HN readers of any age who felt alone at some point and found community - what worked for you?
meetup.com
The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
131–140 of 824 posts
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#132The books the authors cite are great and worth reading. Some personal observations: - The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now. There are lots of reasons for this. But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture. - People put a lot of effort into work, and work is becoming more transactional. No more "life-long employment with the buddies" kind of situation. - Americ…
> The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now
This is why we need to pursue annexation by Mexico, so we can finally be a country with some culture.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#133The cause is having a tiny computer in your hand all day. It's so glaringly obvious.
Indeed. The old trope of the asocial "computer nerd" too focused on the machine to talk to girls.
The trope is real, and what we are experiencing here is simply the "nerdification" of mainstream society. Everyone is more screen addicted in 2024 than even the most nerdy person was circa 2008.
I honestly love it though. Sure, there is a "dystopian" bent to the idea of most people zombifying themselves in public - but all a westerner needs to do is spend even a week in a very communal society to realize that the radical individualistic society we have cultivated is actually pretty awesome. I LOVE the idea that I can be who I want to be and genuinely not care about what some "community" of people think of it. Everyone pretending that no one around them exists and being screenlocked means I can pick my nose in public, or do any number of even more weird shit without being noticed. Compare this to japan where eating a burger without covering your mouth as a woman is a social death sentence.
Western individualism (and east asian hermitism and maybe eastern european depressive paranoia) are by far the most productive social situations for tech development, as we now have far more "tech autistic" types who tend to be the primary drivers of code innovation. Is it any surprise that there is basically consensus that the best "hardcore" games tend to come from either the west (usually the USA or northern europe), a post soviet state, or japan.
Everyone in this thread bemoans the things that cause the youth mental health crisis, but honestly, I wouldn't go back and I think that higher youth mental health rates are simply worth it. Actual "nerds" in 2024 are less likely to be bullied than in the eras of good youth mental health, and the average becky or chad can learn to deal with the same things that the nerds of 2009 learned to deal with a fortnight ago.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline. I have seen many (usually younger) people make this mistake. The mistake is thinking that the point of the activity is the activity itself. It isn't. The point is the genuine social engagement. (Edited to add:) > I've since learned to say yes more Years ago, I learned to change my default answer to things from "…
Interestingly, I've gone the opposite way in my old age. I realize now how very short life is and how it's absolutely not worth wasting what little free time I have on activities that don't interest me. This goes even moreso in the workplace, where saying yes often leads you into taking on more responsibilities for no extra pay or recognition, unless you simultaneously try to wangle the added work into a schmoozing o…
This assumes you know what is worth doing in advance and I think we rarely do.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline. I have seen many (usually younger) people make this mistake. The mistake is thinking that the point of the activity is the activity itself. It isn't. The point is the genuine social engagement. (Edited to add:) > I've since learned to say yes more Years ago, I learned to change my default answer to things from "…
Was just talking with a friend about this. The reason older people tend to play repetitive card games isn’t because they are captivating, it is just a thin excuse to spend a few relaxing hours together. After a few months of hesitation I’ve gotten some of my friends into playing simple games like euchre and hearts and the quality of our time together has gone up significantly.
Reminds me of a scene from a favorite book-series, where the protagonist is visiting with a recently-retired/convalescent former boss.
> “So,” Illyan said at last. “What do a couple of retired officers and gentlemen do on a country weekend?”
> [...] “Tradition is, you take the local beer from the village—there’s a woman there who home-brews it, extraordinary stuff—and hang the bottles over the side of the boat to stay cold. When the beer gets too warm to drink, it’s too hot to fish.”
> “What season is that?”
> “Never, as far as I could tell.”
> “Let us by all means observe tradition,” said Illyan gravely.
-- Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that the cause of the loss of community? Or is that a coping mechanism for the loss of community? Or a combination? I agree it's related. But that it's glaringly obviously the cause? I'd need to hear more.
i would guess one effects the other in a negative (positive?) feedback loop. access to your phone & 24/7 easy access to social media started to erode communities and now people just rely on their phones because they have zero community around. there is nothing interesting to look to if you look away from your phone because the rest of the people around you are on their phones. EVERYBODY is glued to their devices ever…
Positive feedback loop. Negative feedback loop is like homeostasis or a PID controller.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#137About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone. Fast forward to 2024 and ever…
It can't be treated like drug addiction, though. Most people I know have a _relatively_ healthy relationship with alcohol or cannabis. The addicts, especially of hard drugs, are the odd ones out. With phones, and before that music, and before that newspapers, it's a social norm. If you are trying to talk to people you feel like the weirdo. And I get it, cause I don't like making myself vulnerable. I wish I talked to…
I would argue it should be handled exactly like drug addiction ought to be. That is, as a widespread medical issue. But it is more complex than drug abuse due to interaction with people expressly being part of the equation. One's phone is ever available and there are very very few places indoors or outdoors that it isn't considered socially acceptable to use their smartphone for social media. The same is not true for alcohol or cannabis. Most people won't simply walk down the street or hang in a park smoking or drinking. Phone addiction is far more visible.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#138The books the authors cite are great and worth reading. Some personal observations: - The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now. There are lots of reasons for this. But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture. - People put a lot of effort into work, and work is becoming more transactional. No more "life-long employment with the buddies" kind of situation. - Americ…
> it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture.
Nearly every bullet point the article listed for what makes a strong community was basically just a descriptor for cultural homogeneity, which also touches on a rather controversial taboo. This sort of critique of diversity would be considered hate speech by some.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#139Who knew utterly destroying cities and replacing them with gated communities with no accommodations for children whatsoever, and borderline criminalizing any activity which isn't closely supervised would have knock-on effects.
The majority of people lived in villages until 1920 in the US. US birth rates started dropping off not a generation later.
I mean, there was also a depression, a world war, and the increasing availability of birth control.
That factoid doesn't mean much on its own.
Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community
#140About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone. Fast forward to 2024 and ever…
When I'm out at a sit-down restaurant, I always make a mental note of everyone who has their phone out on the table. It's usually 50-50. Not necessarily using them, but within view, as if they're waiting for something else instead of prioritizing the people who took the time to be physically around them in the same place and time. No wonder lots of people feel disconnected. They forgot how to connect in even the most…
Personally, when I'm in this situation, my phone is out and face down on the table to avoid the discomfort of it digging into me from my pocket. I've also noticed that other people use their phone less when I explicitly take it out and put it to the side. Also, even though I take it out, I never use it unless the conversation has asked for it, like searching an answer for something.