Posted by publicdebates 23 hours ago
Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
It seems a lot of you are in Seattle and I'm willing to try and host an event like this if any of you might be interested.
They have monthly meeting and are active in all kinds of events around the city.
- Invest in 3rd places:
· Zoning that allows small businesses and cafés to be near where people live.
· Invest heavily in public libraries.
· Invest in public parks and spaces. For places where it rains a lot, maybe that should include roofed structures.
· Increase and promote funding for social organisations. Give money to orgs for every member.
- Create more free time:
· Make legislation that accommodates and promotes work weeks shorter than 37 hours.
· Ensure decent and reliable support for people who cannot (find) work, so their time is freed up to support their community.
- In disaster readiness checklists, include a point about knowing the names and special needs of your neighbours.
- Invest in mental health services. Both serious stuff and some light-weight sit-and-talk-groups.
- Set up laws that promote public transportation and carpooling.
- Anti-trust social media companies. Promote competitive compatibility between social media platforms. This is to let consumers choose the services that give them the best outcomes.
It also has a tiny bar. Like 3 feet long with three stools. One terrible television.
Yet there are always people in there hanging out. People are so desperate for a place to hang that is not their house that they will hang out in a convenience store bar.
There’s really two main ingredients to loneliness:
1) We don’t meet others in a way that sparks relationships.
2) We have personal issues that interfere with our ability to have relationships.
#1 is fairly straightforward. We have the ability to make friends; but lack the opportunity. If we can meet and interact with others, we’ll make friends, and mitigate our isolation. We need to “get out more.” We can join organizations, go places, right-swipe on apps, and we’ll eventually break our isolation. I’ve found that a key is to get together with others, over shared interests or goals.
#2 is a different beast. We need to work on ourselves, first and foremost. We may often need help, like therapy or guided self-help. Usually, there’s a lot of pretty humbling work involved. If we don’t treat the root cause (our own issues), then we can meet as many people as possible, and we’ll still be lonely.
Lots of potential reasons for our problems. Could be trauma, neurodivergence, addiction, mental health problems, personal insecurity, or simply lack of experience. Often, a combination of these.
The good news is, is that if we get serious about treating our own issues, we will absolutely end the isolation. Almost every treatment involves a lot of interaction with others, and relationship-building.
For myself, I was definitely in the #2 category. I’m “on the spectrum,” and I had an addiction problem. Intervention was required, and I needed to stop running, turn around, and face my demons. I needed to learn to ask for, and, even more importantly, accept, help. I had to develop a taste for crow and humble pie. Doing this, changed everything.
That was 45 years ago, when I was 18. The road has been anything but smooth, but it’s always been onward and upward. Today, I have close relationships all over the world, with an enormous variety of people, and have done work that affects thousands of lives in a positive manner.
I’ve also found that helping others to deal with their own issues has been effective.
Your #1 is great for after this connection with another human being has been made. Your #2 is why it hasn't been made yet. I'm trying to find solutions for the middle, to solve #2 for random strangers on the street, in order to get them both able and motivated to do #1. Those strangers are people who sit alone at home, all day, every day, and you only see them on the way to the grocery store and back.
I'm glad you got the help you needed to bootstrap your ability to find and form meaningful relationships. If only there was a reproducible way to help countless others get past that initial hump, and begin the same process. I believe it must be possible somehow.
I've been trying my surveys in Chicago as a first step. I need to do more, though, somehow. Now that I'm known as the "sign guy" by many people who pass me by every time I'm there, I think I can get more creative than surveys, and try signs that are more interactive to reach out to those people. I've been brainstorming throughout this thread on a few different ways to do this. If you or anyone has concrete ideas, I'd be very glad to hear it.
Breaking habits isn’t easy. It’s nearly impossible, if we have a compulsive disorder, but, then, we’d be #2.
The key to anything is willingness. If we don’t actually want to do something, then it ain’t happening.
But there’s a hell of a lot more #2, than folks are willing to admit.
Going out and trying to be comfortable in non-ideal situations (i.e. you know hardly anyone there) is a skill you can learn. I often think it's probably like sales cold calling. After a while you develop calluses.
Loneliness is when there is a gap between desire for companionship/connection and reality.
I've done both extended periods of home office and a period of co-working in an open plan space. I didn't feel lonely in the home office. I guess because I did it by choice and had the agency to opt into joining a co-working.
I think that loneliness could be a symptom of lack of connection. And this need for connection can in some cases be fulfilled online or even through reading books. Participating in forums like hackernews or effect-ts satisfies some of the handful facets of connection that I need. It gives me a feeling of not being totally alone with some of my ideas.
Part of loneliness is feeling like you won't be missed. When you serve others (even indirectly if direct contact is not your thing), you feel needed and have purpose.
But I ended up taking it too far. Boundaries start to get blurry, my value started to get wrapped up in my service, to the point it became “well if I stop serving I’ll be worthless”. Which is a tough feeling to face, especially when a subset of the people you end up serving, while appreciative, really end up not caring that much about you as a person. They’re not in a place to give you emotional support, usually.
All that to say, balance is the spice of life. Service is great. Just be sure to balance it out with another source of replenishment.
But the other part of loneliness is feeling like (or knowing that) nobody cares what you think or feel or have to say.
I've been (accidentally) helping people with my surveys for a few months now. It brings a sense of joy when someone comes up to me and tells me that my presence has helped them or that they look forward to my surveys. But it also increases the loneliness that I feel, because none of them care about me or what I think or how I feel. None of them have ever asked.
Well, except for a couple friends I've made, who clearly do care now, and have shown it in a few ways, but we just haven't had an opportunity yet to have coffee or some other interaction where they can show more directly that they care about me, by asking me about how I feel, etc. But those are the exception.
I suppose, that's what I'm after. Not just personally for myself, but what I'm trying to help solve for other people: to help them get to a point where others actually do care about them, and they have opportunities to show it, such as asking how their day was over coffee. For countless people who are just like me, I think this is all they need to not feel lonely anymore. So that's my goal.
And I don't think volunteering is the answer, but I think it can be a start for some of them, a way to meet people. But just as good a way to meet people as saying hi to the person at the next self checkout kisk or the bus stop. The problem for most people is that they don't say hi. Maybe they're convinced, like I am, that nobody would ever want them to, that they would only be a burdensome bother to others, and therefore should always stay silent.
I suppose this is what I'm trying to solve. How to convince others that this isn't true, as one person standing outside holding a sign.
A dog gives you a reason to be wherever you want to be - take a walk around the neighborhood or to the park. You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes, you're walking the dog.
But for for goodness sake, pick up after the pooch. If you can wipe your own arse you can pick up a dog turd with a plastic bag.
Not generalizing to all people, but I think for some a pet can reinforce anti-social tendencies.
I briefly considered it but I don't want to be the asshole. I would put any pet in exact position I am myself trying to avoid - stuck in home, alone for long periods of time.
I lived here almost 6 years before doing much more than a smile and nod to him, but my next door neighbors with a dog befriended him almost as soon as they moved in.
It wasn't until our son started walking and would stop and try and play in the dog water that we ever really talked to him.
What started with smalltalk evolved into conversations over lunch which then afforded after work socializing which then led to actively scheduling time for shared interests. All of those provided ample opportunity to learn almost everything about that person and open the door to a deep friendship when mutually desired.
Either that or your definition of deep friendship is substantially off.
Your original comment.
It can be any other activity that requires more than one person. For example I started going to dance classes with my partner in november and what was just awkward "hello there" interactions before the holidays when we had to swap dance partners is now a bit more comfortable and we exchange a bit much and even have a chit chat after class at the door. It is waaaaaay too early to know if it will create new long term friends but the dynamic is here and after just a few weeks I can already spot the people I have absolutely no wish to know more about and those that I feel natural chatting with.
As a counter example, I've made some of the best friends of my life through walking my dog at the local dog park over the last decade. Seeing how people are dedicated to and treat their dogs gives me a great insight into their personalities.
It's a little counterintuitive, but I find walking around with a camera has this effect too (depending on where you're pointing it of course).
Good god, where do you live where people think like that?
If you already have a friendship circle, start being the one to propose meetups (cafe, pub, picnic, hike, etc.) If you don't, it's harder - join a social sporting league, group fitness class, dance class, DnD group, anything where people have to talk with each other. When you arrive, turn your phone off for the interval. It might take a couple of goes to find something that sticks or the right environment.
I think that the real trick of "solving" the loneliness epidemic is that it isn't spread evenly. Everyone has their own individual level of opportunity for social interaction, so the solution is hyper-local and individualised. There's no one size fits all solution.
I happen to have discovered a fantastic contra dancing community[1] in Chicago that could be great for some who are lonely. You have to chalk up the courage to go (if you aren't used to trying new things, or dancing), but everyone is extremely welcoming, the dancing is easy even for people "with two left feet", and the happiness going around is truly contagious.
I think it's a terrific place to find community. It's a social dance where you'll basically dance with everyone by the end of the evening. There's time before, in the middle (snack intermission), and at the end for striking some conversation. The dancing is every Monday so it's routine. The crowd (100-150 people on average) is diverse in many ways (at least in age, gender, income, interests) so you're bound to find people with commonalities that, using some of the other advice in these comments, you could try to hang out with outside of the dancing.
As far as getting people to feel like they can join, I'm not the expert, but I've had such a great experience that I'm happy to at least bring it up and "spread the good word".
For outside of Chicago: contra dancing is a bit niche, but a surprising amount of large-ish US cities have it. I think it's more popular (relatively) on the East coast. Can't speak for outside of the US.