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The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

mcc.gse.harvard.edu

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Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#211

Post by BoxOfRain »

emptysongglass wrote: post #147
bloopernova wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've chatted with a couple of people who feel that their country (USA) is descending into chaos, and they don't feel like investing in a doomed future. I agree with the general feeling, but I'm trying to use it to motivate myself to have more fun. As to why people feel doomed: Republicans are putting the most faithful trump zealots in places to most influence the next elections. Remember that the Republicans believe…

This belief appears to be an artifact of people spending way too much time on social media, where suppositions are amplified into emotional Armageddons with little basis in reality. The United States' status of "doomed" isn't supported by any metric. > The utter insidious evil of the election theft lie from trump is going to destroy the USA by removing any trust in elections. This kind of invective is just utterly co…

>The world is not that presented by the distorting effects of the shrill voices of the doomsayers.

I completely agree. These doomsayers are powerful because we give them our attention, so if we ignore them they are impotent. We've collectively decided as a society that our attention is valuable so when we give it to people who want to do us harm by enraging us so we follow their political ideology, terrifying us so we doomscroll through the news all day, or showing us a highlight reel of the lives of our peers to make us feel like failures we're pretty much stealing from the pockets of our own futures.

Each of our realities is a canvas and we let some of the most ruthlessly calculating human beings of our generation scrawl all over them every day, but we as individuals can choose for this not to be the case. You don't build a brighter future by hoping someone at the top notices you, the people at the top are there because they benefit from the status quo so of course they're not going to help. You build a better world by starting small, and one small change is kicking the doomsayers out of your precious attention span.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#212

Post by CMay »

mandmandam wrote: post #7

I had a hunch going in that the authors would fail to break down how much more lonely the poor have been compared to the wealthy. Sadly, I was correct. They really didn't mention wealth or inequality once. Class pervades every aspect of America's problems so deeply that it's almost invisible, but that is no excuse to ignore it. Especially when we're talking about Harvard research, and especially when we're talking ab…

I'd strongly question having confidence in the wide applicability of the results in respect to class or wealth, much less loneliness which one would guess skews higher than a random sample due to their data source being Mechanical Turk.

Both this paper and another paper it links to make it a point to state possible concern with getting their data this way. Aside from that, there are several important factors you would want to account for and the more you want to split out the data to isolate influences the larger the sample size you need. Their total sample size was only ~950, making each nested subset sample size progressively smaller than that.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#213

Post by paul7986 »

floydian10 wrote: post #208
paul7986 wrote: post #188

Anyone else find dating to be different in the pandemic ... like it's harder to connect with people then before? Dating was never real easy for me, but wow since Dec 2020 to now ive went on 20 to 30 dates to new friend meetups (bumble bff) and really nothing materialized. I've even started talking about it with recent dates (since Sept) and meetups cause they bring it up themselves. I thought it was my age which is a…

I do. I mean, you do need to be in a good place to be able to connect, mentally and emotionally speaking. I can barely keep existing friendships these days.

I've went offline in the past five months to connect with people .. church/play in their band and meetup.com. Church has been the most fruitful in terms of making a new friend and their friends.

Online dating is a joke with a good amount of friends (casual ones ive known through work & school) all saying it's hard to connect with people on a deeper level then just a date and a hookup. There's always something better to swipe right on and the one your interested in is interested in another whose not that interested in them but another and so on. My view of it ...one view at least.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#214

Post by inetknght »

jbrun wrote: post #4

It's a bit paradoxical. I have a tech company and most staff want to come to the office 1 day a week. Getting them to come is very tough. Many of my staff and friends don't want to have kids, make no effort to find a partner and find all sorts of excuses. Netflix, the internet and these things are part of the problem, but I have no clue what the solution is. There is only one way to not be lonely - be with people who…

> You have to get out into the world and invest in others.

I agree. So with the context of that statement I will give you my opinion about your other statements:

> I have a tech company and most staff want to come to the office 1 day a week.

How many of those staff have to do work in the office? There's no reason to go to the office if you can work from home other than to socialize with others. And I don't know about you, but I think socializing with coworkers leads to a very unprofessional work environment. I'd rather stay professional.

> Getting them to come is very tough.

As it should be. Work shouldn't be their only way to socialize.

> Many of my staff and friends don't want to have kids, make no effort to find a partner and find all sorts of excuses.

I don't want to have kids. I wouldn't mind a partner but I don't particularly make an effort to find one.

What you see as excuses are perhaps your own opinion.

I particularly think it to be really fucking selfish to bring a child into the world when the child won't succeed better than you. Despite the tech sector and certain trade sectors, the job market is shit. Education is shit. Climate is shit. Government is shit. Neighbors are shit. Why the hell would you think now is the time to have children?

> Netflix, the internet and these things are part of the problem, but I have no clue what the solution is.

But on that point I quite agree with you

Everyone is different. There is not "the solution". There are many, sometimes mutually exclusive, solutions.

For me: work shouldn't take up all of the time I would require to run errands. Other businesses' time are completely within my own employer's time. There's literally zero time for me to go deal with a bank problem or take the car or lawnmower to the shop. If I have an electrical, or plumbing, or stovetop, or refrigerator issue that needs immediate attention then I have to take time off of work to do that. And there's only a few weeks given for that. I've seen people have to take a few weeks off just to deal with problems and then they have zero time for themselves. Where are they supposed to find time to build relationships or fix the problems that matter to them?

> There is only one way to not be lonely - be with people who care about you.

I've been around for a few years. It's one thing to care about someone; I care about many people! But I don't really want to learn more about them because what they're interested in is utterly empty and devoid of meaning to me. I imagine it's the same in reverse: the people who care about me don't really want to care about the things that I care about. That's where loneliness is.

You say you have a tech company and I see from your bio that you're "founder and president". How much steering can you provide? Can you steer your company's goals to align with the things that your employees care about? Because until that happens then I won't believe that you really care about your employees.

You care about your company and, on the peripheral, are your employees who seem to be dragging their feet with regards to your company. And that makes you peripherally concerned about your employees but not meaningfully concerned. At least, that's the surface impression I get without knowing who you are, what you do, or anything about your company; an assumption. I hope I'm wrong :)

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#215

Post by mandmandam »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #155
bloopernova wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've chatted with a couple of people who feel that their country (USA) is descending into chaos, and they don't feel like investing in a doomed future. I agree with the general feeling, but I'm trying to use it to motivate myself to have more fun. As to why people feel doomed: Republicans are putting the most faithful trump zealots in places to most influence the next elections. Remember that the Republicans believe…

>The utter insidious evil of the election theft lie from trump is going to destroy the USA by removing any trust in elections. I have the unenviable position of being against trust in elections and also against Trump.

There are dozens of us.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#216

Post by inetknght »

bloopernova wrote: post #50
jbrun wrote: post #4

It's a bit paradoxical. I have a tech company and most staff want to come to the office 1 day a week. Getting them to come is very tough. Many of my staff and friends don't want to have kids, make no effort to find a partner and find all sorts of excuses. Netflix, the internet and these things are part of the problem, but I have no clue what the solution is. There is only one way to not be lonely - be with people who…

I've chatted with a couple of people who feel that their country (USA) is descending into chaos, and they don't feel like investing in a doomed future. I agree with the general feeling, but I'm trying to use it to motivate myself to have more fun. As to why people feel doomed: Republicans are putting the most faithful trump zealots in places to most influence the next elections. Remember that the Republicans believe…

> Republicans are

It's not just the Republicans though. There are also quite a lot of maliciously incompetent Democrats too.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#217

Post by tsol »

mchanson wrote: post #87
ljm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really have to know how to look after yourself, and be happy with yourself, before you can really bring another person into the mix in the form of a committed relationship (using the example of people not having partners or not thinking about children). There's been an expectation for a long time that your self-worth as a person is connected to being with someone else, and therefore your path to increase self-wor…

You don't need to know how to look after yourself. This is perfect is the enemy of the good type situation. Not being a fully realized person doesn't stop you from making connections. Even deep great friendships. You and your friends can grow together over time. You can cut out friends that are not a good fit over time if they are bad for you (abusive, etc.).

In fact, I find more and more the people who are most successful around me are those who just go for it rather than being contentious and trying to perfect themselves. I think the best place to be is, at always, in the middle. Too much alone time and you may be very independent but you don't want to spend time with others as they're worse company than your own self. Too little alone time, and you become codependent and don't learn to be independent.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#218

Post by tsol »

bloopernova wrote: post #50
jbrun wrote: post #4

It's a bit paradoxical. I have a tech company and most staff want to come to the office 1 day a week. Getting them to come is very tough. Many of my staff and friends don't want to have kids, make no effort to find a partner and find all sorts of excuses. Netflix, the internet and these things are part of the problem, but I have no clue what the solution is. There is only one way to not be lonely - be with people who…

I've chatted with a couple of people who feel that their country (USA) is descending into chaos, and they don't feel like investing in a doomed future. I agree with the general feeling, but I'm trying to use it to motivate myself to have more fun. As to why people feel doomed: Republicans are putting the most faithful trump zealots in places to most influence the next elections. Remember that the Republicans believe…

People have always thought the world is ending. It's more likely things will just change somewhat, as they always have. Some things will get better, some things will get worse. As they always have

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#219

Post by tsol »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #69
arthur_sav wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've lost the community aspect. Previously, communities were essential for survival but nowadays it's easier than ever to be independent. Work remote from your computer. Buy food, water, sex and get dopamine hits from social media. When you don't really need anyone, it's hard to be vulnerable and try to open up to new people. So here we are, we have everything at our fingertips and yet we're empty.

Lost? It was dismantled and it was done with intent. Let us not forget the people who did it and how they did it. "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families." - Margaret Thatcher It's much harder to build something than it is to tear it down.

How did Thatcher make it so Americans don't really bother to know their neighbors anymore(can your believe people used to borrow a cup of sugar from their neighbors-- now I feel like that'd make be seen as crazy)? How did she make it so that people feel like calling is weird and people should just text(and dropping by unannounced is just annoying, even if your a friend, which in the past was considered an occasion to show hospitality)? Did Thatcher make society secular so they don't meet and socialize at church every Sunday(with the subtext that the all knowing and all good wants us to do it even if we don't feel like it)? There are definite changes to society.

Re: The pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness

#220

Post by tsol »

Bancakes wrote: post #207
tarboreus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that empirically, on average, they're miserable, by self-report. It's the most depressed generation. https://www.mhanational.org/number-people-reporting-anxiety-... https://www.aecf.org/blog/generation-z-and-mental-health Not great reports but I've read actual papers on this in the past.

I see those are American self-reports. From experience, here around Eastern Europe, I am surrounded by people content with being single. If anything, life doesn't get cheaper.

So they say, but single people are statistically more unhappy to the degree that they don't live as long as married people. Saying this as a single person
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