The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround.<p>You can take action, like get a new hobby that is just an okay activity but the people are great. Work on becoming a kick-ass friend yourself and cook for people and all that good stuff. But you'll do all that against massive societal forces. A few decades back you'd join one of the few organizations or clubs that happened in your area, and instantly be in a reliable community (if you adapt a little - let's ignore all the downsides for a moment). Friends would hook you up with a partner who's as nerdy as you. When I was young random strangers had regularly great conversations on trains. A city street was a village, you knew <i>everyone</i>.<p>That is not coming back anytime soon.
I live in a big city, but I'm terribly lonely.<p>- I live alone.
- I work hybrid, but when I go into the office, it's more or less empty and I spend all my time on zoom calls.
- My family lives far away.
- I'm single.<p>Most weeks, my only social interaction is at the local bar, where I'm a regular, or various dates from apps. Excesses of both of these is unhealthy in different ways.<p>I've been pushing myself to go to meetups and hobby groups, but my hobbies are mostly solo ones (probably a bi-product of spending time alone), and I have terrible decision paralysis. It ends up being a lot of work, and not at all something I'm excited about or that seems _fun_.<p>I don't really have a solution here, but something tells me I'm not alone in being in this situation.
There's been a lot of talk recently about effects of loneliness and the "loneliness epidemic". What a lot of this lacks, including this article, is a good and correct definition of loneliness. They seem to use the lazy & inaccurate definition of "spending significant time alone", which is very different to being lonely. There's a lot of people who are now able to spend more time alone than before and are happy with that.<p>Some of the academics I've heard discussing this define loneliness as when a person's social interactions are significantly less than their desired amount of social interactions. It's an individual's perception, not measured time. That seems like a much better measurement as it takes into account human variability.
I the last few years I had to move contries a few times and basically rebuild my entire social circle each time – and it made me aware how much of finding friends is just a matter of logistics. I think that much of the loneliness problem comes down to people just not having a process that helps them meet new friends.<p>In most places, there's a surprising amount of events where you can meet new people. For me it was open boardgame nights – the difficult part was actually beating the inertia and going there, but once I did, I think I made about an average of one new friend per two outings, as long as I remembered to message them afterwards.
Not being lonely used to be automatic as society forced you to interact and meet with lots of people just to function.<p>Religion might force you to church where you meet most of the community regularly. It goes far beyond just the purpose of religion. You'll know about every life event of every member, learn about businesses in the community, might meet new friends or even a spouse. The only social institute that comes close is school but school is not forever.<p>To stay in touch with friends, you were forced to actually go to them.<p>To look up information, you were forced to go to a library.<p>To discover music, forced to go to a record shop.<p>To eat whilst not cooking, forced to go to a restaurant.<p>Top enjoy photography or whichever other hobby, forced to go to a hobby club.<p>So without religion and post-school, as you maximally use all technology and conveniences available, you're now not meeting anybody. Unless you purposefully organize it. The defaults changed.
There is absolutely no problem with spending time alone, I believe more people should move towards a place where being alone isn't anxiety inducing(easier said than done). Taking a walk alone(no headphones, just your thoughts), spending a couple hours reading a book, going to a restaurant and having a meal by yourself, working on a passion project...these things can be really liberating!<p>Instead our collective alone time is spent with faces stuck in phones and short form media content, as we constantly compare our lives to whatever the latest celebrity is doing, slowly numbing ourself to our own potential and uniqueness.
Not just the US but Europe too.<p>I’m not religious but more and more I think that church (as an institution) had an actual positive effect on local communities. At least as a "force" to keep people together, have a community space etc. A space where you can meet and talk with others. My parents are Anglicans and I always liked the little tea and biscuits after each service. These things matter.
Fortunately as a socially coy software engineer with limited social skills, I've somehow managed to find a partner with similar interests who gets me. However, after dating in New York for a few years, even with more candor my conversion rate to a third date from Hinge was 5%. This is based on around 40 dates in 2021. For some reason, dating is more palatable for skinny weird guys on the east coast?<p>Women have insane standards these days, for men who make less than $100k or don't already have a very strong social circle the options are dismal. I had women ghost me or leave the table when they realized I didn't work in finance, made less than $400k or wasn't willing to spend $250 on the first date. Fortunately, only in one instance did someone "bring a friend".<p>I'm almost 30, and to be honest, outside of friends I see every few weeks and my partner most forms of socializing seem incredibly trite and like a waste of time. I also stopped drinking because of my health and it just no longer being appealing. Meetups seem fake, and usually end up being people who pretend to be friends.<p>After college I joined a really cool small social "club" for young entrepreneurs (unfortunately it's no longer) and it was great. Consistent friends I'd see 3-4 nights a week etc etc. However, once it folded basically nobody stayed in touch - ended up being kind of fake friends :( .<p>Good luck out there friends :)
>Spending less time with friends is not a <i>best practice by most standards</i>, and it <i>might</i> contribute to other troubling social trends — isolation, worsening mental health (particularly among adolescents), rising aggressive behavior and violent crime.<p>In typical, low-effort WP fashion, these are just unsubstantiated claims. Why not take the few minutes to do some actual journalism... ah, because WP.<p>I'm not sold on the truth of these claims, though I am interested and willing to be influenced as to whether this is something truly concerning. Articles like this do nothing to further convince me.
I would put this down to a growing part of the population feels financially insecure.<p>As you grow older, spending quality time with people also requires spending $. If you are barely making some savings, you probably won't feel comfortable in scaling up your social life.<p>It is surprising that the author recognizes the time period/age group...<p>> These new habits are startling — and a striking departure from the past. Just a decade ago, the average American spent roughly the same amount of time with friends as Americans in the 1960s or 1970s.<p>...but cannot (does not dare to?) make the correlation that financial insecurity has exploded.
What a <i>fantastically</i> low-effort op-ed. Not only is there complete hand-waiving of the negative effects of being alone - literally, there is <i>no evidence given whatsoever</i> of how being alone might be harmful to us - but the article just abruptly ends a couple paragraphs after this. There is literally no "Here's why" to follow up on the title ("Here’s why we should reverse that.").<p>It's like both the writer and the editor just... forgot to include the second half of the article. Did the guy have a stroke and die at the keyboard and they decided to print what he'd gotten through?<p>Meanwhile, the comments section is chock full of people debating the merits of something with no evidence. This is why journalism is supposed to be held to a higher standards. The human chickens will cluck-cluck-cluck about anything you put in front of them that seems mildly controversial. Maybe that's the point of this kind of shoddy writing. Generates comments/engagement without saying anything of value.
Maybe familiarity has bred contempt? We have more insights - accurate or not - into each other. The internet has placed us all closer together and more visible to one another where previously we could stay in our social bubbles and communities. Part of why it was easier to get along with people even less than a decade ago was there was a social distance, where that we were different made us more open to one another, and now that we are all in the same single power struggle, our circles have reduced their radii. The whole ideological thing has made us repulsive to one another by saying we are in a zero sum power struggle for equality, somehow against one another. Our differences are no longer complementary, they are intersectional and oppositional, and from what I can tell, almost irreconcilable. If you want to reverse this trend, just ask yourself if you have judged someone, and then look at what reversing that will take.
> You can help reverse these trends today without waiting for the researchers and policymakers to figure it all out. It’s the holidays: Don’t skip Thanksgiving with your family. Go to that holiday party (or throw one yourself). Go hang out with friends for coffee, or a hike, or in a museum, or a concert — whatever. You will feel better, create memories, boost your health, stumble across valuable information — and so will your companions.<p>So it's not "we should reverse that" but "you should reverse that". I'm always suspicious of text filled with "we", "us" , "our" where the group is never well defined. This is an opinion piece, written by an economist, that finds it "safe to assume" things. It is also notable that the author never really justifies that Americans chose to be alone, they just did.<p>All in all, I think it's too light to be taken seriously. For example, is this the first time in history that people are spending more time alone? If not, can we find some events or context that caused this? What were the consequences? Did things change? How? What breaks my heart is that there's a good chance someone, somewhere has spent a lot of time and energy studying this topic and sharing the results for everyone to benefit, but instead here's a piece trying to make people feel guilty about actions they may not have control over.
When post like these come around, it's always someone saying how they resonate and feel isolated or lonely and then someone suggesting how they can get out more, or do dinner parties or host gatherings/play-dates or whatever. Usually, if they're not doing it already, they're probably not the type to know how or feel comfortable (like myself) but would probably attend if the opportunity came around. There seems to be a mix of extroverts here who seem able to pull this off and other types who would do things once someone else took the initiative to make it happen, especially if it was relevant. I'm guessing a lot of people on this site have things in common.<p>What I'm getting at, is it reminded me of the flyertalk[0] forums. Some Frequent Flyers host these things called DOs/meet-ups[1][2][3] at the hubs they fly into or their base cities. Maybe Hacker News could use something like that. A lot of people seem to like travel, or have disposable income, or could just set it up in their region so it's close to drive. Just seems like a lot of people here already have things in-common, including a lack of being able to meet new friends. Personally, I'm not the type that knows anything about how to host gatherings. But, from the sounds of things, there might be some here who excel at it.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trending.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trending.php</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/1015875-consolidated-do-list-thread.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/1015875-consol...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/2006931-sea-meetup-do.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/2006931-sea-me...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-canada-aeroplan/2013877-virtual-ac-do-every-saturday-until-after-covid.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-canada-aeroplan/2013877-...</a>
Americans are mean to each other. We didn’t used to be. Various explanations exist. Isolation like many behaviors can be thought of as a defense mechanism, a reaction. Solutions are obvious. What made us different in the past?
My area's birth rate is approaching Japan's. Although this was always a bit of a lonely place, being alone is now almost unavoidable. Choosing to be alone and being used to being alone look and feel like the same thing, but their root cause is different.
What I (non-US) observed:<p>non-U.S. people when talking about their own medical issues: I <i>have</i> this medical issue, I <i>wonder</i> if I should see a doctor, the cause may be this.<p>U.S. people when talking about their own medical issues: I <i>had</i> this medical issue, I <i>saw</i> a doctor, and the cause was this.<p>non-U.S. people when talking about their own divorce: I <i>am</i> thinking about divorcing my wife/husband.<p>U.S. people when talking about their own divorce: We divorced last week.
My girlfriend and I moved into a small apartment building and got 4 other families with kids to move into the other units. We’re trying to create a more supportive and social environment for us and our daughter: chicagofamilyhousing.org
This isn't much, and i posted about it last week, but if you feel lonely working at home , join our chat to work with friends using the pomodoro technique. Can be 20 minutes or 45 minutes session and it somehow feels good to be focused with company. And it's no longer called pomochat but remoteyo: <a href="https://remoteyo.com" rel="nofollow">https://remoteyo.com</a>
Tangentially related, the urban planning focused YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" recently did a video on the decline of the "third place" (i.e., places other than home and work) in American cities: <a href="https://youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg</a>
Governments should subsidize in-person interactions -- especially for adults. Darts, trivia, volleyball, book club, escape rooms, group therapy. These kind of things would help bring more people together and could help reverse trends of isolated experiences like doomscrolling, social media envy, etc.
It's a good thing people are choosing to be alone instead of in unmerited relationships and dates that don't get anywhere. I have already spent too much time on dating websites and awkward social events trying to get to know people and none of them worked out. Society has changed and old norms don't apply anymore. People are more career-focused and would rather spend time with themselves than with someone with who they don't have anything in common.<p>The ratio of women compared to men on dating websites says a lot. Hence, women are choosing to be picky and men have no option but to be accepting of everything. This didn't work out in the long run and we are seeing its effects.<p>Welcome to reality.
This is because more and more people are moving to cities.<p>When you are in a city, you have everything at your fingertips. You don't like your current friends? No problem, 1 million people live here, I can find more.<p>When you are in a rural area, you live in a town of 1,000 people, you know everyone and everyone knows you. You can't be alone. You can't go out and find new friends. You can't find a new plumber or electrician - there's only one of each in town.<p>Rural areas have much more connectiveness, but not urban areas. There are so many people, I really don't care about the people who live 2 doors down. In a rural community, you do.<p>Of course, not all people in rural or urban areas are like this, but generally yeah.<p>I remember one time, after living only in a large city for 2 years and never leaving it, I went to a rural area and went for a walk along this street. Some dude was walking the other way. He smiled at me and said "Hello." My immediate reaction was, "What do you want? I don't have any money to give you." That was my automatic thought. I knew he wasn't a panhandler, that is a city thing, and the rural area I went to was upper middle class rural area. But that was my first thought. "Why are you talking to me, what do you want, I have no money to give you."
Kind of shocked this trend applied to parents during the pandemic. With daycares and schools shut-down I have no idea how parents not only got alone time but the trend went upward.
I don't want to disagree with this kind of article because it's talking about a real issue, but it pretty much takes a couple concrete numbers and tries asserting that they are just "facts of life". For example:<p>> The percentage decline is also similar for the young and old; however, given how much time young people spend with friends, the absolute decline among Americans age 15 to 19 is staggering.<p>This "given how much time young people spend with friends" just sounds off to me, like it's supposed to be some sort of constant value, and that human nature, social dynamics, etc are fixed to historical quantities.<p>On the one hand, should young people spend more time with friends? Probably. But on the other hand, this sort of "facts of life" type of assertion comes off as manipulative
What is loneliness people speak of? I am alone and I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. I am happy and content. I have fun. I am fine just entertaining myself or going out to do things. I'd say I am by myself 95% of the time of every day.<p>Is loneliness related to depression?
A few thoughts:<p>1. The internet means we have many forms of entertainment available without needing to go anywhere.<p>2. Many of those are social activities, even though we are physically alone. This is completely different from being totally isolated (as implied by the article).<p>3. The declining economic situation affects the ability of people to pursue leisure activities that would involve actually going somewhere that we might meet up with others.<p>I believe that within a few years, comfortable AR and VR goggles and glasses will come out, and they will pick up mass adoption. This will lead to a huge increase in social activities, and they will be almost equivalent to truly being in person, especially once eye-tracking becomes popular. Virtual environments and AR teleportation using things like neural radiance fields will be quite realistic.
I’m wondering if “time alone” includes time spent virtually, with friends.<p>I know it’s not the same as actually being in the same physical place, as others, but, for instance, gamers spend a <i>ton</i> of time together. Probably more than they would IRL.
Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and Forever Peace series of novels chronicle this with pretty decent speculation.<p>He goes from war, to loneliness, to very low birth rates in society to rising same sex unions, to interesting alternative unions -- all designed by the governments of the time to support the martial future society.<p>A fascinating pair of books to read that speculate on the future.<p>(Please don't downvote me for talking about the damn books)
I need to answer this because I solved this problem as a super introvert. This reply will get buried.<p>Quite honestly, I realized I was boring and my life was boring. I had a boring job with no travel that didn’t involve meeting anyone interesting.<p>I quit my boring career and deliberately filtered for:<p>- has a technical element but not software development
- travel, or interact with a lot of people as a result of the job
- has some interesting exciting, creative element<p>If your life sucks. It sucks. I used to be hyper depressed and tried all these superficial mental self motivation techniques, dating apps, meetups, social groups. It felt totally forced and fake.<p>A lot of people on here said it already: if you are going to a meet up or other event to try to make friends as an introvert. It feels desperate, unnatural, forced and wrong. It doesn’t work because you are doing it out of desperation and bring desperate, negative feelings into it and it doesn’t leave you relaxed and able to connect properly with a bunch of strangers who you are trying to force yourself to talk to.<p>At one point I finally had enough. I said fuck this I am not living like this. It lead me to be way more selective about jobs; I filtered the shit out of every boring ass job. If it was some job sitting inside typing computer codes I didn’t want it. There are unlimited supply.<p>If you want to meet women, work on things related to climate, sustainability and impact. Seriously.<p>You guys are a bunch of boring fucks programming database software. Women don’t want to hear it. Women care about impact and social causes. If I had to do it over again as a developer, I’d pick a job with an impact, climate, sustainability or democracy or emerging markets element. Unlimited interesting and educated women in those fields to talk to.<p>Further more, your job is no longer fucking boring.<p>Sorry - you can transition programming skills into fields with a real world impact and your social circle will automatically explode and suddenly you will be hyper interesting and meet a ton of women and people who are passionate and care.<p>It might hurt to hear - but undifferentiated introverted nerd number 40 million is like krypontite to females. You have nothing going on inside your soul that is creative.<p>Women are emotions. If you are programming rust on embedded systems, that is not sexy. Your friends will be boring. Your life will be boring: you will be boring.<p>So I solved it by moving into an externally facing role
That mixed programming with customer and other interactions.<p>Life doesn’t happen behind a desk. I looked in the mirror and I made the call: My life sucks. I need to fix it.<p>Once you realize your life sucks and you are boring, take six months to find a better job which bakes in the above.<p>Can’t help you otherwise.<p>Another great piece of advice is to find immigrants. Americans are not friendly. People in middle America are also more friendly.<p>I met my wife through a secretary who was a super extroverted person.<p>You know what I did? I asked her for help.<p>If you can find female friends, ask them for help. If you can’t make friends with a single woman, an extroverted one, without it being about how she looks that’s another problem.<p>Learn to make friends with women without trying to have sec with them. Women will get you other women.
Working remote has the potential to reverse this, but it will take time. When I had the opportunity to choose where to live around 10 years ago, I chose a city with many of my friends in it. Now if only house prices would drop a bit to make it easier to increase mobility/liquidity...
If they spend time on Facebook or in an online game talking to friends, is it considered alone? Maybe just definition of "alone" changed, as people replaced physical proximity communication with electronic one?
the article doesn't seem attribute the desire to be alone to anything, other than saying that it got a lot more common during the pandemic, but I can say why I prefer to be alone: no judgement, no one makes fun of me, no one takes advantage of me, and no one steals from me.<p>the one and only bad thing for me is that being lonely sucks. I am not lonely, but I probably will be in a decade's time. being alone adds up over time.<p>there is no such thing as a "friend." there are only people who will pretend to be a partner or friend in order to make it easier for them to steal from you unnoticed.<p>people are a toxin and a terrible species of creature.
Why should we reverse it? I'm much more comfortable being alone than having to fit in with what society accepts as proper nowadays. Not to mention how untrustworthy most communities are nowadays.
YES!<p>I could enumerate the enumerable reasons that have been dancing around and torturing my mind for the last years, but frankly I'm exhausted of trying to explain myself. This stuff should be obvious to people.
This spends a lot of time on stats about how much time alone but just seems to rely on the assumption that alone time is bad. Where’s the backing for <i>why</i> we “should” reverse this?
The problem is, climate change makes everyone feel guilty for even being alive. It is like there isn't enough space and everyone wants everyone else to exit the space.
>it seems safe to assume that the decline of our social lives is a worrisome development.<p>Gee ok, could we get any basis for that at all?<p>>Because people said they like things with their friends<p>When did they say that? Presumably before we all changed our preference, resulting in changed behaviour.
There’s nothing wrong with being alone. Being alone creates stress and stress brings mental and physical illness. Once they find a way to block stress, it won’t matter. ISR. Etc.<p>If you want to be around people just get a job. If you want more intimate contact, get a job that brings that. Work at a daycare center and you’ll start to crave loneliness.<p>Loneliness is a liberal thing. Move to the Midwest. People just blurt out whatever they think. They get married at 18 almost as a rule and stay together. They involve themselves in the business of others without asking permission. The idea that loneliness is the new way of the world is just what people in the liberal bubble are seeing.