The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

For the us, I feel like it’s late stage individualism. This is what happens I think when people prioritize themselves over their communities, I think we have less dependence on our communities than ever thanks to the internet and being able to physically avoid community. We have less interaction than before. We can order grocery pickup and not even have to be physically around people for basic life tasks. We order next day delivery on Amazon and don’t even have to go out in the world and be in the physical presence of others :(<p>The article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships<p>I’m grappling with this myself, it requires a lot of energy to form adult friendships. I keep seeing my neighbors out at the playground, I reach out and say hey and hi and ask them how they are doing but stop short of investing the time necessary to form real friendships with them and I know deep down that it’s perpetuating late stage individualism

I&#x27;m not sure what caused this, but I think the expectations of modern friendship have become unrealistic.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s movies and TV, where a &quot;close friend&quot; is more or less a non judgemental therapist that will throw down in a fight for you.<p>What is a close friend? Before we can start asking people if they have any we should probably agree on a definition. If you use the Hollywood standard, then probably none of us have close friends.<p>In my experience, most friends come and go. That&#x27;s OK. People change. Circumstances change. One person is always putting in more effort than the other. Some friends will always be aloof. Some friends will pretend they are independent and don&#x27;t need friendship &quot;like everyone else does,&quot; but they&#x27;re generally full of it. Some friends will seem clingy.<p>Just roll with it.<p>The other challenge is finding people, especially as you get older. I&#x27;ve posted this before, but as you get older you really need to seek out established communities. Sports, trivia nights, things of that nature. Something where you can hop in and immediately meet 5+ people. Then you need to show up, over and over. That&#x27;s how friendships form.<p>At that point, it&#x27;s on you. People are out there and in my experience they are excited to meet new folks.<p>We can write a huge dissertation on why we think The Friendship Recession has happened, but it&#x27;s quite simple. Inertia is human nature. It takes effort to learn something new and join a community where people are practicing that thing. It takes vulnerability and effort. It&#x27;s kinda scary.<p>It&#x27;s a lot harder than turning on YouTube or flipping through TikTok. And most people understandably don&#x27;t want to do hard things, especially after the stresses of work and life.

Back in the day, more children meant more wealth and prosperity for the family. More friends meant more support, bigger communities were stronger against others. It was need based, as they have a need to support and survive by themselves.<p>The nation concept now drains out the need and viability of communities, families and friendships. It&#x27;s like a whale swallowing animals. Animals can no longer keep their own structure and identity once they are inside the whale. They will be disintegrated into individual molecules and become citizens of the whale. Nations do the same. The existence and strength of a nation requires disintegration of internal structures and autonomous bodies. Communities, families and friendships all go against the individualistic nation concept. The best citizens are individual workers with no connections and no opinions and maybe no gender.

I love heavy metal. So I go to metal pubs. I meet people, we talk and listen to each other. I&#x27;ve been talking to the same people for 30+ years but I meet new people EVERY time I venture out. I may see them again, I may not. Who cares?<p>We lend PHYSICAL copies of albums, video games and books to one another. This increases trust, knowledge and love for one another. We share stories about all sorts of things. We create stories by doing things together.<p>This is how friendships are formed and maintained. This is humanity. This is who we are and how we behave.<p>Poverty is the digital world.<p>See you out there!

&gt; The government slowed down its investment in and construction of third spaces—such as community centers, parks, and coffee shops—which has left fewer places for organic social interactions.<p>My anecdotal impression is that people don&#x27;t really use those that are available very much and the drop in investment is because of that.<p>I have organized a few events in community halls over the past few years and I have been struck by just how available the event spaces we looked at were. No conflicts, no competing priorities, nobody using any of the other rooms at the same time, etc. Some communities are no longer bothering to have community halls at all, as nobody really uses them.<p>Where I live, the local community centres are not heavily used. Community social events have dwindled due to being poorly attended. The coffee shops, bars, and pubs have cut seating and replaced it with dedicated pickup areas for those who send in orders or are buying it through a delivery app. Schools have cut all manner of parent activities as the parents don&#x27;t participate.<p>Same thing for anything that isn&#x27;t a flagship park or flagship sports facility. Sure, the top city parks are crowded, but most are pretty empty even on sunny days.<p>So I have to ask, is there actually much demand for more social interaction? As it seems that the drop is mostly in demand, not supply.

I don&#x27;t really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs &#x2F; wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs &#x2F; wk.<p>On a workday, there isn&#x27;t much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat dinner, policing screen time and homework. Then bedtimes and such, following up on the zillion school emails, PTA newsletters, scheduling. If I have 45 min of downtime, typically in the 10-11pm range, if I&#x27;m lucky.<p>On weekends, there&#x27;s all the deferred housework, like cleaning and laundry. Kids have swim and sports. Visits to grandparents, from grandparents. Every now and then we have someone over for a games afternoon, or someone is visiting from out of town, but I really doubt that adds up to 4 hr &#x2F; wk.

The article already mention physical changes (car dependent suburbs, lack of 3rd places) and cultural shift (work as identity and nuclear family) but I think the two last things can be expanded to: we now have higher expectations of friends&#x2F;people we meet.<p>I recently moved back from Asia to Northern Europe, famous for being a place hard to make friends. I made a new friend, when I one day went to the local swimming pool and just started to talk with an old, pensioner guy.<p>He reached out to me later, we set up a coffe chat and now it&#x27;s a biweekly routine.<p>It was a fun story so I told it to friend &amp; partner&#x2F;families. All of my women friends first reaction was caution. &quot;what does he want? Be careful with your drink!&quot;. My guy friends were more perplexed on why I&#x27;d even bother befriending someone almost 50+ year older than me. What&#x27;s there to be gained.<p>I realized a few years back that meeting people with absolute zero expectations is the most fun way. It even worked good on online dating. As long as I enjoy taking to the person (a low bar) it&#x27;s not time wasted.<p>Time is not to be wasted. Everything needs a goal&#x2F;reason. Most people cultivate this mindset and the added expectations on new connections, to me seems like a cultural shift that happened as a result of what the article describes. One can remove that sentiment even with the work&#x2F;nuclear family stuff. (not sure about the physical constraints)

I agree with all the points made in the article, and chuckle to see some comments here (let bad communities fail!) that are manifestations of the lack of vulnerability brought about by living in online, single-player mode.<p>But in my experience, friendship quality is much more important than quantity.<p>I’m only truly friends with people I admire and am interested in, and grow to care about. Some of these friendships happen fast and others are slow burners - they aren’t all alike. But they are definitely hard to come across, particularly in middle age.<p>I believe those friendships give me the kind of benefits that experts suggests we lose in isolation. These are the kinds of friendships you carry with you wherever you are - often wondering what those friends would or do think about the things you are experiencing.<p>On the other hand, I have many acquaintances, some quite longstanding, where the friendship switch never got flipped. Perhaps I am viewed as a bit stand-offish. I am never not gracious but I just don’t have the small talk gene.

People saying it’s impossible with a family have really never frequented third spaces in Europe. Kids go everywhere with their parents and are allowed to roam as long as they remain within sight. The adults make friends and so do the kids. Most importantly, even if hypothetically nuclear families with young children couldn’t do it, younger and older people alike would be able to, which is still a major improvement to the current status quo. Second order effects from the existence of third spaces are simply a more open, pleasant, higher trust society with more independent, resilient adults. Say what you want about GDP, but fact is, I was much happier in Europe than the US and I live in a relatively walkable town close to NYC.<p>Oh, and you can absolutely have friends AND children. I have both.

I&#x27;m way out on the edge of the bell curve in terms of desire for 1 on 1 quality time with friends. Almost everyone enjoys time when it is given to them, but almost no one is proactive. I hear &quot;Thanks so much for reaching out I am so bad at it&quot; from practically everyone. I&#x27;ve concluded that most people simply don&#x27;t have the executive function to manage and overcome such a disconnected social environment.

I am an introvert who prefers solitude to human interaction as my base mode. I find most interactions to be draining and unnecessary. They basically only increase or serve as a source of stress while offering nothing meaningful that somehow improves my mental state. I probably had this tendency but never had enough solitude to really recognize how much I preferred it. It is actually addicting and almost impossible to go back. I understand that in terms of social or financial success it’s not conducive or beneficial but in terms of spiritual growth it is. Even for me it’s certainly a useful skill to be able to connect with others and share experiences or material goods. I see many articles about a loneliness crisis so I guess for most people solitude is actually an unwanted state of affairs that causes them distress.

Almost across the board in western countries, people have less friends, weaker friendships, and there’s less dating, sex, and marriage happening.<p>IMO this is the biggest challenge ahead of us. What’s the point of all this amazing life enhancing technology if we’re lonely, sad, and severed from our tribes.

No-one ever suggests the simplest explanation... maybe socialising is just getting worse?<p>Where I live there were long covid lockdowns and most people expressed relief about not having to go to parties and make painful small-talk with strangers. They were already forcing themselves to go to social engagements because they didn&#x27;t want to be seen as a loser, but they weren&#x27;t enjoying it. This is historically unusual, people didn&#x27;t see socialising as a chore necessary to maintain one&#x27;s mental health a century ago.<p>Every article on the issue though takes as its starting point that socialising is obviously great and there must just be small obstacle which prevents people doing more of it. IMO there wouldn&#x27;t be an epidemic of self-diagnosed social anxiety &#x2F; high-functioning autism &#x2F; &#x27;introverts who get drained by social interactions&#x27; if people were actually enjoying their social engagements.

One curiosity I&#x27;ve noticed about close friendships through religious communities compared to other modern circles of &quot;friendship&quot;: it is largely independent of age, socioeconomic status, and stage of life. In every other friendship circle I&#x27;ve been a part of, the basis has either been age (school&#x2F;college), economics (work), extended family, or skill (sports and hobbies like motorbikes). Some friendships seem to be made through some shared interest (somebody here mentioned heavy metal, i consider you guys my friends on HN) but those tend to be heavily segmented by age&#x2F;skill&#x2F;socioeconomic status too. Religious communities are the only friendship circle I&#x27;ve ever been in where you easily connect with both young and old, regardless of skill&#x2F;ability or stage of life. The unifying factor is &quot;belief&quot; and adherence to tradition. To this day, they remain the strongest and most stable relationships over time and space, even as we moved cities, changed jobs, and entered new stages of life.

I wonder how much the polarization of politics contributes to this. I have friends on opposite sides of the political spectrum than me, but were able to basically segment off that area of discussion to enjoy each others company in other areas. It may be because we go back 20+ years with many shared experiences. I would guess many friendships do not have that level of bedrock to ground them, so developments like the recent political climate can easily uproot them

Can we say that friendship has shifted from being an assumed part of life to something you have to consciously work at. It made me realize how rare certain friendships have become - like with my two best friends, we can go a long time without talking, but when we meet up, it feels like no time has passed at all. We don&#x27;t message constantly, but when one of us is going through something, we&#x27;re always there for each other. It feels like that kind of bond is getting harder to find these days.

It’s not what it used to be. I find people are more self-centered than ever. What to speak of friends even family will not spare a moment for you. Many couples do not have kids for this reason. Who wants to make that sacrifice. Covid accelerated this. People got burned out, then realized they needed to take care of themselves better since no one else will (especially after layoffs). I don’t think the pendulum has swung back yet. Obviously I’m generalizing here and this is biased by my own experiences.

&gt; while the percentage of those with ten or more close friends has fallen by nearly threefold<p>I genuinely think it&#x27;s not possible to maintain close friendship with this many people, especially if they&#x27;re not in the same group. Or perhaps my definition of a &quot;close friend&quot; differs from an average american, both now and back then.

It’s crazy out there for a 40yo.<p>One thing I’m considering is that maybe it’s ok if friends don’t reciprocate. I think some people just have to be the inviters or relationships fall apart.

If you don’t see your friends in person, you’ll lose the thread, and it’s hard to pick up again.<p>Of course that’s an over generalization but for the most part it’s true.<p>Make an effort, make the calls, maintain the relationship by giving it your time, in person. Or the friendship will wither and die.

While I can attest to the accuracy, concerning the US, at least a few European countries where I live(d) do not appear to suffer of the same issue.

1. People have lower tolerance for jerks.<p>2. A few bad apples can spoil a group.<p>3. Maintaining a group is a thankless job.<p>4. Third places are money making establishments now rather than community focused. So people save up to go to the ones that they&#x27;ll remember. So there&#x27;s competing money for these attractions, and the experience undergoes enshitification.<p>Solutions?<p>- lower the cost of community space so more people can enjoy them.<p>- social etiquette needs be enforced through culture. Conformity has its benefits. We don&#x27;t need planes to land because Johnny had too much to drink.

The content was alright but the fade-in animation of every single paragraph was annoying. This is a text article, not a startup company&#x27;s marketing page! It was especially bad when I was hitting Page Down quickly to try to skim the content; the animation forced me to wait until the text showed up.

What would happen if your friend relationships had a lot more similarities to romantic relationships? Scheduled outings, regular discussions about what is pissing you off, regular apologies, mundane&#x2F;unscheduled time together, discussions about hopes and dreams, declarations of affection. Probably less physical touch...<p>Anyway, I feel like people think they can let friendships develop by osmosis. I don&#x27;t think ANY deeply fulfilling relationship can just happen without real relationship work.

The foundations are shaky when they don&#x27;t compare to other countries : there are probably many mistakes they missed, that would have been obvious when looking at it from another perspective.

&gt; Higher cost of living and stagnating wages for low-and middle-income earners means that everyday Americans must work harder to keep up<p>where are wages stagnating and for whom?

I agree with solitude as a preference. I do have a couple of good friends, but an occasional weekday lunch or a much more occasional holiday dinner is good enough to connect.<p>Other than that, every minute I don&#x27;t have to spend with my family is precious. And every such a minute with enough energy to do something productive is even more precious. So yeah, for me solitude is absolutely a preference.

Having friends is great but not &quot;having&quot; to have them is also great, which is what individualism allows us to do. Many people get in trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd. Many people also become wealthy by hanging out with the right people.<p>But being able to live your life alone without dying is a privilege that we should be thankful for.

I was just telling my son that 90% of the time I visited my granddad one of his friends would be there. I have only met up with one of my friends this year!<p>That is a spectacular change. I put it down to the amount of time he had to pursue his hobbies and interests (most of these friends were a part of that) vs me who is at work all the time.

&gt; Neuroscience helps us make sense of these findings. Research shows that hearing a familiar voice reduces cortisol and boosts oxytocin—hormones tied to stress relief and bonding—while text-based communication and video calls fail to trigger the same response .<p>this… feels a bit off. I would have to look at that article to see what they are saying.

I’ll add in a hot take. I think the entitlement of the more recent generations has a strong cause for this as well. I’m not one to say that millennials or whomever are more entitled than previous ones but when it comes to romantic connection - I definitely believe some are.<p>We see the rise of online dating apps being the number one way (by a large margin) for urban educated singles to meet their future partners. If you’re in a place like SF or NYC, you can completely forget about meeting your future spouse at some hobby, the gym, or even in a friend group. I think a lot of this has to do with entitlement - a strong belief that a person deserves a match that is unwaveringly perfect&#x2F;better-than-themselves. This Disney-ification of romance is very strong among certain crowds.<p>In my view, this has a strong effect on social circles. People won’t introduce anyone anymore. You might have a party and people might end up together but the idea of specifically inviting people or introducing friends to each other for romantic purposes is, practically speaking for yuppie circles, gone. The main reason I’ve seen is that certain people have gotten increasingly hostile to anyone even suggesting a person to them that is less than perfect&#x2F;godly. To the point where many people are afraid of suggesting anything and therefore will not risk their own reputation and friendship because they really feel they’ll lose their friend if they even suggest a potential romantic connection.<p>So, anyway, my belief is romance within social circles is quickly dying due to entitlement and this has a strong pusher for people to not put as much effort into them. Once that is established, it carries over into the rest of your life because you didn’t ever prioritize it. Therefore, even if you’re partnered, you have learned to live without.<p>It’s shocking how few relationships I’ve seen are from social circles. If anyone ever studies how people 25-35, educated, and living in major cities dates… being single will be more common than any non-app method.

I have thought a lot about this, and I think one large cause is low- and zero- effort interactions. Anything that requires constant effort eventually dies out. If someone has to initiate, pick up the phone and text you and invite you out, one of you is going to eventually stop doing that. We used to have lots of low- and zero- effort interactions. You saw people at church, at family events, you run into them around town, at the bar, etc. As the article says: in the past people participated more in clubs and organizations, sports leagues and volunteered more. Young people have replaced alcohol and bars with weed and abstinence. Now even when people do see each other, the friction is far higher. It&#x27;s hard to strike up a conversation with someone on a phone, or with earbuds in. Polarization has made it so that every issue is life or death (because many things truly are [1]) and so now it is only acceptable to talk to the correct portion of society. The worst things in the world are constantly livestreamed to our faces in 4K, from the news to social media to the Citizen app, so now you know that the public is insane and you&#x27;d be insane to talk to them. In 2005 the news might feature the 95th percentile bad shit because that&#x27;s the best they could find, but now we all have 4K cameras on us all the time, so on social media you can find the 99.999th percentile bad shit. In a world of eight billion unique humans, that microscopic sliver of the bell curve is a horrifying place.<p>I come to HN for insightful comments, and of course there is one in the 335 posted here: that socializing is no longer necessary for survival. In 2025 your crises are for your therapist and your financial issues are for a fintech and you move house with Dolly and your career is for LinkedIn and your Ikea assembly is for Angi. In 2001 nearly everyone would use their friends or family for those things; in 2025 you don&#x27;t need them.<p>And so we are left with a world where you don&#x27;t strike up a conversation anymore; it&#x27;s too hard and too dangerous and too risky. You don&#x27;t go to church (too problematic) or the bar (bad for you.) You don&#x27;t hit on people (there&#x27;s Tinder.) You don&#x27;t go to the store (Amazon) and if you do go to a restaurant you don&#x27;t talk to anyone (pickup.) You don&#x27;t see your friends and family; you don&#x27;t need them to move (use an app) or put together a sofa (use an app) or talk about your feelings (go to therapy.) As it turns out, you can replace love and touch and hugs and hate and bus conversations and bank tellers and racist neighbors and unprotected sex and and and and all of the things in all of the people with one little screen just a few inches square.<p>Technology is destroying our society and our lives.<p>- - -<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43357719">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43357719</a>

Been chewing on all this - yeah, making new friends these days feels way harder than it used to. I catch myself thinking its just easier not to try at all. Idk if Ill ever really get that energy back but seeing people push through is kinda inspiring tbh.

o&#x2F;t but who made that web design? Text blocks loading one by one as you scroll down, but not at all with JS off. However you can hold [PageDown] to force-load them all and then scroll normally both up and down. WHY?

What are plausible antidotes to this trend? I was reminded of the Stoop Coffee blog post about two months ago.<p>Found it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43473618">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43473618</a>

I tend to believe that individualist societies tend to fracture families, and make people live with their own kitchen and living room. That&#x27;s not good, it&#x27;s like a social prison.<p>I can understand that people want to have 100% privacy and not exist near people they don&#x27;t get along with, but not sharing a kitchen and living room seems a bit too far.<p>Also I am sad that apps like the defunct foursquare or social network are not actively trying to make neighbors connect with each others. I fail to understand why.<p>I suspect that in the 70s, sexual liberation, despite its advantages, caused an epidemic maternal deprivation, where people are now unable to feel comfortable near others.

I have zero friends. I tried to treat few as friends and helped alot but they were always busy when I was in need so decided to not treat anyone as a friend

&quot;Taken together, these trends suggest that Americans are increasingly retreating inward instead of engaging in communal activities. &quot;<p>I have seen, over the ,last ten years, a great depression, as in mood. People are getting more depressed, and that leads them inward, and it is driven by anxiety. Most people are &quot;flight&quot; when they are faced with anxiety.<p>And the capitalism and online world has made isolation much easier and way more &quot;enjoyable&quot;. Movies, porn, food, all of it acquired without a single human contact. Now people are clamoring they want to work from home as well, making loneliness even more available.<p>This is the outcome of hypercapitalism[1]. Extracting labor from the humans while feeding it all its&#x27; needs through the tubes of the internet.<p>I am writing this in a Starbucks right now. Ten years ago I would find couches and comfy chairs in every store. Now? stiff Uncomfortable chairs in a cold industrial setting, the store and counter set up for rushed to go orders.<p>This is not about something being wrong with people, it is a system that is tearing us apart.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;9780470670590.wbeog278" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;978047067059...</a>

Friends were the Internet of a now bygone era.

It&#x27;s not lost, just no longer necessary for survival.<p>Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail.<p>Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by.<p>We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive &quot;on their own&quot; - basically outside their kinship groups. This is possible thanks to globe-spanning networks of communication and trade.<p>Kinship groups are great, but many of them have painful costs. Some 60 percent of Americans, for example, suffered an adverse childhood experience in kinship groups. Some of these could not be avoided - like a loved one&#x27;s untimely death. Most of these negative experiences were intent or neglect by kinship group members.<p>If your early experiences of kinship groups are negative, you are less likely to seek out other human connection. You have learned that your kinship group is not reliable. If people genetically close to you cannot be relied on, then why should it be different for strangers?<p>The connections you do find tend to be focused on your interests, and those people don&#x27;t need to be nearby for you to have a strong connection. But you still have your prior experiences keeping you skeptical of human reliability.<p>Personally, I sympathize with everyone who is sad about communities becoming fragmented.<p>I think, though, that if these communities were as supportive, inclusive, or beneficial as they imagine themselves to be this would not be a problem.<p>Bad communities should be allowed to fail. That is probably what is happening here.

I have two groups I meet with every week around 6 am for an hour for about 10 years. Been a huge blessing!

Let’s call it what it is, a frecession

What happened? Capitalism.<p>In American culture, hyper-individualism has become a virtue somehow but this too is just a symptom of capitalism. Why? Because people who act collectively are a threat to capitalist power structures.<p>The whole &quot;gig economy&quot; is nothing more than needing a 2nd and 3rd job just to survive as real wages continue to stagnate or decline and costs keeping going up. That&#x27;s less free time.<p>The Internet is a negative here too. Physical proximity has historically had huge power in creating freindships. But capitalism rears its ugly head here too in the destruction of so-called &quot;third places&quot;.<p>High housing prices hurt everybody. It destroys community spaces. Hobbies that were once cheap escapes become way too expensive. Housing costs are an input into everything. Take spiraling childcare costs. You need physical space. That&#x27;s now way more expensive.<p>Lastly, there is a natural trend for people who marry and have children to replace friends with family. There is an issue of shared life experiences. 50+ years ago pretty much everyone is in the same boat. Now? By choice or necessity, people are opting out of this &quot;traditional&quot; life and this naturally creates a divide.

Yeah, we &quot;optimized&quot; connection using tech, like everything else these days.

Maybe it&#x27;s b&#x2F;c vast majority not doing well financially?!

&gt; when people feel isolated, they become more sensitive to social threats and more likely to misinterpret interactions negatively, through the lens of rejection<p>&quot;I think they are saying that they want lasagna.&quot;<p>C&#x27;mon, don&#x27;t be assholes.<p>There is plenty of evidence that teenagers were encouraged to ostracize certain personas (other teenagers!), and that behavior spread out of control to more age groups and unforseen interactions.<p>The hubris of trying to generate little soldiers destroyed our cultural inheritance.<p>&quot;The lens of rejection&quot;, great.<p>I heard pagliaci is in town, you should go see him, he can cheer you up. I mean, I heard psychology is in vogue, maybe you should all see one.<p>Please, stop this shit. Let the internet die in peace instead of juicing the last drops of it to try and make yourselves look good.

My personal hot take is it&#x27;s because the majority of people are consuming caffeine and that drug harries you to no end.

I bet Social Media (and even Texting) is almost entirely to blame for the &quot;loners&quot; phenomenon (i.e. lack of close friends). Almost everyone has a desire for social interactions, but Social Media is where they can get that, with the least effort, and money.<p>Smaller contributing factors are 1) Slow economy, where people don&#x27;t have the money for social activities or even dating like the boomer generation did for example, and 2) Rise of Autism rates, which makes people disinterested in social activities and even fearful of them.

&gt; has fallen by nearly threefold<p>What on earth does this word salad mean? Fallen by 300%? 200%? 75%? 2&#x2F;3? All are reasonable interpretations of this incoherent math.<p>&gt; to tolerate the messy work of forming friendships<p>If it&#x27;s true that people are becoming worse at maintaining friendships and losing some skill or tendency they require, then people are ipso facto also worse at <i>being friends</i>. (And even if there&#x27;s no ipso facto corollary, the following seems just as valid an explanation for the decline in friendship as the author&#x27;s expnarion: not that anybody is worse at maintaining friendships but rather that there are fewer friendships worth maintaining, fewer people worth the effort.)<p>I have no idea whether this is actually happening. I&#x27;m just stunned by the article&#x27;s poor, predictable reasoning and odious, sanctimonious, middle-brow, TED-talk moralism: the author takes it as a given that we &quot;manifest&quot; our social lives, that somehow (magically?) our intention and dedication create the desired reality. The author doesn&#x27;t consider an alternative hypothesis.<p>But if I tell you that someone is a bad, tedious, or insufferable friend, you won&#x27;t expect, let alone (I hope) encourage, me to &quot;tolerate the messy work,&quot; demonstrate the &quot;courage&quot; this author has decided is missing, or &quot;show up&quot; and be &quot;vulnerable.&quot; You&#x27;ll encourage me, rather, to save my energy for those who deserve it.<p>If social skills have withered in some portion of a person&#x27;s pool of available, possible friends, then that person not only cannot be blamed for ending friendships; doing so is actually the best outcome, short of &quot;manifesting&quot; more tolerable people.<p>Edit:<p>&gt; embedded myself in existing social structures and prioritized in-person social activities —ecstatic dance gatherings at the Harvard Divinity School, morning prayers at Memorial Church<p>Uh huh. If you&#x27;re the kind of person who decides, I don&#x27;t know, to seek friendship through daemonic possession, speaking in tongues, or, I don&#x27;t know, shaman-guided spirit journeys, you&#x27;re not someone whose advice I particularly want.

&gt; that those who engaged in face-to-face interactions at least once a week experienced better physical and mental well-being, whereas communication through calls or texts did not have the same effect. Neuroscience helps us make sense of these findings. Research shows that hearing a familiar voice reduces cortisol and boosts oxytocin—hormones tied to stress relief and bonding—while text-based communication and video calls fail to trigger the same response .<p>The HN majority &quot;work from home&quot; advocates disagree with this

&gt; online friendships require a different set of social behaviors than in-person ones<p>Yeah. In real life there&#x27;s no karma value next to your name and no string of reactions next to every statement you utter.<p>Imagine a VR-based dystopia which displayed such information to everyone you encounter.