Third places. Become a regular at game night, church (if you're into that), join a bowling league, join organized dinners through meetup.com or whatever the modern version is, take up martial arts, take adult education classes outside your existing interests. There are more options out there than ever before.

Read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feinman" and really absorb the part where he explains how he had so many crazy adventures and encounters.

In the USA, the loneliness epidemic is compounded by isolation. A large portion of our society has moved into suburban communities that are largely impersonal. There is very little in the way of in-person community outside of churches or political movements that only certain kinds of people want to be involved with.

With the Internet giving us the ability to interact with our chosen niche with little effort, we are willing to accept this still-impersonal alternative to our stagnant communities.

I have found that, as a city-dweller, I benefit from separating myself from social media and going out into the world looking for more personal connections, but this is somewhat of a privilege afforded to those people who live in more densely populated areas. Even then, my distance from social media can sometimes be a handicap when you interact with people who are still reliant on it to coordinate everything.

For most people, the social opportunities that existed in the 70's through the 90's simply doesn't exist anymore. If you aren't using social media, you're practically being anti-social, but there is something inherently anti-social about social media to begin with, so you're screwed if you do and screwed if you don't.

The US is structured to promote loneliness.

If you want to fix it:

- More free public spaces (parks with benches, squares)

- More free public events and activities (free concerts, art installations, plays)

- Greater physical proximity (it's hard to make eye contact if everyone drives)

- Wealth distribution (create a society where one's value is not based on their net worth)

- Encourage days off for community service

In other words, provide socially-funded incentives for people to be close to one another physically and remove income as a measure of value.

Sorry, wrong diagnosis in my opinion.

There's not a loneliness epidemic, there's a selfishness epidemic. Nobody does anything for anyone anymore (unless there's money involved, of course).

That's the reason people is alone, avoids having kids or dealing with other people's stuff that could disrupt their overly comfortable western way of life.

Even people that's not that selfish is operating in that environment.

When I think of times in which I've made friends, it usually has to do with being in a group of similar-ish peers for an extended period of time, ideally with a shared goal. School is the obvious example, but work can be too if your coworkers are similar enough.

I've often wanted something of a service that produces something similar: creating groups of people that commit to spending time together on some task or activity. E.g. people who are into sports commit to meet up N times to go watch their local team, or people who love animals can volunteer at an animal shelter weekly for a couple of months.

The 'tech' part of this probably comes from: 1) matching people well to groups, like considering age, personality, politics, location, interests, etc to try to create a good fit. and 2) making it much easier for them to participate in activities, like by automatically booking tickets for events, etc.

Obviously there would be challenges. How do you prevent people from flaking or bailing? How do you handle groups where one person is clearly a bad apple?

Social media and on demand media hijack the emotional triggers that would usually be resolved by talking to people. Some examples:

* In line at the BMV, bored and feeling lonely. Should resolve loneliness by talking to strangers in line... mostly chit-chat, but sometimes you make a friend! Social media turns this into doom scrolling.

* Sitting in the living room by yourself, feeling a little lonely. Should result in calling up a friend or relative, or heading to get a coffee/beer where you can interact with people. On demand media turns this into low risk watching shows (yes, old school TV was an option, but on demand, there's always something on that is interesting).

So the trick is to make yourself ask if you should give someone a call or go somewhere public when you are pulling out the phone with intent to scroll or watch a show. When you find something you are interested in because you are watching lots of videos about it, or replying on forums, force yourself to engage in the real world. If you are arguing politics, find a group advocating your position and get involved (I've got to meet three majority leaders and two Presidents, plus a bunch of congresspeople you see on the news all the time as a side effect of getting involved because I was pissed off on the internet about business taxation issues). If you find a hobby, find a local group that does that. Learning to play the guitar from YouTube was fun, but jamming with other musicians? Off the charts fun and far more educational that just playing along with videos.

Finally, and this is the big one, try to never eat meals alone. Never say no to going to lunch with coworkers. Join stuff that meets for breakfast. Dinners are hard, but it's surprising what happens when you invite a couple people over for dinner and a beer once in a while.

Make Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing legal again.

Having barely room for little more than a bed forces you to get out during the day. Stuff happens when your default for where to spend your time is not at "home". SRO halls also usually had more room for common spaces to meet and socialize with other people in a similar position in life, and of course, SRO is a very cheap housing option.

We need weekly activity plans to introduce multi-racial, multi-age, multi-political people to each other in palaces for the people venues.

Read the book 'Palaces for the People'... Invest Billions in social infrastructure... and run the country like it was a retirement community. Everyone is welcome, everyone has value and we need to learn (with practice) how to love each other again.

I'm wondering if there are any research groups led by sociologist that explore this topic which may be helped by a group of volunteer ?

I've always wondered why applications like Tinder etc... have not been completely destroyed by open-source already ?

We also forget that communities are essentially what allowed this escape in the first place ; I remember going to psytrance festivals but there are so many more escapes : theater, cinema groups, even in tech you have meetings for rust, programming languages and what not

There is definitely some kind of knowledge around being active in life ; and on that point I do not think that working count as active (I'm myself a workaholic so i'm definitely not the best example here)

There are other drivers for isolation than not knowing how to integrate though - it's not always easy to find people who share those common interest or mindset.

It's a very polarized time period which only exaggerate this - the best way to fight it off is to literally do something meaningless with people (eg : play)

I've had a great time at board game meetups. I highly recommend finding a group of people who play modern board games once a week. There should be at least one in most towns or cities. It can take a while to find the right group, but once you do, you can make some lifelong friends just by turning up every week. I've had some great experiences and a few not as great ones around the world and at various times. My favorites ones always involve food and alcohol in a nice bar or pub, usually starting with some casual or social deduction games. I now have a pretty huge collection of board games. I just moved to a new town though and it's pretty small so I need to be a bit more proactive. Haven't played a lot recently.

Confession... I don't actually like board games all that much, and I don't really care if I win. Some of the games are really cool but I just love hanging out and having fun with a group of people.