
An Epidemic of Loneliness in America? - laurex
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/letters/loneliness-epidemic.html
======
wenc
Here's an interesting article: "Why is it hard to make friends over 30?" [1]

"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three
conditions that sociologists have considered crucial to making close friends:
proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages
people to let their guard down and confide in each other."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-
of-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-
friends-as-an-adult.html?fbclid=IwAR2OOyMBHuRYlmoodgUP4IytWePx1Ky6SZag-
zfxW3F9mk72S3_wLzH8P-g)

~~~
humanrebar
I make new friends of all ages all the time. At church.

It does provide "proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting
that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other". And
not by coincidence. One of the major goals of church is to help people form
healthy and significant relationships (that is, friendships).

~~~
BurningFrog
Yeah, as an atheist, the weekly unforced meetup you guys have is the one thing
I do envy.

I wonder how many of the churchgoers secretly have no real faith and are only
there for the company...

~~~
Baeocystin
That's what congregations like the Unitarians are like. I go once a month to
the local one, and I've been an atheist my entire life. I'd guess about half
the people that there are, too, but no one really seems to mind one way or the
other, as long as you're friendly and civil to everyone else. Mostly it's a
discussion group, and I quite enjoy it.

~~~
raverbashing
The hard thing about (some) interest groups is that sometimes they have people
"way out there" in political opinions, "different" view of the world (think
the views that include the usage of aluminium headwear) or just maladjusted to
normal living.

~~~
apatters
Why is this so hard, though? It might be a little tedious to sit through their
ramblings, but it seems to me a sign of the times that this would be
considered hard to do.

~~~
raverbashing
Depending on the level, it is really detrimental to the experience.

I mean I can take your average left/right winger rambling on, but depending on
how far and away it goes it's really a no for me.

------
factsaresacred
> Loneliness, however, is a symptom of large changes in society, many caused
> by policies that Republicans have pursued over decades.

What neurosis is one suffering that loneliness has to be pinned on the
political party one dislikes? I don't understand how Americans can wade
through media so thick with political bias. It's exhausting and increasingly
permeates everything.

And if Republicans are to blame, as the author insists, then so too are
Democratic policies of changing demographics at such a pace as to erode social
trust. Not to mention the constant assault for merely _belonging_ to a
majority demographic. Tell people in despair that they're too "privileged" to
opine, on the one hand, and that their days are numbered, on the other, and
they begin to feel strangers in a strange land.

~~~
dash2
The bias is not in the media in this case. These are letters to the editor.

~~~
tnecniv
The NYT still published it, which i think counts as "media." Even if they
don't necessarily agree it's an implicit endorsement that this is a well
reasonable argument.

------
chess44
I had no desire to make friends until college. I was so content with just
hanging out by myself that I didn't even realize that other people were making
friends. When I got to college I finally realized that I was so different from
everyone else.

I basically had to start from zero social skills and work my way up which
is/was extremely painful.

Can anyone relate? I think it has something to do with my parents because they
aren't social at all.

~~~
baddox
My experience is that having friends to hang out with was “easy” through high
school, because you’re basically “stuck” around a fairly small number of peers
in your neighborhood and school. In college there was still some of that, with
dorm mates and classmates in your major. After that, it’s really only
coworkers that you are “automatically” going to spend a lot of time with, and
it becomes much more important to have the social skills to actively find
friends. As everyone says, hobbies and social groups (like religions and
clubs) are probably the best way to do this.

~~~
ryacko
“Boring time” or dedicated idleness is excellent for socialization, which is
what I think creates the best environment for creating friendships.

~~~
baddox
That’s precisely my experience. To be honest, after college I’ve found that
hobbies are not that great for finding very close friends. Shared interests
are certainly great for meeting people, but just because you occasionally make
pottery or hike with someone doesn’t mean you’ll connect on a deep level.

~~~
jpernst
This is an insightful observation that I feel is worth unpacking further. I've
had similar experience when attending interest-based meetups, which I thought
would be an ideal place to make friends (which I've never been any good at),
but I found that was not the case at all.

Thinking back, I recall feeling uncomfortable commenting on or diverting the
conversation towards anything that was unrelated to the prescribed topic of
the meetup. It felt rude to divert time away from the topic that everyone
there had specifically chosen to allocate their time to, otherwise they
wouldn't be there in the first place.

With places like school, even college, there's still a general feeling that
you have to be there, and so diversions from the topic at hand are more
welcome.

To put it another way, interest-based groups seem to be about the interest
first and the people second. The people there are compartmentalized away as
being related to the specific topic, and not generalized friends. In this way
the group lacks that crucial idleness factor that others here have mentioned,
since everyone is there with a purpose to fulfill that they don't want to
distract others from.

~~~
baddox
That’s precisely my experience. I have “hiking buddies,” but they remain just
that unless I make an effort to connect more (which I’m generally not great
at). It’s not that we never talk about things other than hiking—we certainly
do, but the fact that the group is assembled for the purpose of the particular
outdoor adventure still prevents there from being much organic significant
friendship building.

It probably doesn’t help that a lot of my hiking and camping trips are a few
hours’ drive away from home and thus tend to draw people who live fairly far
away from me.

~~~
et-al
> _the fact that the group is assembled for the purpose of the particular
> outdoor adventure still prevents there from being much organic significant
> friendship building_

I'm of the belief that you don't "create" close friends as much as you
"discover" them. So the purpose of going to meetups, events, parties, etc. is
to just cast a wider net.

Sure by socializing more you become a better conversationalist and can carry
them on better with strangers, but at the core, close friends are like
significant others--special just they way they are.

------
WalterBright
I have a hard time finding people who like to work on old cars. I joined a
mopar club for a while, but all they did is talk about meeting minutes and the
budget. Never going over to Bob's house and getting his wreck back on the
road. I run into people now and then who have a classic in their garage, but
they never seem interested in having a group of people helping out. None of my
friends in the tech business have the remotest motorhead tendencies. Nobody in
college did, either.

I had a group of friends who did this in high school, and have a lot of great
memories of it.

~~~
ethanwillis
Yea, I've recently gotten into working on cars for fun. I've gotten 2 cars I
bought at auction from no start/no crank to running in the past few months..

But no one around me is interested in tinkering. Hopefully I can find someone
to help me with an engine rebuild (my next major learning goal). Then messing
with turbos.

People in tech are especially averse it seems to me to wanting to do manual
labor type things like this.

~~~
WalterBright
> messing with turbos

Haha, ain't nothing like the sound of a belt-driven supercharger. I didn't
stick one in the dodge because:

1\. it would stick up through the hood, messing up my all-go-no-show plan

2\. it would wind up the body of the car into a pretzel if I didn't add a ton
of stiffening

3\. without one it dyno'd at 400hp which turned out to be enough to scare the
crap out of me

~~~
ethanwillis
400, nice.

One of the things I'm worried about is all the heat they generate. I was
watching a guy on youtube and he had to build a ridiculous heat shield to keep
it from melting stuff around his turbo. Seems fun though!

I just want to add a blow off valve and get that sound.

I find myself watching these videos a lot.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn-
AoxKQB90&t=11s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn-AoxKQB90&t=11s)

I don't even like driving fast, I drive like a grandma haha

------
camillovisini
Past discussion of the Op-Ed this is a response of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18521499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18521499)

------
budadre75
I've been seeing this topic in the media for quite a few years now, and I just
wonder why there doesn't seem to have any solution either from the private or
public sectors. Is it because loneliness is not huge enough, or it's like
poverty that has to be dealt by yourself? Those social media and apps trying
to help just make loneliness and anxiety worse as many other articles suggest.

~~~
castratikron
In Japan there are government programs set up to get single people together.
Some cities reserve entire bars or areas for singles only. There are
government run speed dating services as well:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-government-
dating-s...](https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-government-dating-
services-2016-10)

~~~
budadre75
I don't think there's anything in the US for the reasons I mentioned.

------
derReineke
I enjoyed the women from Chicago's point. That having that old-time gym
feeling is not something that's the best for most people. It's one of those
silly ideas that tries to sum up a big problem and give it a small fix. I
remember a friend showed me something their aunt or something posted about
dirt roads. It was a similar idea to the gym thing. It's absurd.

------
kr4
Yogic view of loneliness (and ways to overcome it) is quite different from our
contemporary ideas.
[http://omswami.com/2018/10/loneliness.html](http://omswami.com/2018/10/loneliness.html)

~~~
Pamar
Interesting, thanks. I will add this to my own article on this (featured
already on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794060))
- Looks like loneliness (in the sense of "being alone") is more or less
inescapable, the trick is to transform it in Solitude, in the sense of "being
content even when alone".

------
RickJWagner
I don't think it'll get better any time soon.

When I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to start driving. That led to hanging
out at the town bowling center with a group of like-minded friends.

My kids mostly talk to their friends online. None of them seem to have the
same burning desire to drive places-- they like to get together, but they're
also fine communicating on the phone. It doesn't seem as closely connected.

~~~
stickfigure
When I was a teenager, I had friends who were pretty much accidents of
geography and school districting. This is not to say that they weren't real
friends, but there was nothing really fundamentally holding us together other
than being kids in the same place at the same time. I remember feeling lonely
a lot.

After touring a dozen colleges, I picked my eventual alma mater because I met
a bunch of computer science students who I recognized as _my tribe_. It was
like an epiphany. I'm still close with many friends from this era (28 years
ago), even as I've moved and expanded/changed my tribe. I haven't felt truly
lonely since high school.

When you're young you're on fixed rails without a lot of control. The internet
makes it possible to find people you really connect with, even if you don't
see them in person all the time. Don't prejudge the level of connection.

The only friend from high school that I still keep in regular touch with is
someone I met BBSing (ahh, the 80s).

~~~
clarry
> The internet makes it possible to find people you really connect with

How?

------
InGodsName
I had trouble making friends untill i came across a movie called "The Social
Network".

Before, i was like Zuck (fb founder, the one who blogged about his girlfriend)
from the movie, very annoying but always spewing ultimate truth regardless of
whether it hurts people or not.

Now i act like Sean Parker (Napster founder, the one who brought Peter Theil
on board as an investor) from the movie, either people ignore me or become my
friend.

Those of you who go blank at new people. I suggest you pick a character and
play it with all honesty, if nothing atleast it will be entertaining.

Are there other movies which teach you how to make friends?

~~~
screye
Don't you think this kind of defeats the propose of having a friend ? Sure,
you don't want to be an asshole like social network zuck, but that doesnt mean
one should suppress themselves just to please others.

I have thought of friendship as a distinctly tiered system. I very carefully
reveal parts of me to a lower tier of friends (mostly acquaintances), and use
those reactions to gauge of I want to reveal more of myself to them.

Trust and exposing vulnerability are IMO at the Crux of what friendship is.
There is a certain irrationality and lack of equal exchange that goes into
being a friend. Like sometimes inconveniencing yourself to help a friend,
without any clear short term reward in sight.

If I had to always act like someone else in front of my friends, then I would
say I don't have friends at all.

------
smnrchrds
For me, the most interesting thing about all these loneliness articles is how
often they make it to HN's first page. It says more about HN/tech community
then America as a whole.

~~~
ausbah
Maybe it has something to do with the role technology plays in this issue.

~~~
humanrebar
I don't know. We can blame technology. Or we can actually go out and join
something.

Maybe serve at a local food bank. Worst case, you're still lonely but some
hungry people get fed.

Incidentally, how are you going to find a good food bank to help out at? I bet
it looks like "technology": search engines, smart phone apps, web pages,
email, digital calendars, navigation instructions, and signup forms.

~~~
bobbygoodlatte
Of course this is great advice for an individual. It's always possible to
effect change at the margins. But this sort of advice at a population-level
feels meaningless. It's entirely fair to search for root causes to large-scale
dysfunction. Otherwise the trend will just grow worse

~~~
ThrowMeDown01
I like to point out that the English language has a beautiful way to describe
it by having two distinct words ("anyone", "everyone") instead of just one,
unlike my native German ("jeder"):

If something somebody proposes in response to a population-wide problem works
for _anyone_ it should also be tested if it works for _everyone_. A lot of
"how to get ahead and gain wealth" suggestions come to mind too that fail the
second test.

------
puranjay
It's going to become worse as more and more work becomes remote only

~~~
scirocco
And less physical visits are required for daily life

------
dash2
Offtopic, I followed the link in the last letter to that Senate committee and
got:

Sorry, a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The
Webmaster has been alerted.

Then I tried [https://www.senate.gov/](https://www.senate.gov/) and got the
same thing. Is there a reason for this? I'm in the UK browsing on Firefox.

~~~
JChase2
The senate site has had SSL issues for me for years. It's very weird. If you
go to:
[http://www.senate.gov/senators/leadership.htm](http://www.senate.gov/senators/leadership.htm)
and try SSL, it redirects to http. Strange. Like it's not set up recursively
or something or that directory has it's own .htaccess or w/e that doesn't use
SSL?

~~~
dash2
You literally mean the website of the United States senate _just doesn 't
work_, and hasn't for years? I mean, I absolutely cannot find a way to access
that site without getting the same "unauthorized" message.

This can't be true...

can it?

------
odiroot
If USA, with its outgoing culture has a loneliness epidemic, then Europe (at
least the western part) is already long gone.

~~~
watwut
Those are two different things. Loneliness is more about important
relationships with people who matter to you and you matter to them. You don't
have to be outgoing and chat with everybody to have that. Outgoing people easy
to chat with can still be lonely, deep friendship is not the same as chatting
briefly in a bus.

------
dang
Submissions about loneliness have company at least:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Loneliness%20points%3E10&sort=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Loneliness%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
chiefalchemist
No surprise really. More and more is personalized and self-centric, which is
replacing the shared experience. Of cource more and more people are feeling
they don't belong, there's less and less to belong to.

------
pointillistic
Not sure what's the point of these letters, reminds me of the comments section
in the NYT which I find politically overcharged and offensive. It was an
article that resonated with many people. Does it make people feel better to
ridicule loneliness. You can brush off poverty but it still there...

~~~
whorleater
Letters to the editor are internet comments before internet comments were a
thing. The intent was to display variety of opinions relating to a topic so
you weren't beholden to just the newspaper's stance. Not totally sure why they
continue to publish letters, I suppose they're usually higher quality than
internet comments because they require more effort.

~~~
humanrebar
They're higher quality because they're curated.

It's possible that the average submission is better than the average internet
comment due to the level of effort required. Or perhaps some of it is due to
the fact that the printed letters are archived for posterity.

But regardless, the average letter is not printed. There is only room for a
select few.

------
tootahe45
I know it's opinion, but it's hard to take the NYT seriously when the writers
always blame Republicans where politics is almost completely irrelevant.

~~~
yellowbuilding
Maybe. A friend who I spoke to for the first time in a long time made a pretty
good point to me the other day. Neither of us are liberals, btw. Both of us
are into so many of the same things. We just have different careers, and we
are approximately equally jealous of eachother’s careers.

We talked about what we have been doing while feeling lonely and we each had
different stories of why we were not able to spend time around people we
wanted to be around. He couldn’t afford to live in the city anymore and had to
move to the Midwest where now he makes a wage that will probably never allow
him to move back. I, on the other hand, can never leave the city because there
are no jobs for me elsewhere and I would not be able to come back. Neither of
us are comfortable investing in homes because we both feel unhappy where we
are.

Job wise, we both have problems with our companies we work for, but like our
coworkers. We feel very distant from what we are doing and recognize that the
inability to change careers or better our situations gives us a lack of hope.
His situation is slightly different because he is in a higher management
position, but neither of us feel we can talk to anybody nearby about these
things or we will be outed as not being this imaginary committed perfectly
obsessed careerist type.

Basically, everything we have depends on our entire stories, everything we
have ever done. We don’t have the privacy to have a multifaceted life without
feeling like some fraud. He relates this to our society being so obsessed with
individuals instead of letting us just be ourselves, separate from our jobs
and our income and wellbeing. We don’t have the option of dreaming because the
risk is just too great. We have seen our friends lose everything by taking
risks.

Ultimately, I have to agree. We have let this obsession of making our
personalities our lives get the best of both. It’s the core idea behind
individualism, which we are taught is a great thing and I always believed it.
I still do in most cases, but now i feel stuck inside my individual self,
lonely like alll the other individuals.

We are so obsessed with ourselves as individuals, we lose sight of ourselves
as parts of greater wholes, like families and neighborhoods.

I am not sure I can separate this from politics.

~~~
goldfeld
> We don’t have the privacy to have a multifaceted life without feeling like
> some fraud.

You hint at the answer, that aside from financial obligations nothing stands
in the way of finding who you really are but yourself. Once a person finds
confidence in expressing their true desires and aspirations, others take
notice and start valuing and admiring the person, like in everything else it's
a herd/popular mentality where anyone will appreciate it so long as others do
but specially so long as the subject does. The road is of course winding
tortuous with self-doubt, (more) loneliness as everyone else is just trying to
conform and flak from society until the breakthrough years. But being a
trendsetter is not much more than finding what are your particular trends for
this existence, so to say. Only I can hold myself back emotionally,
ultimately. Though yes, maybe attempts fail with nothing to show for it (even
though wisdom may be worth more than a big salary as one ages) but I still
think it's worth trying, really putting your heart into those attempts. The
focus on people being specialists and not generalists (specially in more than
one area of knowledge) makes the situation worse for sure.

~~~
yellowbuilding
This suggests that I want more money or consumption, and that’s wrong. Nor do
I want popularity. Quite the opposite. Popularity and attention are really the
main problem, if anything. Who we are is defined by what we have done more
than any time in history. Every day that passes is further locking ourselves
into our cages of individuality. How can popularity and followers, like you
mention, be our only hope for change when they are also the ties that are
trapping us to our current trajectories?

Specialist vs. generalist gets more at the problem I think we were talking
about, but even the fact that it is such a debated concept seems off.
Something seems wrong on a bigger level. Sometimes you need a specialist and
sometimes a generalist, and we are highly adaptable creatures. It is strange
this thing leads to so much anxiety. I think people are just worrying
tremendously over _which one are they_ to an unhealthy degree, and because
they are scared to death of failure. Who can blame them?

I’m sure some love popularity and never want to do anything else with their
life, but that is an unrealistic bar we have created for everybody in our
society. So I guess that seems like a thing to look at.

------
jackthrow1
I am not an american. But i have no one in my life. And unlike that 16 years
old who feels lonely although she/he is in fact "surrounded by nice people", i
am not surrounded by anyone. The funny thing is half an hour ago i wrote about
what Ive been already knowing for a good decade: people are small coin.
Bargaining chip. They come and go. What a coincidence. I decided to reiterate
that because some situation reminded me of it, but I dont talk about it in
absolutely most cases. I genuinely think that communication is mostly
woethless and not to be spent time on. Had friends, had online friends, many
of both types, had more than 200 skype contacts and got rid of them all.

Do I regret? It would be a lie to say yes. I almost dont reject any more
connections since 2016, I hardly have any. I saved all the messages Ive been
writing to anyone during the last 2 years. Its refresging to read them and see
how much time you invested in taljing to someone who you have hard time
remembering at all. I think Internet opened my eyes to this fact.
Communication is worthless.

You know one other thing Ive benn thinking about last week? AVOID humans. I
didnt write that anywhere back then. The essence of the idea is that
networking is worthless. Waste of time. Talking to machines may spread your
words 100x more than talking to humans. Just make a bot taljing on your
behalf.

You may say that I will become self absorbed and self righteous for nothing
because no one can correct me. Thats untrue. Occasionaly I can write like i do
now, in a completely alien space. If i feel like it, i will return for answers
and critique. But I dont want that, I will not return.

I read a lot of what others write and post and make and that keeps my thought
going and helps me prevent it from becoming stale. The thing is, they are not
writing or posting that TO me. But still I know what they think.

Honestly, I hugely dislike real life talking anymore. What a waste of
everything. I wont lie, I can interrupt anyone who approaches me with a talk
and say directly "I am not interested". Or "Dont talk to me". I dont care how
they feel. Remember, they all are a passing substance, an ephemera, a
hallucination. Dont get me wrong, they are real humans. But theres no need in
caring about what they feel. There are too many humans. Today these, tomorrow
others. Caring for what they think or what they want from you when you dont
want anything from them is a waste of capacity.

You know whats funny. When you need something from them in return, you just
come to them and ask. That easy. Funny bit is they, been rejected, still often
do what you ask for. They are afraid to break the thousand-year-old lie saying
"what you give is what you get". No such thing.

~~~
baddox
I have the tendencies to feel and act similar to what you describe, but I
think these tendencies can often be harmful and I often try to resist some of
them. Feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk about this and other
randomness with a kindred spirit. My email is in my HN profile and my Twitter
is the same as my HN username.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Heads up, your HN profile is blank.

~~~
baddox
Thanks! I don’t know why I thought email addresses on HN were public for a
minute there. Fixed!

------
mmirate
I've said it before and I'll say it again: loneliness isn't the problem; it's
our physical dependence on non-loneliness that is the problem.

------
azdgajjsh
I think the funny honey badger video is useful in becoming less of a shut in:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg)

That, and remembering that life eventually ends: you literally have nothing to
lose unless you are doing something totally reckless and/or against the law.

You will find that as you become more like the honey badger, people will find
that refreshing and seek you out. Because we all have the same problems and
want to be honey badgers internally.

