26 ms·

The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

• joe_the_user 2y ago
  There are so many candidates for causes here. Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. Of course, that teenager is also watching the world not coming together to solve this problem so you could say the situation is connected to "loss of community" in a way.
  • pavel_lishin 2y ago
    I wonder if there's any useful parallels to children and teenagers growing up during the Cold War - that feels somewhat analogous, at least in the terms of a looming threat that could be solved by more cooperation.
    • realce 2y ago
      I'm reminded of Hypernormalization's portrayal of teens in the USSR. It's not just the impending doom, it's the dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your well-being. I know it's hyperbole, but anywhere you look it feels like nobody is really invested in the future - that everyone's just trying to cash out ASAP and run away to the "safe place" of a gated community or something.
      • pavel_lishin 2y ago
        > it's the dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your well-being. Boy, that sounds vaguely familiar.
  • greenavocado 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • tivert 2y ago
    > Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. That doesn't make sense. Kids in previous generations had to grow up with things like the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, which had greatly faded into the background until very recently. Also (at least in the 80s) destruction of the environment was a an issue kids were made very aware of. At least when it comes to this teen mental health crisis, the 70s and 80s are often understood to have been far better. I think pointing to climate change as a cause of the teen mental health crisis is a good illustration of how issue activists can twist and distort perceptions.
    • ericmay 2y ago
      I don’t disagree completely but I think one could argue that while we had that threat, the government and people were in agreement that it was a problem to be addressed. The equivalent today would probably be the United States having a few token nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union stockpiling nuclear weapons, and 30% of the country largely in charge denying that the Soviet Union even exists. The latter scenario is probably more hopeless and frustrating.
      • treis 2y ago
        There were plenty of people denying that the Soviets and communism at large was a threat.
        • ericmay 2y ago
          Not in any important ways. The mainstream of the US and the entire government was focused on the Soviet Union as an existential threat.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • Miraste 2y ago
      I don't think increasingly poor mental health has much to do with climate change, but the threat of nuclear war is a bad comparison. Bombs either fall or don't. Climate change is a creeping, progressive issue that's visibly worse every few years, and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention.
  • maxdoop 2y ago
    Majority of kids and teens do not care about that, as much as we’d assume. They are aware, but their day to day is what is important to them. Friends, relationships, drama — they are kids.
  • TylerE 2y ago
    It’s so much more than that. It’s the continually enshittification of literally everything. It's a hypercapitalist hellscape.
    • ponector 2y ago
      That is not true. Many things are much better now than 20 years ago. Not mentioning even poor western people are living life in better conditions than the richest people lived 300+ years ago.
      • TylerE 2y ago
        Things in isolation may be better, but the totality is far worse.
        • ponector 2y ago
          Rather opposite: thighs in isolation may be worse, but the totality is better than ever.
  • ponector 2y ago
    I would say the biggest cause is the endless feed of bad news(good news does not sell well) coupled with unrealistically high expectations social media gives to the people.
  • MaxikCZ 2y ago
    Im not a teenager, but really climate change is not _the_ concern I have about world that makes me disilusioned about our society. Its more the world-scope corruption and everpresent dog-eat-dog mentality thats keeping me disinterested from improving anything.
    • joe_the_user 2y ago
      I don't understand why one wouldn't see inaction on climate change as part and parcel of world-scope corruption and everpresent dog-eat-dog mentality.
  • llm_trw 2y ago
    Worrying about nuclear war was probably worse for mental health since you'd die quite quickly (if you were lucky), rather than some nebulous future were something's going to happen.
    • silverquiet 2y ago
      I'd rather be atomized by a nuke than die of heat-stroke in a wet bulb event after my air conditioning fails. I mean, I'd rather not die at all but given the options... I don't know about the kids these days; I'm not one of them, but I'm personally rather terrified of the future that we are careening into in regards to climate change.
      • llm_trw 2y ago
        Let me tell you about fall out and how the majority of people who die in a nuclear attack will feel the meat peel off their bones over two weeks of unimaginable agony with nothing that can be done for them.
• xhrpost 2y ago
  I've personally noticed that my own value of autonomy has often contributed to a reduction in social activity and community integration. I used to be very selective of what I did with others. If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline. I've since learned to say yes more (but not always) to invites and particularly consider ones that are more outside my comfort zone. This does however require a sacrifice of my individualism that is so heavily prized in western culture.
  • JohnFen 2y ago
    > If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline. I have seen many (usually younger) people make this mistake. The mistake is thinking that the point of the activity is the activity itself. It isn't. The point is the genuine social engagement. (Edited to add:) > I've since learned to say yes more Years ago, I learned to change my default answer to things from "no" to "yes". It has been a key to my career success. But, more than that, I have lived a more interesting life than most as a result of that. Making "yes" your default instead of "no" increases the chances that something bad will happen, this is true, but it also increases the chances that something good will happen. Personally, I've found that on the whole, the riskier path is the better path. But I'm quite certain that not everyone will feel the same.
    • sameoldtune 2y ago
      Was just talking with a friend about this. The reason older people tend to play repetitive card games isn’t because they are captivating, it is just a thin excuse to spend a few relaxing hours together. After a few months of hesitation I’ve gotten some of my friends into playing simple games like euchre and hearts and the quality of our time together has gone up significantly.
      • Terr_ 2y ago
        Reminds me of a scene from a favorite book-series, where the protagonist is visiting with a recently-retired/convalescent former boss. > “So,” Illyan said at last. “What do a couple of retired officers and gentlemen do on a country weekend?” > [...] “Tradition is, you take the local beer from the village—there’s a woman there who home-brews it, extraordinary stuff—and hang the bottles over the side of the boat to stay cold. When the beer gets too warm to drink, it’s too hot to fish.” > “What season is that?” > “Never, as far as I could tell.” > “Let us by all means observe tradition,” said Illyan gravely. -- Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
• astrodust 2y ago
  Who knew utterly destroying cities and replacing them with gated communities with no accommodations for children whatsoever, and borderline criminalizing any activity which isn't closely supervised would have knock-on effects.
  • Semaphor 2y ago
    Probably doesn't help, but we have similar issues here in Germany, yet those things you mentioned aren't.
    • lnsru 2y ago
      Buying a home and getting grounded was the key for my community integration. It is very clear who are tenants and who are the owners. The owners came with cookies and Glühwein to remove together snow from our street. Tenants didn’t show up. They know and we know that they will be gone sooner or later. So why waste time with strangers? Edit: what I want to say is that mobility does not create community and stability. I see this in Germany often: school system does not create community either. A child must go through at least couple schools. So the friends get lost and strong friendship does not happen in the last school.
  • grahamjameson 2y ago
    Risk is an important ingredient to a fulfilling life. As we continue to de-risk our lives, we lose our ability to evaluate risk and aggressively criminalize what we do not understand because we perceive it to be dangerous. There are many types of activities which, while not criminalized yet, are “anti-social” in certain environments and can cost you your job.
    • sleepingreset 2y ago
      such as?
      • grahamjameson 2y ago
        Sex, sex-adjacent activities, extreme sports, van life / nomadic lifestyle are examples for which I know people who have either lost a job or experienced retaliation in a professional environment. They are also all experiencing pressure to be criminalized and in certain places are already criminalized or otherwise regulated in a way that is harmful to individual liberty for a perceived gain in safety. Lastly, I’ll add that cost of insurance, general ability to be insured, and the litigious nature of the USA apply a great deal of pressure to limit our ability to enrich our lives with risk.
• amelius 2y ago
  Not everything can/should be solved with technology, but would it be possible to get that sense of community back using e.g. VR and perhaps AI? (Research might also be useful for space missions)
  • AlphaEsponjosus 2y ago
    Why? You want to solve the problems caused by the lack of social integration-interaction by not socializing using VR. The problem with VR, videochat, social networks,etc., is that you are not there, you do not face the challenges nor the consequences of social activities. People gets anxious just thinking about that sonthey never leave their comfort zone, thus causing more issues on the individuals and,obviously in the society. Society and social system are not working ideally, in fact is far from acceptable levels if you ask me. But the solution is not ostracism disguised as virtual interaction.
    • amelius 2y ago
      Why -> because it's now a chicken and egg problem. It's hard to find a sense of community when everybody is looking at their smartphones all the time.
      • AlphaEsponjosus 2y ago
        You are right. The technology is part of the problem. The article points how social media xan not solve the problem. In my opinion social media is the biggest problem regarding this topic. Socialazing is a core necesity in human nature, denying this and other biological traits is what causes discomfort on individuals. Technology is only increassing the issue, not because technology is inherently bad or evil, but cause technology is developed to pursue wealt and power, bot in behalf of society.
  • ryu2k2 2y ago
    Sounds like you're proposing the Matrix. No thanks.
• amelius 2y ago
  How do astronauts train for this when preparing for long missions without much company?
  • sneed_chucker 2y ago
    Astronauts are exceptional people
  • tcoff91 2y ago
    I think training can only go so far. You need to have the right personality type to handle being an astronaut.
  • tokai 2y ago
    Astronauts have a ton of community if you go by the list in the article. It's not about company.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • et-al 2y ago
    Astronauts are older than the teens mentioned in the article, a very selective sample (read We Seven if you haven't), and still train with a team and with a clear purpose of their goals.
• weberer 2y ago
  I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community". The author pointed out Youtube here (who in an Orwellian manner calls their ToS "community guidelines") but I've also seen it with many other multi-million dollar companies such as Reddit, Twitter, etc. Young people today are reaching out for real support structures, but only receiving manipulation from corporations that want them to watch ads, while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous internet strangers.
  • piva00 2y ago
    > while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous internet strangers. Even this has been eroding, the amount of comments made by bots I see across reddit/Twitter has increased exponentially since the 2010s. It only got worse after LLMs.
    • jimmy1337 2y ago
      I made an ‘Ask HN’ yesterday about the dire state of bots on the web and the lack of conversation around it. After a few mins, with 4 upvotes and one user reply it was [flagged] and I couldn’t even reply to the person. So I am left with the impression we aren’t allowed to discuss bots on the web on this platform. Edit: This comment not appearing for others?
      • bmacho 2y ago
        This comment is appearing. However your submission is not visible to me, https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jimmy1337 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jimmy1337 appears to seem empty.
      • CapstanRoller 2y ago
        You're probably not allowed to discuss it here because the people who own this website are currently making a lot of money from content stolen by bots, to be ingested by other bots.
    • throwaway96378 2y ago
• chasebank 2y ago
  The cause is having a tiny computer in your hand all day. It's so glaringly obvious.
  • HPsquared 2y ago
    Indeed. The old trope of the asocial "computer nerd" too focused on the machine to talk to girls.
    • Der_Einzige 2y ago
      The trope is real, and what we are experiencing here is simply the "nerdification" of mainstream society. Everyone is more screen addicted in 2024 than even the most nerdy person was circa 2008. I honestly love it though. Sure, there is a "dystopian" bent to the idea of most people zombifying themselves in public - but all a westerner needs to do is spend even a week in a very communal society to realize that the radical individualistic society we have cultivated is actually pretty awesome. I LOVE the idea that I can be who I want to be and genuinely not care about what some "community" of people think of it. Everyone pretending that no one around them exists and being screenlocked means I can pick my nose in public, or do any number of even more weird shit without being noticed. Compare this to japan where eating a burger without covering your mouth as a woman is a social death sentence. Western individualism (and east asian hermitism and maybe eastern european depressive paranoia) are by far the most productive social situations for tech development, as we now have far more "tech autistic" types who tend to be the primary drivers of code innovation. Is it any surprise that there is basically consensus that the best "hardcore" games tend to come from either the west (usually the USA or northern europe), a post soviet state, or japan. Everyone in this thread bemoans the things that cause the youth mental health crisis, but honestly, I wouldn't go back and I think that higher youth mental health rates are simply worth it. Actual "nerds" in 2024 are less likely to be bullied than in the eras of good youth mental health, and the average becky or chad can learn to deal with the same things that the nerds of 2009 learned to deal with a fortnight ago.
  • squigz 2y ago
    That doesn't seem very obvious to me. Would you mind elaborating?
• ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  The further upstream of that is large super structures of human social web cannot exist. There is no monoculture anymore and that has both pros and cons.
  • SoftTalker 2y ago
    That's interesting and I hadn't really considered that for most of history, children grew up in a pretty un-diverse environment. You lived with your tribe and your extended family for the most part. In cities, ethnic and religious groups tended to self-segregate. The social rules were clear, and there was a lot less room for doubt about who you were and where you fit in.
• brightball 2y ago
  I have to assume that people leaving their home towns to work elsewhere is a huge driving factor of all of this.
  • freshlee 2y ago
    I think it's not only this, but that the process repeats over and over. I had very deep relationships in high school, forged new ones in college, then both of those ended. I moved to a new city where I started a new job with a bunch of other people in their mid-20's, and we formed yet another community. Then the company laid off or required everyone to move to a new city. New job, same story again. I still start up new friendships at work, but it feels less and less worth it each time and so I try a little less hard year by year, because you're working against impersonal forces that will upend your social structures on a whim, and it feels like a treadmill to try to keep them intact.
  • veddox 2y ago
    I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my peers have been moving all over the country in the last few years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job... I'm one of the movers myself, and I know why I moved, but I feel the cost of lost relationships quite heavily.
  • reducesuffering 2y ago
    That has only been declining while youth mental health got worse.
    • brightball 2y ago
      It has been with remote work but think of how much break down is already in place.
  • hot_gril 2y ago
    I recently moved. Most of my new friends aren't from here, they came here for work, but they consider it their own city now and are part of the community. It's different in a "commuter city" like San Francisco. That means the majority of people don't even live there during the day, and even their job might be temporary. Unfortunately most are there to make money, not friends.
• frithsun 2y ago
  We lack the moral courage to be honest about why real world community disintegrated and are therefore doomed to suffer these pedantic lectures that miss the point and point in random directions.
  • chemeril 2y ago
    Notably absent from your comment is what you honestly think caused the disintegration of real-world community. I'd posit that it's an expected systemic outcome of unbounded and undirected capitalism.
  • aklein 2y ago
    You are implying the author(s) are disingenuous or are drawing the wrong conclusions. What makes you think this?
  • recursive 2y ago
    Do you also lack the courage? If not, could you be honest? Curious what you mean.
  • luzojeda 2y ago
    Seems like you lack the moral courage as well since you seem to be implying something but are not brave enough to explicitly say it.
  • frithsun 2y ago
    Immigration and assimilation policies in the west have been too rapid, faster than even those who think they're open minded can adapt to new people. The result is a pervasive societal siege mentality with everybody retreating into their homes. The Starbucks data on where "third places" are thriving or dying aligns very well with this model. The answer is as obvious as it is unwelcome, which is it slow down a bit and give people and families time to adapt to their strange new neighbors and neighborhoods.
    • luzojeda 2y ago
      Didn't read but will that article since it sounds interesting. But does Starbucks mention their potential to be a third place? Because as long as you have to pay for something to stay a certain amount of time it will never be a third place. It is, in my experience, a more relaxed place regarding the relationship consumed/time in the place compared to other cafés but that is not all that makes a third place. I mean, I would never consider just go to a Starbucks and expect to meet people without having to pay for something
• constantcrying 2y ago
  No, absolutely not. Young people are more connected than they have ever been before, just now they are connected in some of the most unhealthy and detrimental manners possible. Instead of connecting with friends in real life, they form communities on social media, in discord channels, in video games, etc. The consequences are just barely starting to show themselves. As for the why, I think they are many reasons. The Internet is obviously an attractive and addictive place, but cities have gotten so much worse as well. Where I live the playgrounds I used to go to as a child are now full of drug dealers...
  • raziel2p 2y ago
    The article clearly states that the connections you mention don't make up a community: > Many praise the myriad benefits that smartphones and social media are said to bring; online connection can give a person a sense of “community,” we are told. We can find new friends, discover just about any idea imaginable, network, and even date through our phones. We can video chat with hundreds of people simultaneously from far-flung locations. We can pursue learning largely untethered from any physical space. Based on all of this, it would be easy to assume that place doesn’t matter. > I disagree. Physical place actually matters far more than we realize, especially as our lives become ever more placeless.
    • constantcrying 2y ago
      The article indeed makes that argument. But from a functional perspective it just isn't true, virtual communities have replaced physical ones. I also think it sells short the attractiveness of these digital communities. A digital community can be something where you spend many hours a day, with the same people, where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life. It isn't just dating apps, Facebook and YouTube. Of course what the article wants to say that they are different, which is obviously true and I do absolutely agree that digital communities can be very detrimental and aren't a replacement with the necessary benefits.
      • carapace 2y ago
• fergonco 2y ago
  Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children played in the street with no much supervision from parents. Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other (more attentive) members of your family. Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't allow kids to play in the street. And the ones that interact with each other are the ones who lived there in that period. It's very difficult for newcomers to integrate. What are the reasons for this? My take: cars and lack of stay at home mums. They built the social network at that time. They took care of each other children, the were there to help each other. Nowadays households have both adults working (so nobody even asks for salt to the neighbor, all order a pizza instead).
  • gmoot 2y ago
    We tried to counteract this with our own children by giving them a lot of freedom. But these things are very network dependent. Yes we let our kids play in the street and bike around the neighborhood, but it is boring because there are not any other kids to play with, so they don't do it much.
  • cen4 2y ago
    We have 8 billion people on the planet. And there is no plan what so ever to take care of even half of them. It doesn't matter if we see slowing population growth. With globalization there is no reason to be sitting in the same spot. People are on the move.
  • aantix 2y ago
    There's now an intolerance to letting kids play freely. And if you do let your kids play freely, and something happens - they get hurt, they break something, they're being loud, there's the attitude from others of "why aren't you watching your f*ing kid?".
    • enraged_camel 2y ago
      >> There's now an intolerance to letting kids play freely. Worth noting that streets are a lot more dangerous now due to the large number of huge trucks that everyone drives. If your kid gets hit by one of them while playing, chances are they won't survive. Hell, the driver may not even notice.
• michaelt 2y ago
  Personally I'm more positive about the impact of online communities than the author is. But you for sure need offline friends and experiences, alongside the online ones, to keep yourself grounded in reality; the online experience has loads of biases, some obvious and others very subtle, and only by keeping one eye on the real world can you know when you're encountering them. Also you're not going to meet your future wife or husband through HN.
• drooby 2y ago
  I have recently started traveling and working remote at "co-living" hotels. And I must say, this is the ideal way I wish to live my life in my 20s-30s. Community makes life fun. Someone needs to import co-living to the US. And I don't mean these "co-living" apartment complexes that exist in our major cities. I mean like, actual communities with character and life.
  • sleepingreset 2y ago
    there's a few cool groups working on this, specifically for academics & ambitious young people as the beginning market. https://www.livetheresidency.com/ https://www.livetheresidency.com/ :)
    • mclau156 2y ago
      I dont understand the residency thing at all
    • drooby 2y ago
      That's cool. Would love to see something like this for people that aren't ambitious geniuses though... like myself ;)
  • DoingIsLearning 2y ago
    I'm gonna be a old man shouting at the clouds. But co-living spaces work because they are generally small projects and have very driven and charismatic people leading those projects. The moment something like that grows or scales to a tipping where real estate funds take interest then it will naturally enshitify as most things in society that have been monetized by large scale investors. I agree with everything you said but with the risk of gate keeping I worry that the only way co-living projects will work is by having a bunch of stubborn fun people starting it off and keeping it at a non-industrial scale.
    • drooby 2y ago
      Nah I hear you, and I agree. The co-living spaces in most major US cities are basically just developers trying to glamorize apartments with roomates. Though to scale it up and minimize the enshitification, perhaps some sort of framework or guide could be created that allows smaller groups to more easily navigate the legal and financial challenges on their own. What seems to make this so much easier in other countries are the lack of regulations. Hostels and some Bed and Breakfasts come close to the co-living experience in the US though. And they maintain their unique charm. It's definitely possible.
• bustling-noose 2y ago
  About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone. Fast forward to 2024 and every person home here in India is constantly on their phones. In the gym, in the car, at work, everywhere. Naturally kids are also getting hooked on devices. How can you talk to someone when they aren’t even looking at you or paying attention ? Communities and real physical social interaction keep people mentally healthy. All these apps and devices are doing is keeping people away from each other instead. Of course no one wants to admit this but people are addicted to devices and distractions. The sooner they dissociate, the better.
  • noworriesnate 2y ago
    I've noticed the same thing even on airplanes, where everyone is offline. Unfortunately in that case almost everything is either sleeping, consuming corporate entertainment, or reading books. BUT there are always a few people who are open to talking. I prefer talking to being on the phone when I'm in flight. I get to have a long conversation about 1/4 of flights. If you read old books like Pilgrim's Progress you see people walking towards the same town together, and they always struck up a conversation. Look at the Canterbury Tales: some really great literature that consists just of fellow travelers having a storytelling contest! We are missing so much humanity in our kosher lives.
    • QuercusMax 2y ago
      If you like those kinds of storytelling-on-a-pilgrimage stories, I highly recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A large part of the book consists of a group of pilgrims-of-sorts traveling together and sharing stories, which gradually help you understand what's really going on.
    • AftHurrahWinch 2y ago
      I apologize if this comes across as 'how dare you talk about pancakes when I prefer waffles', but I just want to mention that, like a lot of people, I destroyed my hearing when I was young and now I struggle to hear on busses and planes. If someone talks to me on a plane I say "Sorry, my hearing is really bad", and its really embarrassing when they respond by speaking so loudly the whole plane can hear for the rest of the flight.
• philip1209 2y ago
  The books the authors cite are great and worth reading. Some personal observations: - The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now. There are lots of reasons for this. But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture. - People put a lot of effort into work, and work is becoming more transactional. No more "life-long employment with the buddies" kind of situation. - America went from poor to rich, but still behaves like a developing economy. Public healthcare + public education + low-income housing availability are poor, while there's a big class of people who can afford private education + private healthcare + McMansions. I think this deteriorates the idea of "we're all in this together" because there's such unequal opportunity. - Wars used to be a way to unify a country, but we're in the era of proxy wars - which don't have the same aligning effect.
  • silverquiet 2y ago
    I don't disagree with the comment, but whenever people talk about a "love of the USA", I always want to ask what is it that you love? To stereotype a bit, I'm guessing that it will not be the federal government (despite a strong reverence for the flag of that government).
    • philip1209 2y ago
      The deeper issue is that a pessimism about our country will become self-fulfilling. So, it's not useful. I think the USA is amazing in that it attracts the most ambitious people in the world, provides relative stability for them to work and live, and that it has managed to create such a stable society given the heterogeneous nature of its culture. It has a lot of problems, but I'd much rather be here than in the communist former-country my mom was born in.
      • Mountain_Skies 2y ago
        Ever consider that perhaps cramming a community full of the most ambitious people in the world might have a bunch of negative consequences for that community?
• throaway12346 2y ago
  I believe a lot of people intuitively agree with this. I certainly do.
• thih9 2y ago
  HN readers of any age who felt alone at some point and found community - what worked for you?
  • mclau156 2y ago
    meetup.com
    • cedws 2y ago
      I live in London and Meetup is an arid depressing wasteland here since the pandemic.
  • WorkerBee28474 2y ago
    Church. Attending is a step up from nothing, and volunteering is a huge step up from attending.
  • weberer 2y ago
    Moving out of the city and into a small town. It made a night and day difference. Neighbors became people you actually know and talk to rather than just another stranger like the thousands of others on your block. Another commenter really nailed the difference in behavior between home owners who have a 30 year stake in the neighborhood, and renters who will probably be gone next year.
  • panstromek 2y ago
    I go through event listings on fb, meetup, and various other sources and just bookmark and visit random events that spark my interest. I visited a city planning debate this week, and next week I'm going to see a waste processing plant. Few months ago I found a recurring event where a small group of strangers discuss deep topics from a deck of cards with questions, which are often very personal. This was probably the most impactful, I've met some new friends there. Generally though, it's a funnel. Sometimes you find somebody, sometimes not, I just try to make a lot of opportunities.
  • __rito__ 2y ago
    Just being able to choose people you spend time with is a huge plus. When you are in school, you are forced to be with some people, and see them everyday despite not liking them even a bit. Growing up fixed this. Now I can choose. What worked is volunteering in charitable activities, organizing programmes and camps, deliberately choosing some people and making time to see them regularly. That's about all.
• Sol- 2y ago
  Is the "youth mental health crisis" confirmed? I remember reading there was a bit of back and forth in that topic. Some unhappiness was also concentrated among young progressive girls etc. It fits nicely with the pessimistic vibes that everything gets worse, but I wonder to what extent it's media bias and that actually things are normal or even good.
  • hot_gril 2y ago
    It's real. My class was the start of it, and it got worse after.
  • Tade0 2y ago
    Suicide rates among young people - especially females, have been on the rise for close to a decade now.
    • akimbostrawman 2y ago
      i hope those rates will never climb as high as there male counterparts
• 29athrowaway 2y ago
  In the end your friend will be an AI that tries to sell you shit all day long.
  • yimmothathird 2y ago
    Eh, that's not even too far off from many of the people I meet.
• kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and third places outside of the consumer setting are becoming extinct because they are non-monetizable. This last category, non-consumer third places are formerly the domain of kid-friendly community-building activities. When we talk about creating more of these and the response is, "they aren't economically viable," it's exactly the kind of economic calculus framing that I'm talking about.
  • sologoub 2y ago
    To take this a step further, I’d argue such framings encourage either creation or amplification of risk perceptions in order to sell the remedy (and for political gain), at least in the US. Kids aren’t really allowed much autonomy the way even their parents enjoyed. All interactions are in a sense supervised and structured.
  • RickS 2y ago
    This is positively gut wrenching in its accuracy. Really well captured.
  • hot_gril 2y ago
    Anything is economically viable if enough people want it.
    • meowkit 2y ago
      Point == missed Its a tragedy of the commons style problem. The viability has to come from a group effort - as soon as there is a single entity running the show the economic incentives will warp or collapse the 3rd place into something different.
      • hot_gril 2y ago
• carapace 2y ago
  Christopher Alexander & co. have a site "Building Living Neighborhoods" about doing just that with his Pattern Language: > The tools offered are intended for the use of ordinary people, families, communities, developers, planners, architects, designers and builders; public officials, local representatives, and neighbors; business owners and people who have commercial interests. The processes here are expressed in the belief that the common-sense, plain truth about laying out a neighborhood, or repairing one, is equally valid for all comers, amateurs and professionals. They help people build or rebuild neighborhoods in ways that contribute something to their lives. https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm
  • mclau156 2y ago
    that website is bad
    • carapace 2y ago
      Yeah, I know. "Ignore the bird, follow the river."
• jessriedel 2y ago
  Is there a difference between 'cause' and 'upstream cause'? I though the whole up/downstream language was just a synonym for causation.
• vishnugupta 2y ago
  One big change I've noticed between growing up in a small town and now where I'm in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is increased "transactional" nature of interactions of my daily life. Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange small updates (how's your son doing, is he married yet?) and then finally do the actual purchase. It was to an extent that the carpenter would come by and just hand over a big dining table just because he thought our house deserved/needed it. He wouldn't ask for immediate payment either and also in instalments. Some other times he would come by and borrow some money. All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with vendors is 100% transactional. I don't even know their names nor they mine. It means that I'm now connected only with my immediate family, that's it. It also means that the generation now growing up know only transactional way of interaction with non family/friends. I guess these things eventually add up to the loss of community.
  • sublinear 2y ago
    I don't mean to be so brutal about it, but these small social interactions were simply never valued that much by the majority and maybe even seen as a nuisance.
    • __rito__ 2y ago
      It's not all or nothing. I live in small town India since Covid and WFH, and I spent my childhood here. The thing is, with this much tightknit society, people are often loudly judgemental and requires you to conform. But, there are always sensible, gentle people, and loud stupid people. You can modulate your expectations. But what happened is- all the "good ones" leave sooner or later. There is much hue and cry about brain drain from India to US/Europe, but little about brain drain from small towns and villages to big cities. I left for college, too. There were many more cultural programmes, much better environment for upliftment and somewhat more sensible society when I was a child compared to now. I engage in community as much as I can, but very selectively. Because most people want things to fall in a certain place. People are ill informed in technology, and don't really get WFH. Some bluntly ask- why I don't have a "real job"? People want girls to get married at a certain age, and squint if that limit is crossed. Community also come with this kind of burdens.
• conductr 2y ago
  I’m so glad it’s finally happening but also it’s wild to me this conversation feels like it’s just beginning. The Anxious Generation book seems to have been what was needed for people to see what, to me anyways, was common sense and actually question their silly iPad at 6months old parenting styles. As it’s picking up steam, I’ve been hearing stories recently about how our local “school district decided to ban phones from classrooms” and just yesterday it was “the school will no longer allow food delivery services to drop off food”. Like, educators, WTF, why was that ever an option? In my days long ago, 80s-90s primary school, there was a zero tolerance policy for this stuff. Why was it ever deemed allowable? I can see letting kids keep their phone in their locker or create some storage solution for it. For emergency purposes. But in emergencies, the parent should be able to call the office and they can fetch the kid. It worked just fine in the days of landlines. It’s hard for me to understand the parenting styles that demanded and allowed this stuff to take place, because I’m sure it was parent driven. But there’s so much else to the parenting styles that are contributing to all this stuff. Banning outdoor play and independence is why they’re online so much and why the arcades and third places all disappeared. I say all this as a parent of an almost 6 year old boy, doing everything I can to shield him from the wacky parenting style that seems to be the norm and provide him places of community and activities away from screens. He won’t have a phone until he drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need a communication line to reach him when he’s a bit older.
  • kahmeal 2y ago
    >I say all this as a parent of an almost 6 year old boy, doing everything I can to shield him from the wacky parenting style that seems to be the norm and provide him places of community and activities away from screens. He won’t have a phone until he drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need a communication line to reach him when he’s a bit older. This is possibly a bit extreme, imo. In a world that is ever increasingly digital, responsible exposure is without a doubt necessary; However, it seems that one could also inadvertently foster naiveté and ignorance of our digital reality, which has its own potential pitfalls. The "right" answer is probably somewhere in the middle. As usual.
    • 2y ago
• boot13 2y ago
  What a load. See https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/22/jonathan-haidts-book-the-anxious-generation-is-coddling-the-american-parent-giving-them-clear-simple-wrong-explanations-for-whats-ailing-teens/ https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/22/jonathan-haidts-book-the...
  • WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    You might need to be more specific. The author attributes different conditions.
• jeffbee 2y ago
  This guy seems to think his city is special by not allowing kids to have phones in school but the thing is I've heard this claim of special status from a lot of places lately and in my own city kids have never been allowed to have phones at school so I am starting to think this is actually just a widespread and quite obvious practice.
• 0xedd 2y ago
  Heh, come on. It's the breakup of the family unit by the woke plague. It's time to face the music and let children be children.
  • QuercusMax 2y ago
    What does that even mean? Please explain, because I don't think I understand what you're saying.
  • bilbo0s 2y ago
    What are you even talking about?
  • luzojeda 2y ago
    Gays! I knew it was them! Even when it was the atomization of society, loss of third places, destruction of the middle class and so many other things, I knew it was them.
• tarkin2 2y ago
  The lack of religion is a big factor. I'd argue as much as the internet. Religious activity--putting aside the well-documented negatives--gives group identity, belonging, a welcoming atmosphere, an in-person place to socialise, associated group events and a connection to your geographic community. The rush to abandon religion never replaced the essential in-person community it offered its adherents.
  • kredd 2y ago
    Tight knit irreligious communities always existed. I grew up in one, nobody in my family is/was religious, yet people still were close. I think the top comment nails down the root cause — rampant individualism is rewarded from an economical and financial stand point, so people avoid making sacrifices for others. If you check out very religious societies (other than closed down sects), they have a significant decline in youth co-mingling as well. I’m not saying removing religion did not contribute to the decline (e.g. parents forcing their children to go to church), and we definitely screwed up when it comes to replacing that freed time with something more social. But actively asserting ideas and beliefs that don’t hold ground in the modern days to the children isn’t something I can support.
    • hu3 2y ago
      > But actively asserting ideas and beliefs that don’t hold ground in the modern days... You realize that's an opinion right? Not a fact. Such a broad and loaded generalization too. Religion might not have a place in modern society >to you<. Generalizing that opinion is just as radical as trying to impose religion onto others. Not to mention that, just because non-religious groups are also able to become close and social, it doesn't mean that religion doesn't help here too. So there is a flaw in this logic.
      • kredd 2y ago
        Fair, you're right, apologies, I just have a knee-jerk reaction to any commentary that suggests religious indoctrination of children. But again, I still think parts of religious traditions are amazing (like bringing the community together, having pre-set activities, celebrating things together and etc.). The "ideas and beliefs" that I'm against is just the usual paranormal stories that are being push as the objective truth. If someone can extract out the core good things out of the religions (being nice to the neighbour, helping others, decency and etc.) and apply it to the modern world, I will be all for that. And that's kind of what my parents taught me from day 1 as well. Or taking specific activities, how my Jewish friends do, like hosting Friday night Shabbat dinners to bring your friends and family together. The problem is, it's very hard to implement in a larger scale, as you can't push people one way or another through fear (whether it's fear of God, or going to hell, or bad karma). I obviously have no real solution to it, but just wanted to explain my thought process.
• photochemsyn 2y ago
  Some things to keep in mind: (1) A 'youth mental health crisis' may or may not actually exist. Consider the 'chronic pain crisis' marketing that preceded the opiate epidemic in the USA, and the concomittant boom in opiate drug prescriptions, sales and profits. Similarly the 'attention deficit crisis' was very profitable for the makers of amphetamines and their derivatives, from Ritalin to Adderall to Desoxyn. Here's CDC on opiate prescriptions in the USA, 2006-2015: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm (2) A 'youth mental health crisis' may actually be a 'youth are looking at the dystopian world besest by war and climate chaos and not feeling good about their future prospects' - which means their mental health is probably fine and their views are entirely rational. See the famous "this koala is having a mental crisis' cartoon: https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/avf6kh/this_young_koala_has_a_mental_health_problem/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/avf6kh/this...
• cooolbear 2y ago
  I'm surprised that the definition of 'community' he uses here so strongly revolves around a shared identity and activity, and that what is shared is what defines a community. For one, I don't really think communities where people share the same interests or ritual really does the trick, otherwise so-called YouTube 'communities' or Twitch stream 'communities' or even strangers you play games with online would be all that's needed. In those cases, whether it happens in real life or online wouldn't really matter. I think some people can tick all the boxes he has here with an online group and still feel lonely from it. Some people still feel lonely going to church every Sunday. There certainly needs to be a common thread--that's what you get out of place-based communities, for example: we all experience the same weather--but what I feel really combats loneliness and creates belonging is having to connect with people that are different you and, importantly, to witness and connect with people because of their difference, and that these connections are made because you have no choice. The richness and complexity of life and all of the kinds of sorrows and joys that you get to see and relate to yourself and relate to others is what is sorely missing from incidental, emergent, real-life community. I suppose I'm basically just describing the Breakfast Club experience. Like kids don't feel lonely because there isn't an authority figure around that can boss them around. That makes for a more ... socially conditioned ...? person, and maybe a wiser, more carefully-guided person, but not necessarily a less lonely person. It's not the bossing around that makes them feel like they're in a community, it's the fact that there is someone with a different experience with whom they share some connection, and it's a coincidence that it's an authoratative one.
  • parpfish 2y ago
    when community is formed geographically, it also helps that there's a diversity of people/opinions which serves to moderate the group. if people select community based on some other criterion, you are more likely to get narrow group think and increasingly extreme opinions/culture that isn't ultimately welcoming or sustainable.
  • ryan93 2y ago
    Actually kids are much happier in homogenous communities. Being the lone white kid in a black/Hispanic community would cause nonstop low level stress
• Animats 2y ago
  This article needs more comparison between countries. Where is this not happening?
• canadaduane 2y ago
  Seth Kaplan, professor at Johns Hopkins University and frequent contributor to UN and World Bank efforts to shore up community in difficult countries has written a book called Fragile Neighborhoods that I highly recommend.
• onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  I think it's less the lack of community, and more the lack of the ability to feel like you matter. Before the world was globalized, anybody could do something that would stand out in their community. On a global scale, virtually no one is good or big enough for anyone to care about. It doesn't matter anymore if you're the best soprano in the choir or the best basketball player on your team. You need to be one of the best in the world. And that's not realistic.
  • leobg 2y ago
    That would mean the winners will be those who turn towards a local community. Which makes sense. I often wondered how lawyers who are terrible at their craft can stay in business. Thing is, they just don’t compete. They build relationships with local clients over decades. And those clients, once they know, like and trust these lawyers, don’t even see how bad they are. I guess the same applies to AI experts, etc..
• hnpolicestate 2y ago
  The articles thesis on loss of community plays a role but has always existed in some context depending upon the individuals location. The primary cause (in my opinion) of the youth mental health crisis and falling happiness rates was the introduction of the smart phone. Blaming social media is a clever cop out, it's the actual device and inability of people to stop looking at it. Totally abnormal to human life. Will we adapt to it over time? Possible, but many people will be lost along the way.
  • RangerScience 2y ago
    Counter-take: Smartphone addiction, like other addictions, it a coping mechanism for other issues, see https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-teach-us-about-addiction https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-tea... > But Alexander wondered: is this about the drug or might it be related to the setting they were in? To test his hypothesis, he put rats in “rat parks,” where they were among others and free to roam and play, to socialize and to have sex. And they were given the same access to the same two types of drug laced bottles. When inhabiting a “rat park,” they remarkably preferred the plain water. Even when they did imbibe from the drug-filled bottle, they did so intermittently, not obsessively, and never overdosed. A social community beat the power of drugs.
    • hnpolicestate 2y ago
      I've considered the rebuttal and study you cited. I can't envision any social environment that would permanently stop people from obsessively looking at their phones. It's possible to provide an activity that would temporarily redirect the obsession but we're talking about 24 hours. At some point the individual will resume the obsessive behavior. I also bet that the rat park study would eventually fail given a long enough amount of time. The rats would eventually get bored of their environment and experiment with the drug filled bottle. I speculate all this of course. Can't be positive.
  • squigz 2y ago
    > Totally abnormal to human life. Which era of our history might best reflect "normal" human life?
• hnpolicestate 2y ago
  Second comment. Sorry if excessive but it's relevant. I'm a computer teacher for elementary and intermediate school grades. You know what drives kids absolutely insane and agitated? The schools IT guy turning their laptops and Mac desktops into locked down consumption devices. The kids aren't even permitted to change their wallpaper. Those in tech with authority need to loosen up on control of systems, hardware and services if they want kids to be less agitated.
  • globular-toast 2y ago
    Yeah, fuck "devices". This is a massive part of the problem. Up to a certain age, children don't ask "does it have to be the way?" It's obvious why they don't: they are learning so much anyway, they don't have time to ask such questions. So the world we present is the world that is accepted, no questions asked. Religion thrives on this. So let's think about what world we are presenting. Physically you have no autonomy. You require a giant wheelchair to get around (called a car) which you can't drive until you're older. These wheelchairs are higher in the social order than you. You have to give way to them. If you don't they will kill you. They matter more than you. And in the digital world too: no autonomy. You use a "device". You can't participate in anything without said device. In fact, you basically don't exist without your device. The device is more important than you. Your device does what it does and no more. Someone else controls your device. Your device controls you. A tiny fraction of children will grow up and ask "does it have to be this was" to a tiny fraction of things. Most will go through their whole adult life without questioning it.
• bilater 2y ago
  My controversial take on this is that we are in the mid-curve of this tech, i.e., smartphones/social media are not quite there to replace IRL experiences and are even further off from real community...BUT instead of going back, we need to move forward to the right side of the curve where full VR / network states can solve a lot of these problems. I'm very bullish on IRL experiences. Community building is more complex, with various ripple effects to consider, but realistically we are heading in that direction whether we like it or not. I find it more compelling to explore how we can reclaim and enhance these lost aspects in our modern world rather than going on "back in my day" nostalgia trips.
  • yard2010 2y ago
    That sounds both implausible and dystopic. But I believe this is going to happen and everything is going to be fine
• romanobro56 2y ago
  As a member of generation Z I would like to add that one of the many enshittification reasons leading to the loss of community is an aging population. Many of the same neighborhoods that our parents used to roam and play are now a majority old or childless families. The kids are there, just not dense enough to form small tight knit play groups anymore. This applies to suburbs specifically
• whoknowsidont 2y ago
  I think quality of the community matters here. There are a lot of "not real" people in our society.
• RangerScience 2y ago
  Hot take: The upstream cause of this is, essentially, "the rent is too damn high". Not necessarily in a sense of housing prices, but - In order to have a community, that community needs a space. (The early 'net was interesting in that "space" was cheap/nearly free - IRC, forums, etc, which might be one reason it took over as a social space to begin with) Extremely consistently, I see efforts at forming communities fail simply due to a lack of regular space in which to have them, and from what little I know talking to organizers, it pretty much always comes down to the cost of the space - the rent. This remains true even if the space itself wants to be cheap/free - it has to pay it's own rent, which means it needs dollars from everyone using it. AFAIK, religious institutions get around this through (1) advantageous tax laws and (2) long-term ownership.
• robotelvis 2y ago
  I recently joined my local Elks club and the experience has been amazing. Being social is effortless. I just show up at the lodge and people I know will be there. As a parent I can let the kids run wild with other kids within the safe confines of the lodge and have adult conversations. If I don’t have plans, I don’t need to sit home reading the internet. I go to the lodge. It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to a problem everyone complains about.
  • WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to a problem everyone complains about. Social orgs can supplement a healthy community. They can't replace one, however. A healthy community is one where it is trivial for kids to go on their own to a safe space. A place where they can Kid together, free from interfering adults.
    • llm_trw 2y ago
      I keep hearing all these people talking about kidding together. Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing when it's screaming running around. It means beating the fat kid till he can't stand up. The idea that kids don't need adults is laughable to anyone who remembers being a kid.
      • WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        > Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing when it's screaming running around. It means beating the fat kid till he can't stand up. This is very rarely true. I grew up with rural hill people and I was a skittish, annoying kid who got bullied a lot. Bullying was something that mostly happened in isolation. I was at-risk at school or if I was out alone and ran into the wrong kids, like the local neanderthal who started shaving at 10. Where I was safe was in groups. These were rough kids, sometimes brutally so. Feuds between youth could be extreme and the injuries were often serious. But those were between individuals or sometimes families. In groups, there were boundaries - a truce could be assumed. Animal cruelty existed but wasn't overly common. It sometimes happened within feuds. ex:A pet would disappear and be found down a well. And like bullying, that happened in isolation. Animal cruelty was never a social thing. Ever. Someone who entertained the notion could expect to get beat by the other kids until they thought differently. There was no tolerance for it.
• zombiwoof 2y ago
  Yet Apple will continue to push iPhones , sometimes I think the iPhone is worse than Facebook
• NickC25 2y ago
  Kids don't even play video games together in the same room any more. LAN parties were a thing in the 90s but everyone was in the same room(ish). Even when playing console games people don't game together in the same room or home. That's kinda odd. Online gaming is cool but my favorite gaming memories are playing with the person sitting next to me. I miss those days, and wish kids knew what it was like to play games together as a physical experience AND a digital one.
  • hitsurume 2y ago
    Yep. Also besides Lan parties, we had the N64, which allowed 4 peoplo play together. GoldenEye and various Mario games were a blast. the next generation had Halo and linking Xbox's together. Now a days I don't think kids or teens are having that same kind of fun we did back in the day.
• resource_waste 2y ago
  This is just repeating Positive Psychology correct?
• silexia 2y ago
  Mental health problems are the result of taking animals (humans) out of their natural environments and giving them phones with addictive apps and telling them that they should work instead of having children and growing their families.
• HellDunkel 2y ago
  The internet was a bad idea.
• g9yuayon 2y ago
  When I grew up in China, students in a school were divided into fixed classes. Those classes formed great communities, as we spent hours every day for at least three years and some for 6 years. Each class had a head teacher, who fostered the sense of community too. No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those who struggled at academics. At least not openly. We loved each other and still do. Our bond was so strong that we had regular reunions every few years, and most of my classmates would make it. We had multiple couples who were high-school sweat hearts, even though dating in high school was a taboo in China then. The concepts like nerds, like queen bees, like sports jockeys, like that those who can get drugs and drinks are popular... They were all new and parts of the culture shock to me when I moved to the US.
  • ZoomerCretin 2y ago
    > No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those who struggled at academics. At least not openly. I always hoped there was a way to avoid US-style bullying. I hadn't considered that it might be yet another consequence of society existing at too big of a scale (ex: behaviors that are accepted or even optimal in a city of 20 million people is wildly different than in a social setting where everyone knows you, your siblings, your friends, your parents, your boss, your coworkers, your pastor, etc.) Cohorts sound like a good, if imperfect solution, for managing this at school.
  • galdosdi 2y ago
    Ugh, yes, and many Americans naively imagine that all that John Hughes movie nonsense is somehow a normal universal part of teenage growing up! They'll see their kids start doing it and since they did it too they just shrug whist fully about the passage of time! Ignoring that it isn't normal elsewhere and wasn't normal here 100 years ago either when children were too busy for that kind of baby court intrigue. In fact, even in the modern US it's not universal. Both I and my child have gone to school in different areas and in both cases the level of that kind of nonsense was far less in some places than others. Teenagers aren't naturally alienated. You're alienating them and that's why they're alienated. By 13 a normal child is ready for and craves a lot more responsibility and efficacy than much of modern suburban American provides them, and lacking it leads to trying to direct the energy into other less constructive outlets. Idle hands are the devil's hands.
• stonethrowaway 2y ago
  [flagged]
• EGreg 2y ago
  Yes, ever since Robert Putnam wrote his book "bowling alone", the problem has been growing. And now, Big Tech has exacerbated it. Would like to get the feedback of people here. Journalists love to write about problems, but very few write about solutions. (It's just one of those things in the news media, it's like writing about good news and helping old ladies across the road.) I have spent 12 years building an open-source platform that will hopefully unite our communities and restore public health. LA Weekly recently wrote about it: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
• kylehotchkiss 2y ago
  I want to share what I imagine would be a controversial data point but one that I hope has value to this conversation - I recently decided to join a church just to reconnect with faith that I had pushed aside back in 2016, and with the church, a small group. It's working for me. I am making older friends for the first time in my life, and despite me generally not aligning with people politically, I'm just biting my tongue and not letting that define who I will spend time talking to the same way I used to. I'm not advocating religion specifically as a solution for others, just saying it works for myself. But my question is - why aren't there secular alternatives to religious community where people could just go bite their tongues and get along despite maybe some of our superficial cultural differences? Why can't there be larger weekly meetings for people, with smaller breakout groups, and a general sense of bringing people together in a community? Why is church the only place I can find that? I don't think the "fraternal clubs" are the solution here as they give off a certain "old mans club" perception that I can't get past (and the lack of windows on their buildings has been noted). But maybe somebody here could put one together and see what happens.
  • hitsurume 2y ago
    Churches don't pay taxes. They collect money from attendee's to pay for the real estate they occupy. Any other gathering / community has to deal with these real world problems before they can attract people. In my college years, there were clubs or fraternities, and they could use classrooms or student unions as low cost resources to gather in person and foster community. I think that's a barrier as an adult.
    • kylehotchkiss 2y ago
      Thoughtful. I didn’t think deeply enough how the tax implications mattered (especially given how many church buildings sit empty for days at a time)
• AlexCornila 2y ago
  And what are the causes for the loss of community ?
• SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  >I moved to my current neighborhood, Kemp Mill, just north of Washington, D.C., 12 years ago The unspoken truth here is that geographic community requires that you can stay in one spot long enough to make the massive investment in building or becoming involved in a local community. Recently I was thinking that I should become involved in local initiatives, or perhaps even local government, until I realised that as a renter not only would I not be here im a few years time, but any actual success I had in improving the local area would just mean a likely rent increase as it became more desirable and gentrified. The fact that I'm shocked and feel blessed that I'm living at the same address for 4 years in a row now makes it obvious how bad an investment trying to becime part of the local community seems to someone like me. In the age of homeownership haves and have-nots, it's natural for local community to break down.
• Caius-Cosades 2y ago
  What a shocker, community ceases to exist when people living in a economic zone have literally nothing in common, other than being bipedal humanoids that are enslaved to banks.
• avereveard 2y ago
  > the teens that appear least impacted by the mental health crisis tend to be religious, conservative, and live in less individualistic cultures Weird how fast the other two factors from the linked essay got dropped only to focus on individualism, aint it? Doesnt matter tho doesnt seem neither cite sources, methodology and data
• CMCDragonkai 2y ago
  I find that community depends alot on culture. My experience of Western culture (the culture I grew up in, although not born into) is mostly Anglo-spherical, which in the beginning felt like this was Western culture, but travelling through Europe I realised that there's far more to Western culture than just Anglo practices/preferences. I have found the US to be far more diverse in its Western cultural roots compared to NZ and Australia. This might be due the fact that the US received significant immigration from non-Anglo Western cultures early on compared to Australia/NZ. Anyway my point is that what constitutes "community" and whether you fit into that community depends alot on whether you can fit into that culture, and whether that culture can accept you. If there's a match, then you end up finding community easily. If there's no match, then community can be difficult, and this I believe explains why there's so many ethnic enclaves in Sydney and I believe elsewhere too. So that's why unlike the "melting pot idea", Australia tends to be multi-cultural society. This is especially difficult for people who are neither there nor here, a sort of inbetween. It takes alot of grace and self-reflection to integrate opposing cultural norms and bridge communities...
• sph 2y ago
  The loss of community, sadly, does not affect only the youth, but all people that have grown with the internet. This now includes older millennials like me. --- I have a silly dream that has been calling me for years now, and I don't know where to start [1]. We're all knowledge workers now, right? We basically just need electricity, a laptop and an internet connection to contribute to society. Is this not the time to start a movement away from the big chaotic cities, back into the calmer and more peaceful rural villages? I envision a future where "nature life" does not mean hippy living like the 1800s, but we can leverage our modern high technology to make natural life even better for us. For example, solar panels, low-energy devices and appliances, automated greenhouses/hydroponics, etc. Natural life also means community life. We are tribal animals, we enjoy being productive members of groups of < 50 people, where everybody knows each other, they have their own "culture" and way of doing things in harmony. In 2024, this doesn't have to mean warring with each other with rocks. Modern "tribes" are no more than communal and self-contained living and social arrangements. Basically, I have this unbearable call to settle in the middle of nowhere, with other people that have the luxury to live free of the shackles of modern society, to live like humans are meant to live: in the sun, in the grass, in a community but also with running water, fibre internet and green energy. I know some of us are starting to have the same need and we are at a point in civilisation where this is possible, so here's my shot in the dark, hoping to talk with and hear from the other unreasonable, uncivilised ones that just want to abandon the idea that we are meant to live in chaotic cities socialising mostly through the hellish babel that is social media. --- 1: actually, I know where to start. I am moving back to Italy within the next few months, and will seriously look into a place to settle and to make this a reality just for myself.
• southernplaces7 2y ago
  Or, conversely, there's a reporting and over-reporting bias at work today that previously didn't exist due to much smaller exposure to notions of perceived and real mental health disorders among (admittedly often suggestible) young people. "Community" is not only a generic term, it's also a somewhat ambiguously dangerous one that captures many very biased notions of a supposedly ideal community that have little to do with a healthy reality. Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular. This hardly makes them reliable sources for arguments about its lack. Few things about today's world of easier communication and more easily than ever being able to find others who share your interests makes it especially hard for any given person of any age to find what they're comfortable calling a community for themselves. It's certainly easier than it was decades ago when you either had to physically go somewhere or make a serious effort of some kind to find wider communities you might like. Either that or settle for whatever sort of fit the bill in your home town. These things are much easier to avoid today.
  • goda90 2y ago
    > Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular. If someone has little positive face to face interaction with people outside their immediate family, I don't see how you could argue that's not a lack of community.
    • southernplaces7 2y ago
      People can leave their home, people can travel. If digital media expose to the curious a given community of shared interests, you have more avenues than ever for discovering it, and making contact. I simply can't see how this is worse than not even being able to find such communities while stuck in your supposedly superior town/neighborhood community of the people who live around you.
      • goda90 2y ago
        Sure they CAN leave their homes, but they aren't. There is a lack of positive face to face interaction with people you can see often. We need more than text on an online forum. We need facial expressions, we need body language, we need smell and touch. We need people who can see that we're in a low spot because they see us all the time to know the difference. We need the chance to do the same for others as well. We need to interact with people who have different opinions and interests or are at different stages of life. We need to be told we're wrong and to see the impact on others when we screw up. So much of that just doesn't happen online.
• Log_out_ 2y ago
  Cooperations eat,prey and consist of isolated individuals integrating into a artificiql "subsetsociety" which is why individual progressive society is the colon of the filter feeder beast.
• silexia 2y ago
  The spike in young Asian and white male suicides is the discrimination against them. See here where only 15% of them who are in the academic top ten percent are admitted vs 57% of black students in the top ten percent. https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-showed-astonishing-racial-gaps/ https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti... End all racism.
• AbstractH24 2y ago
  It's not just youths.....
• sydbarrett74 2y ago
  As in most spheres, the ruthless pursuit of 'efficiency' in social interactions has led to a less resilient society.
• noonething 2y ago
  Every group is cultish nowadays. God forbid if you have your own opinion anymore.
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• BargirPezza 2y ago
  "In it, he argued that to restore the play-based childhood, we must first rebuild strong in-person local communities." Churches! It is perfect, gives community, hope and a purpose. And the Christian way to live and be is a very good model.