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Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

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Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#91

Post by bherms »

All of the replies so far are suggesting ideas for an individual but seem to be missing the real crux of the matter...

Yes, you'll be less lonely if you join a group, get out of your house, etc... But how do we actively incentivize that? Social media and whatnot have hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to find ways to suck you in and monopolize your time.

While "everyone should recognize the problem and then take steps to solve it for themselves" is the obvious solution, it's also not practical to just have everyone collectively decide they need to get out more without SOME sort of fundamental change in our society/incentives/etc

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#92

Post by rootusrootus »

bherms wrote: post #76
ecshafer wrote: post #45

People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward. My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or gr…

this is one reason, while i personally work from home, i actually lament that many 20-somethings will never be in an office i'm nearing 40, have a wife and kid, house in the mountains, etc... but, damn, those office days were foundational to the person I am today

For sure. I would have been in real trouble if covid had happened when I was 20. The few times I tried to work remotely it took a matter of just a few days to go stir crazy. The office was a good environment for me (it helped that it was legitimately a good environment with good coworkers, not everyone has that).

As a family man with a wife, two kids, two cats, and a dog ... working from home is no big deal for me now. I prefer it. I got lucky that we did not get forced into this until I was in a position to handle it well.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#93

Post by vel0city »

bherms wrote: post #76
ecshafer wrote: post #45

People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward. My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or gr…

this is one reason, while i personally work from home, i actually lament that many 20-somethings will never be in an office i'm nearing 40, have a wife and kid, house in the mountains, etc... but, damn, those office days were foundational to the person I am today

I agree with this take. I'm definitely not friends with everyone I've worked with in person, but some of the most meaningful post-college friendships were formed by socializing with the people in the office (or people I met through socializing with office friends).

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#94

Post by parpfish »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #3

Why do they feel they can't join any local groups? Fix that.

i wonder if a resurgence in social clubs like the Elks club/Moose lodge would ever catch on.

i don't know how big they ever were in the past, but it seemed like it was commonly represented in media in the 50s/60s (e.g., the flintstones had a parody of the lodge which would suggest that they were common enough that people were familiar)

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#95

Post by zahlman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Intentionally choose community and the effort it takes to build and cultivate it [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. People are work, but you cannot live without community [6]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250212233145/https://www.hhs.g... [1] https://thepeoplescommunity.substack.com/ [3] https://www.tiktok.com/@amandalitman/video/75927501854034854... [4] https://boingboing.net/2015/12/21/a-survivalist-on-why-you-s... [5] http…

I'd like to assert here that "community" can exist online as well. It's not just people staying indoors; it's about how they interact with what others write and whether they even care that another person wrote it. It's about things like coming to recognize usernames and build trust.

Of course, LLM generated content threatens that, so things have gotten worse.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#97

Post by SoftTalker »

gipp wrote: post #24

Well, let's start by confronting and acknowledging the very strong case that we -- "we" here being the tech world in general, and the audience of this site -- bear a heavy burden of responsibility for it. It could be argued that it was all inevitable given the development of the Internet: development of social media, the movement online of commerce and other activities that used to heavily involve "incidental" social…

Not everyone has left the real world, only the people who got really sucked into the online/social media world. This can maybe seem like the whole world though, if you're in that bubble.

Bars are still packed on the weekends, people still gather at churches, or gyms, or bowling leagues, or book clubs, or any number of other "IRL" activities of all kinds that are going on. You do have to make the effort to go out and get involved though, nobody is going to come and rescue you.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#98

Post by zahlman »

peterspath wrote: post #74

Go to church. Data from various studies, including those from academic institutions and public health organisations, supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community. 1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3551208/ 2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/human-flourishing/20... 3. https://hrbopenresearch.org/ar…

> supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community.

Correlation does not establish causation. Regular church attendance dominantly occurs among people who have shared values (clustered around what the church teaches); that doesn't imply that an outsider can just choose to fit in.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#99

Post by vel0city »

yesfitz wrote: post #67
publicdebates wrote: post #2

I'm also in this group, so I have a few theories as to what causes it and how to fix it. For one thing, I was severely traumatized as a kid, which delayed a lot of my social skills. I'm catching up but not all the way there yet. When my social battery is full, I can do pretty well, but if I'm even a little down, it's basically impossible to act normally. I also had it hammered into me as a kid that nobody wants me ar…

I've posted this thought a few times in different ways, but in my experience, community is found and then built. Regularly sharing space with others is the way to start finding community. I think your surveying is an example of that. The next step is when the interactions begin taking place outside of the regular time/place, as evidenced by your epilogue. What I haven't posted before is anything about how to successf…

That's one thing I've found about trying to meet new people. Try and find something they want to talk about, and the floodgates will often open.

Re: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

#100

Post by aleph_minus_one »

ecshafer wrote: post #45

People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward. My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or gr…

> People need to purposefully and intentionally do things. Sitting home on an app, watching TV is easy. There is no fear or rejection, there is no work to get out of the house, there is no risk. But there is also no reward.

This is the wrong model:

Sitting (alone) at home and working on program code or reading scientific textbooks does have a reward. Many things for which you go outside of the house or where you interact with other people have a much lower reward. So you rather loose a rather decent local optimum, and if you don't know very well where to look outside for something really good, you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.

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