Pictures reveal the isolated lives of Japan’s social recluses (2018)

Not necessarily sense of worth, I would argue. I doubt that it's the first time in history when parents told their children that they are very beautiful and smart, much better than anyone else.

IMHO cushion of enough wealth to allow a lifestyle of "prefer not to" combined with lowered expectations of the life is a total destroyer. Many people in developed countries can choose not to face the difficulties of the life and be entertained and fed through their adulthood.

If it's hard for you to face rejection or go through social situation there's enough infrastructure to let you live your life in a room. You may or may not have income if you don't have to pay rent, staying alive is extremely cheap so your parents can take care of you with almost no impact on their budget. You can also do some remote work that requires only tech literacy.

I myself had periods of "going back to parents home" when I was feeling "No expectations form my life but not interested in dying". What worked for me was forcing myself out of my comfort zone through changing cities/countries with no enough fund to sustain that kind of lifestyle.

It worked well for me 3 times so far. The state of "living in your room" is easy thanks to the internet, I don't remember getting bored because my schedule was always full with "projects", TV series, games and online discussions(forums->facebook->Digg->reddit). You notice the toll on your body and you disconnect at some point when your peers move on with their phase in their lives.

I'm not exactly an introvert(I simply need time alone too), I actually enjoy the company of people and what works for me is re-inventing myself somewhere else and meet completely new people. That's the phase I feel alive instead of content, suddenly I feel like I have a purpose(because I actually do have a purpose. I'm doing rebuild from scratch and there's plenty of stuff to do). At some point the things stabilize and I start feeling like disconnecting from the society for a while.

I just wonder why these other people don't seem to break their stay in the room period. The world is full of opportunities and it's actually very friendly place overall. The flaming extraverts are cool too.

I have a hypothesis for this too. One thing I noticed about my "live in the room phase" peers is that they tend to deny observations, they are extremist in their lifestyles and fight to the bitter end any evidence that another way of life is possible and it's within their reach. They are extremely cynical towards the outside world. I think this is required because, to maintain inaction you need to have a gap between what's possible and what you can do. If you accept that the world is full of opportunities, the only way to have a gap preventing you from picking these opportunities is to have low abilities. So yes, it does have a component of self worth.

I wonder if this is true, or if there's a darker side to the hikikomori that we just don't see as much of.

My theory is that we go through this little dance because we can’t stand to admit that there’s anything structurally wrong with our society. If people feel lonely, or unsupported by their community, then well, it just means they’re broken, and should go through years of expensive and intensive therapy. Otherwise, just deal with it and get back to work.

I’m not saying we all need to join communes or anything, but explicit recognition of the problem at hand would go a long way I think.