long as your dogs don't hate each other you already have something in common.
A dog gives you a reason to be wherever you want to be - take a walk around the neighborhood or to the park. You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes, you're walking the dog.
But for for goodness sake, pick up after the pooch. If you can wipe your own arse you can pick up a dog turd with a plastic bag.
Anecdotally, I've had a lot of people in my life recede after getting pets. They're an excellent excuse to say no to things that you might otherwise do, because you need to get home and take care of the pet or you can't find a sitter to go on a trip etc.
Not generalizing to all people, but I think for some a pet can reinforce anti-social tendencies.
The first step to solving it would be proving it exists.
Because it doesn't. It's been a phrase used for over 40 years to decry basically any change the author didn't like, from different technology, the rise of the 'me' generation or the declining religiousness of the US.
Everyone always gets the causality reversed. Social media didn't cause the epidemic, it filled a niche to help cure the epidemic. People were lonely long before the internet arrived, the internet just made it easier for those lonely people to connect to each other. And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person.
In other words, the problem is structural. Moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, only work with people for a few years, and where there are no longer institutions like the church, how is anybody supposed to meet anyone? Meetups? Half the people can't even afford a car.
There is no solution other than meeting a lifelong partner.
It used to be that you knocked on the door of the residence beside you.
> And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person.
This is the crux of it. Your neighbours weren't ever likely to be your soulmate, but that is who was there to befriend, so you did. But now you don't have to. And since they now feel the same way, they aren't putting in the effort either.
Data from various studies, including those from academic institutions and public health organisations, supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community.
I have been going to a church half a year now, and the sense of community is amazing, made new friends and know more people I could dream of. So there is a way, there is a light. Never felt lonely again since.
For what it's worth, I tried that a few years ago. It worked for a while. Then I realized that my church relationships were paper thin and that I'd be forgotten the day I stopped coming and/or I started showing that I didn't really believe in what was preached.
Got better connections through improv acting and role-playing game.
I'm no fan of religion, but the situation you described is true for pretty much all social hobbies. It's just one of the early steps in making friends. First you do stuff, then you meet people through that stuff forming acquaintances. Then you spend some time forming setting-specific friendships. It's fine to have lots of these, but the next step is to break out of that specific setting. Starting with immediate invitations to adjacent events ("Hey, want to grab dinner after our workout?", "Want to grab lunch after church?", "Hey, want to hit the bar after work?"). Once you have a habit of doing that, you can escalate to invitations to non-adjacent events. ("Want to go to a concert this weekend?"). Do that ever 1-2 months, and you've got a general friend.
As someone whose childhood included attendance to various churches, this mostly reflects my experience. That's not to say that it can't or won't produce deep connections, but it is in my estimation more unlikely than not, particularly if there's anything about oneself that the church doesn't agree with or if commitment to that particular denomination hasn't been established.
Personally speaking I find the need to conform to the church's norms/expectations to not be ostracized at minimum chafing and in the worst case stifling. The third place and social aspects can be nice but being told how to live and exist isn't.
I've entertained the idea of going to church. My understanding is that a non-trivial number of people going to Unitarian Universalist churches are openly atheist and completely comfortable with that. So the preaching ends up being more about general good community ideas and less about dogma.
I have not decided yet that it is a good fit, but I am definitely thinking that I should foster some community connections outside of my own family.
I was involved in a UU church for a few years. It's a weird organization, and very unstable, with another revolution sweeping in new leadership (and completely new culture) every 5 to 10 years.
When I first started going, it was VERY open to atheists and secular humanists. New leadership sweeps in, and there's a mandate to focus more on "worship" and other religious jargon... and let the atheists know that while they can be fellow travelers on some of the social justice stuff, they're not really in the fold.
Last I heard, that leadership wave had themselves been swept out under controversial circumstances. But by then I was long gone.
I could never really get a straight answer on WHAT we were supposed to be "worshipping", given that UU's don't profess faith in any any particular deity or pantheistic concept, etc. I finally reached the conclusion that we were supposed to just worship the leadership's political beliefs, and not think too much or ask questions. In fairness, maybe that DOES make it a real church?
That’s possibly useful on an individual level, but not a solution. If existing institutions didn’t solve loneliness yet they aren’t going to without changing something.
Promoting church attendance might help, but so would any number of group activities the issue is why that stuff is in decline not that stuff not working.
Unless you grew up surrounded by nonbelievers I'm guessing half a year ago wasn't the first time you've ever been to a church and there's a little more to this anecdote.
* Religion has been used, is currently being used, and will always be used to facilitate and encourage the murder/death/suffering/abuse/exploitation of others
* My Little Pony is a children's cartoon that attracts creepy adults with questionable fetishes who like to wear ugly costumes in public and buy anthropomorphic sex dolls
I think if I *had* to pick one of those works of fiction to pretend to be a fan of just to get other people to talk to me, I'd rather deal with the smelly weirdos in the MLP fandom than any of the dangerous zealots in the <insert religious book here> fandom. (MLP is a joke example, but obviously there are way more options out there to find a community)
> supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community.
Correlation does not establish causation. Regular church attendance dominantly occurs among people who have shared values (clustered around what the church teaches); that doesn't imply that an outsider can just choose to fit in.
I was addicted to weed from ages 15-23. I have clinical depression and anxiety/OCD (now medicated and stable). I basically isolated and got stuck in a loop of believing I was broken and a bad person. When I committed to quitting I joined addiction recovery groups and asked for help instead of trying to do it alone. I still rely on the wisdom I gained in AA/MA. Trust God, clean house, help others, go do something when you are in danger of wallowing in self pity.
4 years later, I have a few real friends and many acquaintances. I swing dance and volunteer. I work in a semi-social office. Life is good. I still get paranoid thoughts, but they don't own or define me. I wish the best to all the lonely programmers and alienated people out there.
I have a fear of crowds and bums. Not where I'm paralyzed/medicated but one thing I'm trying to do is go downtown and do street photography. I wonder how do I say no to a stranger asking me for money. Or fear of getting robbed. It's not like my camera gear is that expensive but yeah. This would push me to get out there more as I've lived in the same place for 10 yrs and I haven't really explored/gone around much. Other than when I did Uber Eats, I would go all over the place. I would get wasted/drink at bars but end up with nothing end of the day, temporary day-long friends.
Funny I was at the gym yesterday, guy said hello to me, as a guy that keeps to himself usually (unless around friends) I gave him a bad look (not on purpose) and then I responded. I'll say hello next time I see him.
Yeah for me it's just fear and lack of exposure. I do make a lot of "work friends" go on walks. But yeah real friends I think I have 4 or 5 lifelong real friends. Women nothing, haven't been laid in like 12 years pretty said to say. Unfortunately it's something I value myself like "I'm a loser by not getting laid". Even though rest of my life is good, 2BR apt, sporty car, six-fig job, but yeah. It's my social awkardness, but I lift/improve myself, cutting down on weight I want abs. Idk I'm not going after women anymore either just trying to live life now, do shit, get out of debt, get out of 9-5, mental freedom.
It's funny if it's guys I'm very "charismatic" like I can be "everyone's friend" which doesn't work out due to conflicting interest. To that end it's really about taking an active interest in the other person, engaging them, asking them questions and remembering.
My thing with women is I don't get along with them like a guy (where I don't want anything from them physically). If they're not attractive then it's easier to talk to them but yeah, I guess that comes from a desperation mindset.
Hear me out. Its not just social awkwardness. You're experiencing class boundaries and do not seem to have the right mentality to bridge the gap.
First, you call homeless people bums, which sets the stage for how you see and treat them.
I'm an excellent engineer, but I was abused and impoverished as a child, homeless as a teenager. During my 20s, I started a few companies but my savings have been continually depleted taking care of family members. I don't have a sports car or a big bank account, or nice cameras. When I see a stranger or homeless person, I smile and wave. I keep cash on me so that I always have some to give out. I buy people lunch and sit on the curb eating with them and attempting to understand them. I learn the names of my local homeless folk and ingratiate myself in the community. I've moved to a few cities so I've had the opportunity to do this a few times.
I don't do this because I lack social anxiety; I sometimes have extreme agoraphobia, to the point that I have to hype myself up for hours just to go to the grocery store, and I have to wear noise-cancelling headphones to reduce the amount of stimulation. I have PTSD. I'm an extreme introvert. A hermit at times.
But what saves me is the philosophical understanding that I have a duty to the social contract. That empathy and direct aid are nonnegotiable parts of being human. I've been homeless and I know what it's like to be truly hopeless and live a life of uncertainty, fear and hunger.
You need to bridge that gap. Class-induced anxiety is real and I acknowledge that it's probably difficult, but it's not an excuse. You sound like you're in a position to change someone's life. Taking those steps might change your own life.
> I buy people lunch and sit on the curb eating with them and attempting to understand them.
I clearly don't have the same people on the street as you do. You should not be just sitting down and having lunch with people who are having daily psychotic breaks or are otherwise aggressive. You can't have a conversation with someone who is constantly riding the line of ODing. I have a regular I see who runs around in the road screaming at cars and people.
The very incomplete "down on their luck" view of homelessness is killing progress in my city.
I have lived in many metropolitan areas and have seen the gamut of homelessness. As I mentioned in a downline comment, the trick is to ignore the people who are not in a position to receive help, and actively seek those who are in such a position. I am not suggesting walking up to random homeless folk in San Francisco who are tweaking out and hanging out with them. I am not suggesting to risk your safety by approaching the first person you see. You live in your area; study it, pay attention, and over time you'll start seeing some familiar faces. This has worked for me in New Orleans, it worked for me in Texas and worked for me in California.
So I'm willing to bet that my understanding of homelessness is more nuanced/holistic than even yours. I have been homeless. Have you?
What progress do you feel is being hindered by a collective display of compassion?
It's funny there was a moment I was at a bus station, somebody asked me for money and I dumped all the coins I had in my wallet in their hand for future bus rides. And some lady comes up to me jokingly like "you handing money out? what about me".
But yeah I think I should just give the money out, I think aside from the guy at the red light that's there almost everyday when it's warm, it's rare I encounter somebody personally. Until I go into the city.
Buy someone new clothes. A sleeping bag. Utensils. A library card or bus pass. If it has to be cash, you don't have to stop at $5. I sometimes give out tens and twenties. Obviously at a place like California your altruism can be spread pretty thin; just ignore the people who are more difficult / less appreciative. Find someone who is appreciative. Get to know them and find out what is holding them back. Maybe you can't help, maybe you can. I've had people tell me I've made their day, their week, their year.
It's that thing though I'm pretty sure I was scammed by this couple at a gas station asking me for "gas money" even though they wanted cash then the lady said "your mother raised a good boy" lmao.
To me this is a gov problem not an individual problem. Yeah if someone was dying in front of me I would try to help them. But now I gotta go to a store and buy em a tent and what not? I guess I am an asshole. Also read up "do you give money to homeless" on reddit. Almost all of the answers are no.
I have to go there and face my fear. See if I do get assaulted, I'm a 6ft buff dude so I don't think so but I'm also not a trained fighter. I just hate this fear, that normal people like living in NYC deal with on a daily basis.
Getting jumped is real though, I've been jumped before by a group.
Might as well just give the $5 though and move on with my life.
Back to women, I have negative traits as demonstrated above, indecisiveness and low self-esteem/caring about what other people think of me too much.
All this stuff is stupid, "I'm a good person because it's what people think you should do" give money to a non-taxed church, politicians, etc... then the individual person not giving a dollar to a homeless person is a bad guy.
I've been fucked over plenty times, sometimes to the tune of 5 digits. Once even cost me my home, and I found myself homeless again for a while.
A good friend of mine once gave someone a ride at a gas station, and they led him to a house where another person jumped inside the car with a gun. They held him hostage, tried to force him to do fentanyl at gunpoint, and drove him around to several ATMs so he could empty out his account. They used his vehicle to sell drugs, and held him hostage in a motel room where they were also sex trafficking women. They nearly killed him, and he is lucky to be alive.
I also know others who have been jumped around here and had the shit beaten out of them. For reference, I live in a city frequently cited as a "murder capital" of the US. You have to be way more careful out here than in downtown San Francisco. As far as NYC, I imagine it's a mixed bag depending on your area. I'm not suggesting naively approaching strangers, I hope it doesn't come across that way.
You aren't an asshole if you don't buy someone a tent, I was suggesting ways to help that have more tangible impact than handing someone a $5 bill which probably just goes towards an addiction. I don't hang around Reddit, so I can't speak for the general callousness of the community, but what I'm suggesting is to go beyond the average, to do more than most would, in reverence of the fact that we're all floating on this lonely space rock together.
As far as women, all I can say is that my girlfriend would be fine with any of those traits, as long as I still maintained a level of compassion.
There is also the thought of too many people to help. Like right now there are thousands/millions of people starving is it my fault? Should I empty all of what I have to help them because I'm guilty if I don't. That's what I'm wrestling with granted what we're talking about is not the same thing. Handing somebody $5 and moving on is not that but yeah idk. I guess as a person that keeps giving shit out eg. $100K to my own family, it gets old.
But I will go out there, I'll see what happens. I need to face my fears.
I hear you. I've had ungrateful family members drive me broke. Compassion is doing the right thing, even when it's scary, or it hurts, or no one is watching, or when people around you misunderstand and demonize you, or they are just plain ungrateful and leave you holding the bag. I admire your willingness to continue grappling with it and finding your own answer.
Regarding women again, are you meeting enough of them? What's the scene like where you live? I don't know what it's like in NYC, but the social/dating scene in my current city just doesn't exist, and I'm watching some of my friends grapple with seriously heartbreaking loneliness.
I don't know what to tell them. I'm dating my high school sweetheart again, but we were broken up for several years, and many of the experiences I had with women during that time were quite traumatic. The rest of them were just not a good fit. I had completely given up on dating altogether, at least for a period of time, and only then did the love of my life find her way back to me. Despite years of extreme loneliness in new cities, I still consider myself lucky and wish I had some actionable advice I could tease from the situation. I've even experimented with building dating apps because this epidemic just scares the shit out of me.
I'm not in NYC sorry to give that impression. I was mentioning NYC as far as being densely populated, I'm in the midwest. Honestly I don't meet much women outside of work or the occasional girl I run into at a gym. I know the cliche saying "go join a club" meet girls that way. I could see that but it's also possible I like being alone too but yeah it just bothers me that my self-deemed value is whether or not I get laid.
The other problem too today is the fakeness of social media, filters on faces, photos looking like peopel go to beaches all the time/live extravagant lives.
Bars it's like a self-control issue, use drinking for courage then you get too f'd up.
In the midwest but we have a small "city" with "skyscrapers" that I wanted to go into and do photography at.
What I found after many years, is that women (people in general, really) are not attracted to people who try too hard to get attention from them. Going through great lengths tends to result in being labeled as desperate or creepy. Try just to be friendly and talk "with" them and not "to" them, almost as if you are one of them. By doing that often enough, it will feel less awkward. Practice makes perfect. And then one day you feel a click with someone. Just my few cents.
Yeah that's the cliche saying, let them chase you or don't put on a pedestal. Idk not sure if it's because I was raised by women that I need their approval (no male figure). But I know other people who were in the same situation and aren't like me so it must be a personal choice/way you decide to overcome it.
I found it uncomfortable as a kid when I saw how my parents handled begging: ignoring it. I remember one time my father saying "that's ok". And I either say "no, sorry" or ignore.
I've heard of kids from cities being given money so they always have something to give a mugger instead of looking like you're holding out, I don't go that far but I remember it to keep perspective.
I recently made an effort to carry cash with me so I can leave tips in cash, still working on that. Would you be open to keeping singles on you to give? You can even give max of one per excursion and then decline or ignore the rest or any combination but maybe having that as a plan can help you feel comfortable. Yes you're training yourself and it's because you deserve the benefits of training.
As for non-bums hello is good, also fist bumps and nodding upwards; that stuff is cool AF and make people so damn happy.
Yeah it's funny I'll sound like I'm virtue signaling here, I donate. Food groups, NHA, stuff like that. Where I live there's usually a person at a red light waiting to "ambush" you. Same at a grocery store, soon as you exit the door solicitors going "excuse me sir".
But yeah it would be easy to just have a $5 to hand out. It's just you know how many people are there and will it stop there kind of thing. Yeah I sound like an asshole I get it. I also have sent over $100K to my own family in support and I'm -$80K in debt so it's not like I'm hoarding my money or something.
It just annoys me. But sure it'll be easier to just say "here you go" and hand out cash.
In my experience a few times people will ask for money if they see you giving someone else something, but not that often, and you can shrug through it and say that was your last dollar or something. Keep the interactions short and easy and try to carry the loose bills outside of your wallet so no one can actually see how much you have inside it?
Exactly one time after I did this, a guy asked me to send something to his venmo since I really only had a dollar. Probably my strangest interaction.
Yeah I'll probably be smart and just empty my wallet except ID and some loose cash. I just don't like it the idea someone coming up to you asking you for money and you're expected to just do it, give it to them. It's funny too as soon as they get what they want or don't get what they want, they're like f you and move on. Ahh well I just wish I didn't care. I'm too soft/care what other people think of me.
It's like points on a website "oh no I got downvoted", there's a thing as being you/not being a conformist
I think I purposefully need to get into a fight you know overcome it, like expect anyone who comes up to me to fight me
I'm gonna stop ranting but it's not like it's hard to get laid, it's just my standards are high like she's gotta be a dime or fit at least. So that means I also have to be fit/good looking which I haven't cared much before as far as good haircut/good clothes. I at least am lucky with my genetics for fitness but I also have not been as cut as I could be. But ultimately I know it's my mind that's f'd.
You don't sound like an asshole because you aren't saying bad things about the people who have the least.
It's up to you, you can just, to yourself, write down the words you'll use to write down that you'll ignore them to become more comfortable with your boundaries.
Personally I don't think handing out cash is helpful so it's not about charity it's my advice to pre-plan how you'll respond to be more comfortable than you are in reaction to these situations.
It is a quick escape though to be like "here you go" and move on but also opens you up to "that's it?" I've had that happen even when I said "I don't have cash" well I have Venmo I'm like alright... yeah I don't want to have this mindset but also can't be naive too kumbaya.
just this week i was stuck with a machine i could use to log on websites, so I just browsed reddit anonymously, no profile, no suggestions, no "me" at all.. and it was delightful, suddenly I'm not here to respond or be heard and my brain went into focus mode, i was eager to read the article linked and not the comments.. very very refreshing
except for critical needs, we should go back to paid limited network access, this will make people allocate their time and attention much better and also do more things outside potentially meeting people
Many answers address the question of "how to build community." I like those responses! I also want to contribute to the discussion with an emotional intelligence response. The theory is that "loneliness" can be a symptom of underlying internal factors.
While it is true that loneliness can arise from a lack of community, people, and related factors, for some people, the problem stems from not knowing how to be alone. At its core, the question becomes, "Am I externalizing my world, or internalizing my world?" When you externalize your world, you require something external. We are social creatures, and I do believe we need other people. I'm only suggesting that sometimes people need to look internally first.
Personal anecdote: No amount of community would have helped me feel like I wasn't alone, because I needed the world around me to provide some sense of my self-worth. It felt counterintuitive, but for me, I had to learn to be alone. Only then could I feel like I wasn't alone. It all came down to attachment theory and self-worth.
Old geezer take: If you're referring to smart phones - social engagement in the US was already headed down 5 decades before those were invented. I blame TV.
I’ve been working with https://fractal.boston/ and adjacent communities for the last year and my loneliness has been cured. I now have the opposite problem where I don’t get enough time to myself!
If you have young boys in your life then teach them that it's ok to feel and express their emotions, and as they get older that their sexual self need not be frightening and that sex can exist outside of narratives of domination.
This requires them to have spaces where they can express themselves sexually without the fear that male sexuality will be judged as inherently violent or oppressive.
I've lost count of the times I've seen women praised while men were castigated, in the same space, for expressing any kind of honest sexual preference.
It's an annoyingly double-edged issue, and one that I believe neither side of the political spectrum (speaking in very broad strokes here) has addressed well at all.
Though I usually consider myself progressive (to an annoying degree to some), the progressive "answer" to young men right now on how to find friends and partners is essentially something like:
> You should just be yourself!
> But, if you aren't practically perfect and even slightly express your social and physical needs you are a monster.
> But, even if you are perfect, we reserve the right to hate you based on experiences with other people of your gender, or because of your privilege, even though you probably have never felt it, and we're also allowed to make fun of you because of said privilege, since making fun of you is "punching up".
> Also, you also should accept that you will *always* be considered a threat to half the population due to how you were born, and if you don't accept that or even try to prove the opposite, that makes you even more dangerous.
> If you aren't happy with this you are an incel, and don't even mention the word "misandry", that's not a thing. The only way to change this is to either be gay or transition into a woman.
Obviously I'm employing a bit of hyperbole for emphasis and this is also me trying to empathize with what it's like being a boy right now despite lacking first-hand experience. Luckily, most women do not feel this way about men, but I've heard all of this said by my friends at one time or another (and I might have said something similar myself during my weaker moments, when I was upset).
Meanwhile the hardliners on the opposite side of the spectrum espouse the idea that actually men should be evil because it's manly. That women are lesser to them and that patriarchy is super cool actually. See Andrew Tate as an example, who has captured the ears of millions of teenage boys around the world. At first it's hard to comprehend why his ideology speaks to them, but you have to remember that most of them are just entering the time of their life where they have to figure themselves out, where they have to, for the first time in their life, find friendship, respect and companionship on their own outside of the family or the playground. And after all, everyone wants to be loved and respected in some way, and Andrew Tate offers them an answer: You can be an asshole and still be loved and respected, while the leftie answer tells them that you can be as perfect as you like, but you probably still won't be loved and respected, and if you fuck up, don't expect any grace.
And now the question is what should society actually do so that both young men and young women can find a harmonious place in it? I think really the only answer is to stop playing the blame game, stop trying to make one side the constant bad guy and scapegoat, try to comprehend that we are all equally human, and that whatever a person's gender is doesn't give you the right to be shitty to them. I don't know, maybe this is simply another utopian idea, of men and women living together in perfect unison, never being mean to each other. I think we should still strive to achieve some sort of balance, but sadly I don't really see an easy answer to this.
Sorry for this long rant, I've wanted to put this into words for a while. Occasionally I think about how bad it must be being a teenage boy right now, the thought scares me and I feel lucky not being one. Every time I read another woman saying that she's afraid of every man on the street walking in proximity to her, and every time it's dark out and I hear a man behind me and I get physically afraid, I think, what if I was a man and she was afraid for her life because of me? Just because I exist in the space next to her? Just because of a random coin-flip during my conception? And it feels awful. I don't want anyone to go through that.
> that their sexual self need not be frightening and that sex can exist outside of narratives of domination
This makes a ton of sense but the language needs so much work here to be digested into a real conversation by your average parent, let alone preteen/teenager.
There is no "loneliness epidemic". It's a bad journalism epidemic. People in general are a combination of lone and grouping. Both are OK. People don't need to socialise all the time. People who want to socialise but can't usually suffer from emotional difficulties that they haven't addressed. Same for people who obssess about socialising all the time.
Something I've noticed with me and other gen-Zers is that meeting with friends or strangers over Discord VoIP is a great way to socialize. It's missing some of the social benefits of in-person meetups, but it's very low-commitment (just hope on a call) and it's much easier to find others who share your interests.
Is there a loneliness epidemic? Or is this viewing history through rose colored glasses?
Is the shift from how society used to work to how society has come to work real or just a grammatically correct statement?
Statistics are biased by those who compute them. Have we asked everyone or inferred and p-hacked up data points?
The single salary family is largely a myth. A relatively small percentage of the population ever achieved that. Is the same true for loneliness? Is it a bigger problem now than it has been?
Is this like in medicine where we think ADHD is up, cancer is up... it's an epidemic! When in reality as a percent of society things are normal, we just had no idea before how prevalent those things were before we measured.
In the past, whenever I felt lonely and hopeless, I jumped into helping others: volunteering, helping an old neighbor garden, help someone move, etc. Helping people gave me a short-term purpose, which eventually let me ride out the low phase of life. YMMV, of course.
I have noticed that doing the sign leads to some good conversations in which I've helped someone in a small way, and that gave me a nice little dopamine boost. It's also led to about half a dozen genuine friendships over the past few months. I wonder if that's the answer, a sort of meta-solution: organizing this thing I'm doing into something that other people in the same situation can do, as a way of meeting people and getting outside their comfort zone. Like setting up a chess table in public if chess is your thing. But no, there are already public chess tables, and they'd have already done that. I don't know, just thinking out loud.
This is my go-to strategy as well. When I feel irrepressible bits of loneliness or depression, I just make some food and go out and start handing out to the needy.
Or go for a walk and find people that need a hand. People moving, lifting things, carrying things. Small little acts of being useful and helpful for a moment help.
The feeling will creep back in eventually, but at least for that time I was out and about, it's not.
Having kids (with the right partner and good intentions as a parent) is a great way to avoid feeling lonely.
The kid(s) are tremendous source of connection. You may trade for a feeling of exhaustion, overwhelming responsibility, etc. but a lot less loneliness.
Also go a step further and join support groups for parents. Community resources where kids play and parents can hang out and chat. Connection is built through shared experiences, and parenting is an experience you can share with other parents.
Between having kids and participating in events with other parents, there will be a lot less opportunities to feel lonely.
If you identify with that problem,
and you want to solve it,
and you are open to advice...
Go to church, and be intentional to connect. Find a bible study, fellowship group, volunteer opportunity, or prayer meeting. Sit at church on Sunday with somebody from the bible study. Get lunch with one of those people. Find somebody at church who shares a hobby. Do your hobby together.
You have to put in the effort.
Growth is uncomfortable.
Real connection takes time.
Maybe you find something similar in other spaces, but I am certain you can find it in church.
It’s all about fostering community again, and that’s more than just shared calendars and town events.
It’s “third places” where folks can just hang out and work, play, share, and commiserate without having to pay money to do so.
It’s bringing back establishments that promote lingering and loitering, like food halls or coffee shops, rather than chasing out folks.
It’s about building community centers inside apartment complexes, more public green space, more venues and forums.
Giving people space that doesn’t require a form of payment is the best approach, because humans will take advantage of what’s out there naturally. Sure, structure helps, but space is the issue at present I believe.
Is it? There are a number of third places around here that sit effectively vacant. The few who are passionate about seeing those spaces thrive will tell you that the problem is getting anyone to come, not finding space to host them.
I wrote an article[0] on Tiny Neighborhoods (aka “Cohousing”) that starts with:
> “I often wonder if the standard approach to housing is the best we can do. About 70% of Americans live in a suburb, which means that this design pattern affects our lives – where we shop, how we eat, who we know – more than any other part of modern life.”
We have been so uncritical of the set of ideas that make suburbia—single family homes, one car per adult, large private yards—even though these play a big role in how people act.
Some people want to address loneliness by making incremental changes. But if the statistics are right and nearly everyone is somewhat lonely, we should expect that the required adjustments feel “drastic” compared to the current norm.
People would be less lonely if they could live in a community of 15-20 families with (1) shared space and (2) shared expectations for working together on their shared space.
I posted on another subthread but I think this is largely an excuse. If you live in a typical suburb you have 15-20 families on your street. You can easily walk next door and chat or just say hello when you see someone outside. It takes initiative, which is the key thing that's missing. You either hide in your house or you get out and be sociable.
> You can easily walk next door and chat or just say hello when you see someone outside.
I have no problem with socialization and I have an unusually-active social life for a thirty-eight year old married man with three kids, so I clearly don't lack initiative.
With that being said, all of my neighbors are either elderly, shut-ins, or just don't want to be bothered; even the ones with kids.
My wife & I helped organize a Block Party last year and I'm fairly certain it resulted in 0 new friendships for any of the attendees.
What's the solution here? Friendships need to have mutual interest, no?
I think it's a circular problem. Like, my kids don't go outside much because there are no other kids outside to play with.
There's no question that there are 15-20 families within 300 yards of my house. But that group of people absolutely does not have a sense of shared anything but the road.
And the fact is that this is true of the supermajority of suburban streets in the United States.
I don't disagree but 30 years ago the people in those kinds of neighborhoods did get out and talk to each other, did organize cookouts and other gatherings, and in general were sociable neighbors. The people changed.
No one is asking for this advice, but I'm sharing it anyways.
My #1 top priority this year is _social health_. I'm taking it into my own hands. Mostly just continuing things I'm already doing with tremendous payoff. My measurable result is going to be throwing my own birthday party in fall. I've never done that before, I've never had enough friends in my city!
No one group or app is going to come save you from loneliness. You have to get up, go outside, and find people.
0. Say yes to everything, at least if you're new in town. Don't care how scared you are of X social situation. "Do it scared" - @jxnl
1. I am part of my community's swing dancing scene. I take classes, go to social dances, I _show up_ even when I don't feel like it. People recognize me now, know my name, etc. I'm also a regular at my gym. Find a place and be a regular face there. (_how did I become a swing dancer? I got invited, and my social policy prevented me from saying no!_)
2. If I have no social plans for a week I do a timeleft dinner (dinner with 5 strangers). Always have something on the books. I call this my "social workout". If I vibe with anyone I ask if they want to grab ramen the following weekend. Leads me to point #3..
3. Initiate plans. Everyone is waiting for that text "hey, want to go do x with me?". Be that person. I have an almost 100% enthusiastic response rate to asking people to do literally anything. Go on a random walk? Go to costco? Go checkout ramen or pizza spot? You don't have to think of anything special. Whatever you're already doing.. ask someone to come with! Soon they start inviting you to do random stuff.
4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence.
> 4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence.
This is a very mature, balanced take. If I may advise: Try some experiments on yourself. You already know how you feel and how you socialise without drinking. Try drinking various amounts in different social settings. How does it feel? Do you like yourself and your life more before? Then go back. Else, continue experimenting until you find a sweet spot.
A couple of years ago I tried to create a platform to connect people to local communities. The twist was that each community had members that worked as buddies to help welcome and guide new members. I got 10s+ communities and members but since there was no business model associated and I needed to work, I couldn't kept it up. The website was https://tribalo.app.
From the few numbers I got, I figure out it help. Maybe one day I don't need to work and can focus on it again.
This is a minor thing, but as an introvert, I really try and push myself to model social behaviour to my kids. Saying good morning to people in the street, chatting to other dog owners, being nice to waiters, travelling by bus, there are lots of tiny opportunities every day to show that world is full of lovely people who aren’t scary at all.
Some things I do: I organize a monthly brunch for friends. I try and grow it, invite people I've recently met.
If someone asks me to do something, I try and do it. Get invited to poker night, I'm there. Asked to play Fantasy Football, yep! Even though I don't watch football and have never played.
Social media and on demand media hijack the emotional triggers that would usually be resolved by talking to people. Some examples:
* In line at the BMV, bored and feeling lonely. Should resolve loneliness by talking to strangers in line... mostly chit-chat, but sometimes you make a friend! Social media turns this into doom scrolling.
* Sitting in the living room by yourself, feeling a little lonely. Should result in calling up a friend or relative, or heading to get a coffee/beer where you can interact with people. On demand media turns this into low risk watching shows (yes, old school TV was an option, but on demand, there's always something on that is interesting).
So the trick is to make yourself ask if you should give someone a call or go somewhere public when you are pulling out the phone with intent to scroll or watch a show. When you find something you are interested in because you are watching lots of videos about it, or replying on forums, force yourself to engage in the real world. If you are arguing politics, find a group advocating your position and get involved (I've got to meet three majority leaders and two Presidents, plus a bunch of congresspeople you see on the news all the time as a side effect of getting involved because I was pissed off on the internet about business taxation issues). If you find a hobby, find a local group that does that. Learning to play the guitar from YouTube was fun, but jamming with other musicians? Off the charts fun and far more educational that just playing along with videos.
Finally, and this is the big one, try to never eat meals alone. Never say no to going to lunch with coworkers. Join stuff that meets for breakfast. Dinners are hard, but it's surprising what happens when you invite a couple people over for dinner and a beer once in a while.
I doubt it's the solution, but a silly program I want to build is something like this:
- Give users a modern Tamagotchi
- Give the digital pet a need to socialize.
- Strap a basic LLM to it so users can talk to their pet.
- Have the pet imprint on its owner through repeated socialization.
- Owner goes to bed, pet still has social needs, goes out into the digital world to find other pets.
- Pet talks to other pets while you're asleep, evaluates interactions, befriend those with good interactions.
- Owner wakes up the next morning, checks their pet, learns it befriended other pets based on shared interests, and is given an opportunity to connect with their pet's friends' owners. Ideally these connections have a better-than-random chance of succeeding since you're matched via shared interests.
I'm sure there's a ton of unsexy technical reasons this is hard to make work well in practice... but dang, I think it would be so cool if it worked well.
I realize this exacerbates the issue in some ways - promoting online-first interactions. But, I dunno. I'll take what I can get these days, lol.
In my mind, it's more like meeting new acquaintances at the dog park. Dogs start playing with each other and getting along and you end up chatting with the other dog's owner while watching the dogs play together. Trying to recreate those vibes with digital pets.
Make Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing legal again.
Having barely room for little more than a bed forces you to get out during the day. Stuff happens when your default for where to spend your time is not at "home". SRO halls also usually had more room for common spaces to meet and socialize with other people in a similar position in life, and of course, SRO is a very cheap housing option.
I lived on a kibbutz for nearly three years after university and had similar levels of personal space. While I definitely would not want to live on a kibbutz for my whole life, there were very significant downsides (internal politics), I made some lifelong friends there and overall consider that experience to have been very positive, in particular for my social life.
I doubt we can solve this for other people. Each person must solve it for themselves, but for most people the solution will be joining a church and attending weekly. From there, get involved with a ministry, that will lead to appreciation dinners, which will lead to getting invited to the non-religous stuff the people are involved with.
There is a gap between thinking and action. I think the social media and gaming and online stimulions currently designed to bombard and drain your thinking brain, leaves nothing for the action you and your body needs to take. Your brain only has so much chemistry to trigger neural activation and we are blowing it on mental stress to the point where the body doesn’t have any more mental energy to tackle real world stress or handle real world emotions.
Try an A/B test. Do days with zero screen stimuli - no TV, no phones, no online interaction. Go into the world to a cafe, or a common area with people and do stuff. See how you feel and what you feel up to. Vacations might be good and relaxing because you disconnect. Maybe do it without paying for it.
Anecdote: I had a friend in SF. He and I would hang out once in a while, and I always looked forward to these hangouts (we'd meet up for coffee, or go for a walk, hang out at Dolores Park, etc.). He is gay, I'm not. His perspective on things was often quite different than mine and I found that interesting. I got married, he stayed single. Even after marriage we would still hang out (though not as often as before). Then we had a child, which sucked all spare time out of my life; but even then we hung out once in a while. Then one winter there was cold/flu/COVID going around. We planned on hanging out and I unfortunately bailed on him at the last moment. This happened 2 more times. Then that bout of illnesses passed and I reached out to him to hang out again. But this time he seemed cold and distant. So I dropped it. And I didn't see him again for almost 3 years.
Then one day I ran into him while walking through Dolores Park. He didn't see me, but I hesitated and still hollered out at him, for old times' sake. He responded and walked over. We chatted a little, I gave him a parting hug and we agreed to hang out again.
A couple of weeks later we managed to hang out again. What I gathered from our meeting was that he had been miffed at what he thought was me blowing him off; and I, when I felt he was cold and distant, had misread his grief at losing his cat. We both misread each other and wasted 3 years.
Moral of the story that I took away from it was: be more forgiving. Friendships are worth the extra effort.
Eliminate the Internet. I'm not joking -- it's much, MUCH harder to be lonely if you don't have Amazon, Instacart, UberEats, and social media fulfilling various needs in your life.
Some people think loneliness is somewhat a result of stress and anxiety, it’s far from it. It is precisely the lack of pressure that makes them stay home. You need to apply as much pressure on them so that staying at home becomes unbearable.
The common denominator is to have shared spaces where it's expected to be among strangers' presence, and for those strangers to eventually become repeat guests in a person's life. That's the maximally comfortable scenario for inducing social behavior and it's responsible for eons of human social history. Think church.
The problem there is that it's the responsibility of groups or society to arrange that. There's not much that a single lonely person can do there.
The less common denominator, that an individual may partake in until society concocts a better solution, is to intentionally visit existing shared spaces even where they otherwise wouldn't (hint: bouldering gyms are good for this because there are repeat faces as well as a social okay-ness to congratulating strangers, or asking how certain challenges can be solved).
Or break with convention, comfort, and perhaps etiquette, and instead just talk to people. Even outside of those spaces. (This is the advice that will piss a lot of people off if it's presented as their only option.) This advice is horrible until it isn't. It does, with enough practice, 'just work'.
---
For an entrepreneur or organizer: it would just go a long way to think about things in terms of allowing conversation to happen unimpeded. Pay attention to where people talk, and about what. Conversations happen a lot in hallways but famously by water coolers, perhaps because it affords people enough time in a shared space to muster the internal capital to start a conversation.
In college I ran a forum for people to meet others and some of the most self-reportedly successful participants just asked questions into the void and were surprised by the number of responses.
There are, of course, multiple causes for loneliness. We can't fix them all with one clear action. Here are the main five, in my view:
First, social media. It's too easy to temporarily forget about your loneliness by staying home and doomscrolling or watching TV.
Second, increased mobility. People move around the whole continent now for work, removing them from their closest and oldest social connections.
Third, God is dead. Churches as community centers are dying out. Young people don't trust them anymore, because they don't believe in God, and because churches had many scandals. Secular community centers are very rare and struggle with funding.
Fourth, work is more stressful now. There used to be more time to socialize, but in our quest for productivity, work became denser with fewer idle times.
Fifth, fewer people want to have kids. Much has been written about this.
Now what can we do at societal scale? First of all, study the phenomenon more closely. Who is lonely? Who isn't? Which interventions work? Which cultural factors are important?
At your local scale, you can just call or meet a friend.
Sports. CrossFit and similar social sports have been healthy for me and for many others, and I think the community is at least equal to the exercise in improving people's lives.
Not saying this is the only way, but it made a big difference for me and my friends. I realize the physical challenges are artificial, but so is an Advent of Code puzzle when you already have a day job. Hard things are worth doing because they're hard, and they're even better when done together with those you love.
I have considered a "physical social network". Standing on my usual street corner and holding a sign that directs strangers to join me and whoever else shows up, for a casual chat at the local coffee place at a specific time, with a few topics for conversation listed on the sign up front. If anyone has ideas for those topics, let me know, I'm likely to do it this Sunday.
When NextDoor first came around, I recall walking down the street to help a lady move her couch down to the ground floor. She then gave me some cookies she'd baked. Fun! The notifications it sends me these days are less enjoyable so I send them to spam because unsubscribing doesn't seem to reliably work for me.
> Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius…
Don't know if they still do, but Nextdoor required address verification via a postcard early on. I was pretty shocked at what some people in my area would post under their real names and locations.
(And well outside the realm of political nonsense. Someone posted a pic of their toddler's first poop in the potty.)
I think the power of shame has reduced significantly in recent years.
I think shame is still powerful, but in the context of Nextdoor we just don't see our neighbors very often anymore. In many cases they might as well be random people on the other side of the country. I live in a small town and I'm quite friendly with my neighbors, but I still see and talk to them relatively rarely.
When you have a toddler it's very surprising what becomes normal. We're potty-training our son and I sometimes get texts from my spouse with a picture of a poop in a bad spot and then just the word "help."
1. Pass a law letting people WFH where its reasonably possible. I WFH in a walkable city and me and my friends try new restaurants every week, always around noon. I've met lots of new people, and joined new groups that I wouldn't have found out about if I was stuck at my desk. Give people more freedom of movement.
Do you have any strong evidence that this would improve the situation? It may be correlative and not causative, but as working from home is increasing, it seems that most related statistics to loneliness are increasing as well. What if it's actually part of the problem and not the solution?
I'm not saying that I have evidence on hand to the contrary, just trying to challenge the idea.
I have been trying to make more friends in the real and virtual world the past two years, and I have been pretty successful. Most of my new friends come from the following: Volleyball, MtG, or a writing group.
Really, I think that it comes down to make making or joining a space with a shared activity and moderating out the crap.
The problem is most communities are losing those spaces in favor of private social clubs. That's what we need to fight.
This is a difficult problem to want to solve. Some of it has to do with low income or joblessness. So this is the first focus I would set - make income easier to come by, more fair, more distributed. This in itself will not fix the solo state of people but it would alleviate some worries. Then we have to tackle the social problem. This is really difficult to want to solve. Activity helps, so the state should be able to encourage more activity overall. For instance, in my own youth I was physically more active, so you meet a lot of people through sports - that alone works fairly well. You can probably think of many more cohesive social structures and what not. I think it is a difficult to want to solve problem though. Not everyone uses social media by the way but is still isolated; Japan even gave some odd name to this.
Many large orgs have smaller chapters locally, but there are often regionally-relevant ones.
I’d start with personal passions, and work from there. It won’t really work, unless it’s something we care about.
Volunteer orgs tend to be fairly disorganized, and there’s usually a lot of lively personalities. If one seems too dysfunctional, try another. Don’t just go for one.
Also, it can take some time to get into the “inner circle.” Like any human society, trust takes time to build. We need to be willing to start small. Get to know the place. Figure out where we can make a difference.
I’ll bet that ChatGPT would be a great source of information.
Phrases like "I’d start with personal passions, and work from there" and "we need to be willing to start small" are NOT actionable, they are meaningless platitudes. Not to mention it assumes everyone has "personal passions," an the majority of people probably don't.
I didn't "just go for one." I spent like a month trying to volunteer , for anyone. I was on medical leave from work at time time so I had plenty of time to give. Nobody ever got back to me or picked up the phone. It was worse than applying for a job. I have an anxiety disorder, so even reaching out caused me massive stress and anxiety. So I caused myself distress to feel more worthless than I already felt. My heart is racing and I'm on the verge of tears just typing this up.
So I'll ask again, how does one "join a volunteer organization?"
I normally don't contribute to HN comments these days (too much anger in the comments section) but I appreciate your post and activities.
I am a tail-end boomer in the U.S. so my experiences were with a world where socializing was more functional: we shopped in public, played in public, read in public libraries, watched movies in public, rode transit together, etc. Being in public was a requirement, not a choice. While there are still remnants of this older culture still active in today's world in urban life, there are so many options for not being in public that it is simply easier to avoid it. We all want our space in one degree or another.
On the playground growing up, my world was filled with name-calling and backbiting. I was a heavier kid, so that was my burden. Other kids had bucked teeth, warts, limps, they were too short, or too tall, uncoordinated--whatever--nobody really escaped the wrath of the crowd. We were forced, by our parents, to just deal with it.
My parents like many others in their generation recognized this behavior for what it was--natural. Watch an episode of the Little Rascals--you will see what I am referring to.
Most if not all of those kids who were called names and isolated in some way found ways to break out of their pigeon hole: playing sports, playing music, making art, studying hard at school, boxing, singing, dancing, cracking jokes, whatever. Then they were heroes, and the crowd could celebrate them--and they thrived.
I know this sounds overly idealistic, but it is true. I experienced this first hand in a neighborhood of several hundred kids from broken homes, poor homes, ethnic homes, etc.
Voiceless people must find their voice. The responsibility is their's. The crowd will not come to the rescue of the person who won't stand up for themselves and make their way in life.
Loneliness is very, very sad. The cure to loneliness is in the powerful hands of the lonely person. Do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to work on those things that hold the lonely person back from achieving something--anything--for themselves and then engage with the crowd with more confidence.
I appreciate what you are doing by helping others--that is one of your superpowers. Live a good, strong life!
Your first paragraph is what I've always thought: "back in the day" most people simply didn't have the option to be a hermit. In modern life, your bills, grocery shopping, car registration, hobbies, etc. can all be handled online / in your home.
In my opinion, it takes a lot of time and energy to avoid loneliness in the modern era. So, advice about "just get yourself out there" is technically accurate, but it misses the mark since previous generations didn't need to put much thought, if any, into socializing. Perhaps not everyone is wired to focus so much energy into that aspect of their life and we're seeing that play out with modern amenities?
You'll find virtually every dimension of your life will improve if you're on top of these four things. It will make you more ambitious in pursuing social engagement. And that will make socialization much easier.
Cults have been viciously slandered by mainstream information sources, often because lurid cult stories generate clicks and headlines. Of course some cults are abusive, just like some marriages are abusive. But we still think marriage is good in general.
If you think all cults are bad, you're implicitly against all religion, since every mainstream religion was once a cult. Being anti-cult is also profoundly un-American. America was built by cultists. Freedom of religion is literally the first principle stated in the Bill of Rights.
A cult is really just a professionally managed social environment. If you trust professionals like lawyers, doctors, or teachers with their respective duties, there's no reason in principle you shouldn't trust a cult leader to manage your social environment for you. Of course you should vet them, ask about their reputation, etc.
IMO the biggest barrier to entry to the hobby is the price, coupled with the existing communities being really old. I'm trying to get people to print their own cards for casual kitchen table play through https://cardstocktcg.com.
I built a mobile app that allows you to get a morning wake up call from a real person. Part of my motivation here was to help add a little human interaction to what is a lonely experience for some people.
I was going to post this somewhere else, but I think this story fits.
An old guy approached me and said "put the music on my phone mann".
Alright.
My response:
"Search on YouTube"
He keeps insisting on ME doing it for him.
3 steps
First his data was off. For presumably a while he's had his data off ( it's metro PCs so it's prepaid anyway) and I guess he was relying on WiFi.
Ok.
One click to fix that in the Android tile menu.
His Bluetooth was off too.
Turn that on. Turn on his headphones. Luckily it was already paired.
Finally I had to open YouTube and find music for him.
3 or 4 steps.
Now he's happily listening to music.
But beyond that, he got to introduce himself to me, and I guess the next time he accidentally turns off his data he can ask for help again.
I also like to help people.
Old people are awesome when it comes to this. They'll just ask someone to help them out, that's how you build community.
Don't know how to change your oil ? Cool Billy's a car guy he can help you out. Having trouble with your water pressure, maybe Sarah's a plumber and she can help.
Of course if something serious you're still going to be expected to pay these people, but if it's something quick they'll help you free of charge. Maybe you'll bake them a cake for their kids birthday.
I recall when I was young a neighbor basically gave my mom a car. It was an absolute piece of crap, and out of the goodness of his heart he would come and fix it every now and then.
I didn't realize it as a kid, but if you're passionate about cars and you get the emotional satisfaction of both helping a neighbor and seeing how long you can keep that old car running, that's its own reward.
How many of you would love for a non technical neighbor to say their computer is slow. I recall someone on HN even offering to send out a free laptop to someone in need.
Traditionally communities would have a blacksmith or a baker. That's what that person did and they had a status tied to it.
In modern economic systems what exactly we do is so abstracted away from anything meaningful we lack this connection.
On a very fundamental level people need to feel needed.
I visit whatever sport activity I can find. Like Go Karting, gymnastics, bouldering, etc and always start asking pro guys: “yo, how come you visit this so often? How do you get fun from it?”. And people lovely tell their story. Later they teach me how to do things. It works for me.
Working on a basketball app to bring people together. Basketball was invented out of grief, by James Naismith who lost his grandfather, mother, father, and family home to a fire within 4 months. He was tasked with helping to have rambunctious youth learn the principles of teamwork and sharing and slowing down and thus created the game. It truly brings people together and I hope everyone gets a chance to experience the magic that is pickup basketball. It got me out of a deep hole after the pandemic after my mom had passed and I gained 30 lbs.
People who live in London, how did you find a solution for this? I am interested in hearing what you tried. I am in my very early 30s. Single male. I didn't feel up in UK. Moved here I my 20s.
I dont know the solution but few things that are root cause:
- Internet and Social Media
- Neighborhoods no longer are walkable especially suburbs at least in America. Kids are not encouraged to go bike to their friends place anymore because of traffic risks.
- High Trust societies have degraded into "lets keep ot myself, I can't trust anyone these days". Decades ago, you could just walk into a neighbor's home and say hello. Now, you need an appointment just to talk to a neighbor or are too worried what they will think of you.
- No real friendships after school/colleges. This is a huge deal once you are out on your own in the real world. Work relationships are meh at best and with remote work nowadays, it has become even worse.
- Even if you join a club or activity, they are too "planned" and "robotic". For example, my kids take a dance class and they said they don't like it. I realized why. There is no break. They don't even get to spend like 30 mins with other kids socializing etc. There is a fixed schedule. You go, you dance, you leave.
But this is the world today. So I don't know how to fix it.
Maybe our built environment shouldn't consist solely of isolated houses in isolated gated communities where we drive our kids and sit in isolated cars in the school dropoff/pickup lines.
This may just be me, but I hold the opposite view.
When I lived in a rural area with a few acres of property, I was much more social and engaged with my community.
Now I live at the edge of the city in a medium-high density townhouse area with no private outdoor space. Since I can never really get away from people and be alone, I also have no desire to go out and do things and engage with the community.
I think the variability is nice. If I can get home, relax, not have people around, have some private outdoor space, then I can recharge and have the energy to engage more.
This is an individual problem and an individual's responsibility to solve, imo (Although I do think it's interesting to consider whether a project, company, or initiative could help make this easier to solve for millions.)
Regardless, there are four steps worth taking as an individual: (1) go out, (2) make friends, (3) turn friends into community, and (4) maintain community.
If you're feeling lonely, you're probably failing at one step along this chain.
1. Going out. I don't have a lot of tips here. Except to go to things that actually facilitate interacting with strangers. Don't just go to a bar or go work from a cafe. Go to a meet and greet, an event for strangers to mingle, etc. Or, if you're having trouble motivating yourself to go out, then that's something inside yourself to work on. I find that a shakeup to your life routine (e.g. moving cities, going on a vacation) can provide a good window to change your habits, where you'll start doing things you don't normally do in your home city.
2. Making friends. This one is simple but hard for some. Basically: be personable, smile, engage in conversation, ask questions, be interested, avoid being threatening or clingy, dress and stylish normal-ish unless you really don't want to, etc. Then talk to people at these events, and if seems like you'd like hanging with them and have things in common, ask to exchange numbers.
3. Turn friends into community. IMO this is where you go from the basics into the advanced, and where the most benefits lie. However, most people stop after #2, even though this step is easier than steps #1 or #2, and is extremely rewarding. Community is an in-person social network. The number of connections between people in a community determines the strength and stickiness of that community. Thus it's very important that you introduce your friends to other friends. For example, instead of going on a coffee date with a friend once every month or two, invite 2 or 3 friends to dinner. This has numerous benefits. All of your friends will meet each other, and suddenly they'll know who you're talking about when you mention other people. Also, conversation is easier when there are more people. Also, you'll find events and hangs happen more often, because (a) more people are able to initiate them, and (b) there's more reason to go. People are more motivated to go and less motivated to cancel when there's an event that allows them to see multiple friends at once.
4. Maintain community. People move away. People have silly fights and disagreements and stop talking to each other. People get into relationships and disappear. People get sick, or old, or antisocial, and disappear. Shit happens. So you have to keep doing steps #2 and #3, at least occasionally, forever. You don't necessarily need to do step #1 as much, since the people in your community will naturally bring friends and whatnot to your events. But you still need to get to know these people, exchange numbers, and invite them to future events.
The older people get the more disposable they are viewed as by society.
When you are younger, you belong in school. When you get older, you belong at work.
If you fall out of any of these social structures its extremely difficult to find your way back in.
I was already pretty disconnected from society and people in general when my divorce hit and now I am completely untethered from any kind of community. Living is miserable I hate my life and I do not want to exist like this anymore.
None of the solutions people provide are easy or functional. "Go meet people" is the most vague, unhelpful bullshit ever.
I think the reality is some people, no matter how intelligent, caring or otherwise full of empathy they may be are just "too far gone" for anyone to have the initiative or concern to care about us. The world is so corroded and socially poisoned that any kind of meaningful effort in this kind of thing is pointless. Anybody with time or money is busy making money.
You can't solve the epidemic because it is a byproduct of multiple irreparably broken systems. People will continue to fall through the cracks and it will get worse. I don't know what happens after that but we'll probably all be dead.
I am somewhat suspicious of this loneliness epidemic. 81% of Americans are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with their personal life[0]. And my personal experience is that both close friends and general civil community is easy to find[1]. I wasn't trying at all so it can't be that there are any real constraints here.
I don't think [0] is showing what you think it does.
> % Very satisfied with the way things are going in personal life
That Dropped from 65% in 2020 to 44% in 2025
> Record-Low 44% of Americans Are 'Very Satisfied' With Their Personal Life
Also focusing on the raw percentages of these style reports is challenging, due to socially desirable response bias [0]
The fact it is dropping is the important part, it is a relative measure, not a absolute one, and I am sure Gallop would change there questions/responses in a modern survey that didn't need to maintain compatibility with historical data.
* Gallup (not Gallop) has the English questions and responses in the PDF at the bottom of the page. They will also respond if you email them so you can check if wording changed significantly.
* Yes, I am pretty sure the Gallup thing is showing exactly what I think it does considering I said "81% are [somewhat] satisfied or very satisfied" and the Gallup survey shows that 81% are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied.
* The fact that the Hacker News community was enthusiastic about the thesis of a loneliness epidemic during a period when satisfaction was rising casts aspersions on "the fact that it is dropping is the important part". When satisfaction was rising, there were still posts on that where everyone was agreeing about how bad it was.
I was looking at the PDF [0] and [1] and [0] calls out:
> In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
``QN5:Personal Satisfaction is a binary question``, with a category for refused/didn't know that WAS NOT OFFERED IN THE QUESTION, with an additional question asking about very, sort of etc... They call out `QN5QN6COMBO: Personal Life Satisfaction`
I can't answer the HN sentiment straw man, the DELTA from previous results is what is important. Using it as an absolute scale would almost certainly be discouraged if you asked them via the email address in the PDF.
Basic statistics realities here, and Gallup knows the limits far better than the comment section here. And they understand that "81% are [somewhat] satisfied or very satisfied" especially when presented as two trivial properties, has limitations.
Once again they asked:
> In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in your personal life at this time?
Then followed up with:
> Are you very [satisfied/dissatisfied], or just somewhat [satisfied/dissatisfied]?
Note how both of those are binary, with a NULL being an option to mark down as an exception.
I don't think it's a straw man. If it is true that the delta matters and it is also true that at the time when this metric was showing the most positive results and trending upwards, online communities such as this talk about the existence of the loneliness epidemic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20468767 then one must ask oneself whether this is a property of the online communities in question.
At the time when the gallup poll showed an upward trend towards its peak this community was talking about the loneliness epidemic. When the gallup poll shows a downward trend toward its lowest, this community is talking about the loneliness epidemic. And it's the change in satisfaction that is the most significant. So there are two changes in opposite directions causing the same conclusion.
If this were happening to me, I would ask myself "Am I sure this is a general property and not just a property of me?". Do you find this not convincing to move your estimate of the likelihood of the loneliness epidemic actually existing? If you don't, it's all right. We can leave it here.
> 81% of Americans are satisfied or very satisfied with their personal life[0].
No, 81% are "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied". I don't think "satisfied" is synonymous with "somewhat satisfied".
It's worth noting, as the article states, that this is the lowest value in the history of the poll, going back to 2001.
It shouldn't be too surprising that the overall value is high and stable over time. Hedonic adaptation[1] is a core property of our emotional wiring. The fact that the value is the lowest it's been in a quarter century should still be ringing alarm bells. We are not OK.
It's a 5 point scale, so landing a 4 or 5 on satisfaction on a 5 point scale seems significant. Also, when the value was at its highest in that time series, Hacker News had articles like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20468767
The comments there are full of people describing this loneliness epidemic when 65% of people were very satisfied and 90% of people were "somewhat satisfied or very satisfied". No matter what surveys of people's satisfaction with their personal lives show, there appears to be an enthusiasm for this subject of the loneliness epidemic. This makes me suspect that this is less an epidemic than an 'endemic' (if you'll forgive the word).
Regardless, I didn't intend to mislead so I'll edit it to say "somewhat satisfied or very satisfied (4 or 5 on a 5 point scale).
> It's a 5 point scale, so landing a 4 or 5 on satisfaction on a 5 point scale seems significant.
No, it is absolutely not. Gallup is not asking "on a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your satisfaction?" They are asking:
"In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in your personal life at this time? Are you very [satisfied/dissatisfied], or just somewhat [satisfied/dissatisfied]?"
When it comes to surveys and social science the specific wording of questions has a huge impact on the results.
Sure, and 81% of people are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied. And the loneliness epidemic thesis was popular around the time that very satisfied was at its peak of 65% (when somewhat or very satisfied summed up to 90%).
Did you read the article you cited or are you just evaluating the snapshot of numbers?
> WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Forty-four percent of Americans say they are “very satisfied” with the way things are going in their personal life, the lowest by two percentage points in Gallup’s trend dating back to 2001. This also marks the continuation of a decline in personal satisfaction since January 2020, when the measure peaked at 65%.
> Record-Low 44% of Americans Are 'Very Satisfied' With Their Personal Life
And then to link to your own blog post as though that were a supporting citation is strange to say the least.
My blog post is a more detailed expression of a sentence that starts with "my personal experience". I think that's fine.
And of course I read the article. That's why my sentence explicitly says "satisfied or very satisfied" whereas the text you quote only selects the "very satisfied". One can imagine that if I had only linked without reading I could not possibly have guessed 81% correctly either.
I'm not saying "just stop being depressed". I'm questioning that any significant portion of the population is depressed. I think that's valid.
I can only speak anecdotally from what I have seen in TikTok videos and TikTok comments, and yes, a significant portion of people in society are very depressed, and drinking/smoking/screwing their way through it, putting on a Joker smile.
I think certain populations have this effect, yes. As an example, teen suicides have genuinely risen in the US in the post-smartphone/post-social-media era. So I think the evidence (suicides are not subject to measurement error as much) is pretty strong that certain populations (all teenagers, for instance) are encountering unhappiness to a great degree.
But TikTok is renowned for having an algorithmically tailored feed that is specifically engagement maximizing. While there are some selection effects in the people one encounters in normal life, surely one must concede that an algorithmically tailored feed maximizing engagement cannot possibly be anything but highly selected.
I think the big solution consists of many small solutions. One problem I identified is that social media platforms (1) decimated local live music events coverage in mid-sized cities and (2) placed live music events into the same "filter bubble" algorithm as everything else, making it difficult for people to discover what is going on nearby.
I started https://musiclocal.org, a 501(c)(3), as a curated live music events platform for my local area (and hopefully others). We list all the live music events in the area, and we optimize the software for usability, performance, SEO, etc. The goal is to make discovering local live music events as easy as doom-scrolling. We have had an outstanding reception in the area we serve. We are not self-sustaining yet, but I am optimistic about our chances. As a non-profit, we do not do any of the dark-pattern garbage that has become omnipresent in social media and other consumer software. We just do the right thing as best we can.
Here is some more background (from our "Issues" page):
At MusicLocal, we focus on the root challenges facing local music communities to address endemic issues of negative social media practices, isolation and community polarization, and economic concentration and monopolization. Specifically:
• We believe convenient, comprehensive live music event listings are critical to reversing the decline in local music journalism.
• We believe ethically designed, steward-curated live music event listings provide a vital alternative to addictive social media platforms.
• We believe that making live music more visible and accessible encourages in-person interaction, strengthening communities and alleviating loneliness and social isolation.
• We believe that local live music listings are a critical component of strong local economies, helping to lessen the negative economic consequences of big tech and music industry monopolies.
---
"Technology has a purpose, and that purpose is to do good and to share" --Steve Wozniak
I think people in general need to stop letting differences rip them apart from each other. I've seen countless friendships crumble over stupid things like politics. (I'm not saying politics is stupid overall, but I do think it's stupid to let it affect a relationship, except in extreme situations). I'm not talking about the Neo-Nazi who openly expresses hatred towards other races, or the extreme other end who insists that anything other than full throated and vocal activism makes you a bad person. Those people are toxic and should be avoided. IME that's like 1% of the population if not less.
Social media has (IMHO) exacerbated this by allowing us to selectively surround ourselves with people we know we'll agree with. It's a nice reprieve sometimes, but it's so, so unhealthy beyond short-term.
Also talking to people in-person is very important. The less you do it, the harder it is, but it's worth doing. The natural humanizing effect of conversing with a person in meat-space does wonders for increasing understanding. Don't talk about topics you disagree on, focus on agreements and common interests. A good friend of mine is a trans-woman married to a woman. She decided to get into target shooting and approached others in good faith, and she said something like (not a direct quote): "I was worried they would be assholes, but it turns out they're just nerds like me, they just love to kit out their rigs".
Another friend of mine fell into the right-wing youtube rabbit-hole and "infiltrated" an Antifa group. He's a good guy overall, but got a very clouded exposure to "the other side." After he was done, he said something like (not a direct quote) "I was actually really surprised at how accepting, respectful, and intellectual most of them were. We wouldn't agree on politics, but they were a lot more interested in real analysis and dealing in facts than I ever would have thought, and we ended up having some good conversations."
Yes there are going to be assholes out there, but give people a chance before jumping to conclusions. You might be surprised! Don't jump in the deep end all at once, and be mindful of personal danger and comfort-level, but don't be so afraid to reach out to humans (in-person) and try to connect, even if you think on the surface there's no way you could get along.
Shared stressors are what bring people together. Communities form when a group of people all have the same problem. Go around egging peoples homes in your neighbourhood, and keep doing it. By the time your neighbours finally catch you they will all have gotten to know and appreciate one another better. They will have formed a communtiy identity.
Well, let's start by confronting and acknowledging the very strong case that we -- "we" here being the tech world in general, and the audience of this site -- bear a heavy burden of responsibility for it.
It could be argued that it was all inevitable given the development of the Internet: development of social media, the movement online of commerce and other activities that used to heavily involve "incidental" socialization, etc. And maybe it was. But "we" are still the ones who built it. So are "we" really the right ones to solve it, through the same old silicon valley playbook?
The usual thought process of trying to push local "community groups," hobby-based organizations etc is not bad, but I think it misses an important piece of the puzzle, which is that we've started a kind of death spiral, a positive feedback loop suppressing IRL interaction. People started to move online because it was easier, and more immediate than "IRL." But as more people, and a greater fraction of our social interaction moves online, "IRL" in turn becomes even more featureless. There are fewer community groups, fewer friends at the bar or the movies, fewer people open to spontaneous interaction. This, then, drives even more of culture online.
What use is trying to get "back out into the real world," when everyone else has left it too, while you were gone?
Not everyone has left the real world, only the people who got really sucked into the online/social media world. This can maybe seem like the whole world though, if you're in that bubble.
Bars are still packed on the weekends, people still gather at churches, or gyms, or bowling leagues, or book clubs, or any number of other "IRL" activities of all kinds that are going on. You do have to make the effort to go out and get involved though, nobody is going to come and rescue you.
Many of these activities have gotten extremely expensive or just died out in the majority of places. There's 2600 bowling alleys in the US compared to 4000 20 years ago. That's a decline of 35% without accounting for population. Last time I went to a bowling alley the price for a lane without drinks was 100 dollars for an hour and a half. This isn't even in a very high cost of living area. Besides a place like the gym can hardly be considered a place where people gather, most people just see it as something functional and would rather not be disturbed (I believe this has gotten 'worse').
I agree with the fact that it's exaggerated online but when you see these kinda numbers in the vast majority of activities which were affordable for most Americans not too long ago it's not solely to be blamed on individuals.
I believe in the majority of the country things will only get worse with how little value is placed on being involved in things for 'community'. People have gotten more anti-social because of social media (and just media in general).
Most tech workers won't be as impacted by this I assume, they can afford paying 200 dollars for bowling without thinking twice, same with many others of the upper middle class.
"Who don't feel that they can join any local groups"
There's your problem. Fix that.
If there aren't any local groups then help create one. If there are, go along, meet some people, see what works for you, join a different one if you didn't like the first one, keep going until you've found your people.
If you feel like you can't go to a group then create a support group for people who feel like they can't go to groups. Or go online and find the virtual space for people like you and then travel to see those people (or invite them to see you).
But there is no fix for you having to socialise if you're lonely. You're going to have to find a way in.
Affordable third places[0] where people can impromptu join and serendipitously meet friendly faces repeatedly. All of my strong friendships were from exactly this at either skateparks, college dorm common area, or run clubs. Churches had this figured out for millenia
it seems like a lot of locales that would have been third places in the past have been neutered because the people go there and then immediately put up walls. coffeeshops have become ad-hoc offices where people will sit there with a laptop and give off "leave me alone, i'm working".
people need to find a way to sit in a third space without pulling up a screen or a book that immediately re-isolates you.
also: don't underestimate the subtle effect of architecture and seating arrangements here. a coffee shop is filled with lots of little two-seat tables that intentionally isolate. for contrast, think about local pubs/bars -- there's one big central seating arrangement where evertybody is facing the bartender. the bartender is naturally placed in a position that makes them serve as a conversational mediator that can facilitate connections between then people hanging out on the periphery.
Anyone suffering in the loneliness epidemic should have a copy of The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg. The entire point is that you should be putting yourself into socially active areas in your community.
This includes: a church, a local pub or coffee shop with regulars (ideally walking distance from where you live), a rec sports/game league or club.
Knowing this, I've perused it in my life and it seems very effective. I'm a regular at a Trivia Night one night per week (I don't go every week, but enough to know both the bartender and host by name). I'm a regular at a bar three blocks away from where I live, even if I consume only one non-alcoholic beverage and one alcoholic beverage per visit (a couple night a week), that leaves me plenty of time to chat with my neighbors. I'm a member of a local golf club (a very cheap municipal course), and play there every other week, and after a couple years have very good relationships with many of the other members even if we don't interact much outside of the club. At my last apartment, I was a regular at the coffee shop enough to know multiple baristas by name, it wasn't exactly a third place situation, but it was getting close before I moved. I'm not religious, but I'm very familiar with academic institutions and open lecture series that I used tot attend in grad school.
I do this intentionally. My partner had never been a regular at a bar before, and she really, really enjoys it now even though she doesn't really drink. When she joins me, she will maybe consume one-half of a light beer. You don't have to be an alcoholic to be a regular, this is a major point that Oldenburg discusses when he contrasts German-style drinking culture with English-style drinking culture.
Being happy with yourself and being OK that you're not advancing anymore (you're just happy and don't have anything to pursue), or raising a family. The only two ways.
Make as many third places as you can. People need to get out to do other things than work, and these should be low cost activities. If you introduce subscriptions and then ramp up prices, then you are the scum of the world.
I would suggest for the crowd here: tech meetups, even online ones and communities will connect you to people with your interests.
Another thing that you'll likely find in your area is a chess club.
Maybe you won't love the chess itself, but it's an excuse to hang out with people.
Another one is volunteering work. Elderly, dogs, etc, many communities need help.
In my village I have started a "clean up" program where average citizens take few bags a picker and we clean areas of our village.
Most of people are "this is the job of the garbage collectors, the mayor should do it", so what? It also costs money, and nobody will do as carefully as the people living there.
Even if 95% of my village won't care few will and we make an impact and socialize, etc and more start taking part of it.
In the USA, the loneliness epidemic is compounded by isolation. A large portion of our society has moved into suburban communities that are largely impersonal. There is very little in the way of in-person community outside of churches or political movements that only certain kinds of people want to be involved with.
With the Internet giving us the ability to interact with our chosen niche with little effort, we are willing to accept this still-impersonal alternative to our stagnant communities.
I have found that, as a city-dweller, I benefit from separating myself from social media and going out into the world looking for more personal connections, but this is somewhat of a privilege afforded to those people who live in more densely populated areas. Even then, my distance from social media can sometimes be a handicap when you interact with people who are still reliant on it to coordinate everything.
For most people, the social opportunities that existed in the 70's through the 90's simply doesn't exist anymore. If you aren't using social media, you're practically being anti-social, but there is something inherently anti-social about social media to begin with, so you're screwed if you do and screwed if you don't.
We (reading this) can't do anything. An enlightened government might set policy in such ways as to fix this over the course of decades, but I don't even seen that being acknowledged as possible or desirable in those same decades. The problem will continue to deteriorate until it becomes catastrophic.
In person RPGs, tabletop wargames and boardgames are amazing for geek culture. Thanks to local Discord groups, I have an active nerd community that I play games with at least once a week. This has revolutionized by social life!
There is a introverted crafty side of painting and 3D printing miniatures that works great for me too.
These games all work as essentially offline alternatives to videogames and are way more fun!
Also, my local game store serves beer; so its essentially a nerd bar even though most people don't drink.
Wargaming related references:
Tabletop Minions on YouTube,
The HiveScum podcast,
Companies such as Black Site Studios and
Conferences such as Adepticon.
Step one might be to stop calling it the loneliness epidemic. Loneliness is an emotion, isolation is a condition, and we might even expect that if people felt lonely more often they would try harder to be social and actually be less isolated. This is also a network effect: my reaction to my loneliness affects someone else's loneliness if I go talk to them (or not).
I have 2 answers to this, depending on how you define "loneliness epidemic"
Genuine loneliness, like what you described, can only really be solved by touching grass. Figure out your hobbies, or find one if you don't have any.
My answer to what a lot of people call "the male loneliness epidemic" as a woman is to say it doesn't exist, you need to figure out how to be attractive. We aren't throwing ourselves on shitty men, and most of the men that complain are complaining because they feel entitled to us and thus put no effort into being attractive. The quickest way to be attractive is have empathy and not be a douche. Listen to peoples needs, and don't feel entitled to our attention
> The quickest way to be attractive is have empathy and not be a douche.
This would suggest most people are attractive. Is an empathic non-asshole really attractive, even without other things that make him interesting (e.g. travel experiences or interesting takes on things)?
When I'm feeling lonely, I stop feeling lonely and feel awesome instead.
There are lots of good suggestions in here. People just need to go do them. And if there are structural impediments to doing them, then eliminate those impediments.
I wasn't getting out enough during the day because I share the car with my wife. So I bought an EBike and now I go out all the time.
I chose to live in a place with things near by that I can go to.
Whenever I'm thinking, I'd like to go do an activity, but I need something else first, it's usually not true, or the other thing I need is easy to get.
People just need to decide to stop doing things that make them unhappy.
It's so interesting to see the tech community all angsty about the loneliness epidemic.
20 years ago, the Pope warned of the coming "epidemic of loneliness" that the tech industry would bring us, and the tech industry laughed at him. They said he was just an old man who didn't understand and that technology would bring us together in unity and happiness.
And yet, here we are 20 years later, and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't submit an article to HN about loneliness.
Easy, same as obesity and environmental problems: fix the built environment by building places for humans, not cars. It all stems from that in North America.
IMO it is not possible. The world has changed. Until modernity, people made connections out of economic necessity. Either you get a wife or have fun farming by yourself - literally it doesn't work so you die. Either you're friends with the baker or you don't get bread or get absolute shittiest-quality goods and you die. And so on. Shut-ins didn't exist because it was physically impossible to survive without leaving your room. No UberEats, no Amazon Prime, no remote work, no internet.
When the economic necessity to form relationships with others disappeared, the naked truth was exposed - most people don't fucking like each other. Yes, when you're starving to death you'll be friends with the guy who has potatoes, but when you can buy the damn potatoes yourself in the supermarket, you're not going to tolerate his smelly ass.
Most friendships form over common participation in a project. Doing something together, knowing that you have to put up with the other one to achieve higher goals. Without those goals, there are no incentives to deal with others. And what goals am I supposed to have if by doing nothing I already have a roof above my head, full fridge, clean house, and an entire library of video games?
Think about the main message of feminism: "Girl, you can make it in life without a man. Don't settle for an aggressive alcoholic just because that's the only option. You can do it yourself.". It perfectly captures how forming relationships turned from an asset into a liability.
And that can happen even when you are among 1000s of people, not just alone , if you are among people thinking of something else, staring into the void or that you can't connect etc. you are a deep person.
Deep person + deep thinker is the worse. Also people aren't doing them any favor by singing the praise of being a deep person and a deep thinker.
It also has to do with abundance of everything and being not in need of cooperating 24/7/365 to avoid starving ....some people slip into deep thinking and deep emotional introspection...yeah fuck that
I know homeless people and rich people, equally lonely and unfulfilled and unhappy. I don't know what the solution is. I'm trying to figure it out. But I know that throwing money at this problem does little to solve it. I know from experience.
i wonder if a resurgence in social clubs like the Elks club/Moose lodge would ever catch on.
i don't know how big they ever were in the past, but it seemed like it was commonly represented in media in the 50s/60s (e.g., the flintstones had a parody of the lodge which would suggest that they were common enough that people were familiar)
Well, first, props to you because you're actually doing something to initiate contact. That's a really big deal; more people need to do that. (Maybe even some that don't wrestle with loneliness.)
But what's you're next step? Someone comes up and marks that they feel really lonely. Do you get contact information? Invite them to something? (Invite them to what? You may have to create something - a board game night at your house, or a "lonely people shopping together" time at a grocery store, or something. You probably have to create that "something", because you're the one who's able to at least reach out, and the ones who are responding probably aren't there yet.)
You're finding people that need something. The next step is to find a way to connect them - with you, or with each other, or with someone.
For any activity you come up with, some people won't be able to, due to time or temperament or personality or something. So maybe what you need is more than one. (Eventually. Look, don't get overwhelmed by that. Just one is the next step, in my view. And maybe some helpers.)
So your proposal is to start an ad hoc friend group with people who come up to me, and try to become friends with them personally?
I'm not sure I'm the right person for that. I live in a suburb, not the city that I do the surveys in. And I'm extraordinarily boring, and too old.
It seems that I should try to think bigger. Try to find a way to help these people connect with each other. Something in person, not an app like Hinge. Maybe, hold a sign that says ad hoc meet and greet at such and such time and place, after collecting a list of common interests and putting those interests on the same sign that says the time and date. That could work.
In my city, an older guy organized an “urban hiking group” where he would plan walking routes through the city, usually stopping at a restaurant for brunch. It was very popular, but probably a lot of work. He was semi-retired, so he had the time to do it. He did research to have talking points on the history of some spots we passed, like a tour guide.
It was a great low key meet up. You didn’t have to make friends with the organizer. If you were walking with someone you didn’t really like in the group, it was easy to drift to talk to someone else.
go volunteer. they're needed everywhere. problem solved. most able-bodied lonely people are that way because they can't be arsed to get off the damn couch. they would just rather discuss loneliness on social media. I can't be arsed either, but I don't feel lonely when I'm alone, which is the majority of the time.
I think part of the problem is that social media is normalized and it is easy. It is way easier to engage socially (or at least you feel like you're engaging socially) with likes and lurking and stuff. It is way harder to put on pants and go out and it is normalized to do so (phrasing like bedrotting is super casual, whereas it is actually really hard to maintain an eating disorder because you have to be constantly hiding it from people).
Also I think there's more groups whose social norms online teach you to be repulsive offline and again there's not enough social pushback against it. We do need to be harder on casual edginess online because it is teaching habitual behaviors that make it hard to engage socially. Your 50 year old hiking buddy is not going to understand your soycuck joke you are trying to show him on your phone. Your average wine mom at women-only book club is not going to love if you insist on talking about banning trans people from the club because they're "men invading the women's spaces" especially when there's very likely 0 trans people to exclude in the first place on account of trans people being rare.
Lastly there is usually a ton of stuff happening but the instructions on how to engage with it is nebulous. People who know the algorithm find it easy, the people who don't know the algorithm find it super hard. And IDK how to solve that because there's so much going on in people's heads that they don't realize the people around them seriously aren't scrutinizing them that much. There's like a socialization death spiral where every small awkward interaction hurts way more when you don't have enough experience to know that the small awkward interactions are normal. So you can't tell someone "just go to book club" because they'll go, have 1 normal situation like mishearing someone and then decide they are so embarrassed they can never go to book club again-- but since it is so normal it happens at every social event and they end up lonely.
You actually bring up the biggest obstacle to my tentative idea for this Sunday, of holding up a sign that points to a time/place for a casual conversation with strangers. I thought this would be a good way to get very lonely passers-by out of their comfort zone and into a situation where they have a chance to make friends and bond, but the absolute diversity of interests is the main show stopper. My first thought was to essentially avoid sensitive topics on the poster, such as religion and politics, but it still leaves the huge diversity of potential common interests open. So I started doing some research on the most common hobbies that people have in cities and that can be talked about casually, in hopes of finding like 5 ot 6 to write on the sign to get people into the coffee shop.
There is no easy solution to this problem. It's a conflux of many factors. (There are no more "third spaces". Too much rent-seeking behavior. The centralization of platforms consolidates power and creates inertia. The dopamine-hacking of recommendation algorithms. Social media in general.)
I've written at length about related topics. Unfortunately, there are powerful invested interests in keeping things shitty. It's often critiqued as "capitalism is bad" but we're seeing today is better described as techno-feudalism than capitalism.
Loneliness epidemic started 30+ years ago. There were books written in the 90s about it(bowling alone). Nothing modern can be blamed on it. If anything, social media is helping the crisis; not causing.
The 'fixes' has been established for just as long. My nearby 'community centre' was built in 1987. Has this been successful at all? Not in the least bit.
The reality of what is causing this hasnt changed. Without fixing this key problem, the crisis obviously has continued for 30+ years. I'm not nostradamus here. However, from many previous conversations it's crazy how absolutely nobody is ready to talk about the cause. They'd rather just call it a paradox or feign ignorance for why this is happening. Honestly it's rather conspiratorial creating when you think about it.
Out of curiousity I asked what gemini 3 pro thinks.
1. Revival of third places.
As if that hasnt been tried for 30+ years... fail.
2. replacing 'socializing' with "service"
The idea is that cleaning a park will somehow make you less lonely is laughable at best.
3. Bridging the generational gap.
Elderly teach the young skills? while youth teach digital literacy. My community centre literally has this. F mark.
4. Urban design and walkability.
We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
5. digital hygiene
social media is a sedative? crazy.
I love gemini, but man they are getting it so wrong. All of this will likely just caused the crisis to be worse in my opinion.
To me, has this been done unintentionally through the typical 'road to hell is paved with good intentions' or has this been intentionally done and maintained? The refusal to acknowledge the cause seems to push toward intentional. Guess we just live with the loneliness epidemic.
>We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
That doesn't mean the point is wrong.
The US bet on the wrong urban planning ideas, and now it is facing the consequences. This is not unique to the US; other places have fallen into the same trap.
This feels overly cynical and reductive. A problem existing for 30 years doesn’t mean modern forces haven’t made it worse or changed its shape. Bowling Alone didn’t argue “nothing can help,” it showed that social participation declined as work hours grew, commutes lengthened, communities hollowed out, and institutions lost funding.
Those trends didn’t stop in the 90s, they accelerated! I lived through it myself. Social media isn’t the sole cause, but it clearly displaces time, lowers the incentive to show up in person, and offers connection without obligation.
Saying “community centers existed in 1987” misses the point... they stopped working when participation stopped being the default and became optional, inconvenient, and socially risky. People feel worn out and get "good enough" at home... so they choose the poor substitute. This also mirrors american food consumption habits.
This doesn’t require a conspiracy. It’s an emergent outcome of optimizing society for efficiency, mobility, and consumption instead of continuity and belonging. Service, third places, walkability, and intergenerational spaces aren’t magic fixes... and loneliness isn’t solved by “hanging out,” it’s solved by repeated, role-based, low-friction interaction where people are needed. We all but know how to fix this problem, there are piles of research behind it.
The real failure isn’t that these ideas were tried, it’s that we stripped away the economic and cultural structures that made them functional at all, then declared them ineffective. Pretending that nothing structural can help just guarantees the problem.
It is up to them to change. They won't change, and this "loneliness epidemic" is starting to become really fucking annoying. It is almost a grift now to shit on tech by mids.
These people don't want to go outside or engage with other people.
It is like people who are drug/alcohol/tobacco/gambling/sex/etc addicts. It is up to the individual to change. How is it anyone else's responsibility?
I surveyed a bunch of people on reddit, discords, etc. a couple years ago to figure out why people are lonely, back when this whole "loneliness" movement was starting.
A lot of these people say they have "trauma" or some other mental block as a primary reason why they're lonely (btw they're in discords with thousands of people, and playing online games with OTHER PEOPLE). I'm sorry but everyone has shit going on in their lives. You aren't really that special.
Maybe 1-5% of people have dealt with actual, really horrific trauma, and even they have managed to go on to have fulfilling lives. They chose to move on.
I'm an asshole, no doubt, and I've dealt with my own traumas in the past that were honestly way more fucking horrible than "I'm shy" or "nobody likes [insert some esoteric niche]" and guess what? Who cares? Go outside.
There is no helping these people, or anyone to be honest, unless they really want to make a change. These aren't starving Sudanese or people who live in India or something where you can't just "go outside". Mfs be in CALIFORNIA and crying. I'd understand if they were lonely because they were living in Iraq or Venezuela or something.
The only solution is we build a Matrix, and put all these people into it. I will bet 100% of my net worth and any earnings from my entire lineage for perpetuity that they will still fucking complain and be lonely. I was really hopeful for metaverse, too bad but maybe there's still a chance.
I never want to hear about "loneliness epidemic" again, to me it just sounds like DEI/ESG/Eacc and other bs grifting now to hate on tech. Everything is a choice. You press A in a video game even though you're lonely, why not press A to go outside?
These people aren't lonely, they exist in massive online echo chambers with other people. And honestly? I think they like it. Most drug addicts loved being on drugs even though it was a horrific existence. They don't like it when they're narcan'd during OD. But when they decide to get clean, I am proud that they actually did it how amazing is that? SO these lonely people have to stop crying and step outside.
on the topic of platonic friendship, I couldn’t disagree more with a lot of the comments. I have plenty of friends yet I don’t do clubs and will never, ever do organized religion. People advising it are religious freaks in my opinion. Some of my best friends took this advice to go to church and bible study. They complain every time I see them about the people in their church. Meanwhile I’ve made more and better friends online. Its not hard, get on social media, find an influencer/streamer that matches your vibes and go jump into the official or adjacent discord community and play video games with people in that community. If you engage in active listening and are a decent person, you will easily make plenty of friends. Additionally, I think in person hangouts are kinda mid, but I hangout with my friends in-person (at a minimum) every other day when I weight lift. Like seriously, I often would rather chill in Discord than go and hang out in-person.
To me the male loneliness epidemic is more about a lack of ability to find meaningful romantic relationships. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and as somebody who has been doing online dating since it essentially started, I am pretty sure that the problem (or at least a major piece) is that match group has commodified romantic relationships.
I know a lot of people will focus on meeting people in public or whatever, but it has been my experience that dating has become completely garbage and a large part is because all of the current popular dating apps disallow index search and funnel you into swiping. From a mate selection perspective this makes no sense. Not only does it muddy the waters about who is actually a real match, but it also does psychic damage to make so many shallow judgements.
Back before match group bought OkCupid, I used to have excellent results finding people their who shared a lot of common ground with, messaging them with a thoughtful message, and going on dates. Swiping is an absolute crap shoot, and often I feel like I am being used.
from what I've looked into, on an individual level, the main thing I need to do is learn how to be a good company for others. Be for other strangers what I would want them to be for me. But it's easier said then done.
From a practical perspective, there is the whole "3rd place" issue. How can I open a business that caters to the public, who will just sit there and loiter on their phones and laptops all day and be profitable. Starbucks sort of did it in the 90s, but they're not tolerating that anymore.
Forget businesses, can you walk to a park, a beach, a hiking trail on a whim and run into people? Can you hold events, watch parties,etc.. on public places easily like that? It's not easy at all these days.
I blame cars. I despise the idea that electric cars are the replacement to cars, without considering changing transportation so that it is more efficient with trams, trains,etc... The side-effect of that is you run into strangers on public transport. This doesn't just affect the loneliness epidemic, it is in my opinion a direct cause of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, and of course obesity. You can't even be homeless and sleep on the streets these days. Even the park benches are built to be hostile to anyone that wants to chill there for too long.
Society was restructured between 1950s-1980s so that it is suburbanized. It's all about the family unit, single family homes, freeways and roads built to facilitate single family homes (after WW2, starting families was all the rage, plus white-flight didn't help). Shopping centers built to cater to consumers driving from their suburban homes. Malls you can walk in, after you drove some time to park there. Even when you buy food items at grocery stores, pay attention to serving sizes, it is improving a little, but you'll see at minimum a serving size of two typically.
Society was deliberately engineered so that you have more reasons to spend more as a consumer. Families spend more per-capita. suburbs mean more houses purchased, entire generations renting with their bank as a landlord via mortgages, home repair, home insurance, car insurance, car repairs, gas stations for cars where you can get the most unhealthy things out there in the most frequented and convenient places. Make kids, make wives, make ex-wives, get sick the whole lot of you for hospitals, health insurances,etc..
It wasn't planned by some central committees or secret cabal, but it was planned nonetheless by economists and policy makers.
If everyone just got married and had kids, they won't be lonely would they? you don't need to hang out at park with strangers, you'll feel less of a member of your local neighborhood who look and think like you, and start thinking more as one people.
All the interpersonal interactions and opportunities to build relationships with people are commercialized and controlled.
For one reason or another, people are just not getting married in their early 20's anymore, or having that many kids later on like before. Even when you get married, your interaction is by design with other married people, who are busy commuting in their cars to and fro work, kids school,kids sports, plays,etc... imagine taking your kids on busses and trains every day to these places which are fairly near-by, by necessity. you'll be spending time with them instead of operating machinery. They'll be meeting stranger kids from other schools, seeing random strangers all the time, you'll be talking to randos as you walk to the train, wait on the bus,etc.. but this can't be monetized.
Blame the economists and policy makers if you want to blame someone.
If you want solutions, let's talk explicitly about the policy changes that need to happen.
Too much traffic? tear down the freeways instead of building more lanes.
It costs $10B to build a simple metro line? pass better laws to regulate bidding and costs, investigate fraud and waste.
But to dig even deeper into the root of the matter, look at what is celebrated and prized in society. Most of its ills come from there. For most Americans, it is inconceivable to be able to just go out of your house without any plans or destination in mind and just start walking and see where you end up, and who you run into. That's a crucial and tragic ability that's been lost. We really have more urgent things to address to be fair, but ultimately, this can only be solved one small step at a time, but also big sweeping changes are needed. The first step is to define and accept what the problem is, and where the blame and cause lie.
>Blame the economists and policy makers if you want to blame someone.
I wouldn't go as far as blaming, but American society should at least acknowledge their responsibility for this. Its not like the KGB imposed zoning laws in Texas. You (Americans) did. Americans chose the urban model they wanted.
HN has some odd people that don't jump to tech solutions for everything. Plus I'm banned from reddit for 3 days for making a dark joke, and besides, my reddit post asking the same thing went nowhere. At least people here engage in good faith and depth.
I actually wanted to suggest government funded online dating, so we aren't beholden to godawful Tinder and its clones (OkCupid was great for me until it got bought out and turned into Tinder).
I have a slightly different angle on that - Government mandated open algorithms, exposure of sort factors (are you in the back of the line in the swipe queue), and monthly disclosure of male/female ratios. Yeah, it'll effectively crush their business models and then they actually need to start solving the problems they've created (extreme superficiality, not background checking users, not addressing bots, not acknowledging that US has an implicit class system)
I'm trying to figure out if I have enough energy to try to pitch this to my representatives office, but I don't know if 30-40% adults never marrying or falling birth rates would be arguments that democratic politician would care to act upon.
People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward.
My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or grandparents did it: They went to church/temple/synagogue, they went to PTA meetings, they talked to their neighbors, they were in clubs, they went to the same bar.
So I think doing things that get you out of the house, consistently the most important part:
1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors, invite them over for dinner or bbqs, make small talk. How towns are constructed now is a hindrance to this (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches).
2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week.
3. Join social clubs / ethnic organization. The polish or ukrainian clubs, knights of columbus, elks, freemasons. Go every week.
4. Join a club / league. Chess club, bowling league, softball league, golf league. Tech meetups, DnD Night etc. But you have to talk with people and try to elevate things to friendships.
5. Have lunch, happy hour, etc with coworkers.
I think the trick is getting off social media.
When I was a computer nerd in the 2000s, I noticed people used to like to hang around and chat, but I mostly didn't.
Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore.
When you get off social media, real life becomes far more interesting. The problem with addiction is that it's so stimulating that everything else is boring. You have to let your mind reset.
Let me tell you about real life. I’m a caregiver and leaving the home is simply not an option. Short trips to the store, a walk around the block, maybe, if it’s before sundown, provided the person I’m caring for is in the right mental state to be left alone for 45 minutes. If there were neighborhood pubs that might be a thing to do if I drank. Getting off social media is great for those lucky enough to have the option, but with an increasing number of people getting into their dementia years, many with no savings to afford respite or other forms of care, social media is going to be the only option for a lot of people like myself. It’s better than nothing.
Tip of the hat there, it’s a very selfless thing to commit to caregiving. From a 50kft view, we have an aging demographic globally, and the bet seems to be robotics- hopefully they will get good enough to help meaningfully in this capacity. What happens to an economic system predicated around having more kids (GDP growth) is another concern.
First, sorry for what you're going through. Also, your situation is definitely an outlier that I can't focus my main efforts on. Maybe someone else is meant for that. But I'm curious, why not have friends over? Is anything like this possible?
I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too.
Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with.
The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them.
I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts.
I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car.
I heard the unofficial motto for BlackBerry from friends, something along the lines of "make distant friends be nearby, and nearby friends distant"
just find a hobby that involves other people. any kind of team sport, r/c airplanes, shooting, bird watching, the options are pretty endless. You'll meet other people, make friends, and not be so lonely.
> just find a hobby that involves other people... shooting,
Ok that one made me chuckle just from the initial reading of the wording.
I don't disagree though, I do competitive bullseye, and it is definitely a communal thing. Many old guys at the range in particular seem to be there for 99% talking at you, and 1% actual shooting related stuff.
If I'm going to the range for a set of three position, a 120-shot session by myself takes like 2.5 hours including setup and teardown. If there's talkative-old-guy at the range, then I'm there for 4 hours, and I don't even make it through 60 shots lol.
Which is fine for someone like me who is a competitive shooter but not like really trying to be the absolute best, I don't mind spending 60 minutes doing bullseye and 180 minutes chatting about whatever. The actual competitive shooters at the range though, they'll either have someone screen talkative-old-guy for them, or just otherwise make it clear that they are Serious and not to be bothered.
> You'll meet other people, make friends
'Making friends' doesn't occur by just being in proximity to people.
Quite likely at the end of the night they'll return to their lives and you won't be invited to interact with them again until the next meeting. That's if you're not excluded from existing club cliques - I've gone to many different meetings and come away at the end feeling more alone.
"Activity partners" are pretty easy to find. What's harder is getting them to make the transition to deeper friendship where you spend time together outside of the activity.
Birding is great.
Thankfully social media is getting so much worse so fast it's making this easier and easier. HN is the last social media platform I still participate in... and I suspect that might not be for too much longer.
I recently logged onto Facebook and Instagram to update my 2-factor auth settings after having too many notifications of malicious login attempts. It was incredible to see what a transformation has happened there, it's like going to a decaying suburban shopping mall with only a few stores left open (and sort of sad to see the remaining users so continually desperate for a drop of approval from some imagined community).
Reddit is mostly bots, astro-turfers and people so brainwashed it's hard to tell the difference. I remember disagreeing with people on there (this in the pre-Digg migration era) you would get interesting divergent points of view. Now it's like people are reading from a script.
Twitter used to be my strongest addiction, but it's almost unbelievable how big a transformation has occurred since it became X. It's almost a parody of everyone's dystopian social media fears.
HN has obviously held up a bit better, but the AI driven mass hallucination impacting this community, combined with the increasingly aggressive manipulation of the home page, is continually making logging out for good seem like the best option.
> Reddit is mostly bots, astro-turfers and people so brainwashed it's hard to tell the difference. I remember disagreeing with people on there (this in the pre-Digg migration era) you would get interesting divergent points of view. Now it's like people are reading from a script.
It's hard to classify Reddit as one thing, the communities are all so different.
The subreddit for my town has led to several new friends that I meet with in person. Most of that came from coming together to advocate for something at a city council meeting or similar, where there was a directed meat space purpose. Getting together for hobbies like hiking or other things happens once in a while too.
On other, technical subreddits dedicated to digging deep into details, there are few bots. It's all real people with shared interests. Reddit is far better than most forums that I frequent for finding those communities.
The few times I have been swarmed by bots on Reddit was when I touched on a topic where, say, Russia had a strategic interest, then the subreddit would get tons of new commentators from other subreddits, which was the indication of bots. Fortunately the mods took swift action when this happened, becuase my god the discourse is awful when bots flood the zone with their babble.
> Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore.
A lot of the events and spaces I go to have people who hang around and chat.
I agree that internet use has had an impact, but I think it's easy to underestimate how much situations change as you grow up. Now that I have kids, it seems like we're always ending up in spaces where people are hanging out and chatting. As far as my kids know, that's just the way the world works.
I thought the same up through college, then I graduated and suddenly spontaneous socialization ended. I had to change my habits to go find other people.
>how much situations change as you grow up
And yet this looks very different from what 40+ years back looked like for adults so it's not just about growing up, there was other massive changes in our society.
For example the number of kids we had in the past dramatically affected 'forced' socialization.
The post war suburbanization that forced us to spend huge amounts of time on the road.
Things like TV that took entertainment from a group activity to a single person event.
All these things added up.
>Things like TV that took entertainment from a group activity to a single person event.
TV was the visual replacement of radios, and both used to bring families together for tv events… I remember lots of instances of that as a child.
It also brought people together at work. Everyone used to watch nearly the same things, and even up to 15 years ago, there’d at least be groups you could find in your office who was watching the same things you did, and could engage in water cooler talk.
Now theres so many shows on streaming networks, and you can watch whenever, so its all fractured.
It's like China during the opium epidemic.
Maybe we'll see Europe try and ban social media, leading to a kind of "Opium War" to keep it going on the pretext of "freedom" and so on.
My friend, don't scare quote freedom.
Sure, it may not have infinite value, but there are plenty of far less valuable things we endure significant harm to be able to enjoy.
And I say this as someone who absolutely hates social media.
Usually countries don't go to war over actual principles such as these but for self-interest. That's what I was getting at. Scare quotes indicate the position of the concept within public-facing rhetoric for an Opium War style operation (which would presumably be about profit, control and so on, the usual).
I feel like the idea social media prevents socializing in real life is a bit of a straw man.
I've made many friends over the years through platforms like Instagram, some in countries I don't even live in, and we've met many times in person.
Of course that won't necessarily work for everyone but the point I'm trying to make is that social media isn't some one way street that won't return value.
People are seeking multiple things on social media. One common one is connection. I am in Mexico dealing with family business. I am in a rural area. My Spanish skills are developing but are still weak. I can have light conversation here, but I can't deeply connect. My desire to use social media has drastically increased.
But I only want to engage with my friends. Every platform feeds me various flavors of rage bait mixed in with my friends' content. Some of my friends groups have moved to chats on other less public platforms like Discord, Signal, or Whatsapp. But that's not the same experience. And a lot of the people I like to engage with aren't moving over to those platforms.
We all thought maybe social media would evolve into something good... but it was enshitified. So maybe part of the solution here is to develop a tool that offers that connection without the whole being exploited aspect?
I know the feeling but my impression is that interacting with people that are strictly internet friends is a proxy to the real thing, the same way watching porn is a proxy for the real thing. When you spend X hours talking to people on the Internet you're spending at least less X hours talking to people IRL and building the sense of community that we now feel thinning away.
I know people that are internet famous and are terminally online all the time. I'm pretty sure it must feel like they're accomplishing something but for somebody IRL not familiar with the game they're playing their life looks very weird socially.
My current mindset for this is that social media should only work augmenting my real world social life, not take what's left of it away from me.
> (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches)
You can turn the garage into a hangout spot. A neighbor has a full bar with communal table plus TV for sports and he opens up the garage door once a week on a schedule (Sunday game day or whatever depending on the season) and whenever he feels like it on work week evenings. As people pass by we invite them over and after a few months everyone knows that when the garage is open, they can come over for a drink and to shoot the shit. Low pressure social interactions that often turn into weekend outings, regular poker games, etc.
Now years later we get impromptu block parties when he brings out the grill onto the driveway. It’s done wonders for our community in an otherwise unwalkable SoCal suburb.
This works wonders. I did it accidentally. In March 2020 when my gym closed, I started working out every night in the garage. After a couple of weeks a neighbor who I only ever said "hi" to wondered by and asked if he could join since his gym was closed. After a while more showed up, and now I have like 12 people every day show up. One Friday someone brought a bottle of whiskey and we hung out after the workout and now weekly happy hours are a regular occurrence. The neighbors who don't workout stop by after the workout for happy hour. It's almost become expected and folks schedule their weeks around it so that they can be there for drinks in the evening. As a super introvert nerd, I never thought I'd be the center of community in my neighborhood.
This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing unless I was warmly encouraged to join in, that's how I've been turned into a social outcast in my youth. I know some people who for a fact feel the same way.
Maybe one solution is therapy, to help massage them out of their shell, to help them learn to be vulnerable and unafraid and friendly. But many of them refuse to go to therapy for whatever reason also.
These are things I will be running into as I try to resolve this. I have already encountered a young man named Daniel who remembered me, and told me that he was hospitalized, and that the thought of me and my sign helped him get through it. I'm dealing with people on all spectrums of mental health.
In fact, maybe that's kind of the point. I'm trying to reach out to people who refuse to go to therapy, who have internal thoughts berating them all day long, and I have the unique opportunity of helping them through the darkness and into the light of the truth, that they are valuable and lovable, if only people saw the true them, and trusted them to become that.
Yep. I grew up in the era of ‘stranger danger’. We were explicitly taught as kids to fear strangers and socialising. We were taught “don’t be rude and butt in to conversations uninvited”, etc.
Still, something else is off. In the 90s, the Internet was a way to expand your social circle. So many friends made on IRC groups that moved into real life.
Nowadays yeah, commenting on Reddit and chatting to friends in message groups does feel like socialising, even though you might go two weeks without seeing anyone other than coworkers, cashiers (maybe) and Uber Eats delivery drivers.
> This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing
Part of it I think is to endure the uncomfortable for a bit.
I felt really uncomfortable in social settings, and still do sometimes. But I forced myself to ignore those feelings. Now I'm at a point that if people think I'm weird or whatever then that's their problem.
I try not to be rude, be considerate and such thing, I'm not totally unhinged. But I am much more relaxed about just being me. Sometimes it doesn't work, but often it's all good.
on my son's bday i drug our firepit out to the front yard and setup some chairs for my wife and I to welcome his friends as they arrived. Maybe a dozen people in our neighborhood walking their dog or out for a run just dropped by to say hello and talk. I guess the fire looked very inviting (it was a chilly evening). I'm going to start doing it regularly, it's an easy way to meet people in your community.
Join a religious organization to fight loneliness is like start smoking to loose weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
The common retort is that these don't exist any more, but in my experience they're all over. If you have kids you start seeing them everywhere, too. They're not as classically romantic as an ancient Greek agora, but there are plenty of spaces. During the summer I'm probably at a different space 5 days a week with the kids after school.
I think the real problem is that some people forget how to go places. It's so easy to do the routine of work -> dinner -> screen time -> sleep -> repeat that time vanishes from people.
Whenever I hear people, usually young and single, complain that their 8 hour job leaves 0 hours in the day to do anything and they're too tired on the weekends to go out, it's always this: Their time is disappearing into their screens, which makes it feel like their only waking hours go to work. I try to give gentle nudges to help give people ideas, but none of them really want to hear that it's something they can change. It's just so easy to believe that life has thrust this situation upon us and there's nothing we can do about it.
> The common retort is that these don't exist any more
Usually when I see the retort, its also with the understanding that 3rd places need to be free, or essentially free. If theres a significant expectation of money being spent in order to spend time there, its not really a “3rd place” by the intended definition. (Thats the argument I’ve seen)
That has never really been part of the definition. If you look at that Wikipedia article a couple comments up, I only see two examples (i.e. stoops and parks) that are free, and I think parks are a stretch because conversation is not a primary reason for most people going there.
Also, people forgot how to find places. If you're driving a car, places speed by too fast to see or remember (and it's dangerous to spend too much time looking at them). On Google, places are actively hidden from you for the sake of making the map look "cleaner". Every time I go downtown (on transit, not by car) I notice new shit that just doesn't exist on the map unless you specifically type in the name to get Google to admit that it exists.
I noticed this the first time I took a walk by myself to the town center rather than letting my parents drive me there. You know the routine: drive to the mall parking lot, go and get the thing you're looking for, drive home. Well, I didn't have my own car and figured I could walk there (about an hour, so probably 2-3km, in a country that uses sidewalks). It's basically magical how much stuff you notice that you would just ignore when in the car, even as a passenger.
Exactly this. Vote for representatives that want to build walkable cities, support small businesses, and want to build parks. Suburban sprawl sucks.
No it doesn't. I live in a planned neighborhood in the suburbs. I can walk to a branch of my local library, a few restaurants, a bar, a bookstore, I even get my haircut in my neighborhood. And even if none of that existed, nothing has stopped me from being friends with my neighbors, or the parents of my kid's friends. The suburbs are a different model with tradeoffs, but they're also useful for periods and phases of life different from the ones served by urban settings.
A planned neighborhood is technically by definition not suburban sprawl, as sprawl requires a lack of planning. On the other hand, I'd argue if you can do all of that (and said walking distance is under a mile[0]) you're not even in a suburb, you're in a dense enough location to be a town or small city. Unfortunately thanks to American zoning and planning it can be very difficult to know what your home area is actually considered and it makes this type of anecdotal evidence not particularly useful[1].
[0] A mile is essentially the farthest the average person will comfortable walk versus driving a car for travel that does not require carrying anything back. Once you add in carrying things (e.g. groceries) it drops to half a mile. Anything less dense than that and people won't want to walk, anything more dense than that and you're into standard city planning.
[1] Assuming you're American of course and obviously I'm not about to ask you to dox yourself, considering this type of thing can vary right down to the neighbourhood level.
Urban environments blunt people's connection to other people too, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese
If you pack people in too tight they just tune each other out.
I live in probably the most walkable city in the world, but there are millions of lonely people here as well. From any of my observations, I can’t pinpoint to one single problem.
It might be a composite effect of different things contributing to the easiness of being alone. Cultural skill that overtime gets eroded, and as less time people spend among others, it becomes even harder to go back.
Voting isn't going to fix this problem in our lifetimes.
We need to do things ourselves.
This. I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community. Community is a function of distance, broadly speaking.
I also like the idea of libraries having a cafe, internet access, a place to meet, all non profit and owned by the community.
There are lots of libraries with cafes, maker spaces, and more. Seattle is one.
If yours doesn't, this is your wake-up call to get involved with your local library. Stop waiting for someone else to do things.
Suburban sprawl is not going to be "fixed" in anyones lifetime. But it doesn't have to be limiting. I grew up in a very typical suburban style neighborhood in the 1970s. Tract homes, lots of cul-de-sac streets. But neighbors talked to one another, kids played together, there were summer gatherings in those cul-de-sacs on the 4th of July or Labor Day.
Don't think you have to live in some idealized fantasy land to go talk to your neighbors.
I live in a suburban neighborhood with a couple bag ends, our neighborhood is pretty social. couple of neighborhood bbqs a year, kids all playing together every day, dinners, etc. It is quiet and not a lot of traffic with long term residents. I am not 100% on what exactly the key is for a town is, I think style matters, but Ive been in walkable neighborhoods without a good community, and non-walkable neighborhoods with one.
I'll say that when I was a kid, the neighborhood was still as it was originally built, no sidewalks. Didn't stop anyone from socializing, didn't stop kids from biking around.
The city added sidewalks there in the '00s or so, but when I go back there I almost never see anyone using them.
I think the trend of isolation and loneliness is not really related to infrastructure or stuff like "walkability." Those things are pretty minor obstacles.
How big were the lots? How far of a walk was the closest bar, grocery store, cafe? Do you have to walk onto someone's property to talk to them if they are sitting on the porch?
I lived in a car dependent burb for 20+ years and would rarely, if ever, run into my neighbors out on the town. Living in a walkable neighborhood in a medium-low density city for under a year and I regularly run into my neighbors.
Standard 0.25 acre suburban lots. No markets, cafes, or anything like that it was a bog-standard subdivision. There was a small park sort of centrally located but that was really the only ammenity. Supermarket was a few miles away. Nobody walked there, cars to go anywhere. Neighbors still knew one another, at least on the same streets. Kids met at school, figured out where each other lived.
> bag ends
Never seen "cul de sac" in English before...
Never heard "bag end" myself.
I knew cul de sac was french for bag end, or end of sack or whatever the translation was. One time reading lord of the rings after learning Tolkien explicitly avoided french loan words, I realized Bilbo living at Bag End is kind of a joke. Its just saying Bilbo lives in the cul de sac.
> idealized fantasy land
For what it's worth, many (most?) countries have most of their people living in places that are not sprawling suburbs. It's worst in the "Anglosphere" countries (US/Canada/Australia) within the last 50-70 years, but it's absolutely not a fantasy land. It's the way things were everywhere before 1940, and most places still are today.
I say that because it is fixable, if we let ourselves fix it...
Your point stands though, even in a fairly antisocial layout of a suburb, you can still usually make friends with a decent number of people nearby.
Yes.
Our lopsided emphasis on individualism, our definition of economic efficiency that does not include the mental health value, these have been detrimental to our connections, roots, community, family etc.
We said, let the mom and pop stores die, their replacements provide the same value but more efficiently. Let community bonds die they intrude upon our individual destiny.
But we did not correctly account for the value provided by those that we chose to replace. So it is not surprising that we find ourselves here.
Could it have played out any other way ? I doubt it. Our world is an underdamped system, so we will keep swinging towards the extremes, till we figure out how to get a critically damped system. The other serious problem is that the feedback system is so laggy, that's a biggy in feedback control loops.
The world has become a much bigger place. You used to know who to avoid, the default was someone was acceptable. Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person.
> Now the ones to avoid move around and it's all too likely that a newcomer is such a person.
This seems a wild generalization to make, though I guess "be suspicious of newcomers" is a little biologically hardwired. What's your epistemology for believing "newcomers" are "the ones to avoid"?
> Our lopsided emphasis on individualism
This reads like that pattern where people assign blame for all issues to whatever thing they happen to not like. The US is the least individualistic it has ever been, but there was much more community and less loneliness in the past. That make it pretty obvious that the issue here isn't "individualism".
I do this. Even to the point where I go to church yet am openly agnostic. Takes the right church, I enjoy a good pastor and message even if I don’t technically believe it can be rooted in morality or philosophy and I can filter out the religious aspects. I could do without the singing but that’s my wife’s favorite part.
The thing is, church works for this because it’s an agreed upon and set time of the week. It’s also a broad group of people. Having friends of all ages is beneficial. I prefer it to a hobby group or our parent groups where we are all very similar in many aspects, although I do those too I just feel like their impact is less on building my own character.
It’s hard to lose what has been lost in the macro sense and then go from 0 to 1. A social movement like “screen free Saturday” or something would be ideal. Kids had to prearrange where to meet, where the teens will party (they don’t party anymore yall!), arrange logistics, and deal with being bored during some part of the day (underrated life skill, as a busy adult I love being bored, but hated it when young). I just recently explained to my kid how TV worked in the 80s. You couldn’t pick what to watch and there were very few times when cartoons were on. You either watched the news or MASH with the adults or found something else to do out of boredom.
This is answering the wrong question.
You're answering the question, "In a loneliness epidemic, what can I do to be less lonely?" Your answer is to use self discipline (which is hard) to get out of your house consistently, a decent answer to that question.
To actually fix the loneliness epidemic, you'd have to get everyone else to do that.
In the 20th century, getting out of the house consistently was the easiest way to interact with other people. Now, you can interact with lots of other people (in a less satisfying way) without leaving your house. What's going to fix that?
How do we get everyone to eat better? How do we get everyone to get enough sleep? How do we get everyone to exercise more? "Just tell them to do it" won't work. "Why don't we all just put our phones away?" won't work. We'd need a policy.
(My best guess: in the US, mandate that health insurers pay for therapy, and provide therapy at low/no cost in countries with national health care.)
I was with you up until you said policy was the solution. No, action must come first. Policy needs people to agree on it, and can take a long time to enact. Action can be done now, and allows experimentation and disagreement. I am looking for actionable solutions that I can experiment with as one lone individual with time to spare on Sundays.
> People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward.
This is the wrong model:
Sitting (alone) at home and working on program code or reading scientific textbooks does have a reward. Many things for which you go outside of the house or where you interact with other people have a much lower reward. So you rather loose a rather decent local optimum, and if you don't know very well where to look outside for something really good, you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.
I think by "reward" in the context of this discussion on loneliness, OP may have meant the opportunity to meet people, make friends, perhaps hit it off with someone and land a date, if you're single. Not that it's entirely useless/detrimental to spend time at home reading or pursuing whatever solo hobbies you happen to have.
To be sure, there certainly are many introverts who are perfectly happy on their own with no need to get out and meet people. More power to them! But there are many that crave human connection, even if they happen to have many intellectual interests and for these types of individuals, they would be well served at least carving out some portion of their time to get out of the house with the explicit aim of meeting people. And yes, not every such outing will lead to lifelong friends or meeting your next soulmate, but it's a numbers game.
My son is comparing every alternative to what he can accomplish by staying home and practicing guitar. However, we are trying to start an anime theme song cover band (e.g. "Upstate NY's most energetic opening act") for which he's going to play Bass, Rhythm or Lead as needed and I'm going to be the Kitsune/Band Manager/Mascot.
> you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.
That's a sense of risk and caution that gets too comfortable for some people to compete with over time. If you don't build yourself better options, all you want to do is sit at home and do the thing that guarantees a reward. Then you get in your car and move about the world in a way that you feel is guaranteed to protect you from conditions, other people, but really is dangerous. You bet only on certainty, and outcomes are predictable, but they're not compatible with not being lonely
What a stupid take, but it showcases the underlying problem: there is no loneliness issue, there is a "me me me" issue.
Friendship is a two way contract: you add something to someone's life and they will consider you their friend, they add something to your life, making them your friend.
Of you "optimize" for your own and only your own benefit, nobody is going to be your friend.
We are optimising for reducing loneliness, remember.
I am of course aware of that.
But reducing loneliness is just a means to an end. My point is that there exist a lot of rewarding things that you can do alone at home, which may give you a hapiness malus because of the loneliness, but also a happiness bonus because you like the activity.
If a solution to reducing loneliness shall be sustainable, it better increases the happiness or rewardingness overall, too. Otherwise you see loneliness as a problem, but see the alternatives as being the worse options, i.e. by rational choice, the loneliness will not be reduced.
You can be happy, well maybe content, but still lonely. It sounds like you're just trying to optimise your happiness, which is fine for you.
> Attend every week.
In my experience, this is the key. “90% of life is showing up.” If you are around the same people every week, for whatever reason, with even a minimal amount of openness and friendliness, you will get community.
Exactly. It can take a month or more but the secret for me is to “become a regular” at places I like.
This movie
https://joinordiefilm.com/
based on the work of Robert Putnam is an essential backgrounder on the topic.
Yet, if you're concerned about Gen Z, 2-4 are aspirational at best. Churches, clubs, live music events, and every other group my son attends have a lot of people who are 35+ and children that tag along but the 18-30 demo is almost absolutely absent at events away from the local colleges and universities. [1] It's quite depressing for someone his age who is looking to connect with his cohort in person.
Leaders of groups are somewhere between outright hostile, completely indifferent, or well-meaning but unable to do anything about the "cold start" problem.
I'm sympathetic to the argument of Ancient Wisdom Tradition (AWT) practitioners that secularism is to blame, but my consistent advice to anyone is you can control what you can control and that secularism would not have encroached as much as it has if AWT organizations weren't asleep at the switch if not doing the devil's work for him.
Personally in the last year I've found a lot of meaning being an event photographer for this group
https://fingerlakesrunners.org/
where I know you can find some people in the 18-30 hole because I read their age off their bibs.
My son is doing all the ordinary things and I am supporting him in all the ordinary ways but I do believe extraordinary times require extraordinary methods.
I can't advise that anyone follow my path but I felt a calling to shamanism two years ago which recently became real, I "go out" as
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115901190470904729
who is a "kidult" and who embodies [2] the wisdom, calm and presence of a 1000-year old fox who's earned his nine tails. In one of the worlds I inhabit I'd call this a "platform" for gathering information and making interventions as it builds rapport and bypasses barriers and the social isolation of Gen Z is my top priority for activism in my circle of influence.
[1] ... and our data there seems to indicates that Asian students seem to be OK and white kids, if they do anything at all, drink.
[2] ... at least aspires to
this is one reason, while i personally work from home, i actually lament that many 20-somethings will never be in an office
i'm nearing 40, have a wife and kid, house in the mountains, etc... but, damn, those office days were foundational to the person I am today
While this is true, it's worth mentioning that a regular coffee machine small talk in the office is not building any relationships. At least that's how I experience it. It can start one, but won't automatically make one.
I can go for a coffee and routinely get dragged into 30 min conversation about politics, or cars, or weather, or any other subject I literally don't care about. All the good relationships begin with finding a niche topic between 2 people.
It doesn't have to be an office - young people just need to get out and engage with the world in whatever way works for them. I tell this to my teenagers all the time. They are used to our nice house in the woods, 10 minutes outside of town, where their old parents work remotely and relax at home. But I remind them that this is a good place for our old age, not their youth. I spent my 20s exploring the world, climbing mountains, meeting new people, making mistakes, learning, and growing. They would be happier if they likewise got out and explored... hopefully with fewer mistakes.
But there is far more to the world than offices, so while I agree 100% with the sentiment, I'd broaden those horizons.
For sure. I would have been in real trouble if covid had happened when I was 20. The few times I tried to work remotely it took a matter of just a few days to go stir crazy. The office was a good environment for me (it helped that it was legitimately a good environment with good coworkers, not everyone has that).
As a family man with a wife, two kids, two cats, and a dog ... working from home is no big deal for me now. I prefer it. I got lucky that we did not get forced into this until I was in a position to handle it well.
Ha, I could have written this comment word for word myself.
Sometimes when I think back to the good times at the office, I wonder if I miss being in the office, or if I just miss being young and full of energy.
Either way, I agree it's a shame for any young people today that won't get that experience. They were among my fondest times.
I agree with this take. I'm definitely not friends with everyone I've worked with in person, but some of the most meaningful post-college friendships were formed by socializing with the people in the office (or people I met through socializing with office friends).
Yep, I met my wife at an office party - she didn't work for the company, just stopped by with someone who did
And not just the office friends that come from it -- I spent an hour a day on the bus, grabbed lunch around town, was downtown when work wrapped up and ended up at a nearby bar/restaurant, went to shows because I was downtown, etc.
Just being forced out of the house led to SO MUCH MORE.
Now I work from home and while we do travel a lot, we barely ever leave the house when we're home. We didn't make a single new friend for like 5 years (and we are a VERY social couple, generally the center of most of our friend groups). We've only just now started making new friends again now that our daughter is a toddler and getting us out of the house -- and it is incredibly refreshing
Seems like someone else (your employer, or your daughter) is controlling your willingness to socialize. It doesn't have to be this way.
It's not just willingness, as the OP mentions, being forced out of the house lots of things happen, some of them social. Having everything in the house, from work to shopping to entertainment is a convenience that could even save you some money, but it has a cost down the line.
I'm not friends with anyone but still it's better to spend some of the day around people versus all of the day alone.
This as well. You need to learn to talk to people, socialize, handle adversity, etc. Sitting at home and your only real connection to the outside world being an echo chamber like facebook or whatever cannot be good for us
Absolutely, I agree. Some of the people I had the sharpest debates with and didn't always agree with had way more impact on who I am today than the softer acquaintances. Most of them definitely made me a better person in the end, even if we weren't really "friends".
And yeah, even just having the basic daily connections can be a dopamine hit.
Sure, but what about the people who don't do this? Those who sit at home all day, scrolling away, drinking themselves to death, wondering why life is so lonely.
The only time you ever see such people is when they're walking to the grocery store. How do you reach out to them to let them know about these ideas or encourage them to try it? Especially when they're filled with discouraging thoughts?
What if all they need is one single person to say hi? How can I find them, reach them? This is what I'm asking.
> What if all they need is one single person to say hi?
Then say 'hi'. By definition they're not going to seek you out nor are they going to be findable so you're only option is to say hi to everyone and hope one sticks.
edit: heh i hope you're not talking about me, i walk to the grocery store regularly by myself. It's how a take a break from work and get some exercise. i'm fine :)
That's my point. How can I tell the difference?
One of my ideas was legitimately to just hold a giant sign that just says "hi"
I had this idea a few months ago, but never wanted to waste a whole Sunday on it. Maybe I should.
To me that seems like not saying hi, rather a device to shift the risk of engaging off of you. Don't be scared. Just say a few banal words to people you don't know every day and gauge their reaction, start a conversation if you like and they seem to be up for it.
[dead]
We need the Tiktoks of the world to realize their responsibility: users get addicted to the apps in order to numb their feelings of loneliness. So we'd need an intervention within these apps that makes them unbearable for the lonely, combined with a healthier way to engage with loneliness.
Imagine TikTok asking you "you've scrolled for 30 minutes. You might be in a loneliness spiral. Write down the name of someone you would like to be closer to."
TikTok does in fact remind you, quite often, that you've been scrolling for a while, and suggests taking a break. Last year, for most of each day, I would just ignore this and keep scrolling. I'd see it so many times each day. That wouldn't change if they added a suggestion like writing a name down. I'd still ignore it, and I think most people in the same situation would too. But when I was at the store, or walking to the store, that's when someone could have found a way in, and been able to get me to make a connection and open up.
Or hear me out, puts you in video call with someone watching the same short as you. Involuntary friend
Omegle + TikTok sounds like a very bad idea.
You just have to become the most friendly ultimate host in the world. Start up random conversations with those people at the grocery store or on the street and invite them to your bbq you are having this weekend.
But ultimately, if a man is sitting in his kitchen and its on fire. Its up to him to run out. No amount of reaching out will help until he decides to make the change.
A somewhat cynical response given the frequency of this topic/question being posted here and on other social media platforms. Add a weak "/s but not really" if you want:
People sitting at home living on apps and watching TV who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else who was at home on an app and watching TV deciding to get out and meet someone else.
The people who have friends.. already have friends. Those who don't are numerous social cycle iterations in on that.
And how long before those people just end up talking about TV shows anyway?
> who decide to go to a new group social event to change things up will struggle to make a connection with someone else
I can't imagine going to a general "group social event" like a party and making a connection. I'd end up just sitting there being bored until I left. I don't have the personality to just strike up a conversation about nothing with some one I don't know. But I do somewhat often go to events that revolve around my hobbies. There, I already have a connection with the strangers, through the hobby, and I have something to talk about or listen to. I've met plenty of new friends that way.
Nonsense. It's fine to be boring, and to have boring friends. This expectation that you need to be travel influencer or a deep philosopher in order to have anything to talk about is an artifact of social media.
I'm old enough to remember what socialization was like pre-Internet. And by curated social media standards, it was really boring. It was also great.
My post wasn't about socializing, it was in the context of the "loneliness epidemic" as a social topic construct.
This is good advice for your friends and family, but a bad answer to the question. "How can we solve the obesity epidemic? Stop eating so much and get some exercise." Well sure, but this misses the big picture. We built a social infrastructure that encourages a sedentary, solitary life. We shouldn't be confused by physical and emotional health implications. We can expect some people to be proactive about it, but we can't expect that of everyone.
I guess we need to delete the internet and tv from existence.
I think that the more people getting out and putting effort in the better, it helps create a knock on effect.
> I guess we need to delete the internet and tv from existence.
If only. My preferred solution is a 4 year national service. College is a key place to form a friend network, but not everyone gets to go.
I think what makes this good advice especially difficult is that it cannot be one-sided. When everyone is letting doom-scrolling replace their social interaction, then one person won't easily solve their own problem by going out to socialize. We need a broader solution, probably a cultural shift away from using technology as a crutch to avoid other people. Maybe the current younger generations will evolve a balance.
Yes, for years now I’ve had this creeping feeling that it’s a social version of the prisoners dilemma: if you’re the only one that puts down the phone (or gets off social media, etc) then you’re just left behind. It’s a coordination problem.
I think that there are a lot of people that are kind of waiting for other people to pitch something to do. Maybe you want to call them type A and B, leader and follower, I think of it as the Host and Attendees. The more of the Hosts the more things that will be happening, so trying to become a Host is just creates more opportunities.
Agreed. I'm not sure how it happened, but it feels like we've experienced a societal shift where a large number of people now expect and wait for other people to create nicely packaged solutions to their (real or imagined) problems. From social apps to medicine to play dates to curated vacations, too many people are unwilling to face "the great unknown" that is just going out and seeing what happens, warts and all. Somehow the ability of boomers to make conversation with strangers has become a meme instead of a norm - they're good at it because they practice it.
I always tell people to find a meetup group and then you will run into people with similar interests. I’ve made some good friends that way.
> 1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors
There are people who find this satisfying. However, you don't typically choose your neighbors. Don't be afraid to eschew spending time on this in favor of groups you deliberately choose based on common interests.
You might not choose your neighbors but, like your family, they're a part of your life anyway. You can choose to build bonds with them (rely on them to water plants, pick up packages, borrow spices) or create your own little world.
You can also find these things elsewhere—I know someone whose dry cleaner cat sits for her—but your relationship with your neighbors can still really affect your life.
I see this as quite a problem in the US. The default place a lonely person has to go is usually a church - where you can expect a modicum, possibly even a seeming profusion, of welcome. This is their hook. They provide automatic acceptance - of sorts. This is also how the right wing fascist regime convinced people to let Trump take over the country - propaganda through the churches.
The only other options people hear about are 'join a club.' Interesting clubs aren't that easy to find. Hanging out at the local pub has obvious downsides, though I guess it sorta works in some countries.
We need more ways for people to casually meet others that aren't trying to manipulate you or program you with religious doctrine...
> Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. ...there is also no reward.
Like hell there isn't. Speak for yourself.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Isn't there an app where I can just order a temporary friend for a few hours.
Uber Friend.
> Isn't there an app where I can just order a temporary friend for a few hours
there's two. Only Fans and making an appointment with a therapist (basically a professional listener/friend educated in helping you help yourself).
1. fair 2. did this but they are all 80+ 3. ok 4. not that good at anything, too old for most groups. gym no one talks with anyone. bjj was the best for this, since its more older and mostly men 5. remote work ruined my mental health
As far as 2 goes: As far as churches go. The type of church matters a lot. If you go to a Universalist Unitarian, or progressive Lutheran Church, yeah itll probably be 80+. Evangelical/Baptist, Latter Day Saints, Orthodox, Catholic (more traditional parishes) all are significantly younger. The more conservative the denomination the younger the congregation. The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture. This also tracks to Judaism, with Reformed Synagogues being much older than Orthodox. I am not sure and haven't seen numbers of Islam, Buddhism, etc. i the US.
For 4: You don't really have to be good for like a rec league kickball, or beer league golf. Gyms are better if youre doing classes though I think, like BJJ or wrestling.
> The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture... The more liberal, the older they are. With conservative/liberal being adherence to scripture.
And yet many young Evangelicals have deconstructed and dropped out of those conservative congregations over the last 20 years or so. They couldn't bridge the cognitive gap between the conservative political stance of their church and what they read in the bible.
> "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of friends at the gym."
Their definition of "a friend" can wildly vary from yours. Especially if such relationship is cultivated only at the gym. I'd hardly call it "friendship".
> 2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week.
So no atheists then?
I'd say particularly if you're an atheist. I've always been atheist, but fascinated by churches and religions regardless, because no matter what you believe, it's hard to refuse the proof that the ideas themselves are powerful and helps people a lot of the times. Why is that? Best way to find out is to talk and engage with those who have these different ideas, probably where they are the most comfortable.
Doesn't mean you need to forget all the horrible impact it has had too, and how much better humanity would probably be without it, or even continue thinking about ideas how we could finally get rid of it once and for all, without violence.
Also, probably different in different parts of the world, but in many places churches are just purely architecturally/visually beautiful and historically interesting buildings. Some of them have really interesting acoustics too, and organs. Many interesting stuff at churches :)
It's not even just an atheist issue. You have to have spiritual beliefs that value the specific repetitive church rituals so as not to be bored out of your mind.
Surprised to see this comment strike a nerve with the HN crowd. That was my first thought as well. Religious organizations? No thanks.
If you agree with the entire comment, except just that line, do you upvote or not? I think maybe that's why :) If that line was the only thing in the comment, the reaction would probably have been different.
Well that’s part of the problem. secularism didn’t make an alternative.
Start an atheist club.
Or join some community.
Join a hackerspace I suppose. Technology is a religion anyway.
I always said science is kind of like a religion in a way. Wonder if that's closer or further from some truth than "technology". Interesting perspective nonetheless.
I think part of the problem is the stuff you’re suggesting. I think everyday life needs to happen organically and if everything is scheduled and regimented and needs to be planned for, it’s very hard for the vast majority of people to actually accomplish. In the past the way, this worked was you went to church which was societally and peer enforced. People need to have marriages that last a lifetime. It’s my opinion that marriages that are a partnership without any sort of hierarchy like we had in the past are essentially doomed to fail except in a small percentage of cases. You need to have kids with stable homes that can go out on the street and be outside all day without fear of crime. Extended families need to live close to each other so there are a lot of folks raising kids and approaching life’s every day problems together. You need to shut off indoor sources of entertainment like social media and video gaming. You need to have a solid education system that is factual and science based, and only lets kids get through on the basis of meritocracy so they can be good informed citizens, and not vote for populist nonsense like we currently have. In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say is people cannot act on what’s best for them but society can put enough peer pressure on everyone for everyone’s good. This might be very hard to listen to in an individualistic society like ours and I don’t even know if I would want to live in this society, but I believe that if that’s the only option, everyone is better off.
I'm also in this group, so I have a few theories as to what causes it and how to fix it.
For one thing, I was severely traumatized as a kid, which delayed a lot of my social skills. I'm catching up but not all the way there yet. When my social battery is full, I can do pretty well, but if I'm even a little down, it's basically impossible to act normally.
I also had it hammered into me as a kid that nobody wants me around, nobody could ever love me, I'm a failure, a burden, a creep, a weirdo, and nothing but a bothersome nuisance that nobody would ever want to spend 30 seconds alone with. I'm trying to reject these thoughts, but it's difficult when you have nobody to talk to. It's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I wonder how many people have the same issue. I've made a few friends in person, but I rarely get to see them.
Well I've started doing public surveys in my nearby big city, and documenting the results. I just hold out a posterboard that says "how alone do you feel"[1] or "have you ever been in love" etc, and hold out a marker, and people come up and take the survey. At first I did this out of sheer loneliness and boredom. But I have done it for enough months that some people have come up to me and told me that I've helped them, or that they look forward to my signs.
I'm trying to reach those people who feel the way I feel have no way of connecting with anyone, or at least feel that they don't. Do you have any new ideas of how to achieve this?
[1] https://chicagosignguy.com/blog/how-alone-do-you-feel.html
Hey, I love you.
Since I was a small child, my grandfather used to beat me savagely and shake me and pin me to the ground, screaming that the devil was inside of me and that I would never be capable of loving or being loved. This was literally beaten into me. He'd beat me with the buckle end of the belt, like a whip, hitting my face, arms, whatever he could. He'd keep beating me until I couldn't cry anymore, telling me that men are not supposed to cry, and that it was his responsibility to teach me not to cry. I flashback at least once a day to it.
But, he was wrong. I love a lot. So much that sometimes it's unbearable. I cry all the time. Sometimes out of pure love for someone. And there are people who I think love me. Of course the doubt is permanently sewn in. But my heart goes out to you, seriously. I love you just for existing and being yourself, and I hope you're okay. We're not alone. Email's in my bio if you ever want to talk.
I am always in awe when people are able to manage such an unsavoury baggage. That's some tough going.
I appreciate the sentiment, but knowing that it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.
That's actually the exact problem I'm facing, so it's incredibly relevant.
A year ago, I was talking to the local Catholic priest (I was donating some religious statues that I had effectively inherited), and it came up in conversation that I was going through a rough time. He went in for a hug, and it felt so absolutely empty and disingenuous. I accepted it merely to avoid a scene, but it was absolutely not welcome or meaningful.
When I'm out in the city, I want to reach out to those people who put that they feel "100%" alone just like I do. I wrote in the article some of my thoughts and feelings on this, and some things I tried and didn't try.
But ultimately, that's the gap I want to bridge now. We have a thing in common. How do we go from there? (Not you and me, but me and a stranger who has the same problem as me that they want to solve.) What do I say next? What's the next thing we can do in that interaction, or maybe a later one if I ever see them again? This is my question to myself, what I'm wondering in this whole post.
[delayed]
> it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.
Man, well said. People who "over engage" are doing it out of a sense of kindness, but you're right that it feels hollow and is really just about them.
I think the solution to this is basically what you're doing. Build small connections via whatever engagement mechanism you can and let them organically grow into meaningful ones. Jumping from zero to pretending you have a meaningful connection is exactly why those gestures feel hollow. There is no shortcut, it takes time.
Sounds like you're making those initial connections with your signs, which I think is great.
I've posted this thought a few times in different ways, but in my experience, community is found and then built.
Regularly sharing space with others is the way to start finding community. I think your surveying is an example of that. The next step is when the interactions begin taking place outside of the regular time/place, as evidenced by your epilogue.
What I haven't posted before is anything about how to successfully create those connections. Maybe we get lucky and someone will share our taste in music or movies or what have you, and the connection will be almost effortless. But to increase the rate of connection, I've found that learning to ask good questions is key.
We can learn a lot from popular interviewers like Terry Gross, Johnny Carson, or James Lipton. But to provide some direct tips: Lead with open-ended questions (i.e. not "yes or no"). Ask follow-up questions. Share a little bit while asking questions (e.g. "I'm not really into X music, more Y. Where would I start if I wanted to listen to X?")
Of course, sometimes friendships just aren't meant to be. It's tough, and can feel like a waste of time to have made the connection, but I've been surprised multiple times when a conversation that seemed like a slog of a one-off led to fruitful friendships later.
That's one thing I've found about trying to meet new people. Try and find something they want to talk about, and the floodgates will often open.
Traumatic childhood almost always messes with how one attaches with people. A small exceptional fraction somehow manage to remain unaffected.
When attachment styles get warped, behaviors that were a self protective behavior in childhood, become self-defeating behaviors in adult life. The person is quite oblivious to all this because those behaviors and fragile modes of attachment feel perfectly normal -- it is like growing up in a different g (acceleration due to gravity).
It feels like - I am right, it's the others who are wrong, unfair, greedy, needy, flakey, stupid.
For me this book [0] was very helpful for understanding what's going on in and around me
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9547888-attached
I like this poster thing. Anything that gives people a little connection to those around them.
I sometimes sit on my front step and play guitar. 9/10 people ignore me but usually I'll have one or two nice conversations with a neighbor, and have made a couple friends this way. It helps that I live in a dense walkable place with lots of people who are similar to me.
I've done sidewalk art with my kid. Between Spring and Fall last year, I'd make a new drawing every time it rained. Rarely was there a day without chalk on my sidewalk.
I did it to play with my kid (and learn a little Japanese by writing the title in kanji), but another outcome was talking to neighbors. I keep to myself and have been told I'm difficult to approach, but people often come up and compliment the drawings. One lady said that, when walking with her granddaughter, she makes sure to see what's new on my sidewalk. It's been a very "low risk" way to put myself out there. I draw without anyone looking, and chatty people come to me while I'm in the yard.
Thanks for sharing.
Your website made me smile…it is a fun one for sure.
Helping people like you are seems like an amazing start. Maybe try to get a pyramid structure going where you teach people to help other people and then they teach people and then it’s a movement? But at all times a low level of effort so there is no pressure other than just holding up a sign or a marker.
I’ve found the hardest thing is breaking the ice and the sign / marker normalises a low stakes interaction where one participant can walk away at any time
Best way to solve it is to recognize that it's intentional and start calling it the anti-social epidemic instead. If we keep calling it loneliness then everyone thinks its something that is happening to them, instead of something they are doing.
Spending time in parts of Latin America or western Europe or east Asia and then coming back to the US, you can see a lot of ways in which we've built loneliness into the fabric of US culture.
It goes beyond car culture. It's probably illegal to build a cafe within walking distance of your neighborhood or into the first floor of your apartment complex.
Americans get an idea of how bad we have it when we go on vacation, but we don't see it as something that can be built at home.
I've been working on something called Open Enough Design (OED). The core idea: most rooms force a binary choice between total isolation (the bunker) and overwhelming exposure (the stage). Neither works. What works is a dial you can adjust.
In my book "Leave the Door Open" I suggest simple, high leverage moves anyone can do. Three examples of practical moves that cost nothing:
-Turn your chair to face the door instead of a wall. Your nervous system relaxes when it can see who's coming.
- If you live alone, open your door or window four inches for an hour. The sounds of life beyond your walls remind your body you're not alone on the planet.
- Put out a second chair. Even if no one visits. It shifts your internal posture from "no one is coming" to "I'm expecting life to enter."
Small changes, I know. But the room shapes you as much as you shape it. It's a virtuous cycle.
I write about this at oedmethod.substack.com if you want to go deeper.
All of the replies so far are suggesting ideas for an individual but seem to be missing the real crux of the matter...
Yes, you'll be less lonely if you join a group, get out of your house, etc... But how do we actively incentivize that? Social media and whatnot have hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to find ways to suck you in and monopolize your time.
While "everyone should recognize the problem and then take steps to solve it for themselves" is the obvious solution, it's also not practical to just have everyone collectively decide they need to get out more without SOME sort of fundamental change in our society/incentives/etc
Yeah, lots of "change your habits" type responses that won't change the reason we're here.
Intentionally choose community and the effort it takes to build and cultivate it [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. People are work, but you cannot live without community [6].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250212233145/https://www.hhs.g...
[1] https://thepeoplescommunity.substack.com/
[3] https://www.tiktok.com/@amandalitman/video/75927501854034854...
[4] https://boingboing.net/2015/12/21/a-survivalist-on-why-you-s...
[5] https://boingboing.net/2008/07/13/postapocalypse-witho.html
[6] How A Decline In Churchgoing Led To A Rise In ‘Deaths Of Despair’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46408406 - December 2025 (2 comments)
[flagged]
I wish you peace, warmth, and that you find your people. It was, and continues to be, hard work, but I found mine.
Why, you ask? Because your comment seemed like you had read only the title and nothing else I wrote here, and wanted to contribute off the cuff links you had stored up. And you barely even bothered to summarize any of what they contain. I've been reading this book by Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy ever since you linked it, and it's definitely got some great insights into it, that mirror my own thoughts and struggles with this. But in your comment, it felt like a mere afterthought. And maybe that's fine, maybe that's fair, you're a busy guy and have your own stuff to do. It's not against the rules or general moral code to write a drive by comment. But it just feels like a low effort comment. Which is why I wanted to downvote it. And now that it's surfaced higher than mine, it just feels like pouring lemon juice on a papercut.
Are you serious right now? I don't mean this in an insulting way at all, but I can see why you're dealing with loneliness. Take some time to self reflect and figure out why you lashed out here(seriously, really think about it or show some friends this dialogue without context and ask what they think, in person). Like the commenter, I hope you find you find your community, but you are far from the path. Your attitude is fixable, nobody is playing down the problems here and instead people who were in your shoes empathetically showed you a way out, but you need some serious self reflection.
In case it's not clear, original replier's comment here is absolutely correct and it doesn't necessarily have to be in a religious pretext (re: the church article), that's just a palpable example for most people. Neighbors, community centers, hobbies, etc-- these all require work on everybody's end and you must commit to these relationships to create a semblance of something to revolve your life around in lieu of drowning in loneliness.
For sure, my church citation wasn't about religion specifically, but that the decline in third spaces in general and a lack of community can be directly connected to early deaths and deaths of despair.
That's right.
Church does not have to be a church of faith, it can well be a church of reason.
What matters is that people with shared values get to spend time together on a regular basis without getting into status games that might eventually show up no matter what the church.
I've tried a few types of churches of reason and they are pretty sad, honestly. Hard core, dedicated, non-religious person here, so I'm not saying that people should go to Church, but I've never seen anything approximating a Church of Reason that would have satisfied my (admittedly minimal) social desires.
I hear you. For me things that have worked are those that are built around a hobby -- travelling to the wooded hills, astronomy, music recitals, caring for strays / abandoned pets.
Try https://www.sundayassembly.org/
I agree!
I wrote that comment back when he had only one or two links, and this post had 4 comments anod 2 points. I stand by what I said: I wish I could have downvoted it for being a low effort drive by comment.
To be blunt: what you said was completely out of line. You were mad that he wasn't responding to your other comment (why wasn't it in the OP if you wanted people to read that stuff before responding?). You then got mad that his comment was voted higher than yours (again, putting all that in the OP would've fixed that, not to mention complaining about vote counts is straight up childish).
Just take the L man. You lashed out for no good reason, the person you responded had a hell of a lot more grace and tact than you showed this entire exchange, just learn from it and move on.
You asked how to solve the loneliness epidemic. I provided citations and recommendations. Are you asking me how to be the person you need to be to make bids for friendship and connectivity to establish community? And where to find people you can have an opportunity to make connections with? I can do that too.
> I'm trying to reach those people who feel the way I feel have no way of connecting with anyone, or at least feel that they don't. Do you have any new ideas of how to achieve this?
Go out and find people looking for other people. Volunteer and find events and gatherings scoped to building connections between people. Third spaces are in decline [1] [2], or in some places, non existent. This will be work. It will not be easy. You will need to work on managing the feelings of rejection and shallow people not genuinely interested in you or building a friendship (boundaries are important in this regard; have them, communicate them, and enforce them). Success is not assured. But your only choices are to try or not.
From your comment:
> I also had it hammered into me as a kid that nobody wants me around, nobody could ever love me, I'm a failure, a burden, a creep, a weirdo, and nothing but a bothersome nuisance that nobody would ever want to spend 30 seconds alone with. I'm trying to reject these thoughts, but it's difficult when you have nobody to talk to. It's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I wonder how many people have the same issue. I've made a few friends in person, but I rarely get to see them.
In regards to this you commented, I highly recommend therapy if you can access it. It will help. This is an unnecessary burden to be carrying through adult life, and a professional might help unburden you of these feelings. The healthier you are emotionally, the easier it will be to create and maintain interpersonal relationships.
Does all of this suck? Oh yes, certainly. But we play the hand we're dealt to the best of our ability. Good luck, in as genuine terms as I can communicate in text. If you feel like I can provide more value with more questions you might have, I will do my best to help.
[1] Closure of ‘Third Places’? Exploring Potential Consequences for Collective Health and Wellbeing - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6934089/
[2] Vox: If you want to belong, find a third place - https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/24119312/how-to-find-a-thi... | https://archive.today/TYDCG - May 7th, 2024
(tangentially, I recommend replacing "idiot who doesn't understand anything" with something more like "I am early in my journey to understand, but I look forward to the experience"; love yourself first, we are all learning and sharing for the portion of the timeline we share, and it is okay to not know if we continue to want and try to learn)
I agree you (OP) must work on developing a positive view of yourself. Maybe therapy. Don't overlook clergy even if you're not religious. Religion is as much about fellowship and how to live a fulfilling life as it is about worship. Some churches (e.g. unitarian) are quite inclusive and are much more spiritual than dogmatic.
But you will find it much harder to attract friendships if you come across as needy or wanting to unburden a lifetime of problems on your new prospective friend. Not to say a longtime friend can't eventually handle some of this, but it's not a good way to start off.
I would say avoid groups that are focused on personal success or networking. These tend to be full of people who are looking for an angle or benefit for themselves, not people genuinely trying to develop friendships and connections with a community.
I'm a highly secular person and I see people constantly say things like "spiritual but not religious/dogmatic" and I cannot figure out what that is supposed to mean. What does it mean?
>In regards to this you commented, I highly recommend therapy if you can access it. It will help. This is an unnecessary burden to be carrying through adult life, and a professional might help unburden you of these feelings.
I'm not the GP, but I have the same experience to them. I have been in therapy and on psychotropic medication my entire adult life, that's 2.5 decades. I'd love to know when exactly the "unburdening of these feelings" happens.
It might never happen for some, and that is terribly unfortunate (but not a reason to not make the attempt). I have no solution for that part of the human condition besides sympathy for bad luck.
I'd like to assert here that "community" can exist online as well. It's not just people staying indoors; it's about how they interact with what others write and whether they even care that another person wrote it. It's about things like coming to recognize usernames and build trust.
Of course, LLM generated content threatens that, so things have gotten worse.
Since it's a societal problem, but solved on the microlevel of one person at a time, it seems the way to have a broader effect is to show the value of having connection with other people over the value of not.
Overcome any addictions (scrolling, gaming, etc.) that stand in the way would be easier if the goal was clear.
Overcoming attitudes and defensive beliefs (too many cliques, they won't talk to me...) go away when you can either recall a time when you had friends or know others who do.
Convince people it's better (in their own value system) to be social, have friends of all kinds, and let them know their value and meaning increase by being a friend, I think you'd have a hard time stopping people from becoming social.
I don't have a full answer, but a couple thoughts:
1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you.
2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will.
Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side".
> the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill
I agree. It's one reason I still come to HN and it's one of the few places I bother to comment (and the only place with more than a few dozen users). The moderation and community culture against trolling makes it a generally positive experience. I do still need breaks sometimes, though, for a few months at a time.
I'd love an online community where everyone was having discussions only in good faith. Zero trolling. I can dream.
> I'd love an online community where everyone was having discussions only in good faith.
That's already readily available outside. The whole appeal of online 'communities' is that it is not that.
The appeal of an online community is having members who participate in bad faith? That's an angle I hadn't expected.
> Stop trolling ourselves
This is so tough, though, because the things happening in the world really, genuinely, do matter and its very hard to realize that our passive emotional reaction to them is not meaningful, probably actively bad for us. If I could snap my fingers and do one thing, I'd obliterate social media from the face of the earth.
I would also argue that even people who I like a lot and have known for many years can be very different "people" online than in person. It's sometimes shocking the dichotomy. I try to remind myself and others to ignore some of the online weirdness and focus on the in person interaction.
Whatever else you think of Bluesky, it's a place where trolling and doomerism are rejected. The nuclear block (and a culture of block, don't engage) does wonders for denying actual trolls an audience, and secondarily for permitting people to do the virtual equivalent of walking away from someone who's behaving badly. In particular, doomerism about Trump is minimized there the same way.
It cannot be solved, at least not in the way I think people want it to be.
We’re lonely because we are wired to avoid rejection and uncomfortable social situations, and because technology has given us hundreds of alternatives to sitting in the mess of connecting with people.
You can only solve it in your own life - by being courageous and spending more of your time in the physical world than in the digital one, willing to gro through the shitty feelings that come with being a human trying to meet other humans.
You cannot solve it for other people. There’s no sexy solution here. Meetup.com or whatever dating app or tech platform or not for profit will not fix it, because it takes individuals choosing the hard path and that will never happen en masse.
I don't think this will ever be resolved.
It's a twofold problem, I believe. People are lonely because of fear of rejection and also actively avoid new people out of caution and high standards.
So two people who are otherwise lonely will make no effort to connect.
I think social networks have done a tremendous amount of damage to our collective psyche. Because on the web, you can single-click permanently block someone and never see them again. If you are admin of a group this person is in, you can also ban this person and prevent them from interacting with members of the group (in the group, that is, you cannot control private messages, but by banning someone from a community you are effectively isolating them), and I think we haven't considered how much power we are giving to random Reddit mods due to this.
I do believe high standards are behind a lot of the dating issues. Dating pools are so large that people hold out for the right combination of the things they find desirable--except they're never going to find that because they don't have exactly the right combination to attract that "perfect" match.
I can't help but think that in 1910, both the concept of "fear of rejection" and "high standards" would have made no sense to people at the time. Yet I would agree that they are valid concepts today. We have to explore why these two concepts exist and why they did not exist in 1910. It seems valid to call them side effects of something bigger, what the bigger is I don't know. I don't see how society can address these two issues without addressing the other issues that lead to the existence of these.
Is that REALLY a lot of power, though? Reddit is quasi-anonymous, how "isolated" are you when you can create a different account in seconds?
When I said "Reddit mods" I didn't mean literally Reddit, but the overzealous nature of full-time Internet moderators with too much free time.
Regardless ban evasion is always forbidden so if you slip up pr get caught because of the way you type or whatever, you will be banned again.
> So they sit on social media all day when they're not at work or school. How can we solve this?
The naive solution is to place blame on the people who are influenced by the most advanced behavior modification schemes ever devised by humans. Kinda like how the plastic producers will push recycling, knowing they can shift blame for the pollution away from their production of the pollution, because people love blaming. You'll see commenters here telling us that the answer is for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get out, get involved in their communities under their own willpower. These ideas are doomed from the outset.
The real solution is already being enacted in a number of US states and countries[1]: legally restricting access to the poison, rather than blaming the people who are at the mercy of finely honed instruments of behavior modification when they're unable to stop drinking it under their own willpower.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
Taking something away by force is not the way to encourage someone to do something else. This is carrot or stick mentality. The city added benches and chairs in all the parks to improve the quality of our third spaces, as an example of social infrastructure.
Social infrastructure is great! However, if you have a crack epidemic adding some benches isn't going to change anything.
Not for everyone but if you can, get a dog. Dogs are icebreakers. People like to meet a cute dog. They won't know your name at first but you will be "Fido's Dad" or "Dave's Mom". Other dog owners will greet you and so long as your dogs don't hate each other you already have something in common.
A dog gives you a reason to be wherever you want to be - take a walk around the neighborhood or to the park. You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes, you're walking the dog.
But for for goodness sake, pick up after the pooch. If you can wipe your own arse you can pick up a dog turd with a plastic bag.
Anecdotally, I've had a lot of people in my life recede after getting pets. They're an excellent excuse to say no to things that you might otherwise do, because you need to get home and take care of the pet or you can't find a sitter to go on a trip etc.
Not generalizing to all people, but I think for some a pet can reinforce anti-social tendencies.
The US is structured to promote loneliness.
If you want to fix it:
- More free public spaces (parks with benches, squares)
- More free public events and activities (free concerts, art installations, plays)
- Greater physical proximity (it's hard to make eye contact if everyone drives)
- Wealth distribution (create a society where one's value is not based on their net worth)
- Encourage days off for community service
In other words, provide socially-funded incentives for people to be close to one another physically and remove income as a measure of value.
The first step to solving it would be proving it exists.
Because it doesn't. It's been a phrase used for over 40 years to decry basically any change the author didn't like, from different technology, the rise of the 'me' generation or the declining religiousness of the US.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/202504/loneliness-is...
Individuals may be lonely, but that has always been true. There is no evidence this is different than before, growing, or in anyway an 'epidemic.'
Everyone always gets the causality reversed. Social media didn't cause the epidemic, it filled a niche to help cure the epidemic. People were lonely long before the internet arrived, the internet just made it easier for those lonely people to connect to each other. And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person.
In other words, the problem is structural. Moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, only work with people for a few years, and where there are no longer institutions like the church, how is anybody supposed to meet anyone? Meetups? Half the people can't even afford a car.
There is no solution other than meeting a lifelong partner.
> how is anybody supposed to meet anyone?
It used to be that you knocked on the door of the residence beside you.
> And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person.
This is the crux of it. Your neighbours weren't ever likely to be your soulmate, but that is who was there to befriend, so you did. But now you don't have to. And since they now feel the same way, they aren't putting in the effort either.
Go to church.
Data from various studies, including those from academic institutions and public health organisations, supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community.
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3551208/
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/human-flourishing/20...
3. https://hrbopenresearch.org/articles/7-76
4. https://www.cardus.ca/research/health/reports/social-isolati...
5. there are plenty more...
also if you allow anecdotal data:
I have been going to a church half a year now, and the sense of community is amazing, made new friends and know more people I could dream of. So there is a way, there is a light. Never felt lonely again since.
For what it's worth, I tried that a few years ago. It worked for a while. Then I realized that my church relationships were paper thin and that I'd be forgotten the day I stopped coming and/or I started showing that I didn't really believe in what was preached.
Got better connections through improv acting and role-playing game.
YMMV
I'm no fan of religion, but the situation you described is true for pretty much all social hobbies. It's just one of the early steps in making friends. First you do stuff, then you meet people through that stuff forming acquaintances. Then you spend some time forming setting-specific friendships. It's fine to have lots of these, but the next step is to break out of that specific setting. Starting with immediate invitations to adjacent events ("Hey, want to grab dinner after our workout?", "Want to grab lunch after church?", "Hey, want to hit the bar after work?"). Once you have a habit of doing that, you can escalate to invitations to non-adjacent events. ("Want to go to a concert this weekend?"). Do that ever 1-2 months, and you've got a general friend.
This has been my experience with meeting people at churches, too.
They always seem like they're only talking to you either to get you to become a member or to satisfy their own conscience, but never because of you.
And it's been proven to me too many times. No thanks, not trying that again.
As someone whose childhood included attendance to various churches, this mostly reflects my experience. That's not to say that it can't or won't produce deep connections, but it is in my estimation more unlikely than not, particularly if there's anything about oneself that the church doesn't agree with or if commitment to that particular denomination hasn't been established.
Personally speaking I find the need to conform to the church's norms/expectations to not be ostracized at minimum chafing and in the worst case stifling. The third place and social aspects can be nice but being told how to live and exist isn't.
I've entertained the idea of going to church. My understanding is that a non-trivial number of people going to Unitarian Universalist churches are openly atheist and completely comfortable with that. So the preaching ends up being more about general good community ideas and less about dogma.
I have not decided yet that it is a good fit, but I am definitely thinking that I should foster some community connections outside of my own family.
I was involved in a UU church for a few years. It's a weird organization, and very unstable, with another revolution sweeping in new leadership (and completely new culture) every 5 to 10 years.
When I first started going, it was VERY open to atheists and secular humanists. New leadership sweeps in, and there's a mandate to focus more on "worship" and other religious jargon... and let the atheists know that while they can be fellow travelers on some of the social justice stuff, they're not really in the fold.
Last I heard, that leadership wave had themselves been swept out under controversial circumstances. But by then I was long gone.
I could never really get a straight answer on WHAT we were supposed to be "worshipping", given that UU's don't profess faith in any any particular deity or pantheistic concept, etc. I finally reached the conclusion that we were supposed to just worship the leadership's political beliefs, and not think too much or ask questions. In fairness, maybe that DOES make it a real church?
Reminds me of a non-alcoholic beer.
That’s possibly useful on an individual level, but not a solution. If existing institutions didn’t solve loneliness yet they aren’t going to without changing something.
Promoting church attendance might help, but so would any number of group activities the issue is why that stuff is in decline not that stuff not working.
I can only commend this, but people should be aware that not every church is equally welcoming. But usually every town has at least one that is!
Sounds good, but I would have a hard time pretending to take it seriously. I wouldn’t want to lie to them.
Would be great if you didn't need to believe in a supernatural being.
Unless you grew up surrounded by nonbelievers I'm guessing half a year ago wasn't the first time you've ever been to a church and there's a little more to this anecdote.
* Religion has been used, is currently being used, and will always be used to facilitate and encourage the murder/death/suffering/abuse/exploitation of others
* My Little Pony is a children's cartoon that attracts creepy adults with questionable fetishes who like to wear ugly costumes in public and buy anthropomorphic sex dolls
I think if I *had* to pick one of those works of fiction to pretend to be a fan of just to get other people to talk to me, I'd rather deal with the smelly weirdos in the MLP fandom than any of the dangerous zealots in the <insert religious book here> fandom. (MLP is a joke example, but obviously there are way more options out there to find a community)
"Just join a group"
The whole point is that they're not doing that, not that they can't or that its really hard to do.
The problem is that being present in a group isn't the same thing as being part of it socially.
> supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community.
Correlation does not establish causation. Regular church attendance dominantly occurs among people who have shared values (clustered around what the church teaches); that doesn't imply that an outsider can just choose to fit in.
The problem with this answer, as with so much about various activities is that it selects for those who can.
This is "lie to join a group" for people who don't believe, and the dishonesty has negative effects on people as well.
I was addicted to weed from ages 15-23. I have clinical depression and anxiety/OCD (now medicated and stable). I basically isolated and got stuck in a loop of believing I was broken and a bad person. When I committed to quitting I joined addiction recovery groups and asked for help instead of trying to do it alone. I still rely on the wisdom I gained in AA/MA. Trust God, clean house, help others, go do something when you are in danger of wallowing in self pity. 4 years later, I have a few real friends and many acquaintances. I swing dance and volunteer. I work in a semi-social office. Life is good. I still get paranoid thoughts, but they don't own or define me. I wish the best to all the lonely programmers and alienated people out there.
Somewhat a tangent response
I have a fear of crowds and bums. Not where I'm paralyzed/medicated but one thing I'm trying to do is go downtown and do street photography. I wonder how do I say no to a stranger asking me for money. Or fear of getting robbed. It's not like my camera gear is that expensive but yeah. This would push me to get out there more as I've lived in the same place for 10 yrs and I haven't really explored/gone around much. Other than when I did Uber Eats, I would go all over the place. I would get wasted/drink at bars but end up with nothing end of the day, temporary day-long friends.
Funny I was at the gym yesterday, guy said hello to me, as a guy that keeps to himself usually (unless around friends) I gave him a bad look (not on purpose) and then I responded. I'll say hello next time I see him.
Yeah for me it's just fear and lack of exposure. I do make a lot of "work friends" go on walks. But yeah real friends I think I have 4 or 5 lifelong real friends. Women nothing, haven't been laid in like 12 years pretty said to say. Unfortunately it's something I value myself like "I'm a loser by not getting laid". Even though rest of my life is good, 2BR apt, sporty car, six-fig job, but yeah. It's my social awkardness, but I lift/improve myself, cutting down on weight I want abs. Idk I'm not going after women anymore either just trying to live life now, do shit, get out of debt, get out of 9-5, mental freedom.
It's funny if it's guys I'm very "charismatic" like I can be "everyone's friend" which doesn't work out due to conflicting interest. To that end it's really about taking an active interest in the other person, engaging them, asking them questions and remembering.
My thing with women is I don't get along with them like a guy (where I don't want anything from them physically). If they're not attractive then it's easier to talk to them but yeah, I guess that comes from a desperation mindset.
Hear me out. Its not just social awkwardness. You're experiencing class boundaries and do not seem to have the right mentality to bridge the gap.
First, you call homeless people bums, which sets the stage for how you see and treat them.
I'm an excellent engineer, but I was abused and impoverished as a child, homeless as a teenager. During my 20s, I started a few companies but my savings have been continually depleted taking care of family members. I don't have a sports car or a big bank account, or nice cameras. When I see a stranger or homeless person, I smile and wave. I keep cash on me so that I always have some to give out. I buy people lunch and sit on the curb eating with them and attempting to understand them. I learn the names of my local homeless folk and ingratiate myself in the community. I've moved to a few cities so I've had the opportunity to do this a few times.
I don't do this because I lack social anxiety; I sometimes have extreme agoraphobia, to the point that I have to hype myself up for hours just to go to the grocery store, and I have to wear noise-cancelling headphones to reduce the amount of stimulation. I have PTSD. I'm an extreme introvert. A hermit at times.
But what saves me is the philosophical understanding that I have a duty to the social contract. That empathy and direct aid are nonnegotiable parts of being human. I've been homeless and I know what it's like to be truly hopeless and live a life of uncertainty, fear and hunger.
You need to bridge that gap. Class-induced anxiety is real and I acknowledge that it's probably difficult, but it's not an excuse. You sound like you're in a position to change someone's life. Taking those steps might change your own life.
> I buy people lunch and sit on the curb eating with them and attempting to understand them.
I clearly don't have the same people on the street as you do. You should not be just sitting down and having lunch with people who are having daily psychotic breaks or are otherwise aggressive. You can't have a conversation with someone who is constantly riding the line of ODing. I have a regular I see who runs around in the road screaming at cars and people.
The very incomplete "down on their luck" view of homelessness is killing progress in my city.
I have lived in many metropolitan areas and have seen the gamut of homelessness. As I mentioned in a downline comment, the trick is to ignore the people who are not in a position to receive help, and actively seek those who are in such a position. I am not suggesting walking up to random homeless folk in San Francisco who are tweaking out and hanging out with them. I am not suggesting to risk your safety by approaching the first person you see. You live in your area; study it, pay attention, and over time you'll start seeing some familiar faces. This has worked for me in New Orleans, it worked for me in Texas and worked for me in California.
So I'm willing to bet that my understanding of homelessness is more nuanced/holistic than even yours. I have been homeless. Have you?
What progress do you feel is being hindered by a collective display of compassion?
I get it, but $5 to change someone's life?
It's funny there was a moment I was at a bus station, somebody asked me for money and I dumped all the coins I had in my wallet in their hand for future bus rides. And some lady comes up to me jokingly like "you handing money out? what about me".
But yeah I think I should just give the money out, I think aside from the guy at the red light that's there almost everyday when it's warm, it's rare I encounter somebody personally. Until I go into the city.
Buy someone new clothes. A sleeping bag. Utensils. A library card or bus pass. If it has to be cash, you don't have to stop at $5. I sometimes give out tens and twenties. Obviously at a place like California your altruism can be spread pretty thin; just ignore the people who are more difficult / less appreciative. Find someone who is appreciative. Get to know them and find out what is holding them back. Maybe you can't help, maybe you can. I've had people tell me I've made their day, their week, their year.
It's that thing though I'm pretty sure I was scammed by this couple at a gas station asking me for "gas money" even though they wanted cash then the lady said "your mother raised a good boy" lmao.
To me this is a gov problem not an individual problem. Yeah if someone was dying in front of me I would try to help them. But now I gotta go to a store and buy em a tent and what not? I guess I am an asshole. Also read up "do you give money to homeless" on reddit. Almost all of the answers are no.
I have to go there and face my fear. See if I do get assaulted, I'm a 6ft buff dude so I don't think so but I'm also not a trained fighter. I just hate this fear, that normal people like living in NYC deal with on a daily basis.
Getting jumped is real though, I've been jumped before by a group.
Might as well just give the $5 though and move on with my life.
Back to women, I have negative traits as demonstrated above, indecisiveness and low self-esteem/caring about what other people think of me too much.
All this stuff is stupid, "I'm a good person because it's what people think you should do" give money to a non-taxed church, politicians, etc... then the individual person not giving a dollar to a homeless person is a bad guy.
There's risk to helping people out.
I've been fucked over plenty times, sometimes to the tune of 5 digits. Once even cost me my home, and I found myself homeless again for a while.
A good friend of mine once gave someone a ride at a gas station, and they led him to a house where another person jumped inside the car with a gun. They held him hostage, tried to force him to do fentanyl at gunpoint, and drove him around to several ATMs so he could empty out his account. They used his vehicle to sell drugs, and held him hostage in a motel room where they were also sex trafficking women. They nearly killed him, and he is lucky to be alive.
I also know others who have been jumped around here and had the shit beaten out of them. For reference, I live in a city frequently cited as a "murder capital" of the US. You have to be way more careful out here than in downtown San Francisco. As far as NYC, I imagine it's a mixed bag depending on your area. I'm not suggesting naively approaching strangers, I hope it doesn't come across that way.
You aren't an asshole if you don't buy someone a tent, I was suggesting ways to help that have more tangible impact than handing someone a $5 bill which probably just goes towards an addiction. I don't hang around Reddit, so I can't speak for the general callousness of the community, but what I'm suggesting is to go beyond the average, to do more than most would, in reverence of the fact that we're all floating on this lonely space rock together.
As far as women, all I can say is that my girlfriend would be fine with any of those traits, as long as I still maintained a level of compassion.
There is also the thought of too many people to help. Like right now there are thousands/millions of people starving is it my fault? Should I empty all of what I have to help them because I'm guilty if I don't. That's what I'm wrestling with granted what we're talking about is not the same thing. Handing somebody $5 and moving on is not that but yeah idk. I guess as a person that keeps giving shit out eg. $100K to my own family, it gets old.
But I will go out there, I'll see what happens. I need to face my fears.
I hear you. I've had ungrateful family members drive me broke. Compassion is doing the right thing, even when it's scary, or it hurts, or no one is watching, or when people around you misunderstand and demonize you, or they are just plain ungrateful and leave you holding the bag. I admire your willingness to continue grappling with it and finding your own answer.
Regarding women again, are you meeting enough of them? What's the scene like where you live? I don't know what it's like in NYC, but the social/dating scene in my current city just doesn't exist, and I'm watching some of my friends grapple with seriously heartbreaking loneliness.
I don't know what to tell them. I'm dating my high school sweetheart again, but we were broken up for several years, and many of the experiences I had with women during that time were quite traumatic. The rest of them were just not a good fit. I had completely given up on dating altogether, at least for a period of time, and only then did the love of my life find her way back to me. Despite years of extreme loneliness in new cities, I still consider myself lucky and wish I had some actionable advice I could tease from the situation. I've even experimented with building dating apps because this epidemic just scares the shit out of me.
I'm not in NYC sorry to give that impression. I was mentioning NYC as far as being densely populated, I'm in the midwest. Honestly I don't meet much women outside of work or the occasional girl I run into at a gym. I know the cliche saying "go join a club" meet girls that way. I could see that but it's also possible I like being alone too but yeah it just bothers me that my self-deemed value is whether or not I get laid.
The other problem too today is the fakeness of social media, filters on faces, photos looking like peopel go to beaches all the time/live extravagant lives.
Bars it's like a self-control issue, use drinking for courage then you get too f'd up.
In the midwest but we have a small "city" with "skyscrapers" that I wanted to go into and do photography at.
What I found after many years, is that women (people in general, really) are not attracted to people who try too hard to get attention from them. Going through great lengths tends to result in being labeled as desperate or creepy. Try just to be friendly and talk "with" them and not "to" them, almost as if you are one of them. By doing that often enough, it will feel less awkward. Practice makes perfect. And then one day you feel a click with someone. Just my few cents.
Yeah that's the cliche saying, let them chase you or don't put on a pedestal. Idk not sure if it's because I was raised by women that I need their approval (no male figure). But I know other people who were in the same situation and aren't like me so it must be a personal choice/way you decide to overcome it.
The basic problem with this is that the ones that are trying too hard are doing so because the standard approach failed.
Maybe you get lucky, but it's not a general solution.
I found it uncomfortable as a kid when I saw how my parents handled begging: ignoring it. I remember one time my father saying "that's ok". And I either say "no, sorry" or ignore.
I've heard of kids from cities being given money so they always have something to give a mugger instead of looking like you're holding out, I don't go that far but I remember it to keep perspective.
I recently made an effort to carry cash with me so I can leave tips in cash, still working on that. Would you be open to keeping singles on you to give? You can even give max of one per excursion and then decline or ignore the rest or any combination but maybe having that as a plan can help you feel comfortable. Yes you're training yourself and it's because you deserve the benefits of training.
As for non-bums hello is good, also fist bumps and nodding upwards; that stuff is cool AF and make people so damn happy.
Yeah it's funny I'll sound like I'm virtue signaling here, I donate. Food groups, NHA, stuff like that. Where I live there's usually a person at a red light waiting to "ambush" you. Same at a grocery store, soon as you exit the door solicitors going "excuse me sir".
But yeah it would be easy to just have a $5 to hand out. It's just you know how many people are there and will it stop there kind of thing. Yeah I sound like an asshole I get it. I also have sent over $100K to my own family in support and I'm -$80K in debt so it's not like I'm hoarding my money or something.
It just annoys me. But sure it'll be easier to just say "here you go" and hand out cash.
In my experience a few times people will ask for money if they see you giving someone else something, but not that often, and you can shrug through it and say that was your last dollar or something. Keep the interactions short and easy and try to carry the loose bills outside of your wallet so no one can actually see how much you have inside it?
Exactly one time after I did this, a guy asked me to send something to his venmo since I really only had a dollar. Probably my strangest interaction.
Yeah I'll probably be smart and just empty my wallet except ID and some loose cash. I just don't like it the idea someone coming up to you asking you for money and you're expected to just do it, give it to them. It's funny too as soon as they get what they want or don't get what they want, they're like f you and move on. Ahh well I just wish I didn't care. I'm too soft/care what other people think of me.
It's like points on a website "oh no I got downvoted", there's a thing as being you/not being a conformist
I think I purposefully need to get into a fight you know overcome it, like expect anyone who comes up to me to fight me
I'm gonna stop ranting but it's not like it's hard to get laid, it's just my standards are high like she's gotta be a dime or fit at least. So that means I also have to be fit/good looking which I haven't cared much before as far as good haircut/good clothes. I at least am lucky with my genetics for fitness but I also have not been as cut as I could be. But ultimately I know it's my mind that's f'd.
You don't sound like an asshole because you aren't saying bad things about the people who have the least.
It's up to you, you can just, to yourself, write down the words you'll use to write down that you'll ignore them to become more comfortable with your boundaries.
Personally I don't think handing out cash is helpful so it's not about charity it's my advice to pre-plan how you'll respond to be more comfortable than you are in reaction to these situations.
It is a quick escape though to be like "here you go" and move on but also opens you up to "that's it?" I've had that happen even when I said "I don't have cash" well I have Venmo I'm like alright... yeah I don't want to have this mindset but also can't be naive too kumbaya.
social media should be studied deep and hard
just this week i was stuck with a machine i could use to log on websites, so I just browsed reddit anonymously, no profile, no suggestions, no "me" at all.. and it was delightful, suddenly I'm not here to respond or be heard and my brain went into focus mode, i was eager to read the article linked and not the comments.. very very refreshing
except for critical needs, we should go back to paid limited network access, this will make people allocate their time and attention much better and also do more things outside potentially meeting people
Many answers address the question of "how to build community." I like those responses! I also want to contribute to the discussion with an emotional intelligence response. The theory is that "loneliness" can be a symptom of underlying internal factors.
While it is true that loneliness can arise from a lack of community, people, and related factors, for some people, the problem stems from not knowing how to be alone. At its core, the question becomes, "Am I externalizing my world, or internalizing my world?" When you externalize your world, you require something external. We are social creatures, and I do believe we need other people. I'm only suggesting that sometimes people need to look internally first.
Personal anecdote: No amount of community would have helped me feel like I wasn't alone, because I needed the world around me to provide some sense of my self-worth. It felt counterintuitive, but for me, I had to learn to be alone. Only then could I feel like I wasn't alone. It all came down to attachment theory and self-worth.
It's the phones dude. It's literally just the phones. Get rid of the phones and you fix it.
Old geezer take: If you're referring to smart phones - social engagement in the US was already headed down 5 decades before those were invented. I blame TV.
Build or join a local community!
I’ve been working with https://fractal.boston/ and adjacent communities for the last year and my loneliness has been cured. I now have the opposite problem where I don’t get enough time to myself!
If you have young boys in your life then teach them that it's ok to feel and express their emotions, and as they get older that their sexual self need not be frightening and that sex can exist outside of narratives of domination.
This requires them to have spaces where they can express themselves sexually without the fear that male sexuality will be judged as inherently violent or oppressive.
I've lost count of the times I've seen women praised while men were castigated, in the same space, for expressing any kind of honest sexual preference.
Yes, that's the issue I'm highlighting. We have to teach the next generation differently. Be the safe space
It's an annoyingly double-edged issue, and one that I believe neither side of the political spectrum (speaking in very broad strokes here) has addressed well at all.
Though I usually consider myself progressive (to an annoying degree to some), the progressive "answer" to young men right now on how to find friends and partners is essentially something like:
Obviously I'm employing a bit of hyperbole for emphasis and this is also me trying to empathize with what it's like being a boy right now despite lacking first-hand experience. Luckily, most women do not feel this way about men, but I've heard all of this said by my friends at one time or another (and I might have said something similar myself during my weaker moments, when I was upset).Meanwhile the hardliners on the opposite side of the spectrum espouse the idea that actually men should be evil because it's manly. That women are lesser to them and that patriarchy is super cool actually. See Andrew Tate as an example, who has captured the ears of millions of teenage boys around the world. At first it's hard to comprehend why his ideology speaks to them, but you have to remember that most of them are just entering the time of their life where they have to figure themselves out, where they have to, for the first time in their life, find friendship, respect and companionship on their own outside of the family or the playground. And after all, everyone wants to be loved and respected in some way, and Andrew Tate offers them an answer: You can be an asshole and still be loved and respected, while the leftie answer tells them that you can be as perfect as you like, but you probably still won't be loved and respected, and if you fuck up, don't expect any grace.
And now the question is what should society actually do so that both young men and young women can find a harmonious place in it? I think really the only answer is to stop playing the blame game, stop trying to make one side the constant bad guy and scapegoat, try to comprehend that we are all equally human, and that whatever a person's gender is doesn't give you the right to be shitty to them. I don't know, maybe this is simply another utopian idea, of men and women living together in perfect unison, never being mean to each other. I think we should still strive to achieve some sort of balance, but sadly I don't really see an easy answer to this.
Sorry for this long rant, I've wanted to put this into words for a while. Occasionally I think about how bad it must be being a teenage boy right now, the thought scares me and I feel lucky not being one. Every time I read another woman saying that she's afraid of every man on the street walking in proximity to her, and every time it's dark out and I hear a man behind me and I get physically afraid, I think, what if I was a man and she was afraid for her life because of me? Just because I exist in the space next to her? Just because of a random coin-flip during my conception? And it feels awful. I don't want anyone to go through that.
> that their sexual self need not be frightening and that sex can exist outside of narratives of domination
This makes a ton of sense but the language needs so much work here to be digested into a real conversation by your average parent, let alone preteen/teenager.
There is no "loneliness epidemic". It's a bad journalism epidemic. People in general are a combination of lone and grouping. Both are OK. People don't need to socialise all the time. People who want to socialise but can't usually suffer from emotional difficulties that they haven't addressed. Same for people who obssess about socialising all the time.
Something I've noticed with me and other gen-Zers is that meeting with friends or strangers over Discord VoIP is a great way to socialize. It's missing some of the social benefits of in-person meetups, but it's very low-commitment (just hope on a call) and it's much easier to find others who share your interests.
The causes are deeply structural. It won't be solved any time soon. We're talking about the fundamental organization of modern society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic#Causes_of_...
Is there a loneliness epidemic? Or is this viewing history through rose colored glasses?
Is the shift from how society used to work to how society has come to work real or just a grammatically correct statement?
Statistics are biased by those who compute them. Have we asked everyone or inferred and p-hacked up data points?
The single salary family is largely a myth. A relatively small percentage of the population ever achieved that. Is the same true for loneliness? Is it a bigger problem now than it has been?
Is this like in medicine where we think ADHD is up, cancer is up... it's an epidemic! When in reality as a percent of society things are normal, we just had no idea before how prevalent those things were before we measured.
In the past, whenever I felt lonely and hopeless, I jumped into helping others: volunteering, helping an old neighbor garden, help someone move, etc. Helping people gave me a short-term purpose, which eventually let me ride out the low phase of life. YMMV, of course.
I have noticed that doing the sign leads to some good conversations in which I've helped someone in a small way, and that gave me a nice little dopamine boost. It's also led to about half a dozen genuine friendships over the past few months. I wonder if that's the answer, a sort of meta-solution: organizing this thing I'm doing into something that other people in the same situation can do, as a way of meeting people and getting outside their comfort zone. Like setting up a chess table in public if chess is your thing. But no, there are already public chess tables, and they'd have already done that. I don't know, just thinking out loud.
One key is to keep doing it for awhile - the first day with your sign, you were someone on the road.
The eighth time someone sees you? You're the guy with the sign.
Routine and familiarity is important, and it's very easy to fall into situations where we don't see anyone in our routine so we can't become familiar.
This is my go-to strategy as well. When I feel irrepressible bits of loneliness or depression, I just make some food and go out and start handing out to the needy.
Or go for a walk and find people that need a hand. People moving, lifting things, carrying things. Small little acts of being useful and helpful for a moment help.
The feeling will creep back in eventually, but at least for that time I was out and about, it's not.
Having kids (with the right partner and good intentions as a parent) is a great way to avoid feeling lonely.
The kid(s) are tremendous source of connection. You may trade for a feeling of exhaustion, overwhelming responsibility, etc. but a lot less loneliness.
Also go a step further and join support groups for parents. Community resources where kids play and parents can hang out and chat. Connection is built through shared experiences, and parenting is an experience you can share with other parents.
Between having kids and participating in events with other parents, there will be a lot less opportunities to feel lonely.
I think you’ve missed a step here. How are lonely and alone people, who have trouble finding friends, supposed to find a spouse and have kids?
There is an old joke or trope of an evil scientist creating a worm that destroys the Internet and everyone ends up thanking him for saving the world.
If you identify with that problem, and you want to solve it, and you are open to advice...
Go to church, and be intentional to connect. Find a bible study, fellowship group, volunteer opportunity, or prayer meeting. Sit at church on Sunday with somebody from the bible study. Get lunch with one of those people. Find somebody at church who shares a hobby. Do your hobby together.
You have to put in the effort. Growth is uncomfortable. Real connection takes time.
Maybe you find something similar in other spaces, but I am certain you can find it in church.
It’s all about fostering community again, and that’s more than just shared calendars and town events.
It’s “third places” where folks can just hang out and work, play, share, and commiserate without having to pay money to do so.
It’s bringing back establishments that promote lingering and loitering, like food halls or coffee shops, rather than chasing out folks.
It’s about building community centers inside apartment complexes, more public green space, more venues and forums.
Giving people space that doesn’t require a form of payment is the best approach, because humans will take advantage of what’s out there naturally. Sure, structure helps, but space is the issue at present I believe.
> but space is the issue at present I believe.
Is it? There are a number of third places around here that sit effectively vacant. The few who are passionate about seeing those spaces thrive will tell you that the problem is getting anyone to come, not finding space to host them.
The first place to look is suburban development.
I wrote an article[0] on Tiny Neighborhoods (aka “Cohousing”) that starts with:
> “I often wonder if the standard approach to housing is the best we can do. About 70% of Americans live in a suburb, which means that this design pattern affects our lives – where we shop, how we eat, who we know – more than any other part of modern life.”
We have been so uncritical of the set of ideas that make suburbia—single family homes, one car per adult, large private yards—even though these play a big role in how people act.
Some people want to address loneliness by making incremental changes. But if the statistics are right and nearly everyone is somewhat lonely, we should expect that the required adjustments feel “drastic” compared to the current norm.
People would be less lonely if they could live in a community of 15-20 families with (1) shared space and (2) shared expectations for working together on their shared space.
[0] https://iambateman.com/tiny
I posted on another subthread but I think this is largely an excuse. If you live in a typical suburb you have 15-20 families on your street. You can easily walk next door and chat or just say hello when you see someone outside. It takes initiative, which is the key thing that's missing. You either hide in your house or you get out and be sociable.
> You can easily walk next door and chat or just say hello when you see someone outside.
I have no problem with socialization and I have an unusually-active social life for a thirty-eight year old married man with three kids, so I clearly don't lack initiative.
With that being said, all of my neighbors are either elderly, shut-ins, or just don't want to be bothered; even the ones with kids.
My wife & I helped organize a Block Party last year and I'm fairly certain it resulted in 0 new friendships for any of the attendees.
What's the solution here? Friendships need to have mutual interest, no?
I think it's a circular problem. Like, my kids don't go outside much because there are no other kids outside to play with.
There's no question that there are 15-20 families within 300 yards of my house. But that group of people absolutely does not have a sense of shared anything but the road.
And the fact is that this is true of the supermajority of suburban streets in the United States.
I don't disagree but 30 years ago the people in those kinds of neighborhoods did get out and talk to each other, did organize cookouts and other gatherings, and in general were sociable neighbors. The people changed.
No one is asking for this advice, but I'm sharing it anyways.
My #1 top priority this year is _social health_. I'm taking it into my own hands. Mostly just continuing things I'm already doing with tremendous payoff. My measurable result is going to be throwing my own birthday party in fall. I've never done that before, I've never had enough friends in my city!
No one group or app is going to come save you from loneliness. You have to get up, go outside, and find people.
0. Say yes to everything, at least if you're new in town. Don't care how scared you are of X social situation. "Do it scared" - @jxnl
1. I am part of my community's swing dancing scene. I take classes, go to social dances, I _show up_ even when I don't feel like it. People recognize me now, know my name, etc. I'm also a regular at my gym. Find a place and be a regular face there. (_how did I become a swing dancer? I got invited, and my social policy prevented me from saying no!_)
2. If I have no social plans for a week I do a timeleft dinner (dinner with 5 strangers). Always have something on the books. I call this my "social workout". If I vibe with anyone I ask if they want to grab ramen the following weekend. Leads me to point #3..
3. Initiate plans. Everyone is waiting for that text "hey, want to go do x with me?". Be that person. I have an almost 100% enthusiastic response rate to asking people to do literally anything. Go on a random walk? Go to costco? Go checkout ramen or pizza spot? You don't have to think of anything special. Whatever you're already doing.. ask someone to come with! Soon they start inviting you to do random stuff.
4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence.
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A couple of years ago I tried to create a platform to connect people to local communities. The twist was that each community had members that worked as buddies to help welcome and guide new members. I got 10s+ communities and members but since there was no business model associated and I needed to work, I couldn't kept it up. The website was https://tribalo.app.
From the few numbers I got, I figure out it help. Maybe one day I don't need to work and can focus on it again.
This is a minor thing, but as an introvert, I really try and push myself to model social behaviour to my kids. Saying good morning to people in the street, chatting to other dog owners, being nice to waiters, travelling by bus, there are lots of tiny opportunities every day to show that world is full of lovely people who aren’t scary at all.
LifeKit did an episode on this recently. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/06/nx-s1-5667582/how-to-build-a-...
Some things I do: I organize a monthly brunch for friends. I try and grow it, invite people I've recently met.
If someone asks me to do something, I try and do it. Get invited to poker night, I'm there. Asked to play Fantasy Football, yep! Even though I don't watch football and have never played.
Social media and on demand media hijack the emotional triggers that would usually be resolved by talking to people. Some examples:
* In line at the BMV, bored and feeling lonely. Should resolve loneliness by talking to strangers in line... mostly chit-chat, but sometimes you make a friend! Social media turns this into doom scrolling.
* Sitting in the living room by yourself, feeling a little lonely. Should result in calling up a friend or relative, or heading to get a coffee/beer where you can interact with people. On demand media turns this into low risk watching shows (yes, old school TV was an option, but on demand, there's always something on that is interesting).
So the trick is to make yourself ask if you should give someone a call or go somewhere public when you are pulling out the phone with intent to scroll or watch a show. When you find something you are interested in because you are watching lots of videos about it, or replying on forums, force yourself to engage in the real world. If you are arguing politics, find a group advocating your position and get involved (I've got to meet three majority leaders and two Presidents, plus a bunch of congresspeople you see on the news all the time as a side effect of getting involved because I was pissed off on the internet about business taxation issues). If you find a hobby, find a local group that does that. Learning to play the guitar from YouTube was fun, but jamming with other musicians? Off the charts fun and far more educational that just playing along with videos.
Finally, and this is the big one, try to never eat meals alone. Never say no to going to lunch with coworkers. Join stuff that meets for breakfast. Dinners are hard, but it's surprising what happens when you invite a couple people over for dinner and a beer once in a while.
I doubt it's the solution, but a silly program I want to build is something like this:
- Give users a modern Tamagotchi
- Give the digital pet a need to socialize.
- Strap a basic LLM to it so users can talk to their pet.
- Have the pet imprint on its owner through repeated socialization.
- Owner goes to bed, pet still has social needs, goes out into the digital world to find other pets.
- Pet talks to other pets while you're asleep, evaluates interactions, befriend those with good interactions.
- Owner wakes up the next morning, checks their pet, learns it befriended other pets based on shared interests, and is given an opportunity to connect with their pet's friends' owners. Ideally these connections have a better-than-random chance of succeeding since you're matched via shared interests.
I'm sure there's a ton of unsexy technical reasons this is hard to make work well in practice... but dang, I think it would be so cool if it worked well.
I realize this exacerbates the issue in some ways - promoting online-first interactions. But, I dunno. I'll take what I can get these days, lol.
It kind of sounds like you want to automate small talk. I think we need to have less tech, not more, if we're trying to solve this problem.
I could see how it could be interpreted that way!
In my mind, it's more like meeting new acquaintances at the dog park. Dogs start playing with each other and getting along and you end up chatting with the other dog's owner while watching the dogs play together. Trying to recreate those vibes with digital pets.
Church.
Make Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing legal again.
Having barely room for little more than a bed forces you to get out during the day. Stuff happens when your default for where to spend your time is not at "home". SRO halls also usually had more room for common spaces to meet and socialize with other people in a similar position in life, and of course, SRO is a very cheap housing option.
have you ever lived in one?
I lived on a kibbutz for nearly three years after university and had similar levels of personal space. While I definitely would not want to live on a kibbutz for my whole life, there were very significant downsides (internal politics), I made some lifelong friends there and overall consider that experience to have been very positive, in particular for my social life.
I doubt we can solve this for other people. Each person must solve it for themselves, but for most people the solution will be joining a church and attending weekly. From there, get involved with a ministry, that will lead to appreciation dinners, which will lead to getting invited to the non-religous stuff the people are involved with.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/31/are-relig...
There is a gap between thinking and action. I think the social media and gaming and online stimulions currently designed to bombard and drain your thinking brain, leaves nothing for the action you and your body needs to take. Your brain only has so much chemistry to trigger neural activation and we are blowing it on mental stress to the point where the body doesn’t have any more mental energy to tackle real world stress or handle real world emotions.
Try an A/B test. Do days with zero screen stimuli - no TV, no phones, no online interaction. Go into the world to a cafe, or a common area with people and do stuff. See how you feel and what you feel up to. Vacations might be good and relaxing because you disconnect. Maybe do it without paying for it.
I'll add another suggestion: be more forgiving.
Anecdote: I had a friend in SF. He and I would hang out once in a while, and I always looked forward to these hangouts (we'd meet up for coffee, or go for a walk, hang out at Dolores Park, etc.). He is gay, I'm not. His perspective on things was often quite different than mine and I found that interesting. I got married, he stayed single. Even after marriage we would still hang out (though not as often as before). Then we had a child, which sucked all spare time out of my life; but even then we hung out once in a while. Then one winter there was cold/flu/COVID going around. We planned on hanging out and I unfortunately bailed on him at the last moment. This happened 2 more times. Then that bout of illnesses passed and I reached out to him to hang out again. But this time he seemed cold and distant. So I dropped it. And I didn't see him again for almost 3 years.
Then one day I ran into him while walking through Dolores Park. He didn't see me, but I hesitated and still hollered out at him, for old times' sake. He responded and walked over. We chatted a little, I gave him a parting hug and we agreed to hang out again.
A couple of weeks later we managed to hang out again. What I gathered from our meeting was that he had been miffed at what he thought was me blowing him off; and I, when I felt he was cold and distant, had misread his grief at losing his cat. We both misread each other and wasted 3 years.
Moral of the story that I took away from it was: be more forgiving. Friendships are worth the extra effort.
Eliminate the Internet. I'm not joking -- it's much, MUCH harder to be lonely if you don't have Amazon, Instacart, UberEats, and social media fulfilling various needs in your life.
Some people think loneliness is somewhat a result of stress and anxiety, it’s far from it. It is precisely the lack of pressure that makes them stay home. You need to apply as much pressure on them so that staying at home becomes unbearable.
Might want to read Bowling Alone[1] (or at least some commentary on it) and the "hunkering down" effect.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
The common denominator is to have shared spaces where it's expected to be among strangers' presence, and for those strangers to eventually become repeat guests in a person's life. That's the maximally comfortable scenario for inducing social behavior and it's responsible for eons of human social history. Think church.
The problem there is that it's the responsibility of groups or society to arrange that. There's not much that a single lonely person can do there.
The less common denominator, that an individual may partake in until society concocts a better solution, is to intentionally visit existing shared spaces even where they otherwise wouldn't (hint: bouldering gyms are good for this because there are repeat faces as well as a social okay-ness to congratulating strangers, or asking how certain challenges can be solved).
Or break with convention, comfort, and perhaps etiquette, and instead just talk to people. Even outside of those spaces. (This is the advice that will piss a lot of people off if it's presented as their only option.) This advice is horrible until it isn't. It does, with enough practice, 'just work'.
---
For an entrepreneur or organizer: it would just go a long way to think about things in terms of allowing conversation to happen unimpeded. Pay attention to where people talk, and about what. Conversations happen a lot in hallways but famously by water coolers, perhaps because it affords people enough time in a shared space to muster the internal capital to start a conversation.
In college I ran a forum for people to meet others and some of the most self-reportedly successful participants just asked questions into the void and were surprised by the number of responses.
There are, of course, multiple causes for loneliness. We can't fix them all with one clear action. Here are the main five, in my view:
First, social media. It's too easy to temporarily forget about your loneliness by staying home and doomscrolling or watching TV.
Second, increased mobility. People move around the whole continent now for work, removing them from their closest and oldest social connections.
Third, God is dead. Churches as community centers are dying out. Young people don't trust them anymore, because they don't believe in God, and because churches had many scandals. Secular community centers are very rare and struggle with funding.
Fourth, work is more stressful now. There used to be more time to socialize, but in our quest for productivity, work became denser with fewer idle times.
Fifth, fewer people want to have kids. Much has been written about this.
Now what can we do at societal scale? First of all, study the phenomenon more closely. Who is lonely? Who isn't? Which interventions work? Which cultural factors are important? At your local scale, you can just call or meet a friend.
Sports. CrossFit and similar social sports have been healthy for me and for many others, and I think the community is at least equal to the exercise in improving people's lives.
Not saying this is the only way, but it made a big difference for me and my friends. I realize the physical challenges are artificial, but so is an Advent of Code puzzle when you already have a day job. Hard things are worth doing because they're hard, and they're even better when done together with those you love.
Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius
Make them interact and do things, generally they will be less toxic because it will reduce their online disinhibition effect.
Make them have meals, meet, walk at the park, whatever.
I have considered a "physical social network". Standing on my usual street corner and holding a sign that directs strangers to join me and whoever else shows up, for a casual chat at the local coffee place at a specific time, with a few topics for conversation listed on the sign up front. If anyone has ideas for those topics, let me know, I'm likely to do it this Sunday.
you laugh, but bringing people back to reality might require using screens to do it
When NextDoor first came around, I recall walking down the street to help a lady move her couch down to the ground floor. She then gave me some cookies she'd baked. Fun! The notifications it sends me these days are less enjoyable so I send them to spam because unsubscribing doesn't seem to reliably work for me.
> Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius…
Don't know if they still do, but Nextdoor required address verification via a postcard early on. I was pretty shocked at what some people in my area would post under their real names and locations.
(And well outside the realm of political nonsense. Someone posted a pic of their toddler's first poop in the potty.)
I think the power of shame has reduced significantly in recent years.
I think shame is still powerful, but in the context of Nextdoor we just don't see our neighbors very often anymore. In many cases they might as well be random people on the other side of the country. I live in a small town and I'm quite friendly with my neighbors, but I still see and talk to them relatively rarely.
Civility and sense of decorum have greatly diminished in the past few decades especially online.
When you have a toddler it's very surprising what becomes normal. We're potty-training our son and I sometimes get texts from my spouse with a picture of a poop in a bad spot and then just the word "help."
I mean, we did that, too. But there's a bit of a gulf between a text to the spouse and posting it for 20k people you run into regularly to see.
1. Pass a law letting people WFH where its reasonably possible. I WFH in a walkable city and me and my friends try new restaurants every week, always around noon. I've met lots of new people, and joined new groups that I wouldn't have found out about if I was stuck at my desk. Give people more freedom of movement.
Do you have any strong evidence that this would improve the situation? It may be correlative and not causative, but as working from home is increasing, it seems that most related statistics to loneliness are increasing as well. What if it's actually part of the problem and not the solution?
I'm not saying that I have evidence on hand to the contrary, just trying to challenge the idea.
I have been trying to make more friends in the real and virtual world the past two years, and I have been pretty successful. Most of my new friends come from the following: Volleyball, MtG, or a writing group.
Really, I think that it comes down to make making or joining a space with a shared activity and moderating out the crap.
The problem is most communities are losing those spaces in favor of private social clubs. That's what we need to fight.
This is a difficult problem to want to solve. Some of it has to do with low income or joblessness. So this is the first focus I would set - make income easier to come by, more fair, more distributed. This in itself will not fix the solo state of people but it would alleviate some worries. Then we have to tackle the social problem. This is really difficult to want to solve. Activity helps, so the state should be able to encourage more activity overall. For instance, in my own youth I was physically more active, so you meet a lot of people through sports - that alone works fairly well. You can probably think of many more cohesive social structures and what not. I think it is a difficult to want to solve problem though. Not everyone uses social media by the way but is still isolated; Japan even gave some odd name to this.
I'll say the same thing that I always do. For some reason, it's not popular, hereabouts, but it's worked for me, for over 45 years.
Get involved with volunteer/gratis work. Join an advocacy/charity group. Do stuff for free.
HN members have really valuable skills that can make an enormous difference.
Joining a volunteer organization brings together passionate, action-minded people that already share a common platform.
It can also teach us a lot. My personal career was significantly helped by what I learned, doing volunteer work.
Boom. Loneliness problem solved.
Maybe dumb question but how does one "join a volunteer organization?" I tried a long time ago but got ghosted.
Not a dumb question.
Depends on the org.
Many large orgs have smaller chapters locally, but there are often regionally-relevant ones.
I’d start with personal passions, and work from there. It won’t really work, unless it’s something we care about.
Volunteer orgs tend to be fairly disorganized, and there’s usually a lot of lively personalities. If one seems too dysfunctional, try another. Don’t just go for one.
Also, it can take some time to get into the “inner circle.” Like any human society, trust takes time to build. We need to be willing to start small. Get to know the place. Figure out where we can make a difference.
I’ll bet that ChatGPT would be a great source of information.
Phrases like "I’d start with personal passions, and work from there" and "we need to be willing to start small" are NOT actionable, they are meaningless platitudes. Not to mention it assumes everyone has "personal passions," an the majority of people probably don't.
I didn't "just go for one." I spent like a month trying to volunteer , for anyone. I was on medical leave from work at time time so I had plenty of time to give. Nobody ever got back to me or picked up the phone. It was worse than applying for a job. I have an anxiety disorder, so even reaching out caused me massive stress and anxiety. So I caused myself distress to feel more worthless than I already felt. My heart is racing and I'm on the verge of tears just typing this up.
So I'll ask again, how does one "join a volunteer organization?"
Join local groups. Talk to and engage with your neighbours. Volunteer in your community.
I normally don't contribute to HN comments these days (too much anger in the comments section) but I appreciate your post and activities.
I am a tail-end boomer in the U.S. so my experiences were with a world where socializing was more functional: we shopped in public, played in public, read in public libraries, watched movies in public, rode transit together, etc. Being in public was a requirement, not a choice. While there are still remnants of this older culture still active in today's world in urban life, there are so many options for not being in public that it is simply easier to avoid it. We all want our space in one degree or another.
On the playground growing up, my world was filled with name-calling and backbiting. I was a heavier kid, so that was my burden. Other kids had bucked teeth, warts, limps, they were too short, or too tall, uncoordinated--whatever--nobody really escaped the wrath of the crowd. We were forced, by our parents, to just deal with it.
My parents like many others in their generation recognized this behavior for what it was--natural. Watch an episode of the Little Rascals--you will see what I am referring to.
Most if not all of those kids who were called names and isolated in some way found ways to break out of their pigeon hole: playing sports, playing music, making art, studying hard at school, boxing, singing, dancing, cracking jokes, whatever. Then they were heroes, and the crowd could celebrate them--and they thrived.
I know this sounds overly idealistic, but it is true. I experienced this first hand in a neighborhood of several hundred kids from broken homes, poor homes, ethnic homes, etc.
Voiceless people must find their voice. The responsibility is their's. The crowd will not come to the rescue of the person who won't stand up for themselves and make their way in life.
Loneliness is very, very sad. The cure to loneliness is in the powerful hands of the lonely person. Do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to work on those things that hold the lonely person back from achieving something--anything--for themselves and then engage with the crowd with more confidence.
I appreciate what you are doing by helping others--that is one of your superpowers. Live a good, strong life!
Your first paragraph is what I've always thought: "back in the day" most people simply didn't have the option to be a hermit. In modern life, your bills, grocery shopping, car registration, hobbies, etc. can all be handled online / in your home.
In my opinion, it takes a lot of time and energy to avoid loneliness in the modern era. So, advice about "just get yourself out there" is technically accurate, but it misses the mark since previous generations didn't need to put much thought, if any, into socializing. Perhaps not everyone is wired to focus so much energy into that aspect of their life and we're seeing that play out with modern amenities?
Thanks for the rare comment.
I agree that these people need to do the work themselves.
But they first need to be encouraged and motivated, no? Otherwise they'd have done it by now. That's kind of what I'm trying to figure out how to do.
Start with you: 1. Daily sunshine 2. Nutritious diet 3. Adequate, quality sleep 4. Exercise
You'll find virtually every dimension of your life will improve if you're on top of these four things. It will make you more ambitious in pursuing social engagement. And that will make socialization much easier.
I mean this seriously: we need more cults.
Cults have been viciously slandered by mainstream information sources, often because lurid cult stories generate clicks and headlines. Of course some cults are abusive, just like some marriages are abusive. But we still think marriage is good in general.
If you think all cults are bad, you're implicitly against all religion, since every mainstream religion was once a cult. Being anti-cult is also profoundly un-American. America was built by cultists. Freedom of religion is literally the first principle stated in the Bill of Rights.
A cult is really just a professionally managed social environment. If you trust professionals like lawyers, doctors, or teachers with their respective duties, there's no reason in principle you shouldn't trust a cult leader to manage your social environment for you. Of course you should vet them, ask about their reputation, etc.
Trading Cards!
IMO the biggest barrier to entry to the hobby is the price, coupled with the existing communities being really old. I'm trying to get people to print their own cards for casual kitchen table play through https://cardstocktcg.com.
I built a mobile app that allows you to get a morning wake up call from a real person. Part of my motivation here was to help add a little human interaction to what is a lonely experience for some people.
I was going to post this somewhere else, but I think this story fits.
An old guy approached me and said "put the music on my phone mann".
Alright.
My response: "Search on YouTube"
He keeps insisting on ME doing it for him.
3 steps
First his data was off. For presumably a while he's had his data off ( it's metro PCs so it's prepaid anyway) and I guess he was relying on WiFi.
Ok.
One click to fix that in the Android tile menu.
His Bluetooth was off too.
Turn that on. Turn on his headphones. Luckily it was already paired.
Finally I had to open YouTube and find music for him.
3 or 4 steps.
Now he's happily listening to music.
But beyond that, he got to introduce himself to me, and I guess the next time he accidentally turns off his data he can ask for help again.
I also like to help people.
Old people are awesome when it comes to this. They'll just ask someone to help them out, that's how you build community.
Don't know how to change your oil ? Cool Billy's a car guy he can help you out. Having trouble with your water pressure, maybe Sarah's a plumber and she can help.
Of course if something serious you're still going to be expected to pay these people, but if it's something quick they'll help you free of charge. Maybe you'll bake them a cake for their kids birthday.
I recall when I was young a neighbor basically gave my mom a car. It was an absolute piece of crap, and out of the goodness of his heart he would come and fix it every now and then.
I didn't realize it as a kid, but if you're passionate about cars and you get the emotional satisfaction of both helping a neighbor and seeing how long you can keep that old car running, that's its own reward.
How many of you would love for a non technical neighbor to say their computer is slow. I recall someone on HN even offering to send out a free laptop to someone in need.
Traditionally communities would have a blacksmith or a baker. That's what that person did and they had a status tied to it.
In modern economic systems what exactly we do is so abstracted away from anything meaningful we lack this connection.
On a very fundamental level people need to feel needed.
TLDR: Help others.
I have no link or affiliation with this company, but recently heard about it:
https://storiboardclub.com/
They say they want to “make meeting like-minded people easy, natural, and fun” and “ Loneliness doesn't have to be the norm.”
https://storiboardclub.com/about-us
I visit whatever sport activity I can find. Like Go Karting, gymnastics, bouldering, etc and always start asking pro guys: “yo, how come you visit this so often? How do you get fun from it?”. And people lovely tell their story. Later they teach me how to do things. It works for me.
I am a solo bootstrap founder, ultra lonely.
Working on a basketball app to bring people together. Basketball was invented out of grief, by James Naismith who lost his grandfather, mother, father, and family home to a fire within 4 months. He was tasked with helping to have rambunctious youth learn the principles of teamwork and sharing and slowing down and thus created the game. It truly brings people together and I hope everyone gets a chance to experience the magic that is pickup basketball. It got me out of a deep hole after the pandemic after my mom had passed and I gained 30 lbs.
People who live in London, how did you find a solution for this? I am interested in hearing what you tried. I am in my very early 30s. Single male. I didn't feel up in UK. Moved here I my 20s.
I dont know the solution but few things that are root cause:
- Internet and Social Media
- Neighborhoods no longer are walkable especially suburbs at least in America. Kids are not encouraged to go bike to their friends place anymore because of traffic risks.
- High Trust societies have degraded into "lets keep ot myself, I can't trust anyone these days". Decades ago, you could just walk into a neighbor's home and say hello. Now, you need an appointment just to talk to a neighbor or are too worried what they will think of you.
- No real friendships after school/colleges. This is a huge deal once you are out on your own in the real world. Work relationships are meh at best and with remote work nowadays, it has become even worse.
- Even if you join a club or activity, they are too "planned" and "robotic". For example, my kids take a dance class and they said they don't like it. I realized why. There is no break. They don't even get to spend like 30 mins with other kids socializing etc. There is a fixed schedule. You go, you dance, you leave.
But this is the world today. So I don't know how to fix it.
We can encourage people to start families and stop telling them that it's the end of anything fun.
As someone with young kids, it's not fun. If I had a time machine I would travel back in time and convince myself not to do this.
You can't just start a family on your own. I don't know how this addresses loneliness.
Maybe our built environment shouldn't consist solely of isolated houses in isolated gated communities where we drive our kids and sit in isolated cars in the school dropoff/pickup lines.
This may just be me, but I hold the opposite view.
When I lived in a rural area with a few acres of property, I was much more social and engaged with my community.
Now I live at the edge of the city in a medium-high density townhouse area with no private outdoor space. Since I can never really get away from people and be alone, I also have no desire to go out and do things and engage with the community.
I think the variability is nice. If I can get home, relax, not have people around, have some private outdoor space, then I can recharge and have the energy to engage more.
This is an individual problem and an individual's responsibility to solve, imo (Although I do think it's interesting to consider whether a project, company, or initiative could help make this easier to solve for millions.)
Regardless, there are four steps worth taking as an individual: (1) go out, (2) make friends, (3) turn friends into community, and (4) maintain community.
If you're feeling lonely, you're probably failing at one step along this chain.
1. Going out. I don't have a lot of tips here. Except to go to things that actually facilitate interacting with strangers. Don't just go to a bar or go work from a cafe. Go to a meet and greet, an event for strangers to mingle, etc. Or, if you're having trouble motivating yourself to go out, then that's something inside yourself to work on. I find that a shakeup to your life routine (e.g. moving cities, going on a vacation) can provide a good window to change your habits, where you'll start doing things you don't normally do in your home city.
2. Making friends. This one is simple but hard for some. Basically: be personable, smile, engage in conversation, ask questions, be interested, avoid being threatening or clingy, dress and stylish normal-ish unless you really don't want to, etc. Then talk to people at these events, and if seems like you'd like hanging with them and have things in common, ask to exchange numbers.
3. Turn friends into community. IMO this is where you go from the basics into the advanced, and where the most benefits lie. However, most people stop after #2, even though this step is easier than steps #1 or #2, and is extremely rewarding. Community is an in-person social network. The number of connections between people in a community determines the strength and stickiness of that community. Thus it's very important that you introduce your friends to other friends. For example, instead of going on a coffee date with a friend once every month or two, invite 2 or 3 friends to dinner. This has numerous benefits. All of your friends will meet each other, and suddenly they'll know who you're talking about when you mention other people. Also, conversation is easier when there are more people. Also, you'll find events and hangs happen more often, because (a) more people are able to initiate them, and (b) there's more reason to go. People are more motivated to go and less motivated to cancel when there's an event that allows them to see multiple friends at once.
4. Maintain community. People move away. People have silly fights and disagreements and stop talking to each other. People get into relationships and disappear. People get sick, or old, or antisocial, and disappear. Shit happens. So you have to keep doing steps #2 and #3, at least occasionally, forever. You don't necessarily need to do step #1 as much, since the people in your community will naturally bring friends and whatnot to your events. But you still need to get to know these people, exchange numbers, and invite them to future events.
Not online.
People, together, doing things, ideally having fun.
Spaces and activities that provide venues for communication, humor, authenticity, play, touch, collaboration.
The older people get the more disposable they are viewed as by society.
When you are younger, you belong in school. When you get older, you belong at work.
If you fall out of any of these social structures its extremely difficult to find your way back in.
I was already pretty disconnected from society and people in general when my divorce hit and now I am completely untethered from any kind of community. Living is miserable I hate my life and I do not want to exist like this anymore.
None of the solutions people provide are easy or functional. "Go meet people" is the most vague, unhelpful bullshit ever.
I think the reality is some people, no matter how intelligent, caring or otherwise full of empathy they may be are just "too far gone" for anyone to have the initiative or concern to care about us. The world is so corroded and socially poisoned that any kind of meaningful effort in this kind of thing is pointless. Anybody with time or money is busy making money.
You can't solve the epidemic because it is a byproduct of multiple irreparably broken systems. People will continue to fall through the cracks and it will get worse. I don't know what happens after that but we'll probably all be dead.
I am somewhat suspicious of this loneliness epidemic. 81% of Americans are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with their personal life[0]. And my personal experience is that both close friends and general civil community is easy to find[1]. I wasn't trying at all so it can't be that there are any real constraints here.
0: https://news.gallup.com/poll/655493/new-low-satisfied-person...
1: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community
I don't think [0] is showing what you think it does.
> % Very satisfied with the way things are going in personal life
That Dropped from 65% in 2020 to 44% in 2025
> Record-Low 44% of Americans Are 'Very Satisfied' With Their Personal Life
Also focusing on the raw percentages of these style reports is challenging, due to socially desirable response bias [0]
The fact it is dropping is the important part, it is a relative measure, not a absolute one, and I am sure Gallop would change there questions/responses in a modern survey that didn't need to maintain compatibility with historical data.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5519338/
* Gallup (not Gallop) has the English questions and responses in the PDF at the bottom of the page. They will also respond if you email them so you can check if wording changed significantly.
* Yes, I am pretty sure the Gallup thing is showing exactly what I think it does considering I said "81% are [somewhat] satisfied or very satisfied" and the Gallup survey shows that 81% are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied.
* The fact that the Hacker News community was enthusiastic about the thesis of a loneliness epidemic during a period when satisfaction was rising casts aspersions on "the fact that it is dropping is the important part". When satisfaction was rising, there were still posts on that where everyone was agreeing about how bad it was.
I was looking at the PDF [0] and [1] and [0] calls out:
> In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
``QN5:Personal Satisfaction is a binary question``, with a category for refused/didn't know that WAS NOT OFFERED IN THE QUESTION, with an additional question asking about very, sort of etc... They call out `QN5QN6COMBO: Personal Life Satisfaction`
I can't answer the HN sentiment straw man, the DELTA from previous results is what is important. Using it as an absolute scale would almost certainly be discouraged if you asked them via the email address in the PDF.
Basic statistics realities here, and Gallup knows the limits far better than the comment section here. And they understand that "81% are [somewhat] satisfied or very satisfied" especially when presented as two trivial properties, has limitations.
Once again they asked:
> In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in your personal life at this time?
Then followed up with:
> Are you very [satisfied/dissatisfied], or just somewhat [satisfied/dissatisfied]?
Note how both of those are binary, with a NULL being an option to mark down as an exception.
You do not have quintiles at all.
[0] https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2020/07/gal...
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1672/satisfaction-personal-life...
I don't think it's a straw man. If it is true that the delta matters and it is also true that at the time when this metric was showing the most positive results and trending upwards, online communities such as this talk about the existence of the loneliness epidemic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20468767 then one must ask oneself whether this is a property of the online communities in question.
At the time when the gallup poll showed an upward trend towards its peak this community was talking about the loneliness epidemic. When the gallup poll shows a downward trend toward its lowest, this community is talking about the loneliness epidemic. And it's the change in satisfaction that is the most significant. So there are two changes in opposite directions causing the same conclusion.
If this were happening to me, I would ask myself "Am I sure this is a general property and not just a property of me?". Do you find this not convincing to move your estimate of the likelihood of the loneliness epidemic actually existing? If you don't, it's all right. We can leave it here.
> 81% of Americans are satisfied or very satisfied with their personal life[0].
No, 81% are "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied". I don't think "satisfied" is synonymous with "somewhat satisfied".
It's worth noting, as the article states, that this is the lowest value in the history of the poll, going back to 2001.
It shouldn't be too surprising that the overall value is high and stable over time. Hedonic adaptation[1] is a core property of our emotional wiring. The fact that the value is the lowest it's been in a quarter century should still be ringing alarm bells. We are not OK.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
It's a 5 point scale, so landing a 4 or 5 on satisfaction on a 5 point scale seems significant. Also, when the value was at its highest in that time series, Hacker News had articles like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20468767
The comments there are full of people describing this loneliness epidemic when 65% of people were very satisfied and 90% of people were "somewhat satisfied or very satisfied". No matter what surveys of people's satisfaction with their personal lives show, there appears to be an enthusiasm for this subject of the loneliness epidemic. This makes me suspect that this is less an epidemic than an 'endemic' (if you'll forgive the word).
Regardless, I didn't intend to mislead so I'll edit it to say "somewhat satisfied or very satisfied (4 or 5 on a 5 point scale).
> It's a 5 point scale, so landing a 4 or 5 on satisfaction on a 5 point scale seems significant.
No, it is absolutely not. Gallup is not asking "on a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your satisfaction?" They are asking:
"In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in your personal life at this time? Are you very [satisfied/dissatisfied], or just somewhat [satisfied/dissatisfied]?"
When it comes to surveys and social science the specific wording of questions has a huge impact on the results.
Sure, and 81% of people are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied. And the loneliness epidemic thesis was popular around the time that very satisfied was at its peak of 65% (when somewhat or very satisfied summed up to 90%).
Did you read the article you cited or are you just evaluating the snapshot of numbers?
> WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Forty-four percent of Americans say they are “very satisfied” with the way things are going in their personal life, the lowest by two percentage points in Gallup’s trend dating back to 2001. This also marks the continuation of a decline in personal satisfaction since January 2020, when the measure peaked at 65%.
> Record-Low 44% of Americans Are 'Very Satisfied' With Their Personal Life
And then to link to your own blog post as though that were a supporting citation is strange to say the least.
It's a lot of "just stop being depressed" energy.
My blog post is a more detailed expression of a sentence that starts with "my personal experience". I think that's fine.
And of course I read the article. That's why my sentence explicitly says "satisfied or very satisfied" whereas the text you quote only selects the "very satisfied". One can imagine that if I had only linked without reading I could not possibly have guessed 81% correctly either.
I'm not saying "just stop being depressed". I'm questioning that any significant portion of the population is depressed. I think that's valid.
I can only speak anecdotally from what I have seen in TikTok videos and TikTok comments, and yes, a significant portion of people in society are very depressed, and drinking/smoking/screwing their way through it, putting on a Joker smile.
I think certain populations have this effect, yes. As an example, teen suicides have genuinely risen in the US in the post-smartphone/post-social-media era. So I think the evidence (suicides are not subject to measurement error as much) is pretty strong that certain populations (all teenagers, for instance) are encountering unhappiness to a great degree.
But TikTok is renowned for having an algorithmically tailored feed that is specifically engagement maximizing. While there are some selection effects in the people one encounters in normal life, surely one must concede that an algorithmically tailored feed maximizing engagement cannot possibly be anything but highly selected.
People are suffering from PCNS. Here is a great documentary about it https://youtu.be/9kqgF5O354E?si=5UMifCZuk_sP71m0
loneliness is not really transmissible like an epidemic. If two lonely people get together, they aren’t lonely anymore.
It is very possible to be extremely lonely in a room full of people.
People are uncomfortable to interact and make small talk. They know smileys and lmao, but many have forgotten how to laugh irl.
I think this is fine? I’m pretty quiet in my real life but I do talk about here.
It can be fine, if you're happy in a mostly solitary life there's nothing wrong with that.
If you're unhappy and feel a need for more friends, then you'll need to take some action if all you do is sit at home on a screen all day.
About what?
I think the big solution consists of many small solutions. One problem I identified is that social media platforms (1) decimated local live music events coverage in mid-sized cities and (2) placed live music events into the same "filter bubble" algorithm as everything else, making it difficult for people to discover what is going on nearby.
I started https://musiclocal.org, a 501(c)(3), as a curated live music events platform for my local area (and hopefully others). We list all the live music events in the area, and we optimize the software for usability, performance, SEO, etc. The goal is to make discovering local live music events as easy as doom-scrolling. We have had an outstanding reception in the area we serve. We are not self-sustaining yet, but I am optimistic about our chances. As a non-profit, we do not do any of the dark-pattern garbage that has become omnipresent in social media and other consumer software. We just do the right thing as best we can.
Here is some more background (from our "Issues" page):
At MusicLocal, we focus on the root challenges facing local music communities to address endemic issues of negative social media practices, isolation and community polarization, and economic concentration and monopolization. Specifically:
• We believe convenient, comprehensive live music event listings are critical to reversing the decline in local music journalism. • We believe ethically designed, steward-curated live music event listings provide a vital alternative to addictive social media platforms. • We believe that making live music more visible and accessible encourages in-person interaction, strengthening communities and alleviating loneliness and social isolation. • We believe that local live music listings are a critical component of strong local economies, helping to lessen the negative economic consequences of big tech and music industry monopolies.
---
"Technology has a purpose, and that purpose is to do good and to share" --Steve Wozniak
Agreed and this is an awesome project. We need more of this. Social Media <==> Real World
The answer is social media. But social is per se difficult like in real life.
Destroy social media.
Fund free places to hang out.
Start passing out fines for people calling the cops on kids that are doing absolutely nothing wrong.
Hanging out in public spaces and skateboarding are not crimes.
> Fund free places to hang out.
And here lies the problem. There are no free spaces to hang out anymore.
I think people in general need to stop letting differences rip them apart from each other. I've seen countless friendships crumble over stupid things like politics. (I'm not saying politics is stupid overall, but I do think it's stupid to let it affect a relationship, except in extreme situations). I'm not talking about the Neo-Nazi who openly expresses hatred towards other races, or the extreme other end who insists that anything other than full throated and vocal activism makes you a bad person. Those people are toxic and should be avoided. IME that's like 1% of the population if not less.
Social media has (IMHO) exacerbated this by allowing us to selectively surround ourselves with people we know we'll agree with. It's a nice reprieve sometimes, but it's so, so unhealthy beyond short-term.
Also talking to people in-person is very important. The less you do it, the harder it is, but it's worth doing. The natural humanizing effect of conversing with a person in meat-space does wonders for increasing understanding. Don't talk about topics you disagree on, focus on agreements and common interests. A good friend of mine is a trans-woman married to a woman. She decided to get into target shooting and approached others in good faith, and she said something like (not a direct quote): "I was worried they would be assholes, but it turns out they're just nerds like me, they just love to kit out their rigs".
Another friend of mine fell into the right-wing youtube rabbit-hole and "infiltrated" an Antifa group. He's a good guy overall, but got a very clouded exposure to "the other side." After he was done, he said something like (not a direct quote) "I was actually really surprised at how accepting, respectful, and intellectual most of them were. We wouldn't agree on politics, but they were a lot more interested in real analysis and dealing in facts than I ever would have thought, and we ended up having some good conversations."
Yes there are going to be assholes out there, but give people a chance before jumping to conclusions. You might be surprised! Don't jump in the deep end all at once, and be mindful of personal danger and comfort-level, but don't be so afraid to reach out to humans (in-person) and try to connect, even if you think on the surface there's no way you could get along.
Shared stressors are what bring people together. Communities form when a group of people all have the same problem. Go around egging peoples homes in your neighbourhood, and keep doing it. By the time your neighbours finally catch you they will all have gotten to know and appreciate one another better. They will have formed a communtiy identity.
stop inventing and endorsing divisive ideas
I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try.
Well, let's start by confronting and acknowledging the very strong case that we -- "we" here being the tech world in general, and the audience of this site -- bear a heavy burden of responsibility for it.
It could be argued that it was all inevitable given the development of the Internet: development of social media, the movement online of commerce and other activities that used to heavily involve "incidental" socialization, etc. And maybe it was. But "we" are still the ones who built it. So are "we" really the right ones to solve it, through the same old silicon valley playbook?
The usual thought process of trying to push local "community groups," hobby-based organizations etc is not bad, but I think it misses an important piece of the puzzle, which is that we've started a kind of death spiral, a positive feedback loop suppressing IRL interaction. People started to move online because it was easier, and more immediate than "IRL." But as more people, and a greater fraction of our social interaction moves online, "IRL" in turn becomes even more featureless. There are fewer community groups, fewer friends at the bar or the movies, fewer people open to spontaneous interaction. This, then, drives even more of culture online.
What use is trying to get "back out into the real world," when everyone else has left it too, while you were gone?
Not everyone has left the real world, only the people who got really sucked into the online/social media world. This can maybe seem like the whole world though, if you're in that bubble.
Bars are still packed on the weekends, people still gather at churches, or gyms, or bowling leagues, or book clubs, or any number of other "IRL" activities of all kinds that are going on. You do have to make the effort to go out and get involved though, nobody is going to come and rescue you.
Many of these activities have gotten extremely expensive or just died out in the majority of places. There's 2600 bowling alleys in the US compared to 4000 20 years ago. That's a decline of 35% without accounting for population. Last time I went to a bowling alley the price for a lane without drinks was 100 dollars for an hour and a half. This isn't even in a very high cost of living area. Besides a place like the gym can hardly be considered a place where people gather, most people just see it as something functional and would rather not be disturbed (I believe this has gotten 'worse').
I agree with the fact that it's exaggerated online but when you see these kinda numbers in the vast majority of activities which were affordable for most Americans not too long ago it's not solely to be blamed on individuals.
I believe in the majority of the country things will only get worse with how little value is placed on being involved in things for 'community'. People have gotten more anti-social because of social media (and just media in general).
Most tech workers won't be as impacted by this I assume, they can afford paying 200 dollars for bowling without thinking twice, same with many others of the upper middle class.
"Who don't feel that they can join any local groups"
There's your problem. Fix that.
If there aren't any local groups then help create one. If there are, go along, meet some people, see what works for you, join a different one if you didn't like the first one, keep going until you've found your people.
If you feel like you can't go to a group then create a support group for people who feel like they can't go to groups. Or go online and find the virtual space for people like you and then travel to see those people (or invite them to see you).
But there is no fix for you having to socialise if you're lonely. You're going to have to find a way in.
Affordable third places[0] where people can impromptu join and serendipitously meet friendly faces repeatedly. All of my strong friendships were from exactly this at either skateparks, college dorm common area, or run clubs. Churches had this figured out for millenia
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
it seems like a lot of locales that would have been third places in the past have been neutered because the people go there and then immediately put up walls. coffeeshops have become ad-hoc offices where people will sit there with a laptop and give off "leave me alone, i'm working".
people need to find a way to sit in a third space without pulling up a screen or a book that immediately re-isolates you.
also: don't underestimate the subtle effect of architecture and seating arrangements here. a coffee shop is filled with lots of little two-seat tables that intentionally isolate. for contrast, think about local pubs/bars -- there's one big central seating arrangement where evertybody is facing the bartender. the bartender is naturally placed in a position that makes them serve as a conversational mediator that can facilitate connections between then people hanging out on the periphery.
CTRL+F "third place" -- take my upvote.
Anyone suffering in the loneliness epidemic should have a copy of The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg. The entire point is that you should be putting yourself into socially active areas in your community.
This includes: a church, a local pub or coffee shop with regulars (ideally walking distance from where you live), a rec sports/game league or club.
Knowing this, I've perused it in my life and it seems very effective. I'm a regular at a Trivia Night one night per week (I don't go every week, but enough to know both the bartender and host by name). I'm a regular at a bar three blocks away from where I live, even if I consume only one non-alcoholic beverage and one alcoholic beverage per visit (a couple night a week), that leaves me plenty of time to chat with my neighbors. I'm a member of a local golf club (a very cheap municipal course), and play there every other week, and after a couple years have very good relationships with many of the other members even if we don't interact much outside of the club. At my last apartment, I was a regular at the coffee shop enough to know multiple baristas by name, it wasn't exactly a third place situation, but it was getting close before I moved. I'm not religious, but I'm very familiar with academic institutions and open lecture series that I used tot attend in grad school.
I do this intentionally. My partner had never been a regular at a bar before, and she really, really enjoys it now even though she doesn't really drink. When she joins me, she will maybe consume one-half of a light beer. You don't have to be an alcoholic to be a regular, this is a major point that Oldenburg discusses when he contrasts German-style drinking culture with English-style drinking culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Good_Place_(book)
Being happy with yourself and being OK that you're not advancing anymore (you're just happy and don't have anything to pursue), or raising a family. The only two ways.
Make as many third places as you can. People need to get out to do other things than work, and these should be low cost activities. If you introduce subscriptions and then ramp up prices, then you are the scum of the world.
I would suggest for the crowd here: tech meetups, even online ones and communities will connect you to people with your interests.
Another thing that you'll likely find in your area is a chess club.
Maybe you won't love the chess itself, but it's an excuse to hang out with people.
Another one is volunteering work. Elderly, dogs, etc, many communities need help.
In my village I have started a "clean up" program where average citizens take few bags a picker and we clean areas of our village.
Most of people are "this is the job of the garbage collectors, the mayor should do it", so what? It also costs money, and nobody will do as carefully as the people living there.
Even if 95% of my village won't care few will and we make an impact and socialize, etc and more start taking part of it.
Telos
In the USA, the loneliness epidemic is compounded by isolation. A large portion of our society has moved into suburban communities that are largely impersonal. There is very little in the way of in-person community outside of churches or political movements that only certain kinds of people want to be involved with.
With the Internet giving us the ability to interact with our chosen niche with little effort, we are willing to accept this still-impersonal alternative to our stagnant communities.
I have found that, as a city-dweller, I benefit from separating myself from social media and going out into the world looking for more personal connections, but this is somewhat of a privilege afforded to those people who live in more densely populated areas. Even then, my distance from social media can sometimes be a handicap when you interact with people who are still reliant on it to coordinate everything.
For most people, the social opportunities that existed in the 70's through the 90's simply doesn't exist anymore. If you aren't using social media, you're practically being anti-social, but there is something inherently anti-social about social media to begin with, so you're screwed if you do and screwed if you don't.
> the social opportunities that existed in the 70's through the 90's simply doesn't exist anymore
Does it have to be that way?
Is there a way to bring back "the social outdoors" of those days? To recreate it?
Idk, probably some kind of app.
undo urbanization, education, and technology. retvrn to monke.
Universal Basic Tokens allowance?
Not with technology.
Organize things.
Start a bowling league, a DnD group, a book club, a charitable organization... whatever.
Have a dinner party. Join the chess club. Start or join a sports league.
Many of these community events aren't happening because nobody has created them yet and it might just be up to you to do it.
Part of the loneliness epidemic is somebody actually has to initiate things and not enough people do. YOU can do it.
Learn to use smartphones as tools, not as all consuming attention sinks.
Learn to use meth responsibly, how hard could it be…
Ban advertising based business models.
together
We (reading this) can't do anything. An enlightened government might set policy in such ways as to fix this over the course of decades, but I don't even seen that being acknowledged as possible or desirable in those same decades. The problem will continue to deteriorate until it becomes catastrophic.
In person RPGs, tabletop wargames and boardgames are amazing for geek culture. Thanks to local Discord groups, I have an active nerd community that I play games with at least once a week. This has revolutionized by social life!
There is a introverted crafty side of painting and 3D printing miniatures that works great for me too.
These games all work as essentially offline alternatives to videogames and are way more fun!
Also, my local game store serves beer; so its essentially a nerd bar even though most people don't drink.
Wargaming related references: Tabletop Minions on YouTube, The HiveScum podcast, Companies such as Black Site Studios and Conferences such as Adepticon.
Go look these up!
Step one might be to stop calling it the loneliness epidemic. Loneliness is an emotion, isolation is a condition, and we might even expect that if people felt lonely more often they would try harder to be social and actually be less isolated. This is also a network effect: my reaction to my loneliness affects someone else's loneliness if I go talk to them (or not).
Volunteer
I have 2 answers to this, depending on how you define "loneliness epidemic"
Genuine loneliness, like what you described, can only really be solved by touching grass. Figure out your hobbies, or find one if you don't have any.
My answer to what a lot of people call "the male loneliness epidemic" as a woman is to say it doesn't exist, you need to figure out how to be attractive. We aren't throwing ourselves on shitty men, and most of the men that complain are complaining because they feel entitled to us and thus put no effort into being attractive. The quickest way to be attractive is have empathy and not be a douche. Listen to peoples needs, and don't feel entitled to our attention
> The quickest way to be attractive is have empathy and not be a douche.
This would suggest most people are attractive. Is an empathic non-asshole really attractive, even without other things that make him interesting (e.g. travel experiences or interesting takes on things)?
If those people got a haircut, brushed their teeth and took a shower, they would be attractive!
To paraphrase Barney Stinson:
When I'm feeling lonely, I stop feeling lonely and feel awesome instead.
There are lots of good suggestions in here. People just need to go do them. And if there are structural impediments to doing them, then eliminate those impediments.
I wasn't getting out enough during the day because I share the car with my wife. So I bought an EBike and now I go out all the time.
I chose to live in a place with things near by that I can go to.
Whenever I'm thinking, I'd like to go do an activity, but I need something else first, it's usually not true, or the other thing I need is easy to get.
People just need to decide to stop doing things that make them unhappy.
It's so interesting to see the tech community all angsty about the loneliness epidemic.
20 years ago, the Pope warned of the coming "epidemic of loneliness" that the tech industry would bring us, and the tech industry laughed at him. They said he was just an old man who didn't understand and that technology would bring us together in unity and happiness.
And yet, here we are 20 years later, and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't submit an article to HN about loneliness.
Easy, same as obesity and environmental problems: fix the built environment by building places for humans, not cars. It all stems from that in North America.
IMO it is not possible. The world has changed. Until modernity, people made connections out of economic necessity. Either you get a wife or have fun farming by yourself - literally it doesn't work so you die. Either you're friends with the baker or you don't get bread or get absolute shittiest-quality goods and you die. And so on. Shut-ins didn't exist because it was physically impossible to survive without leaving your room. No UberEats, no Amazon Prime, no remote work, no internet.
When the economic necessity to form relationships with others disappeared, the naked truth was exposed - most people don't fucking like each other. Yes, when you're starving to death you'll be friends with the guy who has potatoes, but when you can buy the damn potatoes yourself in the supermarket, you're not going to tolerate his smelly ass.
Most friendships form over common participation in a project. Doing something together, knowing that you have to put up with the other one to achieve higher goals. Without those goals, there are no incentives to deal with others. And what goals am I supposed to have if by doing nothing I already have a roof above my head, full fridge, clean house, and an entire library of video games?
Think about the main message of feminism: "Girl, you can make it in life without a man. Don't settle for an aggressive alcoholic just because that's the only option. You can do it yourself.". It perfectly captures how forming relationships turned from an asset into a liability.
The deeper you get the lonlier you get.
And that can happen even when you are among 1000s of people, not just alone , if you are among people thinking of something else, staring into the void or that you can't connect etc. you are a deep person.
Deep person + deep thinker is the worse. Also people aren't doing them any favor by singing the praise of being a deep person and a deep thinker.
It also has to do with abundance of everything and being not in need of cooperating 24/7/365 to avoid starving ....some people slip into deep thinking and deep emotional introspection...yeah fuck that
I know homeless people and rich people, equally lonely and unfulfilled and unhappy. I don't know what the solution is. I'm trying to figure it out. But I know that throwing money at this problem does little to solve it. I know from experience.
Move to Latin America
Why do they feel they can't join any local groups? Fix that.
i wonder if a resurgence in social clubs like the Elks club/Moose lodge would ever catch on.
i don't know how big they ever were in the past, but it seemed like it was commonly represented in media in the 50s/60s (e.g., the flintstones had a parody of the lodge which would suggest that they were common enough that people were familiar)
I posted a comment that gives a few of my thoughts as to why. How do you propose those problems be solved?
Well, first, props to you because you're actually doing something to initiate contact. That's a really big deal; more people need to do that. (Maybe even some that don't wrestle with loneliness.)
But what's you're next step? Someone comes up and marks that they feel really lonely. Do you get contact information? Invite them to something? (Invite them to what? You may have to create something - a board game night at your house, or a "lonely people shopping together" time at a grocery store, or something. You probably have to create that "something", because you're the one who's able to at least reach out, and the ones who are responding probably aren't there yet.)
You're finding people that need something. The next step is to find a way to connect them - with you, or with each other, or with someone.
For any activity you come up with, some people won't be able to, due to time or temperament or personality or something. So maybe what you need is more than one. (Eventually. Look, don't get overwhelmed by that. Just one is the next step, in my view. And maybe some helpers.)
So your proposal is to start an ad hoc friend group with people who come up to me, and try to become friends with them personally?
I'm not sure I'm the right person for that. I live in a suburb, not the city that I do the surveys in. And I'm extraordinarily boring, and too old.
It seems that I should try to think bigger. Try to find a way to help these people connect with each other. Something in person, not an app like Hinge. Maybe, hold a sign that says ad hoc meet and greet at such and such time and place, after collecting a list of common interests and putting those interests on the same sign that says the time and date. That could work.
In my city, an older guy organized an “urban hiking group” where he would plan walking routes through the city, usually stopping at a restaurant for brunch. It was very popular, but probably a lot of work. He was semi-retired, so he had the time to do it. He did research to have talking points on the history of some spots we passed, like a tour guide.
It was a great low key meet up. You didn’t have to make friends with the organizer. If you were walking with someone you didn’t really like in the group, it was easy to drift to talk to someone else.
go volunteer. they're needed everywhere. problem solved. most able-bodied lonely people are that way because they can't be arsed to get off the damn couch. they would just rather discuss loneliness on social media. I can't be arsed either, but I don't feel lonely when I'm alone, which is the majority of the time.
I think part of the problem is that social media is normalized and it is easy. It is way easier to engage socially (or at least you feel like you're engaging socially) with likes and lurking and stuff. It is way harder to put on pants and go out and it is normalized to do so (phrasing like bedrotting is super casual, whereas it is actually really hard to maintain an eating disorder because you have to be constantly hiding it from people).
Also I think there's more groups whose social norms online teach you to be repulsive offline and again there's not enough social pushback against it. We do need to be harder on casual edginess online because it is teaching habitual behaviors that make it hard to engage socially. Your 50 year old hiking buddy is not going to understand your soycuck joke you are trying to show him on your phone. Your average wine mom at women-only book club is not going to love if you insist on talking about banning trans people from the club because they're "men invading the women's spaces" especially when there's very likely 0 trans people to exclude in the first place on account of trans people being rare.
Lastly there is usually a ton of stuff happening but the instructions on how to engage with it is nebulous. People who know the algorithm find it easy, the people who don't know the algorithm find it super hard. And IDK how to solve that because there's so much going on in people's heads that they don't realize the people around them seriously aren't scrutinizing them that much. There's like a socialization death spiral where every small awkward interaction hurts way more when you don't have enough experience to know that the small awkward interactions are normal. So you can't tell someone "just go to book club" because they'll go, have 1 normal situation like mishearing someone and then decide they are so embarrassed they can never go to book club again-- but since it is so normal it happens at every social event and they end up lonely.
You actually bring up the biggest obstacle to my tentative idea for this Sunday, of holding up a sign that points to a time/place for a casual conversation with strangers. I thought this would be a good way to get very lonely passers-by out of their comfort zone and into a situation where they have a chance to make friends and bond, but the absolute diversity of interests is the main show stopper. My first thought was to essentially avoid sensitive topics on the poster, such as religion and politics, but it still leaves the huge diversity of potential common interests open. So I started doing some research on the most common hobbies that people have in cities and that can be talked about casually, in hopes of finding like 5 ot 6 to write on the sign to get people into the coffee shop.
There is no easy solution to this problem. It's a conflux of many factors. (There are no more "third spaces". Too much rent-seeking behavior. The centralization of platforms consolidates power and creates inertia. The dopamine-hacking of recommendation algorithms. Social media in general.)
https://soatok.blog/2025/09/16/are-you-under-the-influence-t...
I've written at length about related topics. Unfortunately, there are powerful invested interests in keeping things shitty. It's often critiqued as "capitalism is bad" but we're seeing today is better described as techno-feudalism than capitalism.
Lobby to shut down social media that doesn't encourage real life interaction. I honestly think things will keep getting worse until we unplug them.
I remember when Facebook was used to promote and estimate attendance for local punk shows. That ship definitely sailed.
Loneliness epidemic started 30+ years ago. There were books written in the 90s about it(bowling alone). Nothing modern can be blamed on it. If anything, social media is helping the crisis; not causing.
The 'fixes' has been established for just as long. My nearby 'community centre' was built in 1987. Has this been successful at all? Not in the least bit.
The reality of what is causing this hasnt changed. Without fixing this key problem, the crisis obviously has continued for 30+ years. I'm not nostradamus here. However, from many previous conversations it's crazy how absolutely nobody is ready to talk about the cause. They'd rather just call it a paradox or feign ignorance for why this is happening. Honestly it's rather conspiratorial creating when you think about it.
Out of curiousity I asked what gemini 3 pro thinks.
1. Revival of third places.
As if that hasnt been tried for 30+ years... fail.
2. replacing 'socializing' with "service"
The idea is that cleaning a park will somehow make you less lonely is laughable at best.
3. Bridging the generational gap.
Elderly teach the young skills? while youth teach digital literacy. My community centre literally has this. F mark.
4. Urban design and walkability.
We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
5. digital hygiene
social media is a sedative? crazy.
I love gemini, but man they are getting it so wrong. All of this will likely just caused the crisis to be worse in my opinion.
To me, has this been done unintentionally through the typical 'road to hell is paved with good intentions' or has this been intentionally done and maintained? The refusal to acknowledge the cause seems to push toward intentional. Guess we just live with the loneliness epidemic.
>4. Urban design and walkability.
>We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
That doesn't mean the point is wrong.
The US bet on the wrong urban planning ideas, and now it is facing the consequences. This is not unique to the US; other places have fallen into the same trap.
What is the cause in your view, then?
This feels overly cynical and reductive. A problem existing for 30 years doesn’t mean modern forces haven’t made it worse or changed its shape. Bowling Alone didn’t argue “nothing can help,” it showed that social participation declined as work hours grew, commutes lengthened, communities hollowed out, and institutions lost funding.
Those trends didn’t stop in the 90s, they accelerated! I lived through it myself. Social media isn’t the sole cause, but it clearly displaces time, lowers the incentive to show up in person, and offers connection without obligation.
Saying “community centers existed in 1987” misses the point... they stopped working when participation stopped being the default and became optional, inconvenient, and socially risky. People feel worn out and get "good enough" at home... so they choose the poor substitute. This also mirrors american food consumption habits.
This doesn’t require a conspiracy. It’s an emergent outcome of optimizing society for efficiency, mobility, and consumption instead of continuity and belonging. Service, third places, walkability, and intergenerational spaces aren’t magic fixes... and loneliness isn’t solved by “hanging out,” it’s solved by repeated, role-based, low-friction interaction where people are needed. We all but know how to fix this problem, there are piles of research behind it.
The real failure isn’t that these ideas were tried, it’s that we stripped away the economic and cultural structures that made them functional at all, then declared them ineffective. Pretending that nothing structural can help just guarantees the problem.
You can't.
It is up to them to change. They won't change, and this "loneliness epidemic" is starting to become really fucking annoying. It is almost a grift now to shit on tech by mids.
These people don't want to go outside or engage with other people.
It is like people who are drug/alcohol/tobacco/gambling/sex/etc addicts. It is up to the individual to change. How is it anyone else's responsibility?
I surveyed a bunch of people on reddit, discords, etc. a couple years ago to figure out why people are lonely, back when this whole "loneliness" movement was starting.
A lot of these people say they have "trauma" or some other mental block as a primary reason why they're lonely (btw they're in discords with thousands of people, and playing online games with OTHER PEOPLE). I'm sorry but everyone has shit going on in their lives. You aren't really that special.
Maybe 1-5% of people have dealt with actual, really horrific trauma, and even they have managed to go on to have fulfilling lives. They chose to move on.
I'm an asshole, no doubt, and I've dealt with my own traumas in the past that were honestly way more fucking horrible than "I'm shy" or "nobody likes [insert some esoteric niche]" and guess what? Who cares? Go outside.
There is no helping these people, or anyone to be honest, unless they really want to make a change. These aren't starving Sudanese or people who live in India or something where you can't just "go outside". Mfs be in CALIFORNIA and crying. I'd understand if they were lonely because they were living in Iraq or Venezuela or something.
The only solution is we build a Matrix, and put all these people into it. I will bet 100% of my net worth and any earnings from my entire lineage for perpetuity that they will still fucking complain and be lonely. I was really hopeful for metaverse, too bad but maybe there's still a chance.
I never want to hear about "loneliness epidemic" again, to me it just sounds like DEI/ESG/Eacc and other bs grifting now to hate on tech. Everything is a choice. You press A in a video game even though you're lonely, why not press A to go outside?
These people aren't lonely, they exist in massive online echo chambers with other people. And honestly? I think they like it. Most drug addicts loved being on drugs even though it was a horrific existence. They don't like it when they're narcan'd during OD. But when they decide to get clean, I am proud that they actually did it how amazing is that? SO these lonely people have to stop crying and step outside.
on the topic of platonic friendship, I couldn’t disagree more with a lot of the comments. I have plenty of friends yet I don’t do clubs and will never, ever do organized religion. People advising it are religious freaks in my opinion. Some of my best friends took this advice to go to church and bible study. They complain every time I see them about the people in their church. Meanwhile I’ve made more and better friends online. Its not hard, get on social media, find an influencer/streamer that matches your vibes and go jump into the official or adjacent discord community and play video games with people in that community. If you engage in active listening and are a decent person, you will easily make plenty of friends. Additionally, I think in person hangouts are kinda mid, but I hangout with my friends in-person (at a minimum) every other day when I weight lift. Like seriously, I often would rather chill in Discord than go and hang out in-person.
To me the male loneliness epidemic is more about a lack of ability to find meaningful romantic relationships. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and as somebody who has been doing online dating since it essentially started, I am pretty sure that the problem (or at least a major piece) is that match group has commodified romantic relationships.
I know a lot of people will focus on meeting people in public or whatever, but it has been my experience that dating has become completely garbage and a large part is because all of the current popular dating apps disallow index search and funnel you into swiping. From a mate selection perspective this makes no sense. Not only does it muddy the waters about who is actually a real match, but it also does psychic damage to make so many shallow judgements.
Back before match group bought OkCupid, I used to have excellent results finding people their who shared a lot of common ground with, messaging them with a thoughtful message, and going on dates. Swiping is an absolute crap shoot, and often I feel like I am being used.
from what I've looked into, on an individual level, the main thing I need to do is learn how to be a good company for others. Be for other strangers what I would want them to be for me. But it's easier said then done.
From a practical perspective, there is the whole "3rd place" issue. How can I open a business that caters to the public, who will just sit there and loiter on their phones and laptops all day and be profitable. Starbucks sort of did it in the 90s, but they're not tolerating that anymore.
Forget businesses, can you walk to a park, a beach, a hiking trail on a whim and run into people? Can you hold events, watch parties,etc.. on public places easily like that? It's not easy at all these days.
I blame cars. I despise the idea that electric cars are the replacement to cars, without considering changing transportation so that it is more efficient with trams, trains,etc... The side-effect of that is you run into strangers on public transport. This doesn't just affect the loneliness epidemic, it is in my opinion a direct cause of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, and of course obesity. You can't even be homeless and sleep on the streets these days. Even the park benches are built to be hostile to anyone that wants to chill there for too long.
Society was restructured between 1950s-1980s so that it is suburbanized. It's all about the family unit, single family homes, freeways and roads built to facilitate single family homes (after WW2, starting families was all the rage, plus white-flight didn't help). Shopping centers built to cater to consumers driving from their suburban homes. Malls you can walk in, after you drove some time to park there. Even when you buy food items at grocery stores, pay attention to serving sizes, it is improving a little, but you'll see at minimum a serving size of two typically.
Society was deliberately engineered so that you have more reasons to spend more as a consumer. Families spend more per-capita. suburbs mean more houses purchased, entire generations renting with their bank as a landlord via mortgages, home repair, home insurance, car insurance, car repairs, gas stations for cars where you can get the most unhealthy things out there in the most frequented and convenient places. Make kids, make wives, make ex-wives, get sick the whole lot of you for hospitals, health insurances,etc..
It wasn't planned by some central committees or secret cabal, but it was planned nonetheless by economists and policy makers.
If everyone just got married and had kids, they won't be lonely would they? you don't need to hang out at park with strangers, you'll feel less of a member of your local neighborhood who look and think like you, and start thinking more as one people.
All the interpersonal interactions and opportunities to build relationships with people are commercialized and controlled.
For one reason or another, people are just not getting married in their early 20's anymore, or having that many kids later on like before. Even when you get married, your interaction is by design with other married people, who are busy commuting in their cars to and fro work, kids school,kids sports, plays,etc... imagine taking your kids on busses and trains every day to these places which are fairly near-by, by necessity. you'll be spending time with them instead of operating machinery. They'll be meeting stranger kids from other schools, seeing random strangers all the time, you'll be talking to randos as you walk to the train, wait on the bus,etc.. but this can't be monetized.
Blame the economists and policy makers if you want to blame someone.
If you want solutions, let's talk explicitly about the policy changes that need to happen.
Too much traffic? tear down the freeways instead of building more lanes.
It costs $10B to build a simple metro line? pass better laws to regulate bidding and costs, investigate fraud and waste.
But to dig even deeper into the root of the matter, look at what is celebrated and prized in society. Most of its ills come from there. For most Americans, it is inconceivable to be able to just go out of your house without any plans or destination in mind and just start walking and see where you end up, and who you run into. That's a crucial and tragic ability that's been lost. We really have more urgent things to address to be fair, but ultimately, this can only be solved one small step at a time, but also big sweeping changes are needed. The first step is to define and accept what the problem is, and where the blame and cause lie.
>Blame the economists and policy makers if you want to blame someone.
I wouldn't go as far as blaming, but American society should at least acknowledge their responsibility for this. Its not like the KGB imposed zoning laws in Texas. You (Americans) did. Americans chose the urban model they wanted.
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build another software platform
/s
This community is not going to be the one to solve that problem, sorry.
HN has some odd people that don't jump to tech solutions for everything. Plus I'm banned from reddit for 3 days for making a dark joke, and besides, my reddit post asking the same thing went nowhere. At least people here engage in good faith and depth.
I actually wanted to suggest government funded online dating, so we aren't beholden to godawful Tinder and its clones (OkCupid was great for me until it got bought out and turned into Tinder).
I have a slightly different angle on that - Government mandated open algorithms, exposure of sort factors (are you in the back of the line in the swipe queue), and monthly disclosure of male/female ratios. Yeah, it'll effectively crush their business models and then they actually need to start solving the problems they've created (extreme superficiality, not background checking users, not addressing bots, not acknowledging that US has an implicit class system)
I'm trying to figure out if I have enough energy to try to pitch this to my representatives office, but I don't know if 30-40% adults never marrying or falling birth rates would be arguments that democratic politician would care to act upon.
OkCupid was great before it got turned into a swiping app. Such a shame.
No. We are too busy worrying about an invading USA.
The people who push "no hello" on their co-workers and want to stay home all day are lonely now. Shucks.
"Don't talk about your kids at work, it's off-putting"... then proceeds to talk about their dog every day. :)
Yeah, a lot of this discussion does seem pretty myopic sometimes.