Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

I'm the same age as you and most of my friends are remote, on the other side of the country or in different countries, etc, and I maintain contact all the time, for decades. I still have friends from elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and from most of my jobs going back 30 years. I can pick up my phone and call some of my coworkers from 25 years ago without hesitation and we will go for lunch at the next opportune time.

> most of my friends have dropped off or gone crazy

If you find yourself to be the one who is isolated, then I think you need to look inward. My best friends and I share completely polar opposite politics. We have known each other for almost 50 years now. We have had yelling matches over politics, especially during the Pandemic. We have now stopped talking... about politics. We still chat every single day throughout the day. I laugh heartily at least once a day over some extremely offensive joke that one of us sends, usually at each other's expense. But we never, ever talk about politics anymore and we are happier for it.

Maybe you need to rekindle those friendships and see if you can avoid politics. If you can't then I think it's more on you than them and you should reflect on that.

> Building American cities around the whims of car manufacturers is, to my mind, as bad as any social media.

I think your framing of history is wrong. Trains, and later cars were extraordinarily convenient compared to former methods of travel. We adapted infrastructure to maximize this convenience, not to profit companies. In fact, it's the other way around: companies profited off the demand for convenience they provided.

The same could be said for social media. People wanted small, low-risk interactions with other people over the internet. Companies capitalized on this, and realized that increasing dopamine is the only way to increase capital.

> it requires organized political and social movements, then the legislation and re-allocation of public funds for the public's good

I would reverse the first two, or maybe even remove the "political movement" part. Why is it necessary? It always starts with (a) one person taking concrete action on some principle, then (b) one small group of people joining that person on principle, then (c) this turning into a movement on principle and snowballing momentum until the change is exponentially impactful on society. Later, when the public agrees it's a good thing, they may choose to publicly fund it. Only a-c are necessary for it to make a meaningful impact.

I think people approach it wrong. The framing of solving our loneliness is kind of transactional in a way. Good relationships are not transactional. You got to work on yourself to be curious about others. If it’s genuine, people will reciprocate and relationships develop. You also won’t care as much about putting yourself out there, because the act of getting to know someone is what you like. Greatest thing that ever happened for my social life was hearing Ted Lasso quote “Be curious, not judgemental”.

Don’t you care that you made them mad?

I disagree with your sentiment though.

Yes, addictive consumption is bad, and apps shouldn't be designed for that. And as long as they are, we should try to find ways to undo the damage and help people heal and recover from content addiction, and find alternatives to it.

But that's not to say that consuming is inherently bad.

Consider that a conversation is genuinely an interactive, dynamic, mutual event where you both are both consuming and creating content. One person creates a topic out of recent memories or recites a joke, the other person hears it, and enjoys it. This is an act of consumption. It's not wrong or bad or harmful or blameworthy. It's the other end of creation, a necessary part of it.

In your ideal world, where we have people endlessly creating, who would consume what they create? We need both. We need platforms to share our creations, and to consume the creations of others. Real life has been a neglected platform for this, especially for countless lonely people who have no one to interact with.