Posted by publicdebates 1 day ago
Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
When I lived in a rural area with a few acres of property, I was much more social and engaged with my community.
Now I live at the edge of the city in a medium-high density townhouse area with no private outdoor space. Since I can never really get away from people and be alone, I also have no desire to go out and do things and engage with the community.
I think the variability is nice. If I can get home, relax, not have people around, have some private outdoor space, then I can recharge and have the energy to engage more.
You can have a small town with a nice downtown or park where people meet and hang out. You can have walkable neighborhoods without giant apartment buildings. Neighborhoods where kids ride around on bikes.
That's different than a suburb full of isolated gated communities where each house technically has a yard but you still don't have any privacy and the HOA tells you what color to paint your house and fines you for your grass not being perfectly green all year.
You can also have dense areas without green space, full of cars and noise, and without nice places to hang out with friends.
Building human-centric places isn’t only about density. Variety of density is good. Places where people can walk, ride bikes, and hang out with friends and family are good.
Congested 6-lane roads aren’t good, whether in cities, suburbs, or rural areas in between.
In other words, the problem is structural. Moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, only work with people for a few years, and where there are no longer institutions like the church, how is anybody supposed to meet anyone? Meetups? Half the people can't even afford a car.
There is no solution other than meeting a lifelong partner.
Prior to the internet people were staying home and watching TV. The dynamic is much longer lived than you think. Check out the book 'Bowling Alone'.
It used to be that you knocked on the door of the residence beside you.
> And now many of them prefer the internet over socializing with people they don't care for that much in person.
This is the crux of it. Your neighbours weren't ever likely to be your soulmate, but that is who was there to befriend, so you did. But now you don't have to. And since they now feel the same way, they aren't putting in the effort either.
Traditionally you'd live around the same people your whole life. Invariably they'd feel like family and it wouldn't feel awkward to get together. But that's not how modernity works. People move to different communities all the time, so it becomes difficult to build familial friendships with others.
That's the essential problem. The internet allows us to stay in touch with people who feel like family. That's what we want to do psychologically. If all those people were in the same city there'd be a lot more socializing.
Although now considerably less than in the past. Peak mobility occurred during the mid-1900s. Most, and increasingly more as time marches forward, will stay close to where they were born.
> That's the essential problem.
It is a problem for individuals in that situation, but does it explain a population-wide epidemic when most never actually leave their familial roots?
> If all those people were in the same city there'd be a lot more socializing.
I am among those who still live near where I was born and have known a lot of the people my whole life. Color me skeptical. Nobody has the time to. They're at work all day and when that's done it is into the car to drive their kid to who knows where to play in a sporting match thinking they are going to become a professional some day.
It was a little different 15-20 years ago. You used to be able to go down to the community centre on a Saturday night and the whole town would be there, ready to mingle. But it turns out the draw was really alcohol, and when police started cracking down on drunk drivers and health concern messaging started to gain attention, it all dwindled pretty quickly.
It's all about priorities, and socializing just isn't a priority for most people anymore. There are so many other things also vying for attention.
These days even people who are nearby are still far. That 30 minute drive both ways along with coordinating a time is a lot of extra work to add onto an already busy life.
But if these same people lived on your street you could just pop over for a quick coffee. As is what actually happens. My wife and I have socialized with new friends in our neighborhood more than close family lately because they're right around us. The kicker is we built the friendships through our kids school and repeated proximity rather than artificially.
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.
Very happy to see at least something is being tried to reverse the damage from covid.
I agree though, Melbourne is absolutely bursting at the seam with events, groups and activities in almost anything you could possibly be interested in. It's particularly noticeable for me coming from Sydney. I saw someone in a local FB group suggest holding a whip-cracking jam meetup in a park and it generated significant interest.
So much of the pressure comes from horrendous working conditions from top to bottom.
And as a secondary effect unions require meetings and hopefully cross organising with other unions having different people in them.
When we get better working conditions, we will have more time to meet other people rather than to sit exhausted with our phones having all the parasocial relationships that drain our social batteries without really connecting with a real person.
I’m ultra depressed so I have just been relying on others.
You know the people that are the most lonely? Old widows/widowers that spend too much time in their houses.
Luckily I’m an introvert. But, even if you are, you should get out and do something.
Your health and mental wellness depend on socializing IRL.
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)
Same reason why Signal hasn't mogged WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, etc. Social apps have enormous network effects, and companies with large marketing budgets and early movers have big advantages when it comes to establishing a community.
* 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.
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.
But if you're trying to use it as a euphemism for drug addicts, I think you'll often find that they end up homeless, despite there being SROs, because they spend their SRO rent on drugs instead, and they get evicted. If you're trying to use a euphemism for sex workers, the successful SROs usually had strict rules around the Single Resident part.
Basically it's just like hotels, in the sense that there are both seedy, run-down, crummy hotels and there are upscale hotels. That there are some crummy hotels is not an indictment of hotels in general. If you make the category legal, you will find worse and better examples, and lonely people would have their choice of establishment that would help put them back into close proximity with others.
I don't see how sharing the bathroom and the kitchen with alcoholics, drug addicts, ex-cons, and mentally ill could possibly alleviate one's loneliness. and trust me, even a few of those per floor are enough to make living there an unpleasant experience.
you picture SRO as some kind of hippie commune thing. it's not. again: no one in their sane mind actively chooses to live in such inhumane conditions. it is utterly bizarre to me that someone would romanticize sharing a toilet with fifty other people.