
Study: To Beat Loneliness, Visits Must Be Real, Not Virtual - petethomas
http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-beat-the-blues-visits-must-be-real-not-virtual-1464899707
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wallflower
As someone who has struggled with this, it is always quite illuminating to me
to see the difference between going to a public event by yourself v. with one
or two other people. Just one companion/compadre makes an almost binary
difference in terms of feeling "like everyone is questioning why you are there
by yourself". Two companions are best as conversation can peter off with just
one. The point of this is - invite along people to things you might have gone
to yourself in the past. The more advanced level is approaching people around
you like this is something you do normally. Good luck, I know how easy it is
to fall into a social rut - and it just takes one friend to change everything
(for going out).

~~~
tuxracer
> feeling "like everyone is questioning why you are there by yourself"

This sounds like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect)
In reality it's likely that nobody noticed you much at all, and almost
certainly didn't care to analyze why you're by yourself or even if you really
are by yourself.

It can be actually liberating to realize that random strangers you're not
interacting with couldn't care less about you short of some kind of medical
emergency (and sometimes even then...)

It can be more fun to go to events with people. It can also be more fun to go
by yourself. Just realize either way people around you are unlikely to care or
even notice either way.

~~~
Tsagadai
Not to sound like too much of an egotist but some of us really are noticed an
awful lot and spotlight effect sounds pretty alien to me. I am very tall (over
two meters) so that is definitely part of it. I am very outgoing and I tend to
go to events alone (because few friends share all my interests and I am fairly
antisocial and impatient). All that congeals into many people remembering me
and I don't remember them (except interesting stories separated from
identities). I don't think most people remember me but many do, they have told
me so. It would be quite an experience to just be able to be unnoticed in a
crowd but it is one I have never really experienced in larger crowds as there
is always some extrovert introduces themselves. I daresay intentional
attention seekers and those with some physical quality that greatly
distinguishes them from the norm would have a similar experience.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Sounds like this might be right up your alley:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions)

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ThomPete
We are physical beings and so I don't think anyone would ever say that meeting
in person isn't the optimal.

But you need to look at this from different perspectives.

The very fact that people from around the world can meet so easily virtually
today is in itself a value regardless of whether it's better to meet in
person.

In other words, being able to meet virtually isn't about replacing actual
physical visits it's about allowing you to meet a much larger group of people
and perhaps find more likeminded people and at much greater distance.

So I am not sure I buy into the premise of this study.

I also am not so sure that I believe we are getting more lonely. I would need
to see harder evidence than the typical qualitative studies that are done to
determine this. Would love to see how they are actually getting to that
conclusion.

~~~
aaron695
> The very fact that people from around the world can meet so easily virtually
> today is in itself a value regardless of whether it's better to meet in
> person.

So the standard reply to this is because we are fine tuning our meetups we are
missing out on serendipity.

Travelers stay in touch with home so much they don't need to meet people.

We are connected on the bus and at a restaurant such that we are not pushed to
meet people.

Then when we go to the fine matched event there is too much pressure to make
friends.

I would say I'm the same, I'd need harder evidence that we are not getting
lonelier.

Without a doubt we are changing, so it is troubling we don't know for sure if
it's better or worse, I doubt such a big change is neutral.

~~~
ThomPete
Serendipity happens online all the time.

~~~
nnd
For example?

~~~
ThomPete
People meet in World of Warcraft, the tons of online friends I have on
Facebook or got from IRC, various forums. Some of them I have met.

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tosstothemoon
This is a pretty interesting find, and makes sense.

As someone that struggles greatly with loneliness -- what kinds of systems
have people found to address it as an adult? (Presumably there's an interest
on this site, since this article is here.)

I've for years found it to be an utterly crippling problem that I just can't
really get on top of. I scrape by by having acquaintances at work, and trying
to stay in touch with remote friends (which works quite badly). But I haven't
been able to find a good balance with it for many years.

Sometimes I think maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem, but it seems to
be an unnatural state for a person to feel alone.

~~~
ythl
> what kinds of systems have people found to address it as an adult?

Most people find a "permanent friend" aka significant other aka spouse. I
realize this is hard for some people, but that is what the majority of humans
do.

~~~
rayiner
Also, if you have some kids nobody will ever leave you alone again.

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Agentlien
I find it fascinating that they never once mention instant messaging. As a
boy, I found it very difficult to make friends. I was insecure and emotionally
guarded. This was only made worse by being bullied by most other kids.

I did have a few very good friends, but was still lonely. This changed
drastically when I found a few friends online (via an online game, Dungeon
Siege) and we played and chatted every day. I was taken aback by the way I was
able to bond with people and how easily they accepted me for who I was, when
they didn't see my nervous physical form.

During this period I entered into a long-distance relationship with a girl I'd
never met. She helped me overcome a lot of my social awkwardness and issues
with self-confidence. We ended up meeting a year later and spent seven years
in a long-distance relationship. We spent time together each major holiday,
though plane tickets were expensive. In-between these visits we chatted on
various IM services. This was great, but I still often felt lonely, being
apart.

We're now married and have been living together for six years. Being together
for real each day is an incredible improvement. Still, our time together but
apart was invaluable. I also recently realised that the majority of my close
friends are people I met online.

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yesiamyourdad
The headline that they had in an earlier version was better - instead of
"blues", "loneliness".

I'll cosign all these findings because they correlate exactly to my own
experience. It's the tragedy of the 21st century that we happily nuked
existing social structures in favor of a "build your own social network"
mentality that it turns out doesn't work that well.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
While you find it tragic, I find it a blessing of sorts.

I've never had the experience of being accepted socially in these so-called
social structures. My parents went to church and forced me to go. I've
generally worked, and had school and stuff. It is nearly too bad I don't
believe in God enough to withstand such things. I might as well been invisible
at school, and I only rarely have made any sort of friendship at a workplace
that carried over outside of work. Living away from family has been normal,
and sometimes would go a few months in between visits due to money issues. I'm
the weird one in the family - my brother in law said I was the weirdest person
he'd ever met... until he met my spouse.

However, I have met friends online that I have kept for years. I interact with
folks that aren't turned off by my weirdness. Met my spouse over the internet,
and talking to him, though overseas, eased loneliness. The same lack of
extensive social network at home allowed me to more easily move overseas when
we married. Oddly, being an immigrant has made my weirdness easier and people
tend to be a bit more accepting (minus the anti-immigrant folks).

~~~
yarou
I'd still venture a guess that you are fairly (within a few standard
deviations of) normal. I miss the days of the Internet when it wasn't just a
virtual extension of one's life. The same social memes are now embedded
digitally, which makes loneliness even more prevalent because you can't escape
from it like you used to be able to.

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projektir
I'd imagine people are not purposefully replacing real contact with virtual,
as much as they have trouble finding real contact, so they go for the virtual?

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Definitely the case for me. Most avenues of pursuing "real" contact readily
available in my area and age group involve social situations that I have a
great deal of difficulty navigating (which I increasingly think is some kind
of neurological condition) and/or "common interests" that I lack interest in.
Usually both.

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rando444
Been there. I just got done spending 5 years at the end of the earth
surrounded by very few people of my own age. Sometime in between 3-4 years is
when I realized that the internet and all of the people on it can't substitute
for someone you like coming over to hang out.

~~~
AVTizzle
What was the context/reason behind spending 5 years at the end of the earth?
Curious.

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hesdeadjim
If I had both the time and the money to commission a similar study, I would
design is so the "virtual" option uses virtual reality instead of say, a
webcam. Ideally there would be some kind of haptic vest put around each
participant so that an analog to physical contact could be approximated (e.g.
a hug, a poke, etc). My experience so far building games in VR has surprised
me in the sense that small amounts of haptic feedback within the Vive
controllers can create a surprising amount of physicality if it is timed well
with what the user sees. The brain seems to just fill in the gaps.

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sixQuarks
Interesting that "virtual" in this case means your smartphone. That is not
really virtual. Anyone that has had a good conversation with someone on VRchat
or Alt Space VR realizes there is a very "real" face-to-face communication
going on, and this is just the beginning. Once we get facial gestures and
full-body motion into it, I think true virtual visits WILL beat loneliness.

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theoapps
IMO it's totally possible for virtual experiences to help with loneliness, but
not all experiences are equal. The differences between the status quo of
social networking and real life interaction ought to be examined more closely.

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warcode
This has to be linked with what you grew up with.

I've spent my teens and beyond on text/voice chat with friends and it feels
exactly the same as being with them in person. Maybe slightly less with text.

Or could it be because we play games instead of just talking?

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xyzzy4
What about video calls, do those make the cut?

~~~
rifung
I was just going to ask this too because I remember reading an article about
how people felt that video calls did much to alleviate the loneliness from
remote work, whereas texting and even calling didn't quite work

~~~
trgn
My two cents: I'm a remote worker. Video calls make all the difference! It's
something about the facial expressions, stuff happening in the background you
can comment on, people walking by and joining the conversation. That helps.

Dedicated IM channels for small talk and sharing internet-nonsense are pretty
good too. Can't really do that on the company-IMs, it just clutters serious
discussion, but you get to know co-workers on a different level. That's
usually just on all day. Not sure how much chat reduces overall loneliness
levels, but it's fun.

Phone calls are neither here nor there for me. It's just business. It's hard
to have casual conversations over the phone. "so, now that we got these
expense reports sorted out, how's Timmy doing, still playing soccer?"

I do need to make an effort to step out and do some social things during the
work-day (coffee-&-lunch, sports, ...). These people are not colleagues, but
we're all full time telecommuters. For me personally, these can't be evening
dates, the atmosphere is just wrong, it needs to be somewhat business-like. It
took a while to get a routine schedule with that. Took a lot of "cold calling"
people, like, `hey, we met at this Meetup about BuzzyMcBuzzword.io, you want
to hangout?` (luckily, getting the cold shoulder from some bearded JS-ninja is
not as bad as from that cute med-student at happy hour, but dang, it gets old
after a while).

In my experience so far, remote workers I see doing well seem to fall into two
camps. Either very reserved and just not social, and doesn't really mind being
alone, but with strong work-ethic, they're often abrasive too. Or pretty easy-
going and pleasant company, so the channels of communication are kept open on
both sides. If you're sort of in-between, it can be a hard slog. You need to
ensure colleagues keep reaching out, which requires you to be pro-active and
upbeat, and you can't tire of that either, that energy needs to come from the
remote worker first, because at the other end, it's easy for colleagues to
just kind of check out on that.

Biggest thing about remote work and loneliness in my experience, isn't
necessarily about being physically alone for a large part of the day, or about
what communication medium is best to substitute for real life interaction. A
big factor seems to be how the work is going, and how the team as a whole
communicates about it. Sometimes, projects just take a bad turn, and it's much
more difficult to not have that be a millstone, when you have other people to
commiserate with, through whatever medium. But it takes buy-in from all sides.
If colleagues bitch&moan in the break-room, but don't take it to IM, you're
missing out on that. So you kind of have to get people in the habit to
bitch&moan on chat too. That's the hard part, getting remote-working etiquette
(rule 1, there's no such thing as using too many emoticons) be shared by the
non-remote workers. Because when challenges arise, you need to be part of how
the team is dealing with it. If you're left out, it opens the door for
loneliness to creep up on you.

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anotheryou
I have to say: People older than me or the IRC-protocol are often not very
good at online friendships.

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baron816
Technology and modernity are definitely factors that have led to increased
loneliness, but I hope it'll help lead us out too. My company, Krewe
([https://www.gokrewe.com](https://www.gokrewe.com)) is making it easy for
people to make a new group of friends in their neighborhood and actually have
an active, real world social life.

~~~
xufi
That's pretty amazing. This was something i just discussed in a Psychology
class that I was in about lonliness and visits/interaction where someone is
physically present bridges the gap and decrease lonliness. There have been
many studies that I've read also show that the people who are lonley and
online also have increase microagressionns and lack social interaction skills.

~~~
krashnburn200
The part i don't get in all this discussion is that being alone is a physical
thing, but being lonely is a choice, a perception that can be changed
subjectively.

If you are feeling lonely, and don't like. Stop. On the other hand if you are
enjoying feeling bad, which happens more frequently than most people seem to
realize, then don't complain.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Do you tell clinically depressed people that they "just need to cheer up,"
too?

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internaut
"Winston Churchill called his own bouts of depression “my black dog,”"

What a man. Next to him everybody looks like a wuss.

~~~
internaut
I don't understand why this statement attracted angst.

I am merely saying that Winston Churchill is a forthright character and a
particularly resilient one at that.

~~~
jacalata
No, you weren't "merely" saying that - you added on a general criticism of
everyone else. Don't be disingenuous.

