
No, there is no epidemic of loneliness - simulate
http://andrewgelman.com/2018/05/16/no-no-epidemic-loneliness-dog-bites-man-david-brooks-runs-another-column-based-fake-stats/
======
Nomentatus
1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't quite
what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative term -
"less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that might skew
longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to (almost every
day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably being ostracized
to boot.

2) To a significant extent, it's possible to translate "I'm lonely" into "I'm
too disgusted with the ethics, crudity, vile political opinions, manners,
dress, accents, musical tastes, spiritual nonsense, etc of the people I meet
these days to go out of my way to meet them again, thanks." This may be a
downside to diversity (for those too-easily put off), or a reflection of the
fact that we're all social climbers, who are too optimistic about our "social
value" in the eyes of all the other social climbers, I don't know.

After all, almost all of us have solutions to loneliness handy if we aren't at
all picky about our company. And back in the day, you couldn't be - your
village was your world.

A hidden factor, IMHO, is the rapidity of cultural change. Last long enough
(age 28 in my case) and you are necessarily a time-traveller, in a foreign
culture to a large extent, and it hurts mightily to know that your tribe has
moved on; but it has (unless you joined an uber-traditional church or cult as
a youth.) If you opt to deny this, as many do, your world is gonna shrink and
keep shrinking from that point on. You're gonna miss a lot of fun, too.

PS - volunteer.

PPS - I'm not 28, that's just how old I was when I realized I wasn't part of
"the younger generation" anymore, and had to decide fast whether my
generations' taste in everything was going to be forever supreme in my head,
or to start making an effort to see what the real kids were up to, and whether
I might like any of that, too. I chose the latter and bless that day.

~~~
yakubin
> 1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't
> quite what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative
> term - "less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that
> might skew longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to
> (almost every day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably
> being ostracized to boot.

As I understand it, „loneliness” in the article is understood as the feeling
of loneliness, not a measure of how sociable you are. You can be lonely while
continually being around people which you have relationships with which look
warm on the surface, but don’t give you much of a satisfaction. I think it is
the case with a lot of people suffering from depression.

~~~
creep
This is just speculation-- but to jump on your point, I suspect one of the
reasons the rate of depression and loneliness is highest in males is because
male friendships are often more guarded (less warm or emotionally close).

~~~
watwut
Could it have more to do with near past, namely 1950 nuclear familly ideal?
Middle class women were housewifes - which can be very lonely if you don't put
effort into keeping relationships. People have to make effort to meet you and
if you alienate them, they simply cease to make effort.

Meanwhile men went to work where people have no choice but to communicate with
you. You don't have to put effort into relationship, you are guaranteed not to
be really lonely. In fact, too much relationship can be detrimental as you all
compete for position and salary etc. Being a bit of jerk can pay of and you
don't have to care whether people like you - if they don't it is up to them to
deal with it. Plus there was influence of past war on expectations on males
(be like veterans are).

That leads to two different kind of socializations for boys and girls - where
boy socialization leads to loneliness in long term, when you are too old to
pick up new habits.

~~~
Nomentatus
True, nuclear families are a huge change. The ease of transportation created
them as much as anything, I think.

------
maxxxxx
I think it's pretty safe to ignore anything David Brooks is writing. He has a
long track record of describing bogus societal trends.

~~~
aklemm
Agreed. Not only is his writing just a bunch of loose thoughts imagined into
very Brooks-centric concept, this is also the guy who left his wife of 20
years for a woman 25 years his junior. How do they spend their time? He pimps
work like "The Road to Character" and she leads an institute that studies and
teaches "character". Just...what?

~~~
bauerd
If his writing is that bad, maybe criticise that instead of his private life?

~~~
aklemm
It only works that way up to a point. That point is when the private stuff is
either illegal or is directly relevant to the work, as in this case. #metoo
anyone?

~~~
bauerd
Please elaborate how his divorce is either illegal or directly relevant to his
writing

~~~
aklemm
Character is a theme (and title!) of many of his writings. Ending an avowed
life-time commitment in the circumstances around the way he did it brings that
into question. We should all be questioning it, even if we're free to come to
different conclusions.

~~~
gkya
> an avowed life-time commitment

That's everything what modern marriage today isn't. That's basically a
religious view of marriage, which can freely exist, but has no legal binding
at all, and whether divorce is ethical or not for one or some
religions/"philosophies" is not necessarily universal.

~~~
aklemm
If that were the case, no one would bother with marriage. It would be
completely meaningless. This is an incredibly naive view.

The relevant question is not whether it's legal nor what one's religion has to
say on the matter. The question is whether he showed character, and we can
evaluate that by whether he lived up to his word and--especially--by how his
wife took it.

~~~
gkya
Sorry but BS. Marriage is an economical (oiko- in oikonomia---the Greek word
that is the etymological origin of economy---means family/home), legal and
religious phenomenon. In modern societies the accent is on the first two, and
we separate the legal meaning of it from its religious one; the former being
an official bond regarding two person and their children, which governs how
responsibilities, goods and resources belonging to a family core are parted
and used among those individuals. That's the big part of why people bother
with marriage (or things like civil unions) even if they are not religious.

Regardless, "living up to one's words" means nothing regarding the validity of
a statement. I can say 1 + 1 = 1, but then in my private life behave as if it
was 2; that does not affect the truth of the former statement.

------
vinceguidry
The day I realized that just because people are talking about it, doesn't mean
anything's meaningfully changed, is the day I learned how to discern signal
from noise in society's whingings.

------
noobermin
There's an extreme bit of ranting about Brooks here (not a fan at all but it's
a bit much.) A better source is the blogpost he quotes[0]. Unless the topic is
Brooks specifically.

[0] [http://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2018/04/all-lonely-
pe...](http://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2018/04/all-lonely-people.html)

------
leg100
How can he say, as the title of his blog goes, "there is no epidemic of
loneliness"?

I can see how he has a case for questioning the statistical basis of someone
who is arguing there _is_ an epidemic.

But how does that _disprove_ any such epidemic exists?

~~~
noobermin
The claim "loneliness is increasing" is false according to the stats. That
loneliness is prevalent in society (20% is a hell lot of people) is possibly a
true statement. Moreover, that it's stable throughout the last couple of
decades doesn't mean we should accept it either.

------
ravitation
I feel like this warrants a longer, better supported post, but it seems like
the meaning of "lonely" is extremely (overly) relative. Since a lot of studies
hinge on self-reporting loneliness this has a huge impact on the data
available to diagnose long term trends.

Two important things that get conflated into "loneliness" is social isolation
(the quality/depth of social relationships) and "loneliness" (the quantity of
social relationships).

------
enigma31401
The blog post was crappy and seems the bulk of the context was shitting on the
shitty journalist, rather than debunking thoroughly and straight-forwardly the
claim at hand. I find the claim on loniness as more aparent on a global scale
and demogralhically varying than in one single nation and a single demograph,
so the post seems not only obnoxious but narrow too.

------
badrabbit
I don't know if it's an epidemic but I don't need an article to tell me the
obvious -- that there are a lot of lonely people and loneliness causes
problems of the mind which at times translates to problems of the body.

I wonder how many more people would hit the gym or outdoors if they had a
companion?

------
_bxg1
I couldn't even get to the main content, there was too much vitriol to wade
through first. I'd never even heard of David Brooks and don't have an opinion
on him, but I can't take seriously the opinion of anybody who's this wrapped
up in his own bitterness.

------
chokma
I can recommend Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Loneliness, in which he
examines loneliness and its positive companion, solitude, in detail.

Not a self-help book, but a view on loneliness from both an empirical and
philosophical perspective.

------
mar77i
Be careful about that Brooks guy, he might qualify for the White House, the
way things are going these days.

~~~
api
The Presidency is a labor supply problem. No sane person would want that job.

~~~
mar77i
I wasn't suggesting the presidency for the guy. You know how the people around
him keep getting replaced for being out of touch with reality.

------
martin1975
Mandela, though he was in solitary confinement for much of the 27 years he
spent in jail, came out of it spiritually and mentally unscathed. And we have
a suicide epidemic, if you'll believe the press, of people who were never in
jail, and were surrounded by people whom probably could have helped the
person.... provided he or she asked for help rather than deciding they were
lonely or alone.

I'm not saying loneliness isn't real... all I'm saying is, it is a choice that
needs to be recognized as such, even if we keep choosing it over and over and
can do no other sometimes.

So if you feel lonely, unless you're in solitary, please at least TELL SOMEONE
how you feel... if nothing else. Tell me, I'll listen.

~~~
Barrin92
The sort of loneliness that impacts life negatively is probably more of a
mental space than a physical one. While Mandela was isolated, he was not
without cause or without allies even if he was physically separated from them.

If you're on a purposeful mission you can endure a lot of destitution. The
loneliness that is making the news is more of a secular malaise. People
without purpose, task, meaningful communities to be part of, and so on. They
might not even be literally lonely in a physical sense.

------
dmschulman
_Fischer summarizes:_

 _A layperson might ask, What difference—besides diss’ing social
scientists—does it make if these interesting articles about loneliness growing
are off a bit? First, they are off a lot. But more important, they are a
critical distraction. Chatter about feelings (of mainly affluent folks)
distracts us from the many real crises of our time—say, widened inequality,
children growing up in criminally and chemically dangerous neighborhoods, the
dissolution of job security for middle Americans, drug addiction, housing
shortages (where the jobs are), a medical system mess, hyper-partisanship, and
so on. That’s what makes the loneliness scare not just annoying but also
another drag on serious problem-solving._

Ahh the cruelty of science. I would agree that the claim Brooks, an op-ed
writer, made is overblown and sensationalized a bit in order to get readers
interested, but that doesn't make those who are indeed lonely, and those who
the NY Times article focuses on, any less lonely or visible.

It seems like the post's author is dismissing that there are lonely people out
there because Brooks wrote something that overstates their numbers. As any
social scientist would tell you, even the best numbers we have on these
phenomena are problematic and incomplete.

~~~
msla
It's a slightly higher-flown version of "We can't talk about your problems
because other people have worse problems!"

The problem with that idea, in addition to it being morally repugnant and
utterly disdainful of human life, is that there's _always_ a worse problem.
Oh, you want to talk about polio? Malaria is a worse problem! Oh, you want to
talk about income inequality? Access to abortion is a worse problem by far!

It's a perfect way to shut down any discussion, simply by shouting "HEY, LOOK
OVER THERE! WORSE PROBLEMS!" and claiming the moral high ground.

~~~
zzzcpan
People have limited attention and time. It's perfectly valid to point out how
the media is withholding information and distracting from more serious things
on purpose. Otherwise it is just bike shedding.

~~~
dmschulman
We need a good catchy term for the fallacy that "the media is reporting on X
but not reporting at all about Y!".

This is mostly confirmation bias since no one individual has the bandwidth or
resources to look at every single story produced on every single topic on a
single day. I tend to see people complain "this tragedy happened today and I
don't see it being reported by the news!", implying that the media has
something to hide or they value certain groups of people over others, but this
is not a claim worth its salt.

There are many reason, both from the organization's standpoint and from the
individual's standpoint, why this claim isn't true. It's a weak argument that
only serves the purpose of distracting from topics at hand.

~~~
zzzcpan
It's relatively easy to analyze media outlets, quantify and classify what kind
of stories they publish, what kind of topics they focus on, what views they
are pushing, etc. Definitely doesn't take much time. Few hours per day for a
few days can get you very far. But you probably need some background on
propaganda first, manufacturing consent, things like that.

It doesn't change anything though. Media is still not going to focus on
important problems. It exists to influence people, not to report on all the
right things. And it's worth pointing this out.

