Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by TangoTrotFox » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #18

I recall in a freshman sociology course the text noting refrigeration increased isolation and loneliness as people spent more time indoors. As I have traveled, I have noticed a lot of further examples of technology doing the same. Especially in countries with less wealth, people go outside and share public spaces/activities/infrastructure with each other more, and that seems to have a lot of positive externalities.

There's also something to be said about extensive rules and regulations really hurting relatively normal social activities.

I really enjoy living in developing nations because you can actually just live. You can go buy some random food from somebody selling stuff off the street, pick up a beer or two..., and go sit down by a lake beside the street and have a little picnic type thing with a friend -- or even cast a fishing line out or go for a swim if the mood strikes. Enjoy yourselves, clean up after yourself, be considerate of others, and nobody cares what you do -- as it should be.

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

#152

Post by aphextron » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:35 PM UTC

gbear605 wrote: post #114

ronnier wrote: post #106

My opinion is that likely mostly impacts men. I see men struggling to find women to date (and the opposite for women, too many men to pick from). The internet and apps have made the dating market very difficult for men in general. Women literally have 100's or 1000's of choices at any given time while men will struggle to have a single option. There are just more men now than ever it seems, and it's really exaggerate…

For people between 25 and 54, in America, there are almost exactly as many men as women, to within less than one percent. [0] So if you see more men than women around you, that's a filter bubble that you've artificially put yourself in. Therefore the converse must be that there are many other places in America where there are more women than men. So go out, socialize, get away from your bubble, and meet other people.…

>For people between 25 and 54, in America, there are almost exactly as many men as women, to within less than one percent. [0] So if you see more men than women around you, that's a filter bubble that you've artificially put yourself in. Therefore the converse must be that there are many other places in America where there are more women than men.

Total number of females in the entire population != the number of reproductive aged heterosexual women within my particular socioeconomic level that are single and seeking a relationship. That number is absolutely tiny in comparison. And with even the slightest convolution for racial or looks preference it's down to maybe a few thousand individuals out of millions in a major metro area.

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

#153

Post by icc97 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

dx87 wrote: post #93

zeroxfe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except for the brain works better when the body is healthier.

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

#154

Post by draugadrotten » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #139

sidstling wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s fair to consider IRC a social tool. It’s build around small communities made up of people who both belong to and run the various rooms. So within that you have a social structure, you have familiarity and you have social hierarchies. This is different from most “social” platforms on the modern web. Reddit, twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, instagram, hackernews and so on are all global villages, operated by a…

The problem with the facebook analogy is that you can make private groups that you can heavily moderate.

IRC had closed or private channels and the open channels were heavily moderated as well. I was a #linux moderator on EFnet for several years.

I believe the success of IRC is not due to the greatness of the tool but the userbase. It was pretty much university students world-wide and a few others. Similar behaviours, trainings, ideals etc. Facebook has a lot more diversity and thus conflict.

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

#155

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #42

djsumdog wrote: post #16

There's no indication in this short write up if they also surveyed how often people get out. I think it'd be a likely hypothesis that people today do hang out more with friends, simply because it is easier. Remember the 90s? You're waiting in a parking lot to go caving. "Where's Will?" "I don't know." "Call his house, there's a payphone over there." "His mom said he left 30 minutes ago." "Well I guess we'll just wait…

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.

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by reversecs » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

gbear605 wrote: post #142

ronnier wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at this, singles between 18 and 44, there's just a massive amount of men compared to women: http://jonathansoma.com/singles/#1/6/2/0

That only charts cities. I strongly suspect that the answer is just that there are unmatched women who lives in more rural/suburban areas. For people between 18 and 44, the number of men very closely matches the number of women. So, ignoring polyamory, the the proportion of singles across America must be very gender-equal. Since that shows that the proportion of singles in cities in male-skewed, the proportion of sin…

The proportion of single women is not skewed in other cities, its skewed in other age groups.

You can have the same number of men and women and the older women have a hard time finding a man and the young men have a hard time finding a woman.

It makes sense if you think about older men and younger women being able to easily match up and older women and younger men not being able to find anyone.

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

#157

Post by TimTheTinker » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #116

TimTheTinker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter if people aren't doing it as much. Yes it does. Threads of society are being cut, which is not only causing loneliness, but also emotional distancing, political polarization, demonizing folks in other camps, etc.

> Yes it does. Threads of society are being cut, which is not only causing loneliness, but also emotional distancing, political polarization, demonizing folks in other camps, etc. The post I replied to mentioned specifically small talk with various clerks and tellers. Those clerks and tellers are still there today, just like they were 20 years ago. If you walk into any of those stores listed, you'll find human beings…

> I think blaming technology is just a cop out. If you went to a concert or something, I'm sure you'd have an opportunity to talk to dozens of people,

Agreed, if we're talking about individual people blaming technology for their non-participation. But it's not a cop-out to say that society as a whole is being nudged away from social interactions, and that there are real negative effects on everyone.

Furthermore, there are large groups of people for whom the convenience of online shopping/banking/etc. far outweighs the cost of "getting out", even factoring in the real or perceived benefit of interacting with people at the store or bank -- people with small children, caregivers, poor people, invalids, etc. Although technology has improved quality of life for many such people, society as a whole suffers the effects of the loss of many personal micro-interactions with them and the gradual social fragmentation that results.

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

#158

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #149

iamcasen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting hypothesis. I can definitely see this being true outside of major urban centers. Public transit seems to be the remedy for teenagers doesn't it? When I was a kid, my parents had to drive me everywhere, and I'm thankful they did! I would have had zero friends otherwise.

I'm from outside a major urban center, and I don't really see it being true. Yes, those things are gone, but cars are extremely common, and it's unusual that someone doesn't get one at 16, especially if they're the oldest sibling and can take the younger ones to school, etc. And even when people wreck, they're generally looking for new ones fairly quickly. And this is in a rural area with 20% of the population below…

Not only do the kids not know how to interact, they are repeatedly told that personal interactions are dangerous. Today's kids have grown up with concepts of gangs and mutual accountability. They fear being held responsible when something happens. Relations between the sexes, particularly for young boys, also look like minefields. The line between romantic rejection, and the filing of an incident report, starts looking very slim. So the boys avoid the girls, and everyone avoids unregulated group activities. Playing fortnight is safe. There is nothing you can do in fortnight that will result in the police interviewing anyone. Asking a girl out is risky. Meeting a bunch of other teenagers in a field is downright dangerous.

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

#159

Post by repolfx » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #126

JeremyBanks wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinder for looks. OKC for ideology. POF if you like your partner skewed to the wrong aspect ratio.

I think it's all looks. Even OKC has changed their system recently to be more like Tinder. The first impression is never the profile, but the photo. Pretty much everything else is weighted against that in most peoples' minds (either consciously or unconsciously).

Yeah, but a well written profile and message can go a long way even if you look fairly average (for a man).

The messages and profiles most men do on these sites are awful. You don't have to work that hard to stand out from the crowd.

In fact my most recent OKC experience went like this - reviewed all the women in this city (it's not a large city and it's not in America so this is quite possible), picked the one I liked the most, messaged her. Got a reply the next day, first date a few days later.

That said, Tinder is pretty useless for men. But then you can't send high quality messages and the UX makes it annoying to view profiles, so what a big surprise. The number of women who post Tinder profiles saying they don't want hookups is ridiculous - the entire app is optimised for nothing but that. They should be on more traditional dating sites; I suspect they can't be bothered writing or reading profiles however.

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

#160

Post by crankylinuxuser » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

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.

Uh, IRC still exists. Not only that, but you can use IRC in the browser, on places like Freenode and Snoonet.

I'm currently on freenode #reprap right now, talking to 300 some different people. We're still doing exactly what you're nostalgic for. And, I've met a handful of them in person at 3d printing conventions. (Link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=reprap to chat on IRC right now)

Just because shiny new thing's moved in, doesn't mean that the old thing still isn't in use!

I'm also the same nickname on freenode as I am here. And still cranky as ever!