17 ms·

Loneliness is a serious public-health problem

185 points by joeyespo 8y ago

aldoushuxley001 8y ago
Absolutely, people are vastly underestimating the social and health effects of loneliness. Loneliness is the gateway drug to depression and resentment. Of course, I am referring to unwanted loneliness here. I think people who are comfortable being alone for most of their lives aren't in the same category.
- Aaargh20318 8y ago
  > I think people who are comfortable being alone for most of their lives aren't in the same category. In fact, we suffer from the opposite problem: lack of solitude. Frankly, I think this is a much bigger problem than the overblown loneliness issue. There are people everywhere, avoiding them is practically impossible.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > There are people everywhere, avoiding them is practically impossible. Move to another country, where you don't speak the language. There will still be people, but they won't interact with you.
    - Aaargh20318 8y ago
      That’s not solitude. I shouldn’t have to have to see or hear anyone for the rest of my life if I don’t want to.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        There have always been hermits too. But if you tried it, you would find that isolation behind the language barrier felt like solitude to you.
  - Razengan 8y ago
    I'm a bit in both camps. I have no social contacts and I often work from home. Most of the time I don't even want to hear anyone, and get agitated by the noise of traffic (which is a constant where I live.) However after sitting at the computer for a while I do crave human interaction. Places like Reddit, HN or online games are my usual venues for that, but they don't fix physical isolation. As per my other comment [0], my Holy Grail is being able to do my thing in proximity to other people, in a beautiful environment, without having to interact with anyone or being affected by them, like a calm park with internet access and something to put my laptop on. :) This usually gives me the best of both worlds. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17944802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17944802
  - dorkwood 8y ago
    I agree. Needing a full-time job to survive means I get maybe three hours of time to myself each day. The rest is in an open plan office or commuting. And it’s not even true solitude, since rent prices here force me to share a house with other people. As long as I have a close friend or two that I can share my thoughts with when the need arises, and personal activities that occupy my thoughts and time when I’m by myself, I can’t imagine feeling lonely ever again. More solitude, please.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Loneliness is not the same as being alone. My first taste of gut-wrenching loneliness was when I was 13. I was a little lonely before, but then we moved. That wasn't the issue. Some girls decided I was lesbian. Now, them being half correct is besides the point (I'm bisexual at 40 years old). The entire freaking school stopped talking to me. It eased up a bit next year since there were some new faces in high school, but I struggled for years and years. I struggled with loneliness, in part because I never actually felt like I could just be myself. The midwest, especially in small to medium sized towns, is full of social pressure to conform - in this case, it was usually conformation to the traditional family setup with ties to some christian sect. I could sometimes find small groups of friends that simply accepted me, but sometimes not. 5 years ago I moved to Norway. I knew exactly one person. But I'm also not lonely. This is a place known for being difficult to meet people and make friends, but I've honestly been happier. I have two or three friends, and find that society mostly doesn't care about me conforming as much. Sure, I'm not accepted by everyone, but society itself is set up to try to be inclusive instead of tossing aside folks that do not fit in. It was a real life-changer.
com2kid 8y ago
I grew up and live in Seattle, where loneliness and meeting people is such problem we have our own Wikipedia page about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze When meeting people from other cities, it is hard to explain exactly how bad Seattle is. One case in point, the Seattle meet up scene is dead compared to other similar cities. Even the engineering groups (PHP, React Native) that have hundreds of active participates in other cities will have dozens to none in Seattle. Put 10 people from Seattle in a room and suggest an activity, and everyone will nod their heads, say that sounds like a great idea, and then never take the final steps of organizing to do it. This Seattle mentality lead me to found https://www.thawd.net https://www.thawd.net where we are melting the social freeze. I'm a technologist, so I have to believe that technology can solve problems, and I hope that the system Thawd is building can help reduce loneliness. The tl;dr is that Thawd removes all the friction of social activities, and presents the user with a great big "get me together with other people right now" button. Everything Thawd does happens super short term, 3-72 hours in the future, and our MVP is not eating dinner alone, we form a group of people who'll enjoy spending a couple hours talking with each other. If I don't solve the problem, I sure hope someone else does, because, honestly, Seattle is a lonely place to live.
- mannanj 8y ago
  I feel like I have a similar problem here in the DC area particularly as an engineer. All the meet ups and activities around here I find not fulfilling enough, and have a disconnect with actually wanting to pull through. Is this coming to my area? Or could you possibly show me how this works with a small demo or something so I can maybe help do something similar around here?
  - com2kid 8y ago
    It is a full on startup. Mobile apps on iOS and Android paired with a backend service for reservations and group matching. Thawd is launching first in Seattle, then it'll go city by city.
  - jcstryker 8y ago
    Since you are in the DC area I can plug the DC Code & Coffee[0] and their sister meetup NoVA Code & Coffee[1]. Both are great, active biweekly meetups with around 40-60 attendees each time. Its not just for software engineers, we get data science, devops, security, etc. people coming in. Even people not in tech but looking to make a switch. Its a lot of fun actually. [0] https://www.meetup.com/dc-code-coffee/ https://www.meetup.com/dc-code-coffee/ [1] https://www.meetup.com/NoVA-Code-Coffee/ https://www.meetup.com/NoVA-Code-Coffee/
amelius 8y ago
Makes me wonder what social media do for public health in cases of loneliness.
plainOldText 8y ago
We need deeper, local, and more meaningful social interactions, and less shallow, global, low quality connections. In the course of the last 12000 years, we've evolved from small, hunter-gatherer tribes, to highly dense, highly competitive, modern human establishments, and in the process have created a world perhaps too complex to successfully navigate without properly augmenting our intellects and social abilities. It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us, and one consequence might very well be loneliness. No matter what we decide the proper course of action is to successfully address the challenges of modern life, we must not forget that the only way forward is to accept our shared destiny and the need for collaboration. After all, we’re in this together. There’s no need to fight.
- paulcole 8y ago
  > It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us Tell that to my insulin, my grandma who had a kidney transplant, my coworker conceiving via IVF, the kid down the street who called 911 on his iPhone when somebody tried to kidnap him...
  - alexandercrohde 8y ago
    To some extent some of those problems are better solved without technology. - The diabetes and obesity crisis in America can't be cured by technology. - IVF is often due to advanced aging, due to pressure to work later - There was a time when kids could be left unattended 100 years ago. I'm curious why this has changed so much.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Type 1 diabetes can't be cured nor avoided by lifestyle changes.
      - xattt 8y ago
        Type 1 diabetes isn’t related to obesity.
mc32 8y ago
I wonder if we can learn from Japan. I’m sure they hsve studies about this given some aspects of their culture results in low real-life interactions with strangers, and they have a number of people[Hikkimori] who basically stay in days on end. Not that one culture easily translates to another, but from a health perspective maybe we can learn from them.
budadre75 8y ago
Too be honest, making social interactions is exhausting, maybe it's because I'm introverted, but I too feel lonely. I certainly don't want to die early due to loneliness, lol what a stupid reason don't you think. There are hermits who live long lives, I think it's a better way to learn the ways of solitude than tackling these problems with paid services. This is kind of ironic how capitalism progresses to this point but the prosperity that affords the individualism causes this loneliness problem. In addition, perhaps biohacking can come into the picture in fixing the loneliness problem, for example we know fictional works can induce senses of emotions, so essentially still using technology to solve the loneliness problem but without the humans involved, like the Xiaomi chatbot in China that helps millions with their loneliness problem but beyond just the app level. An anecdote about the Paro robot mentioned in the article: a professor told me Paro robots actually caused panic in the elderly care center at first lol.
- pm90 8y ago
  You can't hack your way into fixing what is essentially a non-technical problem. I guess what I'm saying is that loneliness is not a pathogen that can be removed but a symptom of something you don't have (social circle, friends, intimate partners etc.) The most reasonable solution seems to be something like in the movie "Her", or in Westworld where they use humanoid robots as "good-enough" replacements for humans.
  - disqard 8y ago
    Yes, technology acts as an amplifier for human intentions (Kentaro Toyama's words, not mine). Thus, fixing the underlying cause of the Seattle Freeze is the only thing that can fix the Seattle Freeze, not layering tech-based fixes on top. As someone living in Seattle since 2011, I hypothesize that most people here are sufficiently affluent that they do not need to interact meaningfully (read "make friends") with people other than their family. IMHO, this is the root cause, and I don't think that technology can change this state of affairs.
- petra 8y ago
  It may be possible to hack the negative effects of loneliness biologically, because loneliness's negative effect may be meditated through brain chemicals: "It showed that mice experiencing the stress of spending two weeks in social isolation had elevated levels of a brain-signaling molecule called Tac2, which in turn increases levels of a neuropeptide called NkB. The abundance of this molecule, the researchers write, might be responsible for all of the stressed-out behaviors they noticed in the mice" https://www.inverse.com/article/44885-social-isolation-mental-health-neuroscience https://www.inverse.com/article/44885-social-isolation-menta... Now maybe we could create a medicine to target those. But on the surface , it sounds like a terrible idea - because psychiatric medicines have a lot of side effects in general. But also, even if found an ideal method to remove loneliness, loneliness does seem to serve a role - without loneliness people won't create connections between each other, and probably won't care about other people(as we currently seen with smartphones, social skills and empathy declined). And sounds like a terrible way to build a society, far different from that of the hermit monk(at least in buddhism), that, while alone, is training to increase his compassion towards all other living beings.
EGreg 8y ago
I am passionate about solving this problem. 20 years ago, Robert Putnam wrote a book called “bowling alone” where he put forth the stats on the collapse of social groups in the US. Since then, the problem only got worse, and it also reflects itself in dating, and so on. https://youtu.be/VR5nyQmfG7Q https://youtu.be/VR5nyQmfG7Q What do y’all think of this solution? We spent years on it and it is almost ready to launch. This was a kickstarter campaign video we had put together. Constructive (good and/or critical) feedback is welcome. Here is our roadmap: https://qbix.com/docs/presentation.pdf https://qbix.com/docs/presentation.pdf
bscphil 8y ago
I think it's interesting that so many here think tech meetups are the solution to loneliness. In part that's frustrating because I don't work in the tech industry (programming is a hobby for me), but it's also seems strange because I don't particularly want to limit myself to meeting people who work in the same field. But here in LA, that unfortunately hasn't made things any easier for me. It's just really damn hard to start new relationships here. You need a reason to see someone more than once, and it's hard to establish that the first time you meet someone. I'm reminded of people who do the "if we're not in relationships at thirty, let's get married" thing. It seems absurd to most of us because it seems like you need an established romantic relationship. But maybe that's a mistake - maybe it's just as good to commit to making things work with someone you know you're compatible with. Likewise, I see people on the subway or bus looking at their phones, and I know many of them have to be lonely. It seems absurd for two lonely people to sit beside each other silently for half an hour. But maybe that's the problem: with modern technology we lack the pressure to create social bonds. If it's the 1930s I probably need to be on good terms with my neighbors. We're so independent now - I can even avoid interacting with a clerk if I want because people are willing to ship groceries to my door. What seems to be needed is a way for many of us to blindly push a button that says "commit", and get randomly matched up with a compatible group of friends. Is that the best way to form social bonds? Probably not, but it's so much better than what we have currently that to go on as we do seems like madness.
- Gys 8y ago
  > What seems to be needed is a way for many of us to blindly push a button that says "commit", and get randomly matched up with a compatible group of friends. There is an event starting in LA that might exactly do that [1]. At least in Lisbon, this works very well. Disclaimer: I co-organize in Lisbon and build the app for this. [1] https://www.meetup.com/LA-Digital-Nomads/events/254211266/ https://www.meetup.com/LA-Digital-Nomads/events/254211266/
- pagnol 8y ago
  > Likewise, I see people on the subway or bus looking at their phones, and I know many of them have to be lonely. For ages I only possessed a tattered slow Android phone which I only ever used to make phone calls or send the occasional WhatsApp message. Back then I used to feel the same way about people on the subway who were looking at their phones. For a few months now I’ve been having a brand new iPhone (it was a gift) and I have since discovered to my own amazement that it’s a pretty damn awesome reading device. My backpack used to be full of books which are now all on my phone. This experience has made me less judgemental when I look around on a train and see only people interacting with their phone. For all I know, they may be reading poetry or the latest machine learning papers. :)
vinceguidry 8y ago
It's my opinion America's social fabric has been thoroughly destroyed by it's relentless commercial focus, and it will take at least a few more decades before Americans will rediscover the need to connect with each other. I have been going to the same coffee shop for 13 years. It is one of the only coffee shops in Atlanta that has comfortable chairs and couches that one is happy to spend hours socializing in. Almost every single other coffee shop in the city has succumbed to the frigid tyranny of aluminum and plywood. If you spend significant amounts of time at one of these "coffee shops," your only companionship is likely to be your laptop. Its bars are a little better, but in general our country has turned our traditional watering holes from places where you could go to find a social group, to places where you must bring your social group with you if you are to have any kind of interesting fun at all. It's becoming difficult to find bars with an active social scene of regulars which doesn't feel obnoxiously cliquish. Americans, even when they are social, often fail spectacularly to be inclusive. The only place left where you can go to reliably dispel your loneliness anymore is church. Sadly, even if you're religious, the atmosphere can feel oppressive. My mom all but gave up her quest to find a church where she could fit in with, and she is not a picky lady in this regard. If you were to trace all three of these phenomenon down to a single underlying source, it's consumerism. If Americans aren't immediately getting what they want in any given situation, they leave and go back to their ivory tower / nest that they've constructed out of well-meaning, but myopic products / services that leave Americans feeling catered to, but not fulfilled. We don't want to sit and painstakingly build friendships any more. We want friendship-in-a-box. And our 'third places' have increasingly surrendered to those wishes.
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  I find your consumerism narrative unconvincing as you've laid it out here. I am, however, curious how much you blame mobile devices and social media, because that seems like (a) the Big Thing that's recently changed, and (b) because narratives and my experience around why people choose superficial connection or social disconnection through the use of social media and mobile devices seems very convincing and common. Wish we had more rigorous data on causation here though.
  - 8y ago
lumberjack 8y ago
I imagine the solution to be some sort of Boy Scouts for Adults. It would be different from a MeetUp Group in that there would be some minor level of commitment which is important to keep people attending when they need it most: when they are feeling a bit down; and there would be a regular meeting schedule. If I were not traveling I would seriously look into setting something like this up.
- nopriorarrests 8y ago
  You have just invented church.
  - lumberjack 8y ago
    I am well aware of that. I think a sort of secular replacement for Christianity is needed. Liberalism seems to have just done away with it and left nothing to replace it. It had its problems but it also served some good purposes. This is one of them.
    - toyg 8y ago
      > Liberalism seems to have just done away with it and left nothing to replace it The original "inventors" of social liberalism (and arguably its most vocal supporters today) did have replacements: strong friend circles where they were popular, political parties with strong ideological roots, cultural clubs, societies of shared interests, etc. They fought for auto-determination precisely because they wanted equal dignity for their preferred replacements, in the face of institutional snobism. At the end of the day, even anarchists have clubs. The real problem is that very little is done in education, in most countries, to let kids explore different social groups and perspectives in order to choose the one they fit best; and even less is done for lonely adults. They are usually grouped per age and along fairly omogeneous class lines, which is a complete crapshoot.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Sounds like the Army Reserve. A social group in your local area, structure, purpose, fitness, responsibility, progression.
lazyjones 8y ago
Perhaps we‘re just not built for living in metropolitan areas with millions of people within a few square kilometers and we‘re isolating ourselves from the strangers we see every day because it makes us uncomfortable. Move back to small villages and cities?
iovrthoughtthis 8y ago
I feel like a lot of this problem is to do with logistical convenience. As we get better at traveling further for work / school we build relationships with people who are less convenient to maintain. These relationships demand higher effort than a local relationship and are more fragile than relationships built on convenience (assumption). IMO the solution to this is to somehow decouple where we work / learn from who we work for / which schools we go to so that local, convenient people can work and learn together on different jobs / courses and build relationships that are convenient to maintain. Right now i think the neucleus of our social lives and the places we build the most of our relationships (school, work) are too far from the places we relax (home) for us to easily maintain longterm, social relationship because those relationships are often founded and maintined through convenience. That or we need to spend less time working and officially dedicate much larger portions of our lives to maintaining social lives. We could do this trough reduced working hours, increased leisure time and perhaps some sort of “hanging out” subsidy so that people without disposable income can afford to travel to spend time together.
- deven88 8y ago
  Earlier, we were depended on others (relatives and neighbors) for many things. Now dependency has reduced drastically, so there is no need for relationships. I have have seen strong bonding in neighborhood where they are economically weak.
- logicchains 8y ago
  Another way is for people to become more comfortable with digital communication. If you enjoy communicating with someone face to face, you'll probably enjoy communicating with them in written form too. For instance, I have some people I message very day, some I message every week, some I message every month, and keeping in touch like this allows the relationship to stay strong and grow, in spite of us rarely seeing each other in person. This approach is also ultimately more scalable: hanging out generally takes a lot more time than messaging someone, so you have time to hang out in person with fewer people than you do to message people, especially considering that it's possible to have multiple conversations simultaneously over instant messenging. The alternative is to give up all your friends when you move overseas or change cities, which seems absurd given the wealth of communication tools the modern world offers us.
shard972 8y ago
How about encouraging families again? Could fix the declining birthrate too and give people plenty of social interaction.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  What does that look like, beyond the vacuous nagging I already get from my parents about when I'm going to settle down and have kids?
- GW150914 8y ago
  We should be encouraging people around the world to have fewer children, not more. Local declining birth rates are at worst, a generational problem, and the solution isn’t to breed because of a poorly defined and researched, and massively overhyped loneliness epidemic.
coding_animal 8y ago
As someone living in Bay Area, I think the biggest reasons for loneliness here are: - nobody shares common roots. - it's difficult to travel to meeting places.
Toine 8y ago
In the constant pursuit of better opportunities, better jobs, perfect place for ME, real social circles (family, local friendships, local communities) are slowly fading away. Unfortunately I don't see them coming back in the near future, quite the opposite. Feels like we're all turning into a global network of weakly connected independant nodes, with no strong roots in any local network. We've become weak in that sense, because we're nothing on our own.
blumomo 8y ago
Without judging automation, that's the effect off making everything fully automated and highly efficient. You can - order a pizza home without talking to the pizzeria and their staff - get a car drive to your destination without knowing the language of the driver - get your shirts washed and ironed without going to the laundry - have your grossery delivered home skipping all steps of the purchase process in the grossery store - write code for your customer without ever meeting him - and so many things more As a friend uses to say, the need for warm hearted and human body contact in a broad sense is built into our DNA. Not being exposed to it will make us suffer.
- Guest9812398 8y ago
  We always hear that we're social creatures, and as you said, that human contact is built into our DNA. But, almost everything you mentioned is successful by choice. If we're that social, why are we ordering pizza to our house and not socializing at the local pizzeria or arranging a neighborhood pizza potluck? If we crave interaction, why are we having groceries delivered to our kitchen and not going to the local market and making friends? Something doesn't add up here. Are we more lazy than social? We kind of want to socialize at the pizzeria, but we'd prefer to sit on the couch and eat pizza while watching Netflix? If that's true, then why not embrace our lazy selves? Are we scared? We want to socialize at the pizzeria, but we're concerned we might say the wrong things, or not be attractive enough. It makes us nervous and causes anxiety, and we can avoid those feelings by staying home. Or do we just selectively want to socialize? We might not value conversation at the pizzeria, but we just need a partner at home, and a good friend as a neighbor, and that meets our requirements. If we don't have that partner or friend, we feel a need to socialize, but at the same time, we know that pizzeria can't fulfill that need, so we stay home and remain lonely. I really don't know what's going on, but there are lots of opportunities to socialize, so either we're not that social, or something is holding us back.
  - Consultant32452 8y ago
    >If we're that social, why... We're also tribal, and we don't see those people (pizza worker, grocer, etc.) as part of our tribe. People need a central rallying "thing." Historically this has been genetics, religion, that sort of thing. This is one of the downfalls of multiculturalism, we have not yet figured out what to put as the central "thing" for us to feel like we're all part of the same tribe.
reubenswartz 8y ago
It struck me when I went back to college for a reunion how the college social experience is so different from the adult experience. The parties are the obvious example, but you can still go to parties as an adult. The main thing is that your spend your waking hours with other people. You may have roommates, or, if you're lucky enough to have your own room, you're sharing a hallway, a bathroom, mail room, etc, with people around you. You eat meals with other people. You walk around campus, with other people and/or running into other people out doing the same thing. If you want to hangout with people outside of the regular routine, they're usually 1-10 minutes walk away. It's like the Steve Jobs office plan, designed to get people to bump into each other. You can have solitude if you want it, but you have to work for it. (Being introverted, I didn't always appreciate that.) As an adult, if you live the "American Dream" and end up with a nice house in the suburbs, it's possible to not see anyone outside the office, except through the windshield of your car. Your car will deposit you back inside your garage at the end of the day, so there's not even a chance to interact with your neighbors (something Bin Laden pointed out in his plans for people to blend in without notice). In the name of convenience, schools and other activities have drop-off and pickup lines of cars, so there's no real social interaction there. We have scheduled and optimized our way to a lot of unhappiness. It reminds of me of creatures in the zoo, out of their natural environment, looking sad and lonely and bored. Except we often work really hard to put ourselves in the zoo.
- badpun 8y ago
  > It reminds of me of creatures in the zoo, out of their natural environment, looking sad and lonely and bored. Except we often work really hard to put ourselves in the zoo. I know the "+1" comments are against rules, but I just wanted to say that this is absolutely spot on.
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  It makes me wonder then if there's scientific proof if people who live and work in dense urban metros like NYC are less lonely compared to those in suburban or rural areas i.e. most people are walking, taking public transit, almost constantly surrounded by people and crowds.
Pica_soO 8y ago
The jobs we destroyed, destroyed the self-esteem of the people, who refuse to interact without a role in society to show for themselves. Thats the reason why the normies are more self-social isolating. On HN its usually the control-problem. Any relationship is loosing a part of your life you control. Hard to accept that for some personalities.
rev0lutions 8y ago
rampant capitalism has destroyed communities and family in america
ronzensci 8y ago
Loneliness, when used for turning the search light inwards, can turn out to be a very rewarding experience. Most of the enlightened souls have spent a decade or more in solitude and looking inward. If the time of aloneness is used well, it can help find many answers. Eventually people do end up spending time with others, but those interactions turn out better when the time of being alone has been gainfully spent.
aesthesia 8y ago
I've seen reported that it takes about 200 hours of unstructured time together to become "good friends" with someone. Outside of high school and college, I'm not sure where you get that amount of consistent open-ended time with someone. It makes the outlook for building friendships later in life seem bleak.

185 points by joeyespo 8y ago

Absolutely, people are vastly underestimating the social and health effects of loneliness. Loneliness is the gateway drug to depression and resentment. Of course, I am referring to unwanted loneliness here. I think people who are comfortable being alone for most of their lives aren't in the same category.

Aaargh20318 8y ago
> I think people who are comfortable being alone for most of their lives aren't in the same category. In fact, we suffer from the opposite problem: lack of solitude. Frankly, I think this is a much bigger problem than the overblown loneliness issue. There are people everywhere, avoiding them is practically impossible.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > There are people everywhere, avoiding them is practically impossible. Move to another country, where you don't speak the language. There will still be people, but they won't interact with you.
  - Aaargh20318 8y ago
    That’s not solitude. I shouldn’t have to have to see or hear anyone for the rest of my life if I don’t want to.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      There have always been hermits too. But if you tried it, you would find that isolation behind the language barrier felt like solitude to you.
- Razengan 8y ago
  I'm a bit in both camps. I have no social contacts and I often work from home. Most of the time I don't even want to hear anyone, and get agitated by the noise of traffic (which is a constant where I live.) However after sitting at the computer for a while I do crave human interaction. Places like Reddit, HN or online games are my usual venues for that, but they don't fix physical isolation. As per my other comment [0], my Holy Grail is being able to do my thing in proximity to other people, in a beautiful environment, without having to interact with anyone or being affected by them, like a calm park with internet access and something to put my laptop on. :) This usually gives me the best of both worlds. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17944802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17944802
- dorkwood 8y ago
  I agree. Needing a full-time job to survive means I get maybe three hours of time to myself each day. The rest is in an open plan office or commuting. And it’s not even true solitude, since rent prices here force me to share a house with other people. As long as I have a close friend or two that I can share my thoughts with when the need arises, and personal activities that occupy my thoughts and time when I’m by myself, I can’t imagine feeling lonely ever again. More solitude, please.
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
Loneliness is not the same as being alone. My first taste of gut-wrenching loneliness was when I was 13. I was a little lonely before, but then we moved. That wasn't the issue. Some girls decided I was lesbian. Now, them being half correct is besides the point (I'm bisexual at 40 years old). The entire freaking school stopped talking to me. It eased up a bit next year since there were some new faces in high school, but I struggled for years and years. I struggled with loneliness, in part because I never actually felt like I could just be myself. The midwest, especially in small to medium sized towns, is full of social pressure to conform - in this case, it was usually conformation to the traditional family setup with ties to some christian sect. I could sometimes find small groups of friends that simply accepted me, but sometimes not. 5 years ago I moved to Norway. I knew exactly one person. But I'm also not lonely. This is a place known for being difficult to meet people and make friends, but I've honestly been happier. I have two or three friends, and find that society mostly doesn't care about me conforming as much. Sure, I'm not accepted by everyone, but society itself is set up to try to be inclusive instead of tossing aside folks that do not fit in. It was a real life-changer.

com2kid 8y ago

I grew up and live in Seattle, where loneliness and meeting people is such problem we have our own Wikipedia page about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze When meeting people from other cities, it is hard to explain exactly how bad Seattle is. One case in point, the Seattle meet up scene is dead compared to other similar cities. Even the engineering groups (PHP, React Native) that have hundreds of active participates in other cities will have dozens to none in Seattle. Put 10 people from Seattle in a room and suggest an activity, and everyone will nod their heads, say that sounds like a great idea, and then never take the final steps of organizing to do it. This Seattle mentality lead me to found https://www.thawd.net https://www.thawd.net where we are melting the social freeze. I'm a technologist, so I have to believe that technology can solve problems, and I hope that the system Thawd is building can help reduce loneliness. The tl;dr is that Thawd removes all the friction of social activities, and presents the user with a great big "get me together with other people right now" button. Everything Thawd does happens super short term, 3-72 hours in the future, and our MVP is not eating dinner alone, we form a group of people who'll enjoy spending a couple hours talking with each other. If I don't solve the problem, I sure hope someone else does, because, honestly, Seattle is a lonely place to live.

mannanj 8y ago
I feel like I have a similar problem here in the DC area particularly as an engineer. All the meet ups and activities around here I find not fulfilling enough, and have a disconnect with actually wanting to pull through. Is this coming to my area? Or could you possibly show me how this works with a small demo or something so I can maybe help do something similar around here?
- com2kid 8y ago
  It is a full on startup. Mobile apps on iOS and Android paired with a backend service for reservations and group matching. Thawd is launching first in Seattle, then it'll go city by city.
- jcstryker 8y ago
  Since you are in the DC area I can plug the DC Code & Coffee[0] and their sister meetup NoVA Code & Coffee[1]. Both are great, active biweekly meetups with around 40-60 attendees each time. Its not just for software engineers, we get data science, devops, security, etc. people coming in. Even people not in tech but looking to make a switch. Its a lot of fun actually. [0] https://www.meetup.com/dc-code-coffee/ https://www.meetup.com/dc-code-coffee/ [1] https://www.meetup.com/NoVA-Code-Coffee/ https://www.meetup.com/NoVA-Code-Coffee/

amelius 8y ago

Makes me wonder what social media do for public health in cases of loneliness.

plainOldText 8y ago

We need deeper, local, and more meaningful social interactions, and less shallow, global, low quality connections. In the course of the last 12000 years, we've evolved from small, hunter-gatherer tribes, to highly dense, highly competitive, modern human establishments, and in the process have created a world perhaps too complex to successfully navigate without properly augmenting our intellects and social abilities. It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us, and one consequence might very well be loneliness. No matter what we decide the proper course of action is to successfully address the challenges of modern life, we must not forget that the only way forward is to accept our shared destiny and the need for collaboration. After all, we’re in this together. There’s no need to fight.

paulcole 8y ago
> It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us Tell that to my insulin, my grandma who had a kidney transplant, my coworker conceiving via IVF, the kid down the street who called 911 on his iPhone when somebody tried to kidnap him...
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  To some extent some of those problems are better solved without technology. - The diabetes and obesity crisis in America can't be cured by technology. - IVF is often due to advanced aging, due to pressure to work later - There was a time when kids could be left unattended 100 years ago. I'm curious why this has changed so much.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Type 1 diabetes can't be cured nor avoided by lifestyle changes.
    - xattt 8y ago
      Type 1 diabetes isn’t related to obesity.

mc32 8y ago

I wonder if we can learn from Japan. I’m sure they hsve studies about this given some aspects of their culture results in low real-life interactions with strangers, and they have a number of people[Hikkimori] who basically stay in days on end. Not that one culture easily translates to another, but from a health perspective maybe we can learn from them.

budadre75 8y ago

Too be honest, making social interactions is exhausting, maybe it's because I'm introverted, but I too feel lonely. I certainly don't want to die early due to loneliness, lol what a stupid reason don't you think. There are hermits who live long lives, I think it's a better way to learn the ways of solitude than tackling these problems with paid services. This is kind of ironic how capitalism progresses to this point but the prosperity that affords the individualism causes this loneliness problem. In addition, perhaps biohacking can come into the picture in fixing the loneliness problem, for example we know fictional works can induce senses of emotions, so essentially still using technology to solve the loneliness problem but without the humans involved, like the Xiaomi chatbot in China that helps millions with their loneliness problem but beyond just the app level. An anecdote about the Paro robot mentioned in the article: a professor told me Paro robots actually caused panic in the elderly care center at first lol.

pm90 8y ago
You can't hack your way into fixing what is essentially a non-technical problem. I guess what I'm saying is that loneliness is not a pathogen that can be removed but a symptom of something you don't have (social circle, friends, intimate partners etc.) The most reasonable solution seems to be something like in the movie "Her", or in Westworld where they use humanoid robots as "good-enough" replacements for humans.
- disqard 8y ago
  Yes, technology acts as an amplifier for human intentions (Kentaro Toyama's words, not mine). Thus, fixing the underlying cause of the Seattle Freeze is the only thing that can fix the Seattle Freeze, not layering tech-based fixes on top. As someone living in Seattle since 2011, I hypothesize that most people here are sufficiently affluent that they do not need to interact meaningfully (read "make friends") with people other than their family. IMHO, this is the root cause, and I don't think that technology can change this state of affairs.
petra 8y ago
It may be possible to hack the negative effects of loneliness biologically, because loneliness's negative effect may be meditated through brain chemicals: "It showed that mice experiencing the stress of spending two weeks in social isolation had elevated levels of a brain-signaling molecule called Tac2, which in turn increases levels of a neuropeptide called NkB. The abundance of this molecule, the researchers write, might be responsible for all of the stressed-out behaviors they noticed in the mice" https://www.inverse.com/article/44885-social-isolation-mental-health-neuroscience https://www.inverse.com/article/44885-social-isolation-menta... Now maybe we could create a medicine to target those. But on the surface , it sounds like a terrible idea - because psychiatric medicines have a lot of side effects in general. But also, even if found an ideal method to remove loneliness, loneliness does seem to serve a role - without loneliness people won't create connections between each other, and probably won't care about other people(as we currently seen with smartphones, social skills and empathy declined). And sounds like a terrible way to build a society, far different from that of the hermit monk(at least in buddhism), that, while alone, is training to increase his compassion towards all other living beings.

EGreg 8y ago

I am passionate about solving this problem. 20 years ago, Robert Putnam wrote a book called “bowling alone” where he put forth the stats on the collapse of social groups in the US. Since then, the problem only got worse, and it also reflects itself in dating, and so on. https://youtu.be/VR5nyQmfG7Q https://youtu.be/VR5nyQmfG7Q What do y’all think of this solution? We spent years on it and it is almost ready to launch. This was a kickstarter campaign video we had put together. Constructive (good and/or critical) feedback is welcome. Here is our roadmap: https://qbix.com/docs/presentation.pdf https://qbix.com/docs/presentation.pdf

bscphil 8y ago

I think it's interesting that so many here think tech meetups are the solution to loneliness. In part that's frustrating because I don't work in the tech industry (programming is a hobby for me), but it's also seems strange because I don't particularly want to limit myself to meeting people who work in the same field. But here in LA, that unfortunately hasn't made things any easier for me. It's just really damn hard to start new relationships here. You need a reason to see someone more than once, and it's hard to establish that the first time you meet someone. I'm reminded of people who do the "if we're not in relationships at thirty, let's get married" thing. It seems absurd to most of us because it seems like you need an established romantic relationship. But maybe that's a mistake - maybe it's just as good to commit to making things work with someone you know you're compatible with. Likewise, I see people on the subway or bus looking at their phones, and I know many of them have to be lonely. It seems absurd for two lonely people to sit beside each other silently for half an hour. But maybe that's the problem: with modern technology we lack the pressure to create social bonds. If it's the 1930s I probably need to be on good terms with my neighbors. We're so independent now - I can even avoid interacting with a clerk if I want because people are willing to ship groceries to my door. What seems to be needed is a way for many of us to blindly push a button that says "commit", and get randomly matched up with a compatible group of friends. Is that the best way to form social bonds? Probably not, but it's so much better than what we have currently that to go on as we do seems like madness.

Gys 8y ago
> What seems to be needed is a way for many of us to blindly push a button that says "commit", and get randomly matched up with a compatible group of friends. There is an event starting in LA that might exactly do that [1]. At least in Lisbon, this works very well. Disclaimer: I co-organize in Lisbon and build the app for this. [1] https://www.meetup.com/LA-Digital-Nomads/events/254211266/ https://www.meetup.com/LA-Digital-Nomads/events/254211266/
pagnol 8y ago
> Likewise, I see people on the subway or bus looking at their phones, and I know many of them have to be lonely. For ages I only possessed a tattered slow Android phone which I only ever used to make phone calls or send the occasional WhatsApp message. Back then I used to feel the same way about people on the subway who were looking at their phones. For a few months now I’ve been having a brand new iPhone (it was a gift) and I have since discovered to my own amazement that it’s a pretty damn awesome reading device. My backpack used to be full of books which are now all on my phone. This experience has made me less judgemental when I look around on a train and see only people interacting with their phone. For all I know, they may be reading poetry or the latest machine learning papers. :)

vinceguidry 8y ago

It's my opinion America's social fabric has been thoroughly destroyed by it's relentless commercial focus, and it will take at least a few more decades before Americans will rediscover the need to connect with each other. I have been going to the same coffee shop for 13 years. It is one of the only coffee shops in Atlanta that has comfortable chairs and couches that one is happy to spend hours socializing in. Almost every single other coffee shop in the city has succumbed to the frigid tyranny of aluminum and plywood. If you spend significant amounts of time at one of these "coffee shops," your only companionship is likely to be your laptop. Its bars are a little better, but in general our country has turned our traditional watering holes from places where you could go to find a social group, to places where you must bring your social group with you if you are to have any kind of interesting fun at all. It's becoming difficult to find bars with an active social scene of regulars which doesn't feel obnoxiously cliquish. Americans, even when they are social, often fail spectacularly to be inclusive. The only place left where you can go to reliably dispel your loneliness anymore is church. Sadly, even if you're religious, the atmosphere can feel oppressive. My mom all but gave up her quest to find a church where she could fit in with, and she is not a picky lady in this regard. If you were to trace all three of these phenomenon down to a single underlying source, it's consumerism. If Americans aren't immediately getting what they want in any given situation, they leave and go back to their ivory tower / nest that they've constructed out of well-meaning, but myopic products / services that leave Americans feeling catered to, but not fulfilled. We don't want to sit and painstakingly build friendships any more. We want friendship-in-a-box. And our 'third places' have increasingly surrendered to those wishes.

squirrelicus 8y ago
I find your consumerism narrative unconvincing as you've laid it out here. I am, however, curious how much you blame mobile devices and social media, because that seems like (a) the Big Thing that's recently changed, and (b) because narratives and my experience around why people choose superficial connection or social disconnection through the use of social media and mobile devices seems very convincing and common. Wish we had more rigorous data on causation here though.
- 8y ago

lumberjack 8y ago

I imagine the solution to be some sort of Boy Scouts for Adults. It would be different from a MeetUp Group in that there would be some minor level of commitment which is important to keep people attending when they need it most: when they are feeling a bit down; and there would be a regular meeting schedule. If I were not traveling I would seriously look into setting something like this up.

nopriorarrests 8y ago
You have just invented church.
- lumberjack 8y ago
  I am well aware of that. I think a sort of secular replacement for Christianity is needed. Liberalism seems to have just done away with it and left nothing to replace it. It had its problems but it also served some good purposes. This is one of them.
  - toyg 8y ago
    > Liberalism seems to have just done away with it and left nothing to replace it The original "inventors" of social liberalism (and arguably its most vocal supporters today) did have replacements: strong friend circles where they were popular, political parties with strong ideological roots, cultural clubs, societies of shared interests, etc. They fought for auto-determination precisely because they wanted equal dignity for their preferred replacements, in the face of institutional snobism. At the end of the day, even anarchists have clubs. The real problem is that very little is done in education, in most countries, to let kids explore different social groups and perspectives in order to choose the one they fit best; and even less is done for lonely adults. They are usually grouped per age and along fairly omogeneous class lines, which is a complete crapshoot.
chrisseaton 8y ago
Sounds like the Army Reserve. A social group in your local area, structure, purpose, fitness, responsibility, progression.

lazyjones 8y ago

Perhaps we‘re just not built for living in metropolitan areas with millions of people within a few square kilometers and we‘re isolating ourselves from the strangers we see every day because it makes us uncomfortable. Move back to small villages and cities?

iovrthoughtthis 8y ago

I feel like a lot of this problem is to do with logistical convenience. As we get better at traveling further for work / school we build relationships with people who are less convenient to maintain. These relationships demand higher effort than a local relationship and are more fragile than relationships built on convenience (assumption). IMO the solution to this is to somehow decouple where we work / learn from who we work for / which schools we go to so that local, convenient people can work and learn together on different jobs / courses and build relationships that are convenient to maintain. Right now i think the neucleus of our social lives and the places we build the most of our relationships (school, work) are too far from the places we relax (home) for us to easily maintain longterm, social relationship because those relationships are often founded and maintined through convenience. That or we need to spend less time working and officially dedicate much larger portions of our lives to maintaining social lives. We could do this trough reduced working hours, increased leisure time and perhaps some sort of “hanging out” subsidy so that people without disposable income can afford to travel to spend time together.

deven88 8y ago
Earlier, we were depended on others (relatives and neighbors) for many things. Now dependency has reduced drastically, so there is no need for relationships. I have have seen strong bonding in neighborhood where they are economically weak.
logicchains 8y ago
Another way is for people to become more comfortable with digital communication. If you enjoy communicating with someone face to face, you'll probably enjoy communicating with them in written form too. For instance, I have some people I message very day, some I message every week, some I message every month, and keeping in touch like this allows the relationship to stay strong and grow, in spite of us rarely seeing each other in person. This approach is also ultimately more scalable: hanging out generally takes a lot more time than messaging someone, so you have time to hang out in person with fewer people than you do to message people, especially considering that it's possible to have multiple conversations simultaneously over instant messenging. The alternative is to give up all your friends when you move overseas or change cities, which seems absurd given the wealth of communication tools the modern world offers us.

shard972 8y ago

How about encouraging families again? Could fix the declining birthrate too and give people plenty of social interaction.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
What does that look like, beyond the vacuous nagging I already get from my parents about when I'm going to settle down and have kids?
GW150914 8y ago
We should be encouraging people around the world to have fewer children, not more. Local declining birth rates are at worst, a generational problem, and the solution isn’t to breed because of a poorly defined and researched, and massively overhyped loneliness epidemic.

coding_animal 8y ago

As someone living in Bay Area, I think the biggest reasons for loneliness here are: - nobody shares common roots. - it's difficult to travel to meeting places.

Toine 8y ago

In the constant pursuit of better opportunities, better jobs, perfect place for ME, real social circles (family, local friendships, local communities) are slowly fading away. Unfortunately I don't see them coming back in the near future, quite the opposite. Feels like we're all turning into a global network of weakly connected independant nodes, with no strong roots in any local network. We've become weak in that sense, because we're nothing on our own.

blumomo 8y ago

Without judging automation, that's the effect off making everything fully automated and highly efficient. You can - order a pizza home without talking to the pizzeria and their staff - get a car drive to your destination without knowing the language of the driver - get your shirts washed and ironed without going to the laundry - have your grossery delivered home skipping all steps of the purchase process in the grossery store - write code for your customer without ever meeting him - and so many things more As a friend uses to say, the need for warm hearted and human body contact in a broad sense is built into our DNA. Not being exposed to it will make us suffer.

Guest9812398 8y ago
We always hear that we're social creatures, and as you said, that human contact is built into our DNA. But, almost everything you mentioned is successful by choice. If we're that social, why are we ordering pizza to our house and not socializing at the local pizzeria or arranging a neighborhood pizza potluck? If we crave interaction, why are we having groceries delivered to our kitchen and not going to the local market and making friends? Something doesn't add up here. Are we more lazy than social? We kind of want to socialize at the pizzeria, but we'd prefer to sit on the couch and eat pizza while watching Netflix? If that's true, then why not embrace our lazy selves? Are we scared? We want to socialize at the pizzeria, but we're concerned we might say the wrong things, or not be attractive enough. It makes us nervous and causes anxiety, and we can avoid those feelings by staying home. Or do we just selectively want to socialize? We might not value conversation at the pizzeria, but we just need a partner at home, and a good friend as a neighbor, and that meets our requirements. If we don't have that partner or friend, we feel a need to socialize, but at the same time, we know that pizzeria can't fulfill that need, so we stay home and remain lonely. I really don't know what's going on, but there are lots of opportunities to socialize, so either we're not that social, or something is holding us back.
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  >If we're that social, why... We're also tribal, and we don't see those people (pizza worker, grocer, etc.) as part of our tribe. People need a central rallying "thing." Historically this has been genetics, religion, that sort of thing. This is one of the downfalls of multiculturalism, we have not yet figured out what to put as the central "thing" for us to feel like we're all part of the same tribe.

reubenswartz 8y ago

It struck me when I went back to college for a reunion how the college social experience is so different from the adult experience. The parties are the obvious example, but you can still go to parties as an adult. The main thing is that your spend your waking hours with other people. You may have roommates, or, if you're lucky enough to have your own room, you're sharing a hallway, a bathroom, mail room, etc, with people around you. You eat meals with other people. You walk around campus, with other people and/or running into other people out doing the same thing. If you want to hangout with people outside of the regular routine, they're usually 1-10 minutes walk away. It's like the Steve Jobs office plan, designed to get people to bump into each other. You can have solitude if you want it, but you have to work for it. (Being introverted, I didn't always appreciate that.) As an adult, if you live the "American Dream" and end up with a nice house in the suburbs, it's possible to not see anyone outside the office, except through the windshield of your car. Your car will deposit you back inside your garage at the end of the day, so there's not even a chance to interact with your neighbors (something Bin Laden pointed out in his plans for people to blend in without notice). In the name of convenience, schools and other activities have drop-off and pickup lines of cars, so there's no real social interaction there. We have scheduled and optimized our way to a lot of unhappiness. It reminds of me of creatures in the zoo, out of their natural environment, looking sad and lonely and bored. Except we often work really hard to put ourselves in the zoo.

badpun 8y ago
> It reminds of me of creatures in the zoo, out of their natural environment, looking sad and lonely and bored. Except we often work really hard to put ourselves in the zoo. I know the "+1" comments are against rules, but I just wanted to say that this is absolutely spot on.
dawhizkid 8y ago
It makes me wonder then if there's scientific proof if people who live and work in dense urban metros like NYC are less lonely compared to those in suburban or rural areas i.e. most people are walking, taking public transit, almost constantly surrounded by people and crowds.

Pica_soO 8y ago

The jobs we destroyed, destroyed the self-esteem of the people, who refuse to interact without a role in society to show for themselves. Thats the reason why the normies are more self-social isolating. On HN its usually the control-problem. Any relationship is loosing a part of your life you control. Hard to accept that for some personalities.

rev0lutions 8y ago

rampant capitalism has destroyed communities and family in america

ronzensci 8y ago

Loneliness, when used for turning the search light inwards, can turn out to be a very rewarding experience. Most of the enlightened souls have spent a decade or more in solitude and looking inward. If the time of aloneness is used well, it can help find many answers. Eventually people do end up spending time with others, but those interactions turn out better when the time of being alone has been gainfully spent.

aesthesia 8y ago

I've seen reported that it takes about 200 hours of unstructured time together to become "good friends" with someone. Outside of high school and college, I'm not sure where you get that amount of consistent open-ended time with someone. It makes the outlook for building friendships later in life seem bleak.