
Older Americans are alone half their waking hours, on average - wallflower
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/03/on-average-older-adults-spend-over-half-their-waking-hours-alone/
======
nickthegreek
My father passed away around 11 years back and it wasn't til several years
later that it really hit me that my mom was basically all alone for large
portions of her day out on the a country property. I now call her and chat for
about 20 minutes a day on my commute home. I know that it has made a huge
difference in her life and I feel more connected to her than ever before. I
highly recommend that others take some time to see if their loved ones are in
a similar situation and if so, try and reach out on some sort of scheduled
basis.

~~~
snarf21
This is also why a lot of spouses pass soon after the other. They lose hope
and the reason to get out of bed each morning.

I keep assuming that as jobs are automated away that we are going to have more
people who can do work like visiting elderly people. It also can more than pay
for itself by keeping people on their medication regimens and preventing
costly hospital visits.

~~~
jostylr
A big hope of the UBI movement is that it will "pay" people to take care of
one another in a way that our usual monetary transfer for services rendered
simply can't handle well. That is, someone taking care of their parent is not
going to be paid for that service in our economy, but with a UBI, it allows
one to get that economic support without it being a usual "job". The work of
maintaining genuine social relationships is not a source of income, but it is
what humans are most designed to do and it would be good to have a mechanism
that supports that rather than hinders it.

My personal hope is that a UBI leads to real communities where the old and the
young have a place in our lives and they stop being seen as problems and as
burdens on the middle-aged.

Andrew Yang talks about this a lot in terms of his wife taking care of their
children, but the idea equally applies to people taking care of anyone else.

~~~
wolco
UBI will create the conditions for more suicides. Work can create purpose.

UBI alone would strengthen the family unit and reduce external relationships.

~~~
BigJono
It's not hard to find purpose in life that doesn't revolve around sitting at a
desk doing fuck all and pretending to work for 40 hours a week.

People will still work. Whether it's to get a leg up from the baseline or
because it's something their passionate about, nothing will stop people from
banding together to solve common goals. The current state of work is just a
really shitty abstraction over that. I would have thought software engineers
of all people would understand that.

~~~
wolco
That world doesn't and won't exist for most. In places where jobs are being
lost and no one works people band together for crime more than innovation. The
common goal being additional money.

If you look at the wealthiest innovation is not what they do with there
freetime either.

Innovation requires motivation. Innovation requires resources.

~~~
Dylan16807
> In places where jobs are being lost and no one works people band together
> for crime more than innovation. The common goal being additional money.

Because they're being thrown into poverty with no way out.

The problem is not ennui.

> If you look at the wealthiest

Yeah sure, but UBI isn't going to make everyone multimillionaires.

------
ixtli
As an anecdote, I've lived the majority of my life in America (born and raised
middle class on the east coast in a wealthy area) and if I was tasked with
writing an account of my time here it would be focused around one thing:
alienation.

American life is atomized and consistently getting more so. For anyone who
sits around and thinks about why people are the way they are here I highly
encourage you to consider that people are alone. Alone in life, alone at their
apartment, alone when they struggle, alone when they die. It's to the point
where we regard married couples that live a 20 minute drive from anything as
not being alone when they really are.

Most adults I know have a relationship with their immediate family that I
would regard as acquaintanceship.

Part of this is culture (Americans fetishize a sort of "rugged individualism"
where you alone can solve every problem you're faced with or else it's not a
real problem) and part of it is civil engineering. You need a car to live
nearly everywhere, there's almost no public transit infrastructure, etc.

EDIT: Since this is popular I wanna surface something that people have been
saying: it definitely doesn't require being far away physically from others to
feel alone. I live in Manhattan and big cities can be _extremely_ alienating
depending on the person.

~~~
MiroF
Guys, you need to move the frick out of the suburbs. They're soul-killing.

Cities are also atomized, but not to this extent. They're vibrant, booming,
the schools are fine/good, and in my opinion, far worth the cut to house size.

~~~
rayiner
I love cities, structurally. But I find the people soul-killing. I just have
very little in common with young, childless people anymore. Even when we're
experiencing the same things, we're not really experiencing the same things.
If I go to MOMA, it's because I want to show my daughter Starry Night. I'm
scoping out tickets to take her to Hamilton, because I feel guilty for going
without her. My kids are super well-behaved, but I hate going into a
restaurant with them in tow and watching young childless people glare at me. I
know brave souls who are toughing it out in cities with young children, and
more power to them. Meanwhile, there are 8 small kids and two teenagers on my
block of 15-20 houses. I walk into the Whole Foods, and see other parents from
my kid's school. The _default_ is people like me.

~~~
hestipod
>The default is people like me.

I think not finding things in common with young people isn't abnormal. My
childhood was miserable partly BECAUSE of the sameness of it all. I find the
suburban vanilla Stepford ways soul-killing. I had no exposure to culture. The
internet didn't exist yet. I was ignorant and brainwashed in many ways. I felt
out of place and like I was a freak because I didn't believe what I was told
was "correct". The city was "bad" and "city folk" were "bad". The family and
people in those places still have the same narrow beliefs and I am still
"wrong". The people I know that grew up in multicultural cities had so much
richer experiences and opportunities to grow and explore their beliefs and
ideas without their parents ideologies infecting them as much.

~~~
rayiner
Having rich experiences and exploring different ideas is admirable, in some
respects, but I'm not convinced that's a good basis for sustainable, tight-
knit communities. Your choice of phraseology is interesting--parents
"infecting" kids with their ideologies. Most people would consider it a key
function of parenting (and society) to socialize children in the community's
values, rules, and orthodoxies.

One of the things I find ironic about "experience seeking" is how often people
go to places like India or China to have "rich experiences." But people from
those places generally would relate much more easily to people like your
parents. Circling back to the topic at hand--people in my home country of
Bangladesh, where there is a rigid social order and strict indoctrination of
children, may suffer from many things, but loneliness is not one of them.

~~~
hestipod
If the sustainable tight knit community is awash with horrible "values" like
racism, homophobia, xenophobia, tribal bigotry and arrogance etc then I don't
want to be a part of it. It's perpetuating the wrong things in my view and is
like any bureaucracy just existing to serve itself. Kids should be taught the
basics of human decency like honesty/empathy/kindness/sharing/helping etc, and
then allowed to arrive at any specific spiritual or political views themselves
through varied experience, not indoctrinated from a malleable age into mini-
mes who never know anything else, as is usually the case in areas like I
mentioned above.

~~~
rayiner
Few tight-knit communities would consider those to be "values" ( _i.e._
beliefs that are core to identity). Your view is also a bit of "throwing the
baby out with the bath water." Humanity has lots of vices, and those vices are
often amplified in tight-knit communities. But those shortcomings can be
improved without undermining the social order or adopting pernicious
individualism.

Again, I can't help but notice the irony of your assertion. What is the virtue
in not being xenophobic against Bangladeshis, if you're going to condemn the
way they structure their communities and raise their children?

~~~
devdas
They absolutely are values. Just not good ones.

------
notus
This resonates a lot with my experience and reminds me of a short book I read
by Sebastian Junger called Tribe. His focus is more on the tribal aspect of
military life and that the disassociation with a close knit group or a tribe
is part of what leads to PTSD as there are quite a few people who have been in
the military who have PTSD despite not ever being in combat. He claims that in
smaller tribal communities mental illness is less common and that in times of
extreme hardship or disaster people report decrease in symptoms of mental
illness as they become more valued by their community as a helper during the
hardship.

I interact with people normally at work, but outside of work I'm usually alone
and it is hard to ignore the negative effects of it on my mental health. If
I'm around people after work I generally feel more positive and have less
anxiety, but left alone for too long and my anxiety will start to take over. I
really miss my younger years where I had close groups of friends and we hung
out all the time.

~~~
technothrasher
_If I 'm around people after work I generally feel more positive and have less
anxiety, but left alone for too long and my anxiety will start to take over._

Interesting. I'm the exact opposite. When I have to do things like hang around
with people from work for too long, my anxiety increases until I can get away
and be alone. I'm not a social recluse, I have a wife and kid, and I enjoy
spending time with them, I try to make time for my parents at least weekly,
and I enjoy hanging out with my friends. But definitely anxiety builds as my
time in contact with other people increases. Alone is often my "happy place".

~~~
taborj
I believe this is an "introvert" vs "extrovert" situation. I'm introverted and
I'm like you - spending time with folks after work is a chore. I prefer to
hang around "known associates" as it were - my wife, my kid, my in-laws, my
friends. Spending time with folks outside those circles is draining for me; I
dread doing it, and I look forward to getting home again.

However, I have a few folks in my close circles that are clear extroverts.
They _love_ going out with people after work, always seem to be somewhere
doing something talking to someone. They never want to go home because home is
"boring."

~~~
notus
It's funny I used to think I was an introvert for so many years because I
spent so much time alone. My therapist always used to tell me different and I
just thought he was disconnected on that subject. How could I be an extrovert
when I spent so much time alone? Wasn't until I started having managers tell
me the same that I started to consider it. Turns out I really like being
around people but I had a few painful experiences that made me avoid it.

~~~
mnm1
Same here. I adopted introverted patterns of life because I had no one to
spend time with most of the time. Now I get anxiety when going to meet people.
I still do it or try to and once I'm there, I enjoy it a lot. Of course, it
has to be with the right people otherwise I'd rather just stay in. It's
interesting how society shapes us into what we don't want to become.

------
hestipod
I am an introvert but the isolation I experience is soul crushing. Half of it
is location and culture, rural nowhere and no public transport. Half of it is
poor health. I am not here by choice and it's sapping my will each day. Living
in a city and having people all around easily accessible you wasn't mentally
exhausting for me as one would think, it was lovely and energizing. I'd love
to be able to move back. But one can still be alone in a crowd.

I recall an experience I had in a large city, a dense capital and no lack of
people around. I knocked on an apartment door to meet up with someone but had
gotten the number wrong. A lovely old woman answered the door in her
nightgown. I apologised for my mistake and asked if she knew where the person
I was looking for lived. She did not, but she invited me in for tea. I
accepted and even thought she didn't speak English and my command of her
language was poor, we had a human interaction that both of us needed. She was
so incredibly alone there. You could tell by how she lived in this little 25
square meter flat and how things came pouring out of her to me, this stranger.
We had our tea, I had my tour and saw the photos, and politely excused myself
as I had "things to do". My life hadn't fully collapsed yet, and while I have
always been empathetic and didn't rush out, I can't help but often think that
I should have stayed longer, done more for her, gone back. I always intended
to go back when I had more time, but shortly after my own life accelerated
downhill and I never found the chance. It was many years ago and she was quite
elderly then. I imagine she might have passed by now. But I often think of her
and that little room and if by some magic I can get back there I will knock on
that door. There are lonely people all around us.

------
stirfrykitty
I may be in the minority, but the older I get the more I want to be alone. I
love my wife and kids, but there is almost too much pressure anymore to do
this, do that. There are too many hands on my time. I recharge only when
alone. I cannot do it with the TV on, kids in the background, etc. It's one of
the reasons I like hunting. Just me and the great outdoors. I really like
getting up at 0430 and being in the deer blind by 0600, watching the night
drain from the firmament and knowing I'm alone for several miles in any
direction save animals. It's a great feeling. It's also why I tend to favor
holidays in remote places with few to no tourists. My wife also likes this
approach.

Editing to say that schools are now offering summer sports, which I hate,
because it means less time in the evenings to relax after work. American
culture is too busy. Too many games, too many expectations of parents to
commit to this and that. Too many schools begging for money when I already pay
taxes. It goes on and on...

Some people need lots of social engagement; I don't. I don't like parties. I
do like two or three couples over for a BBQ and beer. It's intimate enough,
but controllable enough that there are not competing voices in the background.

At work, I'm fortunate to be able to keep the lights out in my office, draw
the blinds and stream my psytrance while working. My colleague I office with
likes the same things, so it's a win-win for us. People think we're weird that
we like it dark, but I've never worked in an IT office where the lights were
preferred. I think this may be an IT thing. I also dearly miss when IT was in
the data center and not accessible to the general office staff.

~~~
munificent
I think I'm in a similar state as you. I loved living alone. Then I got
married and had kids, so now I have three roommates, two of which frequently
need interaction/help/etc. I _crave_ solitude. The most blissful vacation I
can imagine is just being alone in a cabin on a lake sitting coffee and
reading. I spent two days driving to see the 2016 eclipse and living in my
truck alone and it was absolute bliss.

At the same time, I find it easy to project that desire too far. I get less
solitude than I would like now, so I feel that need, but I definitely don't
want infinite solitude. While I liked living alone, I also remember getting
quite lonely at times. It's easy for me to take for granted my social needs
because they are being (more than) met right now.

One thing I do find a real challenge is a life that feels both socially full
and shallow. With all of the tasks of being a full-time employee and parent
today, my social calendar fills up quickly. I can really only see a couple of
people a week. Kid birthday parties and other events like that overwhelm it.
Because my kids are constantly making new friends, there is this parade of
parents that enter and recede from my life. They're all nice people, but over
time it gets harder to invest effort into friendship with them because I only
see any given one of them every couple of months and even that may fade if our
kids stop being friends. Not quite the "single serving friends" of Fight Club,
but close.

At the same time, it's hard for me to maintain my own independent friendships
on _top_ of those acquaintances because there just isn't that much time. If
I've already got a birthday party on Saturday and a playdate on Sunday, it's
really hard to enjoy another social activity with my own friends on top of
that. Even with people I consider close friends, I sometimes only see them
once every couple of months.

I try to be mindful that this phase won't last forever. As my kids get older,
they'll do more drop-off parties and eventually will get to their own social
functions without me at all. They'll want less of my time until one day I'll
wake up and the nest will be empty. I try to enjoy this time for what it is
while it lasts.

My biggest worry is that by the time the kids are older and I have more room
for my own close friends, those bonds will have withered along with my skills
at socializing and I'll fail to reinvigorate them.

~~~
stirfrykitty
That was a fantastic post. I feel exactly the same way.

My kids sometimes feel too needy. Oftentimes I never get the desired downtime.

My wife got mad at me one day and said "You need to listen to Harry Chapin's
Cat's in the Cradle. Then come talk with me." It's a shock to listen to that
song, because it's true. It would be easy to end up like that and no one want
it.

~~~
jbattle
I've always thought the best thing would be to have a time-travel machine. You
could spend a day with your kids as infants and enjoy it. The next day you
could spend with them as teens and enjoy it. Then the third day spend with
them as 11 year-olds and enjoy it.

Each of those ages are incredible and filled with irreplaceable experiences.
It's easy to get jaded when you move through them so slowly.

~~~
munificent
What I wouldn't give to be able to bank days for my future self.

"You know, I feel like having a me day. I'll hand this one off to 60-year-old
me."

My 60-year-old self magically time travels in and has a blast with the kids he
hasn't seen as children in decades. Meanwhile I get to relax. Then, twenty
years from now, when the nest is cold and empty, the memories of my kids'
childhood is fading, and I long to feel their little arms wrapped around me, I
get zipped back in time to live a whole day of it afresh.

They say youth is wasted on the young. Sometimes it feels like parenting is
wasted on young parents too.

------
jackcosgrove
Many Americans own a lot of idle property. There is a problem now where baby
boomers want to age in place in their suburban homes, which locks younger
people out of those properties. However these suburban homes have huge yards
by global standards, that could easily support the construction of
grandparent/in-law structures. It seems like one solution is for the suburban
elderly to, maybe with their children's assistance, build an outlying house in
the back yard and downsize to there, and let their children occupy the main
house for raising grandchildren.

Multi-generational housing is a good solution to this problem of elder
isolation and general social isolation, and the friction associated with that
can be eased given the amount of land many suburban properties contain.

I have always thought that the turn towards the nuclear family caused many of
the social problems that began to appear in the 1960s. I think we should
return to more extended family living situations.

~~~
tvanantwerp
A big obstacle to having extended families under one roof is that often the
children don't want to live where the parents' home is located. I am certain I
could move in with my mom tomorrow if I wanted--but it would mean leaving a
city I've come to love and the career I've built here to live in a small town
with little culture and zero opportunities.

I think this is what you see in many rural American towns where only a small
elderly population remains, while the young people all moved to cities for
economic opportunity.

~~~
m463
> often the children don't want to live where the parents' home is located

I lived with my parents during college. It was expected because they couldn't
afford to pay for a dorm for me.

I think it delayed my growth.

------
howard941
When I was a yute my grandmother used to go to a senior center for cards,
talk, company, and her three children lived around the corner or upstairs. In
NYC that was possible: Everything walkable. She lived well into her 100s. I
don't now how they do it down here in Fla where nothing's walkable and public
transportation's laughable and social services can't keep up.

~~~
ixtli
Hey so i upvoted this because you used the word "yute" :D

~~~
howard941
You can take the Brooklyn out of the boy...

------
jokoon
A thing to remember, which psychology will remind you, is that there is a
balance between having social experiences and having solitary experiences.
Introversion/extraversion is a spectrum.

The problem is that modern, sedentary, good-living-standard, individualistic
life tend to isolate people. That's the current model.

In more ancient times we were all living in communities because the
infrastructure forced us to do so. Now the standard is individual housing,
kitchen, toilets, bathroom, etc.

I'm okay to have a solitary bedroom for myself, but I wish activities like
cooking and food were shared in neighborhoods. Similarly, fences exist for
security but they also damage socialization.

------
patrick5415
I’m a grad student. I work in an empty lab. I’m lucky if somebody else is
there 4 hours a week. I go home to an empty house. Once a week, I have beers
with a friend. Count that up. I’m alone (168-8)/168 hours a week. Cry me a
fucking river.

~~~
tlb
I did that too when I was young, but I think it would kill me now.

Having painful experiences can either help you be more empathetic to others
with the same kind of pain, or less. Why not try for more?

------
thow_leet
I just turned 40 and have done a complete 180 from extroversion to
introversion in the last two years so don’t see this as a bad thing. Was
checking up on the psychology of it and checks out as totally normal.
Extroversion in youth was selected for to provide mating opportunities, but
wears off as we age.

------
chmod775
So they're more social than I am?

~~~
gcoda
i bet you are not alone if you consider online messaging.

~~~
colonelpopcorn
Not even close to being with people in person.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It actually might be worse. I hypothesize that the kinds of interactions we
have online are the social equivalent of "empty calories". They tweak the
brain's reward mechanism for socializing without actually getting any of the
real benefits.

~~~
Loughla
Oh man, I think you hit on something there. You get all of the satisfaction of
interaction, but don't have to worry about being challenged, learning from any
mistakes, or really learning anything; you can block anything you don't like.

I think you're onto something with that.

------
tvanantwerp
My mother has been living alone for over a decade now. Luckily for her, she's
very introverted--alone is her preference. Sitting in her rocking chair,
reading a mystery novel, is exactly what she wants out of life.

I'm sure this isn't normal, particularly for extroverts. My wife doesn't
understand it at all. But I take after my mom, and I 100% know that she feels
fine with a minimum of human interaction. I do feel bad for the people who
aren't like her, though.

------
mcdramamean
If you look at the richest people in the world, particularly those that are
American... they are all introverts. As much as we used to fetishize
celebrity, we now love wealth more. And the wealthiest of us have been made
that way due to sitting for hours alone behind a computer. You have to
imagine, there have always been these kinds of people; the general culture
just didn't give them the space in the narrative of the past ( I remember my
great-grandfather would hike 20 miles in the snow both ways to completely
alone to read or something... These are rare stories of the past).

This is less a binary question than a, can we provide outlets for both ways of
thinking, kind of question. Of all the a-la-carte subscriptions many
extroverts pay for (Netflix....), I bet they would be willing to pay for a "I
don't want to be lonely" service (whatever that looks like).

------
ryanmercer
I'm 34 and once you add in the weekends I am and talking is extremely
discouraged at work, in an open office, so even at work you're basically alone
just siting there listening to music or podcasts all day.

At Gym1 I talk to my lifting coach but most of the time I'm in my head focused
on training, after that at Gym2 I'm just trying to do my accessory work and
conditioning and don't talk to anyone other than "hey" back to "hey Ryan" from
the staff at the door. I go home and my retired mother that lives with me
stays in her room and I go to mine, rinse and repeat.

Not entirely by choice but all my friends are married with kids and have zero
free time.

~~~
Ididntdothis
“talking is extremely discouraged at work, in an open office, so even at work
you're basically alone just siting there listening to music or podcasts all
day”

That’s the nutty thing about open office. The thing that’s officially supposed
to encourage collaboration leads to people sitting there with headphones
trying to isolate themselves and rules to not talk to each other.

~~~
ryanmercer
Our open office isn't for fostering communication or anything, we don't need
to communicate, if you have time to communicate you aren't working. Our open
office is so the team lead at the back of each row can watch everyone. :/

~~~
stirfrykitty
A sort of paid-worker panopticon situation is how I see it. I did the cube
farm thing back when I worked for UUNet, and it sucked. Everyone talking,
prairie dogging talking to the guy in the next cube, people farting out loud,
the stinky food, the phone conversations of the admin next to you trying to
work out some awful multi-spoke VPN issue with a distant office, cursing all
the while and everyone within earshot hearing it. Not a good scene. One of the
senior admins got a talking to for one night on his shift printed out name
tags with "Winston Smith" and taping them over the 90 cubes in the office.

------
zeroonetwothree
I’m jealous. Being alone for 60% of my waking hours is the sweet spot.

~~~
Ididntdothis
There is a difference between being alone by choice or just being alone.

------
kwhitefoot
Strange article. All it does is recite the statistics but it doesn't explain
why anyone should care.

It seems from the comments here that solitude is equated with isolation and
with loneliness but this is not necessarily the case.

I think the problem for many who are lonely is that they feel, perhaps
correctly, that they have no choice, no power to change the situation. For me
solitude is a necessity but of course if I cannot choose it but instead have
it thrust upon me then it would eventually become a burden.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> While time spent alone is not necessarily associated with adverse effects,
> it can be used as a measure of social isolation, which in turn is linked
> with negative health outcomes among older adults. Medical experts suspect
> that lifestyle factors may explain some of this association – for instance,
> someone who is socially isolated may have less cognitive stimulation and
> more difficulty staying active or taking their medications. In some cases,
> social isolation may mean there is no one on hand to help in case of a
> medical emergency.

It's literally bad for you.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Looks like you missed my point. Chosen solitude does not imply that there is
no one on hand for a medical emergency nor that one has less cognitive
stimulation. Nor does it necessarily imply that one is socially isolated.

------
Rapidfir3
I always read this threads wondering if there's something wrong with me. I
just never get lonely. It's kinda a scary thought but I feel like I could go
my entire my life not needing to socialize. I'm married so I do socialize
obviously with her and her family and my family and my friends but I've never
felt any desire to be around any of them (except my wife).

~~~
colmvp
I feel like people who say "I feel like I could go my entire life not needing
to socializing" and then continue with "I'm married" clearly aren't seeing how
their POV could be massively different if they didn't have an SO.

------
mikece
This seems like an area where technology would be well suited to help. I'm not
simply saying "Just give 'em a Chromebook and a Facebook account" but VoIP and
VTC would be ideal for helping the "alone elderly" be connected with the
community around them... perhaps connecting with and mentoring children who
are themselves frequently alone. Just a thought... it's certainly something I
can easily imaging being in an Apple/Google/Microsoft keynote about how they
are using technology to help improve the lives and communities of people.

~~~
sp332
I don't know anything about this, but I've seen ads on TV.
[https://www.grandpad.net/](https://www.grandpad.net/)

~~~
mikece
Seems like more of a device than something meant to be a community
effort/project which just happens to use technology, which is what I was
trying to describe.

------
lanrh1836
I wonder if we’re ever going to have a real online friending app. Feels like
we’re still in a stage where it’s weird to attempt to find close friends
online like it was weird to date online 10-20 years ago.

------
opportune
Wonder how much of this can be attributed to suburbanization

Also, having had grandparents who were quite lonely in their later years, a
lot of this can probably be attributed to a reluctance to move out of their
house and into group living situations specifically for the elderly (such as
assisted living). If you are not very mobile and staying in a SFH, it can be a
30m ordeal just to get up and use the landline. And traveling outside your
home requires someone else to drive and help you get in/out of the car.

------
droithomme
Perhaps something to look forward to in old age then. I get a lot done when I
am left completely alone for about 5 days in a row. Having completed difficult
tasks I am then relaxed and ready to socially interact and have a wonderful
time, with more meaningful depth and connection than is possible when
exhausted from the ordeal of interacting with others on a daily basis.

------
rrwright
Reminds me of this poetic data visualization:
[https://www.theatlas.com/charts/HJFYm4uQ-](https://www.theatlas.com/charts/HJFYm4uQ-)

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sun_n_surf
Hey man, I am like 35 and alone all the time.

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argd678
Looking forward to more alone time for sure.

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willyg123
A YC company, Papa, is trying to solve this problem joinpapa.com

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analognoise
Tech ruined privacy, the internet, and large parts of democracy.

I think maybe it's time we put tech where it belongs: in the damn trunk.

Going to a YC company to fulfill a basic human need is exactly why tech
belongs in aforementioned trunk.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I'd pretty much agree. Technology should be a tool to make our lives better,
and when it is obvious it is not doing that we should get rid of it.

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DisruptiveDave
Obligatory reminder: alone does not equal lonely. Not all the time. Not for
everyone.

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dfilppi
Is that supposed to be a negative?

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AstralStorm
Ah, the benefits of individualism and big distances.

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Circuits
Personally, I have gotten somewhat use to being alone. I can only imagine what
it must feel like too someone who has spent the majority of their lives with
someone else. I think I will start visiting a senior living facility with some
of my spare time each week. If you are alone and its weighing you down then my
heart goes out to you.

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aparker1210
joinpapa.com!

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CriticalCathed
is-is that a bad thing?

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Gene_Parmesan
If you are someone who needs regular instances of social contact in order to
feel connected to the world and to avoid depression and feelings of isolation,
then yes. The important thing to remember is that many elderly are alone for
such significant chunks of their days by force, not by choice. If you choose
to be alone because you (like me) are an introvert and value your time to
yourself to explore your interests, that is a very different situation than
someone who is essentially house bound and has no choice in the matter.

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YeahSureWhyNot
That's not a bad thing, people she embrace loneliness and learn to be able to
enjoy it. What's the point of speaking about it like it's some kind of a
problem with the person. If someone wants company then they can go socialize
with whoever is available, otherwise maybe they don't wanna socialize with
what's available and prefer to just chill on their own.

~~~
mykowebhn
While you make a good point, I think you're missing the distinction between
people who ___choose_ __to be alone and people who are alone not by choice.

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swiley
Stop making assumptions about other people (they’re lazy/dangerous/whatever)
and go out and be friendly.

This Wednesday I wandered around the city playing ukulele at 3 in the morning
and I met all kinds of interesting people, everything from this beautiful
female graduate student who just wanted to talk about schoastics to someone
who wanted me to call his “friend in Florida.”

Just go out and be with people, they’re all lonely too.

~~~
grenoire
I don't know how people do that man, it's just very hard for some (quite a lot
nevertheless) people to get out there and be vulnerable.

~~~
_jal
I can't tell if you're actually interested in suggestions, but if you are,
start with something less intimidating that late-night ukulele, and try
reframing what you're doing. If you do encounter something negative when you
experiment, try to treat it analytically as well as emotionally. Just how bad,
objectively speaking, was feeling a little embarrassed around some folks
you'll never see again?

Paradoxically, you may find that putting yourself out there a little can be a
surprising source of strength.

