This seems like an area where technology would be well suited to help. I'm not simply saying "Just give 'em a Chromebook and a Facebook account" but VoIP and VTC would be ideal for helping the "alone elderly" be connected with the community around them... perhaps connecting with and mentoring children who are themselves frequently alone. Just a thought... it's certainly something I can easily imaging being in an Apple/Google/Microsoft keynote about how they are using technology to help improve the lives and communities of people.
Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
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Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#12Stop making assumptions about other people (they’re lazy/dangerous/whatever) and go out and be friendly. This Wednesday I wandered around the city playing ukulele at 3 in the morning and I met all kinds of interesting people, everything from this beautiful female graduate student who just wanted to talk about schoastics to someone who wanted me to call his “friend in Florida.” Just go out and be with people, they’re…
I don't know how people do that man, it's just very hard for some (quite a lot nevertheless) people to get out there and be vulnerable.
Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#13I'm 34 and once you add in the weekends I am and talking is extremely discouraged at work, in an open office, so even at work you're basically alone just siting there listening to music or podcasts all day.
At Gym1 I talk to my lifting coach but most of the time I'm in my head focused on training, after that at Gym2 I'm just trying to do my accessory work and conditioning and don't talk to anyone other than "hey" back to "hey Ryan" from the staff at the door. I go home and my retired mother that lives with me stays in her room and I go to mine, rinse and repeat.
Not entirely by choice but all my friends are married with kids and have zero free time.
Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#14My father passed away around 11 years back and it wasn't til several years later that it really hit me that my mom was basically all alone for large portions of her day out on the a country property. I now call her and chat for about 20 minutes a day on my commute home. I know that it has made a huge difference in her life and I feel more connected to her than ever before. I highly recommend that others take some tim…
This is also why a lot of spouses pass soon after the other. They lose hope and the reason to get out of bed each morning.
I keep assuming that as jobs are automated away that we are going to have more people who can do work like visiting elderly people. It also can more than pay for itself by keeping people on their medication regimens and preventing costly hospital visits.
Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#15I’m jealous. Being alone for 60% of my waking hours is the sweet spot.
Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#16My father passed away around 11 years back and it wasn't til several years later that it really hit me that my mom was basically all alone for large portions of her day out on the a country property. I now call her and chat for about 20 minutes a day on my commute home. I know that it has made a huge difference in her life and I feel more connected to her than ever before. I highly recommend that others take some tim…
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Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#17As an anecdote, I've lived the majority of my life in America (born and raised middle class on the east coast in a wealthy area) and if I was tasked with writing an account of my time here it would be focused around one thing: alienation.
American life is atomized and consistently getting more so. For anyone who sits around and thinks about why people are the way they are here I highly encourage you to consider that people are alone. Alone in life, alone at their apartment, alone when they struggle, alone when they die. It's to the point where we regard married couples that live a 20 minute drive from anything as not being alone when they really are.
Most adults I know have a relationship with their immediate family that I would regard as acquaintanceship.
Part of this is culture (Americans fetishize a sort of "rugged individualism" where you alone can solve every problem you're faced with or else it's not a real problem) and part of it is civil engineering. You need a car to live nearly everywhere, there's almost no public transit infrastructure, etc.
EDIT: Since this is popular I wanna surface something that people have been saying: it definitely doesn't require being far away physically from others to feel alone. I live in Manhattan and big cities can be extremely alienating depending on the person.
Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#18When I was a yute my grandmother used to go to a senior center for cards, talk, company, and her three children lived around the corner or upstairs. In NYC that was possible: Everything walkable. She lived well into her 100s. I don't now how they do it down here in Fla where nothing's walkable and public transportation's laughable and social services can't keep up.
Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#19Re: Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average
#20is-is that a bad thing?