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Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

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Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#231

Post by riversflow »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#232

Post by LorenPechtel »

srean wrote: post #144
pkulak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#233

Post by some_furry »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#234

Post by dyauspitr »

ecshafer wrote: post #45

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 gr…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#236

Post by randysalami »

luplex wrote: post #172
publicdebates wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 yo…

Or hear me out, puts you in video call with someone watching the same short as you. Involuntary friend

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#237

Post by bogwog »

peterspath wrote: post #74

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/ar…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#238

Post by colechristensen »

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.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#239

Post by staticman2 »

peterspath wrote: post #74

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/ar…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#240

Post by publicdebates »

throwup238 wrote: post #130
ecshafer wrote: post #45

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 gr…

> (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 mo…

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.

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