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The loneliest people (and places) in America
- mitchbob 2y agohttps://archive.ph/j0IOL https://archive.ph/j0IOL
- watwut 2y agoInteresting and much different then stereotypes thrown around would have you believe.
- dgfitz 2y ago> Across the data, nothing we tested relates more strongly to loneliness than a lack of social support. When you ask who’s “always” lonely, more than half of the people who say they never get social support raise their hands. A lack of a sense of community makes people feel lonely. Wish this had been the first sentence instead of the last.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoYes, but it begs the question if you just leave it at that, no?
- dgfitz 2y agoSure, the article can support the premise to prove the point out, I just wouldn't have read the rest of it. Waste of time.
- ethinton 2y agoThe headline reminded me of this piece from Alvin Chang that I really enjoyed: https://pudding.cool/2023/09/invisible-epidemic/ https://pudding.cool/2023/09/invisible-epidemic/
- bshacklett 2y agoThis is the first useful case of scroll hijacking that I’ve ever seen. Very intuitive and innovative.
- dustincoates 2y agoOne thing jumped out: many of the states with high rates of "always" lonely, also have high rates of "never" lonely. Many of these states are in the Sun Belt. The article ties those always rates to poverty, these are also states that have had a high in-migration in recent years. Could this contradiction instead be that many of those who report being always lonely are those who have moved recently to the states, and who don't have the connection (often familial) that those who have been around longer, or who have stayed back in the "less lonely" states, have?
- selimthegrim 2y agoI live in Louisiana, one of those states. We have the lowest in-migration and low immigration.
- _tlbb 2y agoProbably the more likely explanation is that the general individual has slowly withdrawn from society due to the internet.
- giantg2 2y agoWith how toxic many online communities are, I wonder what that says about how the real world must have treated them.
- watwut 2y agoFairly often, a person gets radicalized on the internet and then treats real world people around badly. Online toxic communities produce toxic people, but frequently those people were not mistreated all that much in the first place.
- mlinhares 2y agoI've also met multiple people I'd never want to interact IRL but that are actually ok/nice people out of the internet. Being behind a keyboard definitely seems to bring the worst out of some people.
- alistairSH 2y agoMaybe I misread some of the article, but seems like younger people just "suck" at being alone? IE, older people are less likely to feel lonely when they're physically alone? I wonder if that's because older people are more likely to have a solo hobby - reading a book, knitting, whatever - and younger people are more likely to "doom scroll" online?
- johnnyanmac 2y agoIt's a bit weird. They didn't find any loneliness among the gender divide, but it also did note that Gaming among males has drastically increased. But on top of that, Gaming seems to be average in terms of satisfaction but still highly rated as "the worst use of your time". It may suggest some internal polarization. There's a lot of young people who can more or less get by being a pseudo hermit between gaming, remote work, and necessities. But the ones who can't suffer greatly on a mental level. I wonder if breaking down games by genre or format would reveal anything? Regardless, it did also say the primary factors overall have to do with economic, social, and community strength. It's no real secret by now thst Gen Z has had all the structures of yester-decade pulled up from under them. Job market is stonewalled for graduates, third places are dead or near-dead for community building, and social media further ruined a lot of incentive to meet locals in a physical setting.
- _tlbb 2y agoBeing someone from gen z, it feels like there's no opportunity for anything. Not just jobs or economic opportunity, but social ones as well. I graduated high school and started college in the wake of covid so I feel extremely developmentally behind. I do some volunteer stuff in my area but I don't actually "know" or enjoy time with them outside of our volunteer work because they aren't my age or in my stage of life. I don't even play games anymore because the pressure of "making it" makes me feel worse than before playing a game.
- 13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago[dead]
- merryocha 2y agoThe color shading on those maps seems deceptive to me. It suggests a starker contrast than what the numbers tell.
- driggs 2y agoThe scale of each map is independent, and differs by an order of magnitude from the "lonely" top row to the "not lonely" bottom row. A charitable view would be that they consider each category independent. Another charitable view would be that they're focused on showing trends, not "absolute value of loneliness", and that you can view the order of maps Always-Usually-Rarely-Never to be an additional dimension. This would have better fit a linear layout, but as they note in the caption, a fifth map "wouldn't fit"; they are constrained by article layout. If you think the WP is simply trying to push the premise of the article, that there is a "Loneliness Epidemic", then you may enjoy the book `How to Lie with Maps` by Monmonier: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo27400568.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo274005...
- tasuki 2y ago> No matter how much time you think young men devote to video games, you’re probably underestimating it. Two decades ago, high-school- and college-age males (ages 15 to 24) spent about a quarter of an hour a day alone playing games. Now, that figure has more than quintupled to 1.4 hours a day. Wat? I'd have expected it to be a lot more. I'm sure there are quite a few who spend over eight hours a day playing games...
- bluGill 2y agoThere are also quite a few who never/rarely play games. Averages do things like that all the time. Which of course opens the question of is that an important factor?
- giantg2 2y agoYeah, but a more useful analysis would be to look for a median instead of mean, or clean the dataset to remove outliers to say something like, of those who play video game, the average/median is... this would also lead itself to the next step of analysis about if it's an important factor like you mention by categorizing them into players vs non-players.
- zmgsabst 2y agoOr modes. Since the data is likely multi-modal.
- echoangle 2y agoAt this point, you can just show the entire histogram.
- giantg2 2y agoTrue. My main point is that almost everytime I read something about "average" hours spent playing games or whatever, it turns out to be a hack job. Like why use average if you have a bunch of zeros in it? What does that average actually tell us? Usually nothing useful. Metrics like what percentage of teens/men/etc play games now vs 10 years ago, or of the people who play at all, how many hours do they play now vs 10 years ago, etc would be so much more useful than what they gave because the increase in average hours played might only be due to fewer zeros being in the dataset.
- JumpinJack_Cash 2y agoYou can be alone in a sea of people. It's not about quantity, it's about quality and depth. However it would be ideal to feel content with superficial interactions but it's almost always not sufficient.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 2y agoSee https://archive.ph/ZByHo https://archive.ph/ZByHo
- throwaway13337 2y agoThese are survey questions. It seems to reveal most about cultural differences between what different groups feel like they are allowed to feel. It would be difficult to control for this but it’s just naive to think these numbers should be interpreted in the straight forward manner presented. It’s obvious that men and older people would likely report less loneliness as a cultural instinct, on average, for example. This is distinct from actual loneliness, though, which would be higher in both groups. At least if you think suicide rates are correlated. It’s an important topic but this is unfortunately just going to muddy the waters.
- sanj 2y agoIt is derived from the Census Household Pulse Survey which is designed, administered, and analyzed by the most sophisticated survey designers out there. They've had decades to create and refine approaches that deal with this problem. I trust their interpretation over "throwaway13337" statements about what they find "obvious." #gell-mann effect
- weakfish 2y agoIt's a bit puzzling to me that they acknowledge statements like > Looking at people who identify as LGBTQ, the data at first suggested that they tend to be lonelier. But it’s largely because self-identified LGBTQ folks tend to be younger. But then do not follow up with an analysis adjusted for this - wouldn't that be fairly straightforward?
- jncfhnb 2y agoThat sentence is the follow up analysis. The effect disappears if you adjust for age.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]