
Life of solitude: A loneliness crisis is looming - uladzislau
http://theglobeandmail.com/life/life-of-solitude-a-loneliness-crisis-is-looming/article15573187/
======
evanmoran
When I was in college a classmate of mine would come by every day or so to my
dorm. He would just hang out, talking about class or whatever. I couldn't
understand why he kept coming over, but I was too polite to mention anything.

Turns out, he came by because we were friends.

In fact, we had been friends the whole time, but I didn't know it! What I
missed is that the stages between meeting people and friendship look a lot
like hanging out. It seems quite arbitrary -- why this activity, this person?
But the hanging out stage _is_ necessary. Unless you text them, knock on their
door, set up a gaming night, or go on a road trip, it is hard to grow closer.

So the next time you meet someone remember they are probably like you: a bit
nerdy, a bit lonely. Just reach out and spend time with them for no reason,
and then maybe, someday, you'll discover that you too are friends.

~~~
reinhardt
I've never really grasped the concept of "hanging out". I feel a get-together
has to have a tangible purpose, be it solving a problem, playing a game,
cooking or whatnot. Hanging out without a specific "agenda" has always felt
forced, awkward and in the long term boring, resulting in me gradually
withdrawing from most social circles I've found myself in. I guess I don't get
the point of abstract friendship for its own sake.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
'Abstract friendship'? Only real, organic, laugh and cry friendship is worth
having. I can't even imagine what an abstract friendship is - maybe 'liking'
someone on Facebook?

~~~
reinhardt
Probably "abstract" wasn't the best term; "context free" maybe? As in, there's
little common ground and few if any goal-driven activities involved. You don't
"get together to do X", you just "hang out" or "meet up" without a particular
reason in mind, and it basically boils down to everyday smalltalk, shooting
the shit and mindless drinking. I guess that alone is rewarding enough for
normal people and helps keep loneliness at bay but it doesn't do much for me.

------
sown
this applies to me. I'm very alone pretty much most of the time. Not really
had friends and not great at making them. For the last 11 months I've tried
going out and being the most positive person I can, to be a friend to as many
people as I can but I don't know if it's working or not. Just talking to
people, listening to them, smiling at everyone.

It feels like I'm just a grinning idiot, that no one takes me seriously, that
I have to completely change everything about me and who I am so before long
I'm not the same person in the slightest; I have to pretend to be someone
else.

I know I'm not the best person I can be but how much harder and longer do I
have to fight to make it?

I hate the weekends and look forward to Mondays because I can go out and meet
co-workers. Friday afternoons I fill with a heavy dread. It sounds ridiculous
to talk about it out loud because it makes me sound so...high-school. I feel
like a loser talking about it, now, just like how I felt like a loser in
elementary through high school, and grad school. It feels dumb now. I'm an
older man, now. I think most days people won't notice I'm gone until the bugs
don't get fixed and a few years later they find me in my condo after I hung
myself in the closet.

~~~
rjbond3rd
Please do just one thing: make an appointment with a therapist to see if you
have depression.

~~~
githulhu
At the risk of sounding negative, I've found that this is probably a waste of
time, because most therapists are utter garbage...

And, it's really no surprise, really, if you look at the average salary for
therapists. I imagine that most of the ones who could actually help you are
running high-priced practices treating Arab princes and basketball
players...naturally they are not going to be found in the provider directory
for your insurance...if you even have insurance... (US perspective here)

~~~
Jtsummers
At the risk of sounding positive, I've found therapy to not be a waste of
time, despite therapists being generally mediocre.

As long as they're not an asshole, having someone listen to you and prompt you
with questions is incredibly therapeutic. It also helps immensely that you can
be confident about your privacy. Just getting it out sometimes is what you
need. None of the therapists I dealt with when going through
anxiety/depression issues really grokked what was going on in my head (my
impression, but perhaps, like a parent, they really did know all along).
However, a few 45 minute sessions of speaking and prompting got things off my
chest, and my mind redirected on far more positive things than "I'm not good
enough", "I'm going to die alone", "No one would miss me if I didn't wake up
tomorrow" and other delightful thoughts.

~~~
Amadou
_As long as they 're not an asshole, having someone listen to you and prompt
you with questions is incredibly therapeutic._

That makes therapy sound like renting a friend. I don't mean that in a snarky
way at all, maybe that's even a good definition in some cases.

------
everyone
I actually live a quite isolated existence. I dont really like most people and
am very happy this way (I can read, program, play games, make music etc. in
peace and not deal with the tediousness of having to interact with people I
find boring) However, I do _occasionally_ meet other people (maybe a bit like
me in some ways) and we get on incredibly well. Every week or two when we feel
sociable I will meet one of them for intense session of something. Also the
people I really get on with could be any age/sex, one is a 50 yo man, another
is a 20 yo girl.

~~~
dougk16
As I think the article points out somewhere, loneliness and being alone are
different things...you can feel lonely in a crowded room, and all that. You
have people to interact with when loneliness starts creeping in...so good! It
just sounds like your threshold for isolation turning into actual loneliness
is higher than most people.

I think my threshold is pretty similar, but the danger comes in when those few
people you have to interact with move away or otherwise become unavailable,
then it can become hard to meet new people because you're so out of practice.

~~~
everyone
Yeah, see my comment below. It was really amazing and life-affirming to meet
my new friend 2 years ago, but if you just keep a baseline level of meeting
new people I think its statistically likely you will meet one. This does mean
u have to go to events and things with lots of people, but only once every few
months + it can involve something you love like music or games or whatever.

------
Pxtl
Part of the problem is that loneliness has a terrible feedback loop. Isolation
makes you bitter and desperate and then nobody wants to be around you. Do it
too long and your culture starts diverging from the main and connecting with
new people is like crossing a river.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
Then that culture is broken.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

~~~
eruditely
How convenient for you, chomsky, godel, bertrand russell, dirac, von neumann,
montaigne, francis bacon, stoics, and almost all classical great humans to
modern great humans had friends and were at least somewhat social give me a
break. I know it must be comfortable for you, they're all sick and I'm not so
now I don't have to be uncomfortable and try a little.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
I am quite sure that if someone told them that they had to drop their work or
being in order to be friends, they would have found a different friend.

The point is that it is OK to have a different culture, OK to be you, OK to be
a light unto yourself. You will find friends, probably more. You do not have
to adopt the culture forced upon you if it is not yours.

------
zigzig
While I've made plenty of bad decisions myself, I think a large part of why
I've always been extremely lonely and isolated is that I was raised with very
little sense of family or community. Growing up an only child, my parents
apparently never thought it was worth me meeting the 80% of my cousins that
lived in the same country, but somewhat far away. My parents themselves had
scant friends or associates (at least during my memory) and hardly ever anyone
over to visit the house.

That's why if I'm ever somehow in the position to have a child of my own, I
won't be able to. I wouldn't trust my ability to raise anything but an ice
cold stranger.

~~~
polymatter
for what its worth, I think that since you know how bad it is, you know the
true value in keeping in contact and thus will work for it more and be a
better parent because of it.

I have to spend conscious effort to maintain my network of friends and its
hard for me because its not automatic and not something I was brought up to
do. I inevitably drop the ball sometimes and forget someone and have to get
back into contact and reestablish our friendship. Because I know what
lonliness does to me and I don't want to ever be that way again.

So if I am ever lucky enough to have my own child, I am certain I will do all
I can to make sure they never feel the same. I will fight so no child of mine
will ever have to bare the scars that I bare, and that resolve will make me a
better parent.

~~~
kghose
This. Relationships take effort. Often, one will think "Why should I make the
effort? Why should I make the move? The other person has not contacted me?"
But it is better to make the move and contact other people. Because a friend
has not contacted you for a while does not mean they don't want to keep
contact. They may be feeling lonely and down or overwhelmed.

~~~
scotty79
I'm mostly just feeling that other people have plans no matter how trivial and
I don't want to interrupt them or force them to interact with me out of
politness.

~~~
saraid216
Other people absolutely have plans. They have them all the time. They have
those plans because _someone called them up and made those plans_.

Get used to hearing no. The only way to do that is to be told no a lot. The
only way to be told no is to ask in the first place.

It's not easy. It's still not easy for me. I go through long phases where I've
given up and refuse to invite people to things or tell them about things I'm
going to because I'm unwilling to deal with the feeling of frustration that
comes with their being busy or having plans. And then I pick myself back up
and ask them and sometimes they _are_ busy or they _do_ have plans. And that
sucks. And I make another go at it and hey, they're free that evening! It can
happen! And suddenly that evening turns into a great evening.

So ask. Call them up and ask. Or text them. Or email them. They're slightly
less likely to respond, but for different people, those media work better. Try
to do the leg work for them: the less thinking they have to do, the easier it
is to say yes.

~~~
scotty79
I'm not afraid of hearing no. I'd be relived to hear no. I don't want to cause
them to say yes when they don't want to just because they like me or they
think they should.

Also most of my plans do not come from people calling me.

I guess my reservation towards calling other people comes from not wanting to
cause trouble to other people just like the ones they would have caused me if
they called me.

I have no objection to call my friends when I need information or a thing they
probably won't mind lending me and would say they mind if they did.

I probably need contact with people but I don't like it. It's like when you
know you need to eat but you don't realy have the apetite.

~~~
saraid216
> I don't want to cause them to say yes when they don't want to just because
> they like me

But that's the only reason they would say yes. Unless they're just using you
as a source of information or as someone who can lend them a thing.

Are you afraid that people like you? That they think they should like you?

I feel that the right response here is to link you to Aristotle's conception
of friendship:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philia)

You seem to have nothing but friendships of utility. Your friends are people
who can give you information or lend you things, and who trouble you when they
call upon you for the pleasure of your company. That's the kind of friendship
a lobbyist talks about having with the local senator.

------
auctiontheory
In poor countries, like India, you have no privacy at all. The overreaction,
in rich countries like the US, is to buy privacy the richer you get.

But Americans take it to extremes, buying huge houses that allow them to go
days without interacting with another person. In fact, not having to deal with
other people is considered a desirable luxury. Sit at home and eat and watch
TV and shop. I know people who drive (down their very, very long driveway)
just to get to the front gate and mailbox.

The Indian situation is probably closer to our evolutionary roots.

~~~
nilkn
As a recent college graduate in the US, this is exactly how I feel.

In college, there was very little privacy. I shared a room with a roommate,
and that room was one of two in a shared suite, with two other people in the
other room and a common bathroom shared by all four people.

I now share a 2br apartment with a roommate. I have a private bedroom, but a
shared living room and kitchen.

My apartment happens to be in the shadow of a very rich neighborhood, and the
grandest homes here are secluded far off the road, often completely invisible
to passersby, hidden behind dense foliage. They signal their existence to you
through their formidable and ostentatious gates, but beyond that you have no
glimpse of the private estate of the totally unknown and unseen owner. The
owner has spent a vast sum of money--enough for most people to retire on, if
not doubly or even triply so--just to build a completely private oasis in the
heart of the city.

For a lot of people here, that is the end-game: make millions, then spend most
of it hiding yourself from the rest of the world.

~~~
venus
If you're interested in this phenomenon, you might like Paul Fussell's _Class:
A Guide Through the American Status System_

[http://www.phenomenologycenter.org/course/status.htm](http://www.phenomenologycenter.org/course/status.htm)

~~~
dubfan
Thank you for linking this. This was a very insightful read.

------
Lost_BiomedE
I always feel that many in the U.S., by far my largest cultural exposure,
consider a false stoicism as mature and wise. I find it closed and boring.
Many may be doing this due to being rewarded for keeping your mouth shut and
punished for sticking out. It also seems that too large of a percentage who
don't do this are predators, in one way or another. This makes it worse.

The best place that I have found people to open up and be themselves within a
day, is at a bar. Even if they just got there and have not had a bit to drink.

I find almost everyone interesting if they open up. I am an introvert by
nature, so it doesn't bother me much. If I was more extrovert, I would
probably be going mad.

~~~
bitwize
_I always feel that many in the U.S., by far my largest cultural exposure,
consider a false stoicism as mature and wise._

That's a trait we inherited from our cultural progenitors the British. And in
general we don't take it to the extremes they do. On the broad spectrum of
human cultures, Americans are fairly "chummy" and open, or at least seeming
openness is encouraged. The problem is, we expect others to be open, but we
also expect them to be like ourselves. So we punish people who open up and
turn out to be different. So they clam up.

 _The best place that I have found people to open up and be themselves within
a day, is at a bar. Even if they just got there and have not had a bit to
drink._

You think American bars are good? Try Japanese bars. American bars, to me, are
usually noisy, crowded affairs where it is difficult to even say a few words
to someone let alone have a conversation. This is particularly true where I
live (Boston area), where the bars are often packed for the Red
Sox/Patriots/Celtics/Bruins games. But the bars I went to in Japan were _tiny_
and intimate. Only five or six people could be in there drinking at once and
it is far easier to strike up a conversation. Particularly if you are a
Westerner.

Japanese society is about as serious and as punishing of individuality as it
gets in the developed world. The Japanese bar scene is thus correspondingly
lively and full of sincerity, even in tiny bars where there's barely any room
to move your elbows.

------
thenomad
So what can we do to fix this?

I mean, we're hackers, right? We build things that solve problems.

What can we build to solve this problem?

Some initial thoughts:

1) Personally, I've observed that video chat comes a lot closer to genuine
human contact than anything else digital. Better video chat technology would
be useful. Also, ChatRoulette but not terrible?

2) Infoproducts - perhaps it's time for an update of "How To Win Friends And
Influence People" with more emphasis on the "Win Friends" part? There's a
surprising lack of solid information on how to actually make contact with
human beings.

3) There are loads of dating sites out there, but no friend-making sites. It's
gotta be a solvable problem at least to the (terrible but usable) extent that
dating sites have solved the finding-a-partner problem.

4) Nootropics? Cranial stimulation? Brain-training for chronically lonely
people? Something even crazier?

~~~
jokoon
Creating an ad system where you post what you can offer to do and what you
want, like an offer and demand system, and allow to search by location.

Orient this on activities and jobs, and allow people to post their interests
so that people can find people that have the same interests in the area. You'd
only need to ask users what they want to share, and disallow for people to
search beyond their area.

~~~
thenomad
I think this has been tried, although I can't remember the name of it off the
top of my head.

It'd be really interesting to find out why it didn't work well.

~~~
jokoon
I think it's a niche market because it would deal with businesses, and also
with people who are lonely which is the subject of the article.

I don't think it would really be a success at first, but the fact facebook
never tried something like that always frustrated me. I guess they did not
implement it because they don't want to put complex features like this, and
that's understandable. But sometimes an economy can work much better when
detailed information is available about what's around your home, which is not
the case today. Companies do use advertisement, but single individuals don't
and companies don't wait for people to search for their product, and I'm sure
there are ways to advertise yourself if you skip the dating stuff, and let
everyone post their interests so it can searched and found by people around
you. Advertisement only gives voice to people who can afford it because there
are too few room for it.

The real problem here is the number of participants (you need a big sample if
you want users to find matches) and how it cannot be datamined.

I think it would work if it was anonymised and if it would encourage private
talks.

I don't understand why google did not try that, they know how to effectively
sort data by topic and category.

------
pmarca
Gee whiz, if only there were some kind of worldwide computer network where
everyone could meet people who share common interests -- for free!

~~~
psbp
I've been on the internet for a while and that's worked for me maybe once, and
it was by mere coincidence.

------
madcap
The article mentions Portland as an example of city planning which encourages
interaction and social cohesion. Are there any other examples that spring to
mind for U.S. cities? I'm looking to relocate and this is high on the list for
me.

~~~
ams6110
Portland has a high suicide rate.

~~~
mingmecca
Grey skies for 7 months will do that.

------
happen_io
This is a big reason why we created [http://happen.io](http://happen.io).
Facebook mimics real-world connections and puts them in cyberspace, but
studies show it makes people feel more isolated. We wanted to create something
for people to improve their _real-world_ connections, not just their digital
connections.

Happen.io makes it so that individuals can add their own events (like parties,
celebrations, nights-out, family get togethers, club meetings, block parties,
etc) and post them for others to find and save in their own list. Events can
be public or private, for a group or not. It's mobile optimized so that people
can use it on the go, not cooped up in their apartment.

It doesn't take much to feel a sense of connection. I think it really just
takes a few good friends and a few groups to feel a part of. But a lot of
people are missing that, and sites like Facebook and others sometimes turn
into a place to show off how great their life is, not a way to meet new people
or find real activities to do with others.

Why can't there be a place that just shows you things going on near you that
others are invited to? With all this tech to connect people, how come people
100 yards away from each other never meet or get to know each other? How come
it's so hard to find something to do or people to be with outside a list of
your facebook friends? Why isn't there a place for an regular person to post
their activities and events so that other regular people can find them and
make new friends?

That's what we are trying to make happen at happen.io. It's sort of a long-
tail event platform. There's already eventbrite for ticketed events, but this
is for any event, including small get-togethers. And there's facebook and
other event sites that use facebook's social graph, but that makes it so you
only see events of your friends, not just whatever may interest you regardless
of who set up the event.

It really is a disappointment in this digital world we become more connected
to devices but less connected to each other. We need to turn that around.

------
jsnk
“Economics basically says you should be concerned about your own short-term
interests. There’s more division in society, more segmentation; there’s less
identity with a national or global persona, but rather on the family or the
individual. People aren’t as loyal to their employers, and employers are
certainly not as loyal to their workers.”

I thought that mainstream economics has been moving towards the other
direction. More socialized policies, more emphasis on the collective that
individual property right and rights in general, ever expanding role of
goverent in the name of greater good for the society at the cost of
individuals etc.

~~~
dnautics
I don't buy this mechanistic explanation. Society has gone through progressive
levels of specialization and this has never been a problem before, so either
there's a really drastic "nonlinear" effect, or there's something _different_
about this society.

My personal suspicion is that it has more to do with people broadly thinking
that "others" are not good enough for them.

~~~
Yhippa
Could you elaborate on your suspicion?

~~~
dnautics
Yes, it's a bit of an extrapolation. For my social time, I go social dancing.
I still get a little bit lonely from time to time but I don't think it's all
that bad. But in any case, what I see happening is that when people get rather
good (or even if they don't; if they THINK they are rather good) they stop
dancing with people who are not as good as them. Since it's an activity where
being social is also coupled to having a skill; that's an easy habit to get
into, as you're encouraged to "dance up". In any case, invariable the people
who don't "dance down" isolate themselves and wind up alienated from the
community.

Increasingly we're becoming a credentialed society; while social strata are
not necessarily inherited, there is definitely class-based stratification that
people tend to not breach. It's totally rediculous; there's a guy who empties
the trash bins at the end of the day at the lab I work in. He's a smart guy
and super resourceful (he owns his own business, so he would have been eaten
alive otherwise). And most of the PhDs are just... not friendly towards him.
Why not? Is it below their station in life to interact with him?

~~~
eropple
_> And most of the PhDs are just... not friendly towards him. Why not?_

Insecurity. "They're not as good as me, I will be seen as lesser for
associating with them."

Personally, I automatically distrust people who won't bullshit with a taxi
driver or exchange quick comments about the local sports teams with a delivery
guy (and no, you don't have to like sports to do that).

~~~
roel_v
Well to be fair, I used to make small talk with taxi drivers, but when I
noticed a sizable portion of those talks devolve into idiotic racist rambling
I just stopped. Sorry to those who aren't stupid. (I'm a white male so maybe
they just thought I'd be receptive to their 'the foreigners are taking our
jobs' (I use the word 'foreigners' here where in reality they mostly used
other words unsuitable for polite company) complaints because I tried to start
some friendly chatter about their job or the weather or what was in the
newspaper that morning?)

Look, I'm not advocating social stratification, but I understand the drivers
that cause it, and 'insecurity' or 'they think they're better' are just a
small portion of them.

------
ExpiredLink
> _In the West, we live faster, higher in the air, farther from our
> workplaces, and more singly than at any time in the past._

Nothing in life is free. 'We' have to pay for our new lifestyle.

------
chiurox
Maybe there could be a new kind of social network, one where in order to
maintain your online friendship connections, you have to
occasionally/physically get together with your friends and if it doesn't
happen it means that the connection doesn't really mean anything so you
gradually lose it. This would automatically accomplish what some people with
hundreds of fb friends try to do by cleaning up their friend list by asking
those who want to remain friends to reply.

------
roma1n
In my late twenties, a combination of things helped me somewhat (I am still
lonely, but not nearly as much)

* Psychotherapy (it takes time to find a therapist that clicks, though)

* Antidepressants

* Not trying to hide it from my colleagues / family (the period when I did that was a miserable one)

* A few well-intentioned friends from work

* Family support

* This guide : [http://www.succeedsocially.com/](http://www.succeedsocially.com/)

* Meetup et al.

~~~
tachyonbeam
If you don't mind me asking, which antidepressant, and what effect does it
have on you? Considering getting on them myself.

------
mrcactu5
My 7 year old nephew can't tell the difference yet between the carefully
scripted dialogues we hear on TV and the impromptu ones we hear face to face.

Social media has enriched our online-interactions at the expensive of face-to-
face.

We can find exactly the person we want to talk to - virtually, and maybe in
person - why deal with anyone else?

------
sillysaurus2
_Loneliness, it turns out, is as bad for your health as smoking, or being
obese. The research that Prof. Cacioppo has done with colleagues also adds to
the growing body of work that shows how bad loneliness can be for your health.
It shows that loneliness suppresses the immune system and cardiovascular
function, and increases the amount of stress hormone the body produces. It
causes wear and tear on a cellular level, and impairs sleep. As he writes in
his book Loneliness, "these changes in physiology are compounded in ways that
may be hastening millions of people to an early grave."_

Can anyone link to any research supporting these claims?

~~~
ginko
It's generally weird to me that newspapers articles seem to be exempt from the
expectation to cite their sources.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
They also consider themselves exempt from the common practice that text in
quotes contains sentences the people quoted have actually said or written.

I.e., the author may as well have pulled it out of her ass, and you would be
none the wiser. That's old school quality journalism for you.

~~~
EdwigePelagia
Yeah this is pretty absurd. I've been "quoted" a few times in newspapers and
they got my statements completely wrong. Just flat out changed the wording
(and therefore meaning) of what I said.

The Globe and Mail is as authoritative and reputable as they get, but this
isn't saying much. The media is just a shit show in general.

Having said that, even more pathetic is people who get their information from
internet forums asking journalists to cite sources.

The authority hierarchy goes like this: Academic writing > Books by
credentialed people > YouTube videos by credentialed people > Websites by
credentialed people > Newspapers > Yahoo! Answers > Hacker News comments >
Wikipedia.

~~~
001sky
Crowd-sourcing citations, conventional wisdom, and syllabi seems rather
distinct from "the authority hierarchy", and the ROI is far more massive the
further up that food chain you are, right? probably worth keeping in mind...

------
amerika_blog
The reason for this: as a modern Western society, we no longer have much in
common, we no longer have communal rituals, and we share very little in
values. Thus people drift apart and worse, "friendship" has come to be an act
of convenience.

~~~
FrojoS
Exactly. I'm surprised, this comment is not further up. If you are all about
self-actualization, keep pushing your limits and experience new things, it is
hard to maintain deep friendships if your friends don't move in the same
direction and at similar speed. Same problem with romantic relationships.
We're so much about individuality that we become incompatible with the
majority of people. For many its not about being shy, or a lack social skills
but that we like to do our own thing and easily end up lonely because of that.

