>I'd say the internet helped people be less alienated. Have you spent much time around teens to people in their early 20's? Social skills no longer exist or mo

>I'd say the internet helped people be less alienated. Have you spent much time around teens to people in their early 20's? Social skills no longer exist or most of them. They can't look at you, they can't give you their attention, they can't carry a conversation in person. They stare at their phones, feeling underprivileged because their favorite social media accounts seem to have better, flashier, fancier lives than them so they too highly curate what they show to the world. As a 34 year old I can look at the generation before me and the generation after me and see a stark difference in social skills. You used to fall into one of a few groups, now everyone thinks they need to find individuals exactly like them which requires them to search the world far and wide to find someone that identifies as some random string of letters (not necessarily representative of their gender and sexual preferences). I suspect people in general feel more alienated, more alone, than ever before in human history because of the internet. Just in the past week there was a thread here on HN about a hair cutting robot and the number of people claiming that they hated having to go to the barber because, God forbid, the barber/stylist might attempt to talk to them [1] was just flat out shocking. They'd rather have a machine cut their hair than have to be around other human beings! Go out to eat, or go walk around in a populated area (outside or inside). What do you see? People staring at screens, people with earbuds in, throngs of people ignoring each other to interact with strangers on the internet. People sitting at the same table, eating food, texting other people or even texting each other instead of having actual conversations. Take something like a dating app. Instead of walking up to someone and saying hi, you mindlessly swipe pictures waiting for someone to swipe you back. Then your match tries to find all of your social media so they can quickly see if you are worth the effort of getting to know, instead of actually asking you questions and getting to know you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21804089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21804089