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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?

#121

Post by epolanski »

I would suggest for the crowd here: tech meetups, even online ones and communities will connect you to people with your interests.

Another thing that you'll likely find in your area is a chess club.

Maybe you won't love the chess itself, but it's an excuse to hang out with people.

Another one is volunteering work. Elderly, dogs, etc, many communities need help.

In my village I have started a "clean up" program where average citizens take few bags a picker and we clean areas of our village.

Most of people are "this is the job of the garbage collectors, the mayor should do it", so what? It also costs money, and nobody will do as carefully as the people living there.

Even if 95% of my village won't care few will and we make an impact and socialize, etc and more start taking part of it.

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

#122

Post by iambateman »

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…

Thanks for sharing.

Your website made me smile…it is a fun one for sure.

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

#124

Post by swah »

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…

1. fair 2. did this but they are all 80+ 3. ok 4. not that good at anything, too old for most groups. gym no one talks with anyone. bjj was the best for this, since its more older and mostly men 5. remote work ruined my mental health

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

#126

Post by brailsafe »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #100
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 inte…

> you get much worse results than if you simply stayed at home and do there what you love.

That's a sense of risk and caution that gets too comfortable for some people to compete with over time. If you don't build yourself better options, all you want to do is sit at home and do the thing that guarantees a reward. Then you get in your car and move about the world in a way that you feel is guaranteed to protect you from conditions, other people, but really is dangerous. You bet only on certainty, and outcomes are predictable, but they're not compatible with not being lonely

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

#127

Post by digbybk »

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 good advice for your friends and family, but a bad answer to the question. "How can we solve the obesity epidemic? Stop eating so much and get some exercise." Well sure, but this misses the big picture. We built a social infrastructure that encourages a sedentary, solitary life. We shouldn't be confused by physical and emotional health implications. We can expect some people to be proactive about it, but we can't expect that of everyone.

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

#128

Post by munificent »

asdfman123 wrote: post #119
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…

I think the trick is getting off social media. When I was a computer nerd in the 2000s, I noticed people used to like to hang around and chat, but I mostly didn't. Now, everyone is an internet addict, and I was just ahead of the curve. No one hangs around and chats anymore. When you get off social media, real life becomes far more interesting. The problem with addiction is that it's so stimulating that everything els…

I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too.

Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with.

The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them.

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

#129

Post by ecshafer »

rootusrootus wrote: post #86
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…

I think what makes this good advice especially difficult is that it cannot be one-sided. When everyone is letting doom-scrolling replace their social interaction, then one person won't easily solve their own problem by going out to socialize. We need a broader solution, probably a cultural shift away from using technology as a crutch to avoid other people. Maybe the current younger generations will evolve a balance.

I think that there are a lot of people that are kind of waiting for other people to pitch something to do. Maybe you want to call them type A and B, leader and follower, I think of it as the Host and Attendees. The more of the Hosts the more things that will be happening, so trying to become a Host is just creates more opportunities.

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

#130

Post by throwup238 »

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…

> (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches)

You can turn the garage into a hangout spot. A neighbor has a full bar with communal table plus TV for sports and he opens up the garage door once a week on a schedule (Sunday game day or whatever depending on the season) and whenever he feels like it on work week evenings. As people pass by we invite them over and after a few months everyone knows that when the garage is open, they can come over for a drink and to shoot the shit. Low pressure social interactions that often turn into weekend outings, regular poker games, etc.

Now years later we get impromptu block parties when he brings out the grill onto the driveway. It’s done wonders for our community in an otherwise unwalkable SoCal suburb.

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