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It doesn't look like there's a distinction between friendship loneliness and romantic loneliness in the article (not sure if there's one in the actual studies).

It doesn't look like there's a distinction between friendship loneliness and romantic loneliness in the article (not sure if there's one in the actual studies). I'd hypothesis that the difficulty for most isn't making friends (meetups or shared interest groups like dancing, knitting, boardgames, kickboxing, group instrument lessons, etc), but in partnerships. I think people are really afraid today. Dating sites/apps seem to make it worse, reducing individuals to a photo as a primary interest mechanism. I'm really curious of the huge disparity between men/women messaging one another on such platforms. Women tend to get inundated with messages where as men are typically responsible for initiating. Some platforms try to flip this around like Bumble, but it doesn't seem to really change the dynamic at all (some men get tons of responses while the rest get zero). There just isn't enough depth in this article to draw out any real conclusions about loneliness, the various types of alone-ness and what to do about it.

notadoc 9y ago
> I'm really curious of the huge disparity between men/women messaging one another on such platforms. Women tend to get inundated with messages where as men are typically responsible for initiating. You're basically seeing sexual selection and Bateman's principle at an exaggerated scale, because online dating makes it very easy for males to cast wide nets repeatedly thereby allowing women to be even choosier for their partners.
majormajor 9y ago
> I'd hypothesis that the difficulty for most isn't making friends (meetups or shared interest groups like dancing, knitting, boardgames, kickboxing, group instrument lessons, etc), but in partnerships. I've mostly seen the opposite. People whose social lives were centered around dating and meeting people through that, who then settled down, and now don't know how to make just "friend" friends. Would the two have the same root cause? That's an interesting question - many claim that "tech" (in the abstract, or in the specific eg "facebook likes") are responsible for both, but I don't really buy it. I don't know what historical rate information we have, but there have always been some loners. They have an easier-to-access platform today, does that skew our perception?
- eun34ntueon 9y ago
  This matches my experience. People get married, settle down, and then the people they mainly interact with are coworkers and parents of their children. If those people don't have a reasonable sampling of people that match your interests, you don't have a lot of opportunities to make friends elsewhere. Meetups are often full of people trying to hook up, so not always useful for people already in a relationship. Plus, just having a single shared interest like knitting, dancing, or kickboxing isn't really a lot to hang a relationship on.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    To the GP's point though, are the married people who have less friends the lonely ones? The article doesn't specify and from my own experience I'm much less lonely now with a significant other and less friends than I was when I was single and had many friends. I suspect the lack of pair bonding and childbirth is driving the majority of the reported loneliness.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      The question though is the overall social fabric less lonely? Maybe you benefit by being strongly coupled, but suddenly those "many friends" you had when you were single is utterly impacted by the shift. How many of those friends were only friends with each other through your connection and maybe aren't connected today? How many friends are lonelier without as much interaction with you? To some extent modern culture has presented us this model of single-family homes and strongly coupled people against the world, and certainly it might minimize loneliness for the strong couples, but does it maximize loneliness for everyone else? There's a lot to wonder if we've lost something in losing some of the classic "village model" of multiple families and individuals all in close proximity and relationship to each other in multi-family homes. Especially when you start to include individuals that for one reason or another don't "fit" into more traditional "Hollywood" couple relationship roles (asexual and/or aromantic folks don't always fit neatly into a strongly-bound couple role, as one obvious example to me; differently abled people have other challenges; etc). Furthermore, a focus on strong coupling discounts the network effects of looser coupling. You may not feel hardly lonely at all always having your significant other around, but that may only be a "local maximum" state. Your maximal happiness may rely on both the reliability of a tight couple and a network of other friends filling other relationship needs. The long tail of strong couple problems from active therapy needs to cheating and divorce rates seems to suggest that it very much could be a local maximum "trap". Anecdotally, I do feel like an individual that can't win in a game of strong coupling, and it does irk me that the suggestion is simply "be part of a couple". Hollywood and dating companies throw a lot of money at trying to tell people like me that this is the only solution, and it certainly seems like it's not a (workable) solution at all.
el7noo4T 9y ago
> I'd hypothesis that the difficulty for most isn't making friends I have not found any group activity that I would want to do regularly. Upon introspection I find that I have created a lot many small hurdles for me. No smartphone due to privacy concerns, no car because I am accustomed to public transport, live too far from the city even though I could move. Combined with no real interest in offline group activities that leads to not having had anyone who I would call friend in more than a decade. > but in partnerships Isn't "being social" a prerequisite for dating? I mean when I even think about an online dating site the first question that comes to mind is how blank my profile would look.
mjevans 9y ago
The cost of distance and synchronization are also a factors. It is very easy for me to establish a virtual third space for a topic of interest, but the reality of timezones make establishing connections with those friends sometimes insurmountable; and those friendships do not translate well to the physically limited world. Conversely, local relationships are also extremely difficult to establish due to the diffuse living areas surrounding larger cities. Those whom you might be inclined to establish a social relationship with can live /hours/ away during the evening commute periods and are often extremely busy on weekends. Even if time to meet up can be established a stable and sufficiently (warm/private/intimate) meeting place might not exist or might require an economically infeasible increase in rent. The inhospitably to cars (for outsiders of the urban core) and the low quality of public transit in US cities (particularly 'out west') compound the pain of this friction. The net result is friction on social activities that destroy network effects that are probably expected in larger populations. When combined with a lack of locality stable careers in many fields, at least first hand, I observe a lack of community and the ability to establish social links.

notadoc 9y ago

> I'm really curious of the huge disparity between men/women messaging one another on such platforms. Women tend to get inundated with messages where as men are typically responsible for initiating. You're basically seeing sexual selection and Bateman's principle at an exaggerated scale, because online dating makes it very easy for males to cast wide nets repeatedly thereby allowing women to be even choosier for their partners.

majormajor 9y ago

> I'd hypothesis that the difficulty for most isn't making friends (meetups or shared interest groups like dancing, knitting, boardgames, kickboxing, group instrument lessons, etc), but in partnerships. I've mostly seen the opposite. People whose social lives were centered around dating and meeting people through that, who then settled down, and now don't know how to make just "friend" friends. Would the two have the same root cause? That's an interesting question - many claim that "tech" (in the abstract, or in the specific eg "facebook likes") are responsible for both, but I don't really buy it. I don't know what historical rate information we have, but there have always been some loners. They have an easier-to-access platform today, does that skew our perception?

eun34ntueon 9y ago
This matches my experience. People get married, settle down, and then the people they mainly interact with are coworkers and parents of their children. If those people don't have a reasonable sampling of people that match your interests, you don't have a lot of opportunities to make friends elsewhere. Meetups are often full of people trying to hook up, so not always useful for people already in a relationship. Plus, just having a single shared interest like knitting, dancing, or kickboxing isn't really a lot to hang a relationship on.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  To the GP's point though, are the married people who have less friends the lonely ones? The article doesn't specify and from my own experience I'm much less lonely now with a significant other and less friends than I was when I was single and had many friends. I suspect the lack of pair bonding and childbirth is driving the majority of the reported loneliness.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    The question though is the overall social fabric less lonely? Maybe you benefit by being strongly coupled, but suddenly those "many friends" you had when you were single is utterly impacted by the shift. How many of those friends were only friends with each other through your connection and maybe aren't connected today? How many friends are lonelier without as much interaction with you? To some extent modern culture has presented us this model of single-family homes and strongly coupled people against the world, and certainly it might minimize loneliness for the strong couples, but does it maximize loneliness for everyone else? There's a lot to wonder if we've lost something in losing some of the classic "village model" of multiple families and individuals all in close proximity and relationship to each other in multi-family homes. Especially when you start to include individuals that for one reason or another don't "fit" into more traditional "Hollywood" couple relationship roles (asexual and/or aromantic folks don't always fit neatly into a strongly-bound couple role, as one obvious example to me; differently abled people have other challenges; etc). Furthermore, a focus on strong coupling discounts the network effects of looser coupling. You may not feel hardly lonely at all always having your significant other around, but that may only be a "local maximum" state. Your maximal happiness may rely on both the reliability of a tight couple and a network of other friends filling other relationship needs. The long tail of strong couple problems from active therapy needs to cheating and divorce rates seems to suggest that it very much could be a local maximum "trap". Anecdotally, I do feel like an individual that can't win in a game of strong coupling, and it does irk me that the suggestion is simply "be part of a couple". Hollywood and dating companies throw a lot of money at trying to tell people like me that this is the only solution, and it certainly seems like it's not a (workable) solution at all.

el7noo4T 9y ago

> I'd hypothesis that the difficulty for most isn't making friends I have not found any group activity that I would want to do regularly. Upon introspection I find that I have created a lot many small hurdles for me. No smartphone due to privacy concerns, no car because I am accustomed to public transport, live too far from the city even though I could move. Combined with no real interest in offline group activities that leads to not having had anyone who I would call friend in more than a decade. > but in partnerships Isn't "being social" a prerequisite for dating? I mean when I even think about an online dating site the first question that comes to mind is how blank my profile would look.

mjevans 9y ago

The cost of distance and synchronization are also a factors. It is very easy for me to establish a virtual third space for a topic of interest, but the reality of timezones make establishing connections with those friends sometimes insurmountable; and those friendships do not translate well to the physically limited world. Conversely, local relationships are also extremely difficult to establish due to the diffuse living areas surrounding larger cities. Those whom you might be inclined to establish a social relationship with can live /hours/ away during the evening commute periods and are often extremely busy on weekends. Even if time to meet up can be established a stable and sufficiently (warm/private/intimate) meeting place might not exist or might require an economically infeasible increase in rent. The inhospitably to cars (for outsiders of the urban core) and the low quality of public transit in US cities (particularly 'out west') compound the pain of this friction. The net result is friction on social activities that destroy network effects that are probably expected in larger populations. When combined with a lack of locality stable careers in many fields, at least first hand, I observe a lack of community and the ability to establish social links.