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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

#91

Post by octosphere »

djrogers wrote: post #82
octosphere wrote: post #80

There have always been people who wanted to be lonely though, just as there have always been people who wanted constant socializing. Both have their own problems when taken to extremes, i.e: Extreme socialization leads to group-think and collectivism[1], and extreme loneliness leads to despair and becoming overly withdrawn. I (personally) try to find a balance between the two, often withdrawing back into a hermit exi…

> There have always been people who wanted to be lonely I think you’re conflating ‘lonely’ and ‘alone’. Wanting to be alone is healthy, wanting to be lonely would be very unhealthy. It’s the difference between wanting to sit by the fire and wanting to be burned - the latter invites/desires pain and harm.

Thanks for explaining the subtle difference. I always thought alone & lonely were synonyms!

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

#92

Post by Nasrudith »

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.

Active sex lives are better to write about and a small element of wish fulfillment like their oversized apartment for their job.

I was too young to notice but I heard the 90s described as prudish as an impact of AIDS. So not having to worry about the spectre of AIDS even if it was less "expel kids with AIDS from school and deny straight people can get it" hysteria.

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

#93

Post by dx87 »

zeroxfe wrote: post #24
0x4f3759df wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone once made the same point about fitness, you used to have to roll down your windows manually, but now its automatic. More and more muscle functions being eliminated by automation. Add them all up and it makes a difference.

Now that many new cars are coming with have high-def wide-angle rear view cameras, I don't really need my neck muscles anymore. At some point we'll "evolve" to rocks... rocks with wifi.

That reminds me of a TED talk I saw where the speaker was saying that something he's noticed with a lot of academics and tech types is that they only care about flexing their mental muscles; their bodies are only useful for moving their brain from one place to another, so a lot of what they build is done to make it so they have to use their bodies less.

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

#94

Post by WilliamEdward »

m0rphy99 wrote: post #46
dghughes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you 100% but I have an interesting personal anecdote, pretty much the opposite. When I was young I was very shy, painfully shy even into my early 20s. All social outings were family reunions or church. But I liked computers. So in the early 1990s I bought a computer and tried this thing called the Internet. By chance I discovered IRC. It was a world of strangers who interacted in real time. I could conve…

IRC back in the days was literally another world. It was something special. You could bond with other online users like family members even though the only thing you knew about them was their nickname. We have more advance technologies now but we would never be able to experience anything like IRC again. Slack and Discord servers today are not even close.

I think because you're a bit jaded and have had the experience of IRC as your first relay chat makes you bias towards it, whereas a kid experiencing Discord for the first time might have the same feelings as you did towards IRC.

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

#95

Post by goodJobWalrus »

treespace8 wrote: post #88
_8j50 wrote: post #76

Have you seen the movie "Shawshank Redemption"? It makes an interesting point about becoming institutionalized. There was an inmate that was released after ~50 years,he committed suicide because he couldn't adopt to living outside of the prison system. What they call the loneliness epidemic these days is a bit like that. In fact,I would say loneliness is social imprisonment. For one reason or the other individuals en…

Very interesting. I wonder if the shift of placing babies in daycare is a factor. A Dad or Mom will want to interact with a baby. In a daycare situation it's their job to interact with the babies. And at times if a baby isn't causing a problem, they are left alone. Could it be an early connection is being missed?

I don't think so, I come from a country where a housewife is not a thing, and I didn't know any growing up. We all went to child care and people socialize a lot, then and now.

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

#96

Post by r-bit-rare-e »

0x4f3759df wrote: post #65
kuschku wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only trivially small ones that we'd do a few times a week. There's still lots of physical activity that we do (eg walking around, carrying things like shopping, sex, etc). Not everywhere — one of the major reasons fitness (and BMI) is correlated with walkability of a city is that in many typical US cities, you barely have to walk anymore, while in the more walkable cities driving is less possible, and you’ll walk o…

Most of the US is low-density and built for cars, so not a lot of walking happening. Also some people in the city will take a Bird or Lyft scooter automating out walking

Ironic, given how dense the individuals are

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

#97

Post by JeremyBanks »

80386 wrote: post #68
dannyw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re spot on with online dating. It’s not a stretch that it only works for attractive people, when the whole screening test is attractiveness.

Is the whole screening test attractiveness? I tried OKCupid a while ago, and came away with the impression that most people have their profile filled with political shibboleths. Maybe that's just because I live in a major coastal city, but...

Tinder for looks.

OKC for ideology.

POF if you like your partner skewed to the wrong aspect ratio.

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

#99

Post by e40 »

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…

Good points, and I wonder if increasingly interactions with people will be because the automation is breaking down.

Chase can't seem to get emails alerts for my son's CC working. Well, they work everywhere but gas stations. They have a category of alerts for gas stations, so there's just some bug somewhere. I've spent hours trying to get them to fix it, and the conversations are always unpleasant.

This isn't the only interaction like this. I've had similar ones with other banks, Google, and other companies in the last last. All negative. All because automation is failing to do something important.

That's a pretty terrible ending, if the only time we talk to humans will be to correct mistakes that software/hardware make.

What have we wrought?

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

#100

Post by agumonkey »

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…

I also wonder how much of recent 'tech' is due to not very articulated desire to do away with the burden of these social interactions. Something I did want to before[1] but maybe it would be better (and maybe we'll see it this way later) to just revamp the current structure and way we exchange to each other. To make a bold myopic summary, internet is kinda breaking us apart.
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