Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

I sometimes wonder about this, I have a friend who does most of the organizing for parties or whatever. My sense is that there are a few different kinds of people, among those are people who, if they didn't organize parties, there wouldn't really be much of a platform for hanging out for them and others like them, while others are completely isolated, don't organize and don't have any other third space, and others yet have many smaller interactions from many other parts of life that don't necessitate a larger meetup necessarily. If you're an "organizer" type, my guess is that the people you'd hope reciprocate fall into the latter camp; they're happy to show up and have a good time, but they probably have a bunch of other things to explore that for some reason they haven't felt you'd be into... or a bunch of other possible reasons. Asking them to host a party is asking them to fabricate a social setting from thin air, but maybe they just organically don't find that to be something they need to do.

For me, I'll host something for a small group if I get some inspiration, but on a week to week basis I'm often in extremely social third-spaces, supplemented by larger parties (probably bi-weekly). My effort is often best spent meeting people for deliberate, intimate, outdoor sports adventures or coffee hangouts, but the same person I know who tends to organize larger parties doesn't really feel like someone who'd be into these; they can't really hold a conversation 1 on 1 for very long, and they're not super curious or vulnerable or athletic in the way that's necessary to engage in those as much. He's a regimented, scheduled, impatient, person. They often need a sort of fabricated social vehicle (also likes to decorate and host), whereas I get nearly all of my socializing from incidentally being in social space.

I think it's fine to be either of course. It's ok that my organizer friend doesn't like heights, and so I won't invite him to climb mountains, he likes hosting parties, so I try to attend as many as I can.

Note that I don't mean the non-organizer (me) is just passively socializing, it's just that they have different catalysts built into the things they do that extend into socializing easily. I'm DMing 1 or 2 friends, multiple times a week, to do something we both enjoy or just chat while walking around the city. While parties and hosted things are neat, they're just not very good platforms for depth.

Just as well, I do try and be inviting to everyone who'd like to come out and do other things, in general it's important to reciprocate, but I'm not hosting a party just because someone else did.

So what you're saying is you basically have to give. This is what I find real life is like. Unless I'm giving something, like a ride to some interesting place, people are not interested in me at all. They just want to get something from me, that's it.

I've had a great time at board game meetups. I highly recommend finding a group of people who play modern board games once a week. There should be at least one in most towns or cities. It can take a while to find the right group, but once you do, you can make some lifelong friends just by turning up every week. I've had some great experiences and a few not as great ones around the world and at various times. My favorites ones always involve food and alcohol in a nice bar or pub, usually starting with some casual or social deduction games. I now have a pretty huge collection of board games. I just moved to a new town though and it's pretty small so I need to be a bit more proactive. Haven't played a lot recently.

Confession... I don't actually like board games all that much, and I don't really care if I win. Some of the games are really cool but I just love hanging out and having fun with a group of people.

It helps to not look at this as zero sum.

A lot of people are more comfortable with a shared experience objective. This provides a means to do something and a reason behind meeting.

If you are always in the mindset that you are giving and everyone else is taking that can really impact how you perceive everyone. And 9/10 most people over estimate how much they give and under-estimate how much they take.

There is also something powerful with "I _get_ to take my new friend to a place I find cool" rather than "My new friend is using me to go to my cool place". Changing the way you internally frame things drastically helps.

I know it sounds absolutely stupid hogwash but it helps.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/gratitude-bed-every-morning...

I hope this helps!

I‘m a cofounder of a German loneliness startup. My core insight is that loneliness often stems from a badly adjusted internal social threat function ( f(social event)=perceived threat ).

This function runs subconsciously all day long. From talking to strangers to reaching out to a friend, the lonely mind is much more aware of negative outcomes, so your mind protects you by telling you things like „I don’t talk to strangers because I would annoy them“ or „I don’t reach out to that friend because he’s probably busy“. And that makes it much much harder for lonely people to maintain a healthy social life.

As for the fix, you can try to set the social event up in a way that has less room for perceived threat. Think of third places, regularly scheduled meetings, etc. Or you can work on the function itself (=your thinking patterns). If you look at research on loneliness interventions, working on this function is the most effective way to help individuals overcome persistent loneliness.

Now the sad thing is that people don’t like to hear that the most effective way to combat loneliness is to work on their own perceptions, which makes the sales pitch rather challenging.