Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

This is, in fact, an excellent way to fill your life with meaning and connection if it's something you're called to.

I've lived with men in their 60s in these contexts, but primarily this is an option for young people at the start of their careers, which I highly, highly recommend.

Any easy way to work on this problem is to simply lower the barriers to co-habitation. This could look like working to change zoning (I think Oregon has been a pioneer here), building businesses around the concept (many have tried, from small things you haven't heard of all the way up to WeWork), to experimental projects like: https://neighborhoodsf.com/Neighborhood+Notes/Published/The+....

In the days of subsistence farming, a child was an additional free worker. Once we mechanized farming, we went from 50% subsistence farming to 1%. Children moved from the profit-center column to the cost-center column.

Medicine improvements and government policies have reduced child mortality. Mothers no longer need to conceive 12 kids to ensure that 4 live to adulthood. Each birth is a much higher resource cost and a much larger responsibility than in generations past.

The gratifying life of being a stay-at-home mom to 18 kids only works so long as the father keeps the money rolling in and doesn’t decide to abandon the family (this happened to an aunt of mine). The modern changes to family structure didn’t happen out of the blue — they were a response to inadequate protections and violations of freedoms that people had at the time. You might consider educating yourself on your blind spots about the topic.

Churches are eating themselves. People aren’t “moving away from God” so much as seeing the churches as liars. Christianity is full of lies: many small, some big. The more that people are exposed to others with different perspectives, more education, and better ways to communicate complicated topics, the more likely people are to leave a church that lies to them. Churches which have been outed for covering up child sex abuse have seen outflows. Bad policies made it more likely that the child sex abuse would happen. Further bad policies prevented the abuser to go free without prosecution. Even further bad policies have allowed the internal investigations/reviews to be quietly ignored.

Ultimately small churches have empty pews because they aren’t entertaining. MegaChurches / televangelists based in Orange County, Dallas, Houston are pulling in members while small town churches close due to lack of membership. Churchgoers tend to care more about being engaged in the showmanship of the leader than the common benefits of keeping a community alive.

The other functions that churches serve (community service, reminders of purpose) are being replaced by the free market of ideas. Some churches are turning the pulpit into a political campaign. Many secular non-profits are taking up the slack of dying community churches by doing a slice of the same work without the lies, sex abuse, coercion, and threats of damnation.

Then there are completely unrelated changes in society. More people care more about having pets (dogs, cats) than children. Values change as society changes. Companies get far better at marketing than individuals get better at resisting marketing. Drugs, gambling, sex/porn, outrage / attention economy, etc have all been turbocharged via capitalism.

The values of the average person have changed a lot. It doesn’t make sense to cling to the old institutions if they don’t meet the people where they are.

That being said, Im not sure if this is actionable advice for people that don’t already live in societies where this is a thing.