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Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

economist.com

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Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#11

Post by 0x4f3759df »

ada1981 wrote: post #2

If anyone is looking for adventure and connection, I run a group called Founders Hike, which is what it sounds like. Founders get together to mastermind, hike and support each other about once a month. We have some really successful and amazing Founders. Nature is it’s own medicine, the community is great, and the wisdom runs deep. NYC / SF and chapters forming in other cities. Email me if you’d like to join, and I’l…

I keep thinking along these lines. Like Friday night run and beer. You do a 5k run and then you all get a beer and you can bond over the run.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#12

Post by brobdingnagians »

NotCamelCase wrote: post #6

I've watched Friends last year for the first time in my life and it was shocking to me, among other 90s things, how everyone is dating left and right, one after another as if they were in a race or something. I don't know your social circle but in mine, currently it's quite the opposite. I observe that less and less people go out/date/interact with each other socially, which is sad.

I agree. I was fortunate to be in an area and group where that sort of dating was still alive; I didn't end up marrying any of those people in that area, but I learned _a_lot_ about people; how they think, what kinds of people there are, a lot about interacting with members of the opposite sex, gained a lot of confidence in just being around people and making social requests. I think it is invaluable experience for understanding people.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#13

Post by robbyt »

NotCamelCase wrote: post #6

I've watched Friends last year for the first time in my life and it was shocking to me, among other 90s things, how everyone is dating left and right, one after another as if they were in a race or something. I don't know your social circle but in mine, currently it's quite the opposite. I observe that less and less people go out/date/interact with each other socially, which is sad.

In NYC, even the most "undatable" can still have a busy dating calendar.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#14

Post by madeuptempacct »

yters wrote: post #5
PeterStuer wrote: post #4

Another thing I wondered about is the impact of automation and volatility on, for lack of a better word 'involuntary' micro social interactions. Until fairly recently people had 'forced' social interactions when doing their finances, shopping etc. Even if involuntary they 'trained' people's social skills and withered away at their acquired/innate social anxiety. Furthermore, even in these situations the persons you i…

This was commonly understood in medieval times. Aquinas says our mutual dependency forms social ties.

This is kind out of scope, but ever since Deus Ex (the game), I have wondered what the big deal about Aquinas is. Never found his work all that interesting.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#15

Post by hashkb »

It seems obvious that screen addiction is mostly responsible. Take cigarettes as an analogy- it took decades for everyone to admit they kill you. The fact that so many people immediately recognize the screen problem is huge, and the rest are behaving like addicts who need intervention.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#16

Post by djsumdog »

There's no indication in this short write up if they also surveyed how often people get out. I think it'd be a likely hypothesis that people today do hang out more with friends, simply because it is easier.

Remember the 90s? You're waiting in a parking lot to go caving. "Where's Will?" "I don't know." "Call his house, there's a payphone over there." "His mom said he left 30 minutes ago." "Well I guess we'll just wait for him."

Today we can use speech-to-text to quickly tell people we're running late, organize impromptu outings very quickly and probably end up hanging out more. Even those with families and kids probably find it easier to organize events with other families thanks to shared group chats.

I wouldn't be surprised if these two things aren't really correlated and part of me wonders if our interaction may have gone up and our loneliness also gone down. If that's true, it could be more of an indication of us not _really_ talking to one another. Maybe there is less we can say today, or there are other factors that, in the age of acceptance and commodified outrage, make use feel more isolated.

A find thought, another really big factor should be online dating (Tinder, OKCupid, Grinder, POF, etc). Are people romantically lonely? Do average individuals have a harder time now that everything has been reduced to an image? I personally have observed that online dating really only works for attractive people, and for everyone else it's pretty much a wasteland.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#17

Post by trukterious »

NotCamelCase wrote: post #6

I've watched Friends last year for the first time in my life and it was shocking to me, among other 90s things, how everyone is dating left and right, one after another as if they were in a race or something. I don't know your social circle but in mine, currently it's quite the opposite. I observe that less and less people go out/date/interact with each other socially, which is sad.

My take on Friends gets more reactionary the older I get. I now see it as very much a part of the Sexual Revolution: the drive to normalise dating and casual sex. On the one hand the friends treat sex as no big deal, plenty of humour, no judgement, etc. Just occasionally rationalising it as part of a necessary quest to find a husband or wife. On the other hand you notice from a distance that their whole lives revolve around sex. So it is a big deal, de facto, and of course in real life loneliness can be a very real penalty for messing it up.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#18

Post by wallace_f »

I recall in a freshman sociology course the text noting refrigeration increased isolation and loneliness as people spent more time indoors.

As I have traveled, I have noticed a lot of further examples of technology doing the same. Especially in countries with less wealth, people go outside and share public spaces/activities/infrastructure with each other more, and that seems to have a lot of positive externalities.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#19

Post by djsumdog »

NotCamelCase wrote: post #6

I've watched Friends last year for the first time in my life and it was shocking to me, among other 90s things, how everyone is dating left and right, one after another as if they were in a race or something. I don't know your social circle but in mine, currently it's quite the opposite. I observe that less and less people go out/date/interact with each other socially, which is sad.

To be fair, that's a sitcom. I think modern shows like BoJack Horseman are really good interpretations on how poorly those types of stories represented reality.

Re: Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young

#20

Post by ada1981 »

compcoffee wrote: post #8
ada1981 wrote: post #2

If anyone is looking for adventure and connection, I run a group called Founders Hike, which is what it sounds like. Founders get together to mastermind, hike and support each other about once a month. We have some really successful and amazing Founders. Nature is it’s own medicine, the community is great, and the wisdom runs deep. NYC / SF and chapters forming in other cities. Email me if you’d like to join, and I’l…

> Founders get together to mastermind, hike and support each other about once a month. Maybe the world "mastermind" is throwing me off, but how do you prevent something like this from devolving into "yet another networking activity"? There's value in stepping out of the always-on, startup culture and interacting with the other half.

A typical hike is that we hike, stop along the way to do some deeper intimacy and connection work (I coach some of the top tech company founders on empathy, spirituality and leadership), we share what we’ve learned recently and what we are working on, we offer support. We do some meditation.

These are hand curated and I’ve been building communities for over 20 years across a variety of disciplines.

We also have our own Island to adventure and co create on! Majagual.org

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