America's loneliness epidemic: A systemic risk to organizations

https://www.smartbrief.com/original/2019/05/americas-loneliness-epidemic-hidden-systemic-risk-organizations

by laurex • 7 years ago

300 284 7 years ago

rifung2• 7 years ago

One might assume that the higher up the organization you go, the more connected you feel, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Research reported in Harvard Business Review found that half of CEOs report feeling lonely and 61% of those CEOs believed it hindered their performance.

I wonder why people would assume that?

I'd think being CEO would be the loneliest jobs.. You have no peers in your company; literally everyone is one of your reports.

People on the same team can complain to teammates about their management. Managers can complain to other managers about their reports or their managers.

Who does the CEO complain to? Probably their partners, other CEOs, friends, but either way it's most likely people outside of work.

louthy• 7 years ago

Only if you’re trying to keep some kind of aloof separation from the people you manage. There’s no reason a CEO can’t open up and be more inclusive. Things like asking for constructive criticism on your performance and then acting upon that will instill a level of trust that can then create a more open and inclusive working environment.

I’m not a CEO, but I am a CTO/founder and me and the CEO/founder are the de facto joint heads of the organisation.

I often say to my junior devs things like “don’t believe everything I say as gospel. There are lots of false prophets in our industry, so a healthy level of cinicism is good. If you think I’m wrong, don’t be afraid to say so”.

This creates a perceived flatter structure that becomes more collaborative, which leads to a more social work environment. I can only assume it would help for those lonely at-the-top.

The way I see management of people is this: trust your smart people to make good decisions, when there is disagreement or conflict the manager is there to be an arbiter and a guide toward the bigger vision of the organisation, not a dictator

rifung2• 7 years ago

Only if you’re trying to keep some kind of aloof separation from the people you manage. There’s no reason a CEO can’t open up and be more inclusive. Things like asking for constructive criticism on your performance and then acting upon that will instill a level of trust that can then create a more open and inclusive working environment.

I don't believe I stated anything that implied managers can't be inclusive as I think the opposite. I actually think that's a fundamental part of their job.

I'm just skeptical managers and their reports can treat each other as equals because one of them has the power to terminate the other.

Great managers can make that imbalance of power feel nonexistent, but it nevertheless exists, and the issue is you will never know when someone is being fully honest with your or not.

I don't mean to imply that you do this, but sometimes bad managers seem to be unaware of this and get too friendly/cozy and it's actually a huge problem because they just keep doing things which make their reports uncomfortable but the reports are too afraid to speak up. I can only imagine that this is how a lot of sexual harassment begins.

bubblewrap4• 7 years ago

I don't think it is a question of opening up. People won't share the same things with their boss that they share with their coworkers.

ThrustVectoring• 7 years ago

There's a generalized factor that makes it easier to both climb the corporate ladder and make interpersonal connections. On the other hand, it takes more and more effort to win at higher and higher levels of the org-chart tournament, leaving less time for outside hobbies that can foster a sense of belonging.

ianai• 7 years ago

I don’t see CEOs being lonely outside of niche situations. Most are going to have to have some strong desire to tell many people what to do. I’m sure they wind up building a “community” around themselves both inside and out of work.

village-idiot• 7 years ago

I think it’s pretty common to believe that life is better the more power and prestige you’ve got.

Comparison: how many people are surprised when it turns out that a celebrity is miserable? You usually hear “but so many people love them, and they’re rich!”

gingabriska5• 7 years ago

I disagree, CEO isn't a lonely job. You might not be more connected to your reports on personal level but you know quite a lot of other CEOs personally and might also have handful of executives working under you as your personal friends.

granshaw• 7 years ago

I too thought this was a given and have personally experienced it even just being a rung or two on the ladder. It makes total sense - what you do or don’t share or say becomes more important, the stakes are higher, and there’s just generally less people at your level to confide in

CharlesColeman5• 7 years ago

This is a social problem in need of a technical solution. I'm waiting for a startup that can be accurately described as "Uber, but for real friends." Eventually they can phase out the contractors in favor of an ML/AI/ELIZA solution. /s

tehsauce• 7 years ago

This is satire right?

AlexandrB• 7 years ago

It's marked as such (the "/s" at the end). But I didn't realize that it was satire until I got to the "/s". Which is scary.

joker3• 7 years ago

I guarantee you someone out there is thinking seriously about it.

spamizbad• 7 years ago

His post is, but there's probably like 20 people working on VC pitches that aren't.

BonesJustice• 7 years ago

Only until it comes true, at which point it will be considered prophecy.

jodrellblank• 7 years ago

A Modest Proposal to eat the lonely?

dpeck• 7 years ago

That is basically what AdultFriendFinder started as. I realize your comment was for humor but it has been tried several times and seems to always move in the direction of a hookup app.

Animats2• 7 years ago

There's an app for that. Replika[1]

And in Japan, Gatebox.[2] Gatebox is like Amazon's and Google's home "speakers", but with a more personal AI and a display that shows, inevitably, a cute female animated character.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/03/08/replika-c...

[2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/gatebox-azuma-hikari-virt...

com2kid4• 7 years ago

My company, https://www.thawd.net, is working to solve this problem. We help people meet up and have fun.

Creating lasting friendships is a hard problem though. There are only two things that seem to work:

1. A lot of time. On the order of 120 hours spent together to solidify a friendship.

2. Going through a prolonged stressful situation together.

At least 1 of these needs to be present for a long lasting friendship to form.

Combine these two and it is why so many people make great friends in college, lots of time spent together with a small group of people, and the stress level is jacked sky high.

People working at together at startups bond for the same reason.

I am pretty sure of my solution for getting people off the couch, away from Netflix, and talking to each other. What comes next? That is a much harder problem.

crankylinuxuser4• 7 years ago

Uhm.

I'm pretty sure that user:CharlesColeman was saying that in a sarcastic jest, and not as a open petition for someone to actually do that.

I'd hate to see how you sabotage friendship so you can make money.

cirgue• 7 years ago

“We sell authenticity”

laurex• 7 years ago

I recognise the sarcasm, but technology isn't completely incapable of helping. Instead of trying to solve the "matching problem" which has all kinds of issues, there are apps (I work for one) that are helping people have more authentic relationships with people they already care about but just don't have the time/schedule/location to spend time with.

Animats2• 7 years ago

There's an upside to loneliness for employers. Fewer distractions from the job. Less likely to mate and require higher insurance premiums for a spouse and children. Less likely to join a union or act as a a group against the employer.

microcolonel2• 7 years ago

Less likely to mate and require higher insurance premiums for a spouse and children

Lonely people are a tremendous risk to themselves and others, they do a lot of spontaneous dying and tend to get progressively worse at caring about doing their job. I've seen employee loneliness hurt company bottom lines, I don't think that's rare.

drivingmenuts• 7 years ago

But are they as big a risk as married people with children or potential agitators or unionists?

Is there even any objective data on this kind of comparison?

gingabriska5• 7 years ago

I also see people at work who have no family and they see their work as their only reason for living which makes them feel desired, respected and important to others around them even if they are not involved personally in their lives.

rchaud2• 7 years ago

I have met a number of isolated, depressed people across various places of work in my career, and the single common signifier among them all was a slow-to-rapid decline in their quality of work and enthusiasm for the job.

These are not good for employers by any means.

gambler• 7 years ago

Calling what's happening with modern society "loneliness epidemic" is like saying that people in a building set on fire are "suffering from heat exposure and air pollution". A lot of social processes/constructions that make our society stable have been hijacked for profit or deliberately sabotaged for political gains. In both cases it's usually a product of extremely short-term thinking or highest forms of cynicism. Feeling disconnected is nothing more than an illusory side-effect of a whole host of other things.

lostconfused• 7 years ago

Need to call it something. Marx went with "estrangement". Alienation seems to be more commonly used today.

ilikehurdles• 7 years ago

Because I found it interesting, the wikipedia entry on Marx’s Theory of Alienation[1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio...

thescriptkiddie• 7 years ago

Marx used the german word "Entfremdung", which can mean either "estrangement" or "alienation". In context, "Alienation" is the better translation.

dev_dull• 7 years ago

Another option other than malicious intent is that people are choosing to live this way even though they know it makes them unhappy.

Where is the pressure to live differently? It used to come from family and community.

losteric• 7 years ago

I don't think it's a matter of pressure or choice, my grandparents simply lived in a more social environment.

Broad family trees, churches, guilds/unions, even free-range childhoods - gone or fading across the nation.

Aside from work communities, the rest was mostly innate. You can't "choose" to live in a bigger family... but that environment, those pillars of socialization, were what fed into the smaller social niches.

NeedMoreTea4• 7 years ago

Illusory side effect?

Not at all illusory to my mind. We've never been more disconnected from people as we become ever more connected to the net. And that, is certainly not where I thought we'd end up or were even heading for most of the time I've worked in tech.

Society has had 40 years being persuaded to believe in the cult of the individual and that society and community does not exist, and did not matter anyway. All that real terms GDP growth gives fewer and fewer community services and resources because of reasons - political dogma and artificial commercialisation mostly.

Just about every resource, amenity, hobby and club my parents would recognise, and had locally, has been commercialised, consolidated and centralised. There's now fewer of them, and so they're further and further apart. Now it needs transport, and planning. Pubs, clubs, shops and small music venues are closing in record numbers, and besides who can afford (time or money) to go out any more? So Netflix and chill.

Now add apps that try to make every single human interaction no longer actually need human interaction. No need to talk to someone in a bar, or when meeting friends to get a date, we got Tinder marketing images to swipe, and instant messaging to avoid making a call or visit.

Maybe I'm just getting too old but I miss friends calling every week or so just to talk crap for 30 minutes. That got spaced ever wider - now comparatively rare - everyone's on fucking facebook or working on their instagram image. Calls are far more likely to feel intrusive. The other half can talk for England, but spends a fraction of the time on calls compared to 10 or 20 years ago.

Any more disconnected and there'll be a moat around everyone's houses. Convince me it's all illusory. :)

filoleg• 7 years ago

To offer a counter-point: for me, all those social networks and internet in general facilitated some of the most meaningful friendships of my life. Mind you, I am talking about real-life friendships, not just "internet friends" kind of stuff.

For example, two of my closest friends that I hang out with on the order of multiple times a week (dinners, concerts, sports games, etc.), I would have probably never met them if it wasn't for the common facebook groups. We don't even use FB that much (I log in about once every couple of days for 5-10 minutes at most), but I definitely attribute a chunk of the success of our friendship to FB. That's how we met, that's how we find new events and things to do (oh, your acquaintance X liked that new art exhibit opening on the museum FB page, you would probably be interested in checking that out with your friends!).

Also, I don't know where you live, but in my area, things are only getting better in terms of places for meaningful socialization. New small niche bars, concert venues, and hobby places (hacker spaces/libraries/garage co-ops/hobby-specific clubs/etc.) open up at a regular rate and seem to attract a lot of people, many of which become regulars. I talk to bartenders quite often, and most of them seem to echo that sentiment.

we got [...] instant messaging to avoid making a call or visit.

Maybe if someone uses messaging as a REPLACEMENT to hanging out in person, they never wanted to hang out in the first place? To me, that sounds like a good thing, because in this scenario, messaging cuts out forced in-person interactions of low quality.

cameronbrown• 7 years ago

we got [...] instant messaging to avoid making a call or visit.

From my observation a lot of young people struggle with the social anxiety of a phone call.

JimboOmega• 7 years ago

It's just an anecdotal point, but I've been meeting way more people in real life than online for dating purposes recently.

What's interesting (and a little frustrating) is that most of these people profess that they are introverts who rarely ever go out. You would think the segment of people you meet at bars/clubs would be people who go to bars/clubs and are thus fairly outgoing, but it's not the case.

Granted this is in the context of the queer community, which in some ways got hit very hard by apps/etc; it used to be very hard to meet queer people outside of queer bars (because how else would you reliably know, especially in a world where such identities were usually hidden?).

Speaking personally, it's very deleterious to me if I go even a couple days without talking to people IRL (god forbid I'm WFH), so I sometimes make myself go out. Sort of like going to the gym, I'm sometimes not in the mood but pretty much always feel better afterwards (assuming I don't end up with a terrible hangover ;) ). I think it's worth it for the casual HN reader to see just how well they handle staying in all the time if, indeed, they do.

mjevans• 7 years ago

What is the inverse of loneliness? Belonging, a sense of community and companionship.

It is my perception that, at least in America and I suspect in many other places, competition pressure centered around places with strong "second place" (Job) opportunities combined with decades of civic mal-planning and treating symptoms (for some) rather than root causes (for all) have combined with a regressive tax/compensation structures to destroy the middle class and upward mobility.

There are not enough "first places" near jobs. The cost of those places and the demands of the jobs combine to sour the time, energy, and opportunity left for "third places" (#1). Areas and activities where idle time is spent when seeking connections to others. Those places, at least for me, also tend to have a high barrier to participation/entry and very poor discover-ability.

I theorize this might be related to the same issue described in another post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19902782 where "the old Internet" had many small venues, who's main reason for existence was not profit, but the benefit of their "members" (users). They were private, intimate, locations where fans of a given thing could gather and learn more about that thing and themselves; with small local histories that allowed for safer exploration.

A more stable place, where I had a real career I believed in, and a real home that I could start putting equity in to and around; a place where actual roots and structures and friends that would probably stay in the area also existed. That's what I feel we need to actually fight and win the battle against loneliness.

#1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

blurbleblurble• 7 years ago

I'm reminded of this poignant song by Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCRZLr9oRw

xof7112• 7 years ago

There's a world to be discovered... Only takes the will to do so really...

genema• 7 years ago

Here is an interesting thought: in UX design and when building a startup we are encouraged to interact with users to learn what they want and need, then we craft the experience and values around that. Does this ever happen in civic planning? Do city planners ever talk to the public, to design experts, to community leaders? I honestly don't know, but I suspect the answer is NO.

When I moved to Japan it was sort of strange to see residences and businesses in the same building. The longer I live here the clearer it becomes that zoning laws have a lot to do with good civic planning. Of course there are side effects to open zoning, communities don't always look as beautiful (but I think the blame also falls on planners / lack of community effort), but overall loose restrictions allow for more useful places. When I lived in Irvine, CA, I had to drive everywhere to do anything. The sad thing is many people choose communities like Irvine precisely because it is structured this way (I did initially). In truth, you can visually tell how depressed everyone is and how hard they try to make themselves feel better. Despite the average income being below 100k for couples, people are driving 50-130k cars, living in places they can barely afford all for the sake of image. I would argue that the image issue stems in large part from loneliness and a feeling of isolation.

In all, I agree that perhaps the issue is not any one factor, but all of them combined. Rise of technology, fall of communities, poor civic planning, increasing income disparity are just the tip of the iceberg.

jdavis7034• 7 years ago

Yes, planners talk to the general public. You can talk to them at your planning commission if you want by going up to them and well taking to them...

Additionally if you raise a good point during public comment a planning commissioner might even ask the planner to provide a response.

Also locally I know a lot of planners are pretty active on Twitter, so you can talk with them that ways.

Lastly a lot of bad planning is driven by politics (the planners are just staff who have to implement what the mayor and/or council says to do). If you want to change bad urban planning change your city’s politics.

gingabriska5• 7 years ago

I thought reason for this is that Japanese are more homogenous than Americans, so it's much easier for them to sympathize with their own.

dagw2• 7 years ago

Does this ever happen in civic planning? Do city planners ever talk to the public, to design experts, to community leaders? I honestly don't know, but I suspect the answer is NO.

They absolutely do, but the problem is that the "user base" is huge and there is never anything even close to a consensus about the 'right' thing to do among those groups.

nikanj• 7 years ago

Third place experiments have a tendency to turn into impromptu homeless shelters.

Im' not saying we don't need shelters, but Pete and Bob from accounting are not like to chill out at one.

jtmcmc4• 7 years ago

addressing the root causes of homelessness would probably make sense. This is part of the fundamental mismanagement of america...

klyrs• 7 years ago

Im' not saying we don't need shelters, but Pete and Bob from accounting are not like to chill out at one.

Yeah, let's flip that. In this situation, Pete and Bob are self-isolating because they belong to a different societal caste than "third place people." It's sad. Pete and Bob are lonely, and very close to friendless -- but homeless people are forced into a community where they end up finding friends and support structures that Pete and Bob can't even imagine. But if Pete and Bob enter a third place, they'll probably shun, and be shunned by, the folks who frequent that place. All of society is harmed by our lack of altruism. Homelessness is everybody's problem.

handsomechad• 7 years ago

"It is my perception that, at least in America and I suspect in many other places, competition pressure centered around places with strong "second place" (Job) opportunities combined with decades of civic mal-planning and treating symptoms (for some) rather than root causes (for all) have combined with a regressive tax/compensation structures to destroy the middle class and upward mobility. "

i literally cannot parse this sentence. i tried - i am a native english speaker but it's just confusing to me what the proposition being made here is. i tried reading it a few times.

it is late but if someone could clarify it would be much appreciated.

bloomca• 7 years ago

I am not a native speaker and not an author, but from my understanding, they mean that we focus on jobs, not on communities (as society), and then try to patch it later (e.g. go to specific clubs, gather in some places, etc). Moreover, it is hard to jump between social classes, therefore hard to change place of living/your surroundings.

So, in a nutshell, making our lives around job makes it hard (for majority) to live a fulfilling life outside of your job.

naibafo• 7 years ago

Maybe according to OPs perception, the reasons destroying the middle class and upward mobility are a combination of: competition pressure centered around places with strong "second place" (Job) opportunities, decades of civic mal-planning, treating symptoms (for some) rather than root causes (for all) and regressive tax/compensation structures

But I am not sure what that actually means. And I am not a native speaker.

spiralx2• 7 years ago

First place is home, second place is work, third place is communal areas - sometimes the media is referred to as a fourth place.

He's saying that homes are built/valued almost entirely with access to jobs in mind and not communal spaces, and that this has not been helped by zoning laws that enforce this problem, nor by a lack of political will to tackle either this issue or any other deep-seated causes of the problem - things like housing costs for instance, which is part of a wider issue of increasing wealth disparity across the US.

Or perhaps more succinctly, the problem is a focus on fixing the surface problems of an increasingly well-off minority, instead of trying to tackle the underlying structural problems so as to benefit everybody.

skgoa• 7 years ago

in America and I suspect in many other places, competition pressure centered around places with strong "second place" (Job) opportunities combined with decades of civic mal-planning and treating symptoms (for some) rather than root causes (for all) have combined with a regressive tax/compensation structures to destroy the middle class and upward mobility.

I suspect this is almost exclusively an american issue. There is a big societal focus on "getting ahead", "keeping up with the Joneses" etc. in the US that just doesn't exist in most other countries.

rchaud2• 7 years ago

In some parts of Canada, the Red Cross sends volunteers to weekly check-ins in senior citizen communities. Nothing formal, just a friendly knock and a "how are you, need any help with anything today?" kind of conversation.

How long before working adults needs something similar because the conversations they have, which take up the majority of their day are all so "productized" and artificial?

itsaidpens• 7 years ago

Any data if the suburbs and car culture contribute to this?

daodedickinson3• 7 years ago

Urbanization certainly doesn't solve it.

humanrebar4• 7 years ago

Agreed. People riding busses and trains for 10+ hours per week aren't exactly in better shape than people with equivalent car commutes.

clarry3• 7 years ago

Agreed. Walking past random people on the sidewalk doesn't help any more than walking past random people in the supermarket (which you surely do even if you live and die by a car in the burbs).

bbrian• 7 years ago

I went looking because I believe it does, and found a Consumerist article, "People Love Their Cars Because They're Lonely", discussing a journal article, "Truly, Madly, Deeply: Consumers in the Throes of Material Possession Love".

I believe it does because the greater distance cars allow you to travel mean the areas you spend your time in are less likely to coincide with the areas others spend time in, so unlike the small town I grew up in, people don't become familiar, then friendships don't form. The car also allows shopping in large supermarkets, which result in the local shops closing down, and chance to become familiar with faces of the staff and fellow customers is lost.

I've been at parties and been recognised ~"I see you cycling along xxx", which I can't imagine happens to people who drive, both due to the enclosed nature of cars and the speed.

https://consumerist.com/2011/07/22/study-people-love-their-c...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658338

clarry3• 7 years ago

My experience is that people don't get familiar (and certainly don't form friendships) on commutes, whether it's on foot or by bike or by car or whatever.

kashyapc• 7 years ago

Last night I read the "Happiness" chapter (no. 18) from Steven Pinker's fine book, Enlightenment Now, where he reviews data on loneliness in the US students (among two dozen other graphs in the first twenty chapters).

Pinker implies social critics abuse the words "epidemic" and "crisis".

After reviewing the downwards-sloping graph (plotted from 1978-2011) and more data, Pinker writes:

[quote] Modern life, then, has not crushed our minds and bodies, turned us into atomized machines suffering from toxic levels of emptiness and isolation, or set us drifting apart without human contact or emotion. How did this misconception arise? Partly it came out of the social critic's standard formula for sowing panic: Here's an anecdote, therefore it's a trend, therefore it's a crisis. But partly came from genuine changes in how people interact. People see each other less in traditional venues like clubs, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, and dinner parties, and more in informal gatherings via digital media. They confide in fewer distant cousins but more in co-workers. They are less likely to have large numbers of friends but also less likely to want a large number of friends. But just because social life looks different today from the way it looked in the 1950s, it does not mean that humans, that quintessentially social species, have become any less social. [/quote]

daodedickinson3• 7 years ago

Seems like Pinker is one of the few who can remain sanguine. He's not going to be able to persuade many.

hn_throwaway_99• 7 years ago

TBH, that quote is certainly not persuading me. I don't have lots of statistical data to look into, but I will say that myself and my peer group (gen X) at least seem much lonelier, with negative consequences, than my parents and their peer group.

A lot of it is that it's just so much easier to be isolated today than in the past. When my parents moved in the past, they may have hired movers, but they stilled called me, my siblings, and some of their friends to help. I just get on thumbtack to find some help and then hire movers. When my parents were coming back from a flight, one of their kids would pick them up from the airport. I just take an Uber.

Part of forming strong social relationships is a need to rely on other people. It's much easier to get by today without relying on anyone, and that can have significant negative side effects.

mistermann3• 7 years ago

Modern life, then, has not crushed our minds and bodies

It is indeed objectively correct that modern life has not crushed our minds and bodies.

Modern life has not turned us into atomized machines suffering from toxic levels of emptiness and isolation

It is indeed objectively correct that modern life has not turned us into atomized machines suffering from toxic levels of emptiness and isolation (unless perhaps you include suicides from self-perceived loneliness, I assume Pinker does not include those in his analysis).

Modern life has not set us drifting apart without human contact or emotion.

To me, this seems true only if you take it pedantically literally, where "without" = "absolutely none" (and even then, I wouldn't be surprised if it was not entirely true).

How did this misconception arise? Partly it came out of the social critic's standard formula for sowing panic: Here's an anecdote, therefore it's a trend, therefore it's a crisis.

Really? Is there no non-hyperbolic (see 2 out of 3 of the examples provided above) way that can or has been used to describe the increased social isolation that many people are in fact feeling, regardless of the "expert" opinions of people like Steven Pinker?

But partly came from genuine changes in how people interact. People see each other less in traditional venues like clubs, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, and dinner parties, and more in informal gatherings via digital media. They confide in fewer distant cousins but more in co-workers. They are less likely to have large numbers of friends but also less likely to want a large number of friends.

And yet, any feeling of social isolation is one's imagination? And only as a reaction to the fear mongering of social critics?

But just because social life looks different today from the way it looked in the 1950s, it does not mean that humans, that quintessentially social species, have become any less social.

That, specifically, is objectively correct. However, the fact that humans have become less social (as Pinker himself just finished describing above) might be a sign.

Hopefully he releases a revised edition so we know know what to think and how to feel.

To me, this style of writing may contribute to the "backlash" against expert opinions we hear about.

Smithalicious• 7 years ago

What are you trying to say? All you do is assert that a very literal interpretation of what he's saying is correct, with the implication that what he's trying to say isn't correct, but you don't actually offer any arguments against his actual positions

irrational2• 7 years ago

Wait, people confide in coworkers? I've had some coworkers for 18 years. I'm fairly certain they don't know anything about me beyond what I'm working on currently. Why would I ever tell a coworker private information about myself?

jniedrauer2• 7 years ago

Why would I ever tell a coworker private information about myself?

Because you've spent most of your waking hours with them every day for a third of your life and we're social creatures.

If I didn't make friends with my coworkers, I wouldn't have friends.

jdavis7034• 7 years ago

To each their own. Some people value privacy. That’s fine. But most of us spend more waking time with coworkers than with our partners or spouses, so it’s nice to open up at work.

RandomInteger4• 7 years ago

I like Pinker's views with regard to violence and such, but I think he has largely missed the mark on this point. Maybe I'm just trying to generalize my own situation so as not to feel alone (sort of ironic I guess).

Noos2• 7 years ago

There's a huge difference between going to church every Sunday, and talking about church on Reddit. Internet ties are transient, anonymous, and adversarial. The idea of the meetup came into being precisely because these ties were so weak.

even coworkers...you have weaker ties because too much social sharing can and will get you fired. Coworkers are under no obligation to be with you long term and have no bond apart from their employer. The reaon why people make social ties among them is because they literally have no one else; their family may live in another state, and friend networks can be absurdly hard to maintain.

Pinker is just off base on this one. Part of the modern knowledge worker's idealization of college and replication of it in their workspaces is that it's one of the few times where social interaction is forced through proximity. No one, and I mean no one, has spoken rapturously about the glorious communities of online learning.

amznll• 7 years ago

At Amazon today on one their largest email lists there is a discussion of why you should not say "hi" or any other communication with a female at any time but especially when standing at an elevator inside the building.

This position of loneliness is going to get worse before it gets better when the prevailing attitude is, don't talk to anyone.

bubblewrap4• 7 years ago

Horrifying. I don't think I could stand working for such a company.

cced2• 7 years ago

Interesting. What is the logic behind not saying « hi » to females?

I know that this is sexist, but I would at least give them the benefit of the doubt. Not being familiar with these email list, I’m unsure as to the general « feel » of these discussions.

Can you provide more insight?

philwelch• 7 years ago

Interesting. What is the logic behind not saying « hi » to females?

Refusing to speak with someone is the safest way to avoid the appearance of sexually harassing them.

wes-k• 7 years ago

Is this person just being nice? Are they going to follow me? This is on my daily commute, is this going to become a thing? Does this person have an agenda?

We may feel it is a simple and kind gesture but it isn’t. Because woman are harassed so freaking much they basically always have to be on guard. Never know when a nice person will turn into a creep or worse turn into an assailant.

(It was only through my partner telling me her experiences that I learned these things)

tathougies14• 7 years ago

A lack of shared philosophy means there's no open, shared spaces. Like tonight, I'm going to a Knights of Columbus meeting. On Thursday, we're leading marriage prep at our church. On Monday, it's my men's club meeting. Later in the month, we're having a church BBQ. Most of the time, we're over socialized.

For the elderly, we have a shut-ins ministry to visit them. For the poor, the Vincent de Paul society still goes two-by-two to all those who have asked. We've gotten rid of churches, replaced them with nothing particularly inspiring, and now we're wondering where all the social cohesion went.

EDIT: I will point out that I'm not restricting myself only to churches here. I think, in the past, America also had this characteristic -- anyone who believed in American ideals and sought to further them was an American. De Tocqueville mentioned this quality of Americans (every American is a president) in his various writings on American social structure. Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea', as is seen in the reluctance of people to serve on juries, for example.

CalRobert2• 7 years ago

I really miss church. Having a day where you knew you'd meet up with friendly people, have a potluck after, and maybe head to the beach, go for a hike, etc. was really nice.

It's a shame I was a fraud since I never truly believed, and eventually stopped pretending. I haven't found anything to fill that part of my life since.

karmelapple• 7 years ago

How about volunteer with a group advocating for something you deeply support?

Or how about Universal Unitarians?

011000113• 7 years ago

Atheism will always struggle to grow its ranks until it replaces the necessary features provided by religion. I'm an atheist/agnostic who spent a few years in a very cult-like christian denomination. I can say a lot of bad things about it, but it did help me to become more social and taught me a lot about the benefits of shared beliefs. Having a network of people to call on in times of need is priceless. Regular socialization and group participation helped me graduate from being an anti-social outcast.

You can form groups around hobbies and activities, but the bonds just aren't strong enough to overcome our natural tendencies to judge others or take offense at the slightest indiscretions.

I think a lot of people like me end up Unitarian Universalists just so they can gain some semblance of a community again.

nervousvarun2• 7 years ago

Assuming you're in America, I recommend Habitat for Humanity.

You're giving a family a home and the equity in that home that can legitimately change their lives for the better.

Plus you learn useful skills (home repair is always good to know), it's decent exercise, and it's HIGHLY social as well.

fenwick67• 7 years ago

Yeah I lived that life for a while too, I was even in the church band for a bit, after I admitted atheism to myself. I loved church, except the whole god part.

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

Check out https://www.sundayassembly.com/

yingw787• 7 years ago

I find that true too. Friends from mutual interest oftentimes are friends of convenience. You don't know them for their intrinsic value, you only know them by what they bring to the table.

And it sucks.

hikarudo• 7 years ago

"If friendship has a basis it is this: that a person may desire the company of someone for whom he has no specific purpose" - Roger Scruton

chapium• 7 years ago

Refitting our libraries to be more like community centers would help. Having visited a few libraries abroad, I think ghis is whats missing in the US.

fjsolwmv2• 7 years ago

This is happening a lot across the US, but should happen more. And doing so doesn't put the books part at risk, as some fear; and it might turn people on to books by proximity.

tathougies14• 7 years ago

I don't think this helps. It's not just having a space to meet. It's having a reason to meet. Without the unifying force of religion or another philosophy, we invariably devolve into family-based group identity, which is another word for ethnonationalism or identity politics.

zbentley• 7 years ago

That's a good direction to work towards.

However, there's a lot of what engineers would call "tech debt" in that area. Make libraries more like community centers, and you have to deal with an inrush of people who have been rejected by other parts of the failing social safety nets in their lives. In the process of trying to pay that debt, many libraries are judged (ignorantly, I believe) as havens for the crazy or hostile.

It's a MUCH bigger problem than just "make $x space better/safer/more accomodating", though that is part of it.

scarejunba• 7 years ago

That's a space Cafés Philosophiques fill in secular society in some places, but I don't want to go to one in America. It'll probably be full of weirdos. "Third places" like this need to be absent of tension.

Anyway, I fixed that by having a key set of friends who always hang out, usually at a specific friend's home. We play board games guaranteed every two weeks, are on a shared Slack instance, and hang out practically every week. Feels good.

Back in the UK, it was the pub. Same folks at the pub. You can count on them for help. Quite a family.

chepaslaaa• 7 years ago

Tocqueville wrote that shit about every american being a president at a time when slavery was in full swing. He had the rose tinted googles of a french noble. You have rose tinted googles if you think ethnic factionalism has gotten worst.

tathougies14• 7 years ago

You have rose tinted googles if you think ethnic factionalism has gotten worst.

Nah... as a brown guy, I've seen America go from 'you can be American too' to 'you shouldn't even try' (from the left because it's immoral to want to be 'American' and from the right because it's impossible). I think it's worse.

slavery was in full swing.

Despite the inhumanity of it, one point of slavery was to convert the perceived-to-be uncivilized slaves to 'civilization'. The means were immoral, but the intent proves my point.

dv_dt• 7 years ago

I don't know if the reluctance of people to serve on juries is really an example of reluctance to serve, or an example of reduced wages & benefits given to workers, and a reluctance to serve with a financial hardship. All sorts of social gatherings, including civic life is affected by the tightening of finances and leisure.

tathougies14• 7 years ago

You may be right. That is an angle I didn't really explore in my comment. Again though, I think having organizations, such as churches, which are (hopefully) continuously pointing out that money isn't the end-all-be-all of life does help and are willing to offer financial 'aid' to its members (in quotes, because this aid is often not explicitly financial in nature, such as offers of free day care).

bilbo0s3• 7 years ago

Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism...

Are you aware of what de Tocqueville, thought of Native Americans and Blacks? Even from de Tocqueville's brief time here, he could see the ethnic factionalism. If you're uncertain he saw the US in terms of ethnic factions, reread chapter 18 of his Democracy in America. Ethnic factionalism was central to the US. (It is this ethnic factionalism that, historically, holds us back actually.)

Now, I might concede that Identity Politics may be new. (Only in the sense that we certainly had no LGBTQ etc political movements here in the 19th century for instance.) But to suggest that ethnic factionalism in the US is new is just to ignore the history of the United States.

tathougies14• 7 years ago

But to suggest that ethnic factionalism in the US is new is just to ignore the history of the United States.

Nothing of what I said suggests that ethnic factionalism be new, but only that it be of sufficiently different character. I do still stand by that. Both those on the right and those on the left have each convinced the other that those from different ethnic groups are inherently incapable of joining the American enterprise. While I believe certain groups were marginalized in the past, I believe this was due to what were perceived as temporary and fixable conditions. There was still an underlying belief held by at least one major party that... with sufficient education / propaganda / indoctrination... any man or woman could be 'converted' to the in-group of 'American'. I think there is no longer any political party that actually stands for this kind of integration. The left sees this sort of integration as immoral. The right sees this sort of integration as impossible.

Religion or shared philosophy does -- in my opinion -- play a significant role in relieving racism. For example, in my opinion, this is why Catholics are the group most likely to marry a person of another race, even if they are more likely to marry Catholics -- the Church has continued to convert people from many disparate communities, despite the modern day injunction against doing so.

flukus2• 7 years ago

A lack of shared philosophy means there's no open, shared spaces. Like tonight, I'm going to a Knights of Columbus meeting. On Thursday, we're leading marriage prep at our church. On Monday, it's my men's club meeting. Later in the month, we're having a church BBQ. Most of the time, we're over socialized.

Church is not only open shared space, my equivalent is the local sports club for instance. There are many optional activities through the week, lawn bowls Saturday Afternoon and Tuesday night, Cricket Saturday afternoon, pool Wednesday night, darts Thursday night, the parents from the next door school meet there (often with teachers) on Friday afternoon when thye pick the kids up and the bar is open everyday. On any given day you can find children running around to people in their 90's and everyone from the wealthiest few percent of society to the destitute. The lack of shared philosophy is a good thing, it exposes you to a much broader range of society.

Places like this might be a lot rarer than they should be, but that is not an intractable problem, I've seen similar communities develop from as little as a bit of land granted by the local government and a shed. There are still some things groups like this could learn from some churches though, as things get increasingly legalistic the answer to personal infractions is to throw them out, we need to be more community oriented and forgiving for instance.

tathougies14• 7 years ago

No no no. Your examples of sports clubs are exactly antithetical to the kinds of shared spaces I described. My point was that you need shared space based on a shared philosophy (or metaphysics or religion). Interest-based groups are nice, but they do not foster the kinds of connectedness that are fostered in religious-like groups.

For example, my brother and I share little interests in common. However, we would trust each other with our children. On the other hand, I would not trust my programming language community friends with my kids. Why not? Because my relationship with my brother is based on a shared philosophy of what's important in life (given to us by our parents of course), whereas my relationship with the PL community is based on simple shared interests. For all I know, my PL friends could all be nazis.

That's the problem with interest-based clubs -- without an underlying worldview, they cannot foster the kind of intimate social experiences fostered in church. I mean, I would trust many of my church friends with taking care of our children, despite having absolutely no shared interests in common. That's really different to how I view my friends with shared interests, who -- although I may spend more time with -- I don't trust at that intimate level.

azhu• 7 years ago

Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea'

I hate to open from this angle, but does your ethnicity happen to be the dominant one in this country? If it’s not, I’m not sure how you’re not seeing how ethnic factionalism is a step towards the realization of the idea of America that you purport it to have murdered.

The American idea is unimpeded opportunity. Any individual’s definition of unimpeded opportunity depends on their culture. Friction between cultures creates a perception of impeded opportunity. The truth is that what is perceived as lost by one is gained many times over by every other.

tathougies14• 7 years ago

I am conspicuously non white; not that that actually matters (yet another way in which ethno nationalism has become entrenched -- you have to justify your own beliefs with skin color!). And yes, your inability to fathom that a non white guy may perceive ethnic tension to be higher now just shows how disconnected the races are.

I dont believe that theres any value in having several distinct cultures in one nation. For one, i think some cultures are better than others. American values are frankly superior to most other cultures.

We should feel free to share aesthetics (which is what most mean by multiculturalism), but I dont see the value in being forced to adopt other philosophies or moralities (which is what has been forced down our throats as multiculturalism). For example, we can decide chow mein tastes nice and bhangra dancing is fun, but we cant let that influence our fundamental conception of freedom, which is ultimately firmly rooted in a Greco-roman value system via Puritanism.

jtmcmc4• 7 years ago

wow you managed to work in a vaguely racist patronizing attack in your pro church post bemoaning the lack of upstanding morality in america.

It's no wonder one of the richest organizations in the world is able to fund plenty of third places for its members.

As it stands you can derive community along any number of axes while even celebrating diversity.

The issue isn't there are no potentialities for community but rather that there are few spaces available and little time for most people who struggle to make ends meet.

watwut4• 7 years ago

Where do you see racist patronizing attack?

tathougies14• 7 years ago

As it stands you can derive community along any number of axes while even celebrating diversity.

Hmm... the Catholic church celebrates diversity, so I'm not sure what you're on about.

watwut4• 7 years ago

Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea'

Yeah, there is more ethnic factionalism and identity politics then at the time of ku-klux-klan or reconstruction or Jim Crow ...

I get your point, but the races were divided before now.

NTDF92• 7 years ago

Too much of our identity is tied to our employment.

Add to it the fact that our economic system is inflationary (and badly measured at that), not working literally causes one to fall behind.

So no one can actually take time off to do something different, cultivate lasting relationships, join a guitar club, play stupid games, travel, spend time with kids, spouses, family etc. without FOMO on inflation and career.

molteanu2• 7 years ago

Nicely put! Did you notice that not even in sports can we relax and make lasting friendships and a relaxing atmosphere? If you didn't win, you went there for nothing. As a result, everybody seems to be concentrating on keeping score and winning and not on having a good time.

NTDF92• 7 years ago

Did you notice that not even in sports can we relax and make lasting friendships and a relaxing atmosphere?

Team sports are different. They tend to create lasting friendships quite often. Not always but quite often. Same for music bands, tiny startups, backpacking groups etc.

xof7112• 7 years ago

People should go out more... There's a life outside these walls!!

morsmodr• 7 years ago

I would like to make 2 points

Firstly, In the past there were certain ways of being social - clubs, churches etc. But just because humans engage in a different form of being social doesn't immediately mean all is gone. It depends on whether the individual goes to meaningful meetup groups or whether he/she uses tinder and calls it social. There are way too many options and being distracted between many of these is true

Secondly, Humans have had a social need, yes. That is how we evolved, yes. But evolution never stops, it is like walking on a slow gradient curve, each step is probably 1 or 2 generations. Why is human evolution viewed as static? Why is the declining need to be social today viewed as bad? Are we sure that people being alone are really feeling lonely?

When change happens in the environment, side effects do show until the mind and body adapt to the new environment. We could well see a future (100-200 years from now) where a human isn't necessarily social because of the underlying need, that need could get quite minimized in future generations. That human could be social when he/she needs to and chooses to do so people of similar thinking / mind and could be by themselves for long periods of time. Why is this viewed as bad?

Such humans could be extremely well suited for space travels because they can easily handle being by themselves rather than people who constantly need to be in groups to affirm their existence

mistermann3• 7 years ago

Many things in life "could be" true, but with things such as this (human psychology related), it often takes very long time periods before the truth begins to show itself. This would be my reason for considering these major social changes as potentially bad, and certainly worthy of concern/attention/discussion.

voidhorse• 7 years ago

I’ve recently picked up the works of Vilem Flusser, a pretty underrated philosopher who touched on this subject in his 1983 book, Post-History. Much of what Flusser writes about is prescient, but in regard to increased loneliness in modern culture specifically, he argues that a major shift from dialogic forms (speaking with) of communication to strictly discursive forms (speaking to) is responsible. Even our so called “social media/social networks” are discursive and not dialogic—aimes more at telling people about ourselves than stimulating converstion. Part of this shift stems from specialization—when our interests are so highly individuated we have no shared grounds from which to speak, which reduces us to speaking about “pop culture” a shallow solutions to this growing gap in mutual experience.

(Even this post is discursive, not dialogic, just like many of the other parents in this thread, since the technological collective communication mechanism doesn’t emulate real conversation—in online chats you’re already speaking to everyone and no one thanks to the veneer of anonymity/new identity a user name gives you, coupled with the guarantee that others in an online forum are coming from disparate backgrounds. The notion of an audience with shared values/cultural origins has dissolved and been replaced be a universal Everyman/Noman which in turn leads us toward the dissolution of community outside the realm of technical specialization.

reubenswartz4• 7 years ago

This is a great point. And the irony is that the more discursive the environment is, the less people feel heard, the more loudly (at least metaphorically) they speak, in a vicious cycle. This doesn't fulfill the need for conversation and interaction.

(Some people suggest that the rise in therapy for wealthy urban people is largely because this is the easiest way for some people to have someone actually listen to them. I don't know if it's true but it seems very sad.)

petra2• 7 years ago

Great point.

Are there any good solutions ? Any place to read about good solutions ?

bthallplz• 7 years ago

I suspect that I started to misunderstand where you were coming from, but I think that I caught myself.

---

I suspect that you're using the term "Everyman" in a different way than I'm used to it being used — as that every man is set apart from the rest. I'm used to it being used in the way that any man holds in common some/many characteristics, beliefs, and behaviors with all other men.

The notion of an audience with shared values/cultural origins has dissolved and been replaced be a universal Everyman/Noman which in turn leads us toward the dissolution of community outside the realm of technical specialization.

Using my view of Everymanism, we would suspect that individualization would not necessarily move us away from shared values. We would need to distill out our similarities from our differences via discourse, and we would suspect that similarities would be found.

atupis• 7 years ago

Social media where you "speak with" sounds fantastic, but how you would do it Slack/IRC is one way do it, those have usually tightly knitted community but there is definitely other more creative ways do that.

indigochill4• 7 years ago

IMO it's just a question of design emphasis. That is, Slack/IRC work well for this kind of thing specifically because their rooms are created for the discussion of some broad topic. Social media (Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/Instagram/etc) generally doesn't because it doesn't have the same emphasis on topical discussions (Facebook groups being something of an exception, although uptake is limited).

So to create social media that lends itself this direction, take the focus away from individual expression in a bubble and put the focus on topics, just like Slack/IRC/forums/BBSes do/did.

Google+ was actually a step in this direction and was the home to a number of topic-focused communities as a result, but Google wasn't prepared to follow through. Maybe someone else will.

indigochill4• 7 years ago

With you on most of this, but isn't anonymity through usernames orthogonal to the discursive/dialogic shift (hey, turning a discursive text into a dialogic one!)?

I'm thinking specifically in the context of an early 00's forum, people had their usernames but if you spent time on the forum and it became a community, you "knew" the people behind those usernames through the dialogue you had with them on the forum. You might have no real name or face to associate it with, but you understood how they thought and felt about things, what their interests were, and that kind of thing.

And it's true that a parent post would start discursive, but it would often be an invitation to dialogue. It's sort of like if you're at a party with everyone in the world, and groups start forming around conversations people find interesting, with people constantly drifting in and out of the conversation with less regard for whether you actually know anyone in the conversation than people exert in physical space.

petra2• 7 years ago

The basic problem with written communications, is that it's a just not good for emotional connections. There's some research to back that.

Maybe that's why communications degrade to discourse.

Inu• 7 years ago

The rise of secularism probably is a factor. The social function of religion was to create a link between people and to regulate and control their coexistence. It provided a set of collective rituals, customs, festivities. Take that away and what remains is essentially the family unit and the market forces.

zanny• 7 years ago

I think this might hint to one of the greater arguments for communism, which is functionally society as religion.

That being said, I don't feel for a second that religion is the only way to fill that hole practically. But it requires a society that both recognizes the need for that social cohesion and institutionalizes that which can maintain it. 2 weeks paid vacation HOA quarter acre with a picket fence and blacked out windows mainstream American culture is definitely not trying to accomplish that.

humanrebar4• 7 years ago

Take that away and what remains is essentially the family unit and the market forces.

Or what's left of them anyway.

Seems like you left zero-sum tribalism and perpetual consumerist distraction off of your list.

astazangasta• 7 years ago

One clue as to why there is a problem might be in the framing of the article, where the individual's despair only matters because it might start to impinge on someone's bottom line.

This is an old problem, called "alienation". Marx wrote about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

11thEarlOfMar• 7 years ago

I sense that there is an exploitation of human nature at work in this. Fear and outrage get attention, and attention gets revenue. It's amazing the number of times that both liberal and conservative personalities are associated with the world's most horrific events because that triggers outrage and gains clicks, and then turns out to have been fabricated via 'recontexting'.

Outrage drives polarization and polarization drives people apart. Fear drives caution and caution keeps people from getting together.

At this point, the only antidote for loneliness is to be aware of it and develop the courage to introduce yourself to someone you don't know. And then try to start doing that on a regular basis.

solidsnack90003• 7 years ago

It's amazing the number of times that both liberal and conservative personalities are associated with the world's most horrific events because that triggers outrage and gains clicks, and then turns out to have been fabricated via 'recontexting'.

What’s an example of this recontexting?

austincheney• 7 years ago

Could this loneliness be a primary factor in the increased sensitivity and fragility of younger generations?

I also wonder if loneliness is a key factor in some people preferring lies and deceptions in exchange for kindness in their interpersonal relationships. I know this may sound strange expressed so directly, but I have seen numerous comments on HN claim exactly this preference very directly and clearly.

Mirioron4• 7 years ago

I'm purely guessing here, but I think loneliness could be a factor in increased fragility. When you're fragile it's easier for people to hurt you and when you're hurt you get attention and consolation from others. This can alleviate the loneliness.

LUmBULtERA• 7 years ago

the increased sensitivity and fragility of younger generations?

Can you cite your source for this assertion? Thanks!

alexashka• 7 years ago

I'd replace 'lonely' with 'lacking perspective', due to life being unbelievably great.

It's hard to know the difference - just go without hot water, electricity or much food for a few days and then see how much 'loneliness' bothers you.

It's an epidemic of life being so incredible, that we're constantly bored and restless. Strong human connections are made through negative experiences, not ecstasy.

You can't have an awesome life of doing nothing difficult, and yet have great close relationships. You have to choose.

We have choice now - in the past, you had to suffer. Now, you can choose to, if you want. Most people are choosing to not and slowly degenerate into old age, with a bored half-smile on their face at best, cluelessly bitching about trivialities at worst. It's all fine - just remember, you have to choose to suffer, if you want to achieve a great life.

watwut4• 7 years ago

People without water and electricity suffer from loneliness too. Always did. The churches have structures that provide company to sick and old for that reason. If you ever read books from previous eras including war times, they deal with loneliness a lot.

Physical suffering does not make you not lonely. It just means it sux for more reasons then just one.

luckydata4• 7 years ago

We built our cities to isolate us, it's not that strange that we're now isolated. I was born and raised in Europe, came to the US when I got married, lived in California for the most part.

My quality of life has dramatically worsened even as I make more money I've ever made. I attribute that to the lack of casual spaces for aggregation, to free time outside being limited almost exclusively to places where to sit down and eat, shopping or hiking. I don't walk to work, I don't have a neighborhood bar where I can stop after work and see my neighbors and shoot the shit, when my wife and kid left town for a weekend I was extremely lonely and I decided to garden.

When I'm old and will not be able to drive anymore, this will get even worse. This country has built one of the worst lifestyles I've experienced in my life and it's not sustainable. I know it's difficult but the sooner we all realize we have built a bad place to thrive and we tear it down, the sooner we'll be happier.

asdff• 7 years ago

I'll agree, living in the suburbs would be soul crushing. That's why you live in a city and ditch the car commute.

luckydata4• 7 years ago

Not that easy in San Francisco with a family.

rayiner• 7 years ago

Maybe it depends on the city and your age/marital status. I found living in the city (DC) extremely lonely after having kids. Mostly 20-something professionals gunning their careers. Moved out to the suburbs and now actually have neighbors to talk to, ones with kids that’ll come over and have a beer while the kids run around. All the driving isn’t ideal, but I kind of like tooling around the mall.

I agree some of the problems are uniquely American. Having to spend a million dollars on a house to afford to live in a decent urban school district in places like NYC or SF or DC fucks up really messes up important social networks. Even if you can afford it, you’re surrounded entirely and solely by other people who can afford it.

TulliusCicero5• 7 years ago

Even US cities have abysmally bad walkability. It's a complete joke compared to somewhere like Japan or Germany. If Germany is an NFL team, the US would be the local middle school's backup squad.

Most US cities are designed to force you to drive, and if any walking for transportation does occur, it's a small miracle, because they make it as painful as they can: wide roads, high speed limits, a dearth of pedestrian islands, few if any cut throughs, single use zoning, super low density zoning, moats of asphalt around businesses, etc.

Just look at the data for how much walking for transport actually happens in the US. It's comically small.

alexpotato2• 7 years ago

I used to live in Manhattan and there were certain parts of the city that would take more time to get to than my current suburban commute.

e.g. I lived on 42nd street and the west side and to get to the 20's on the east side might take me up to an hour walking.

jlarocco2• 7 years ago

The US is a huge place, and your experience, though not unique, isn't how everybody here lives.

Before I started working from home full time I had a 15 minute bike commute. There's a friendly coffee shop across the street. I can walk to the grocery store. There's an awesome microbrewery and restaurant across the street.

luckydata4• 7 years ago

Most people. I lived in Ann Arbor, quality of life was a smidge better (horrible food compared to California, bad climate, very high property taxes, horrifying roads...) but jobs for a tech worker were really few and far in between.

Let's face it, if you don't find a remote job (and they are still difficult to find) then your reality is probably a lot more likely to look like mine than yours.

The US is a lot more car dependent than any other place on earth, like it or not.

TulliusCicero5• 7 years ago

Nah, he's right. US cities are, on average, really, really bad for walking, for biking, and for public spaces for gathering. Living in Munich now it's like night and day compared to the different parts of the US I lived in.

But you don't have to take my word for it, the numbers bear this out. Walk mode share in Germany's biggest cities are ~4x as high as NYC, which is the US' most walkable major city. That's a bigger gap than the difference in GDP per capita between the US and Portugal.

Compared to Germany, your average US city's walkability is a dumpster that fell off a train wreck, then got set on fire and shot into the sun. It's really that big of a difference.

pertymcpert3• 7 years ago

It really is a shit hole here compared to Europe. Can’t wait to save up and move back.

JacKTrocinskI2• 7 years ago

I grew up in Cali, moved to Poland after uni and have been living here ever since, no regrets. One of the really negative things I remember when growing up was the little cliques that formed at school, you had the popular kids, the nerds, the outcasts, etc. I think a lot of resentment was built up in kids this way, the movie "Mean Girls" portrays the issue well in my opinion. I spent my summers in Poland and saw there was no such divide, you could be a nerd but no one cast you out of some group because of it. Furthermore I never understood why at school during every period I would have different people in my class, and from one year to the next my classmates in single subject would change too, this made it impossible to form strong bonds with classmates. How is that good for anyone? In my opinion it is a terrible system. Thankfully I skateboarded after school, that helped me form strong connections with people over the years that I maintain in touch with to this day. Fix the school system and I think you will fix a lot of social issues as well.

Aromasin4• 7 years ago

I think changing students in classes is fine, provided there is ample opportunity to socialise outside of that. In the UK, schools are largely given free reign on how they organise their day but I was lucky enough to go to a school that provisioned for two 30 minute breaks, morning and afternoon, and one 90 minute one for lunch. This definitely isn't the case everywhere mind. Our school also confiscated smart-phones at the beginning of the school day, so all we could do was play sports and card games.

Most of my friends now are still those I went to school with, which wasn't strange for me until I went to university and found out that most of my friends there don't talk to any of their friends from school anymore. Out of the 150 people in my year, I still regularly see maybe 40 of them. Within that group everyone has been wildly successful and I put that almost entirely down to the time we got every day to build our social skills. Time spent playing football or rugby on the fields, running around the woods behind our school playing catch and bulldog, trying to find places to wrestle and fight in secret, sitting in classrooms playing card games, or messing around in the music rooms with instruments we couldn't play. They're probably my fondest memories and it baffles me that not only is more time not given to it, but time is spent trying to take that away! It did nothing to stunt our learning, and I'd argue it enhanced it. Most of my friends are in postgraduate education, went to Oxbridge or another Russel group university, and were straight-A children at school. A kid shouldn't be expected to effectively work a 9-5 job (let's not even get started on the ridiculous start times some have to go through, fighting their biological circadian rhythm), with an hour off to rush through lunch before getting thrown back in to classroom. It's no wonder teachers often describe teaching as riot control.

A school shouldn't just be a place to learn academics. That puts way too much onus on parents to provide socialisation themselves; meaning children with bad parents, or those that can't afford to send their kids to extra-curricular clubs and sports teams, get left behind and form cracks in a working society.

alexpotato2• 7 years ago

My mother is Italian and I used to live in England which means I spent many summers in Italy as a teenager.

I also noticed that American teenagers seem to be very focused on the "let's make a group to exclude other folks" model. In Italy, however, the idea always seemed to be "let's include as many people as we can in the group!"

Case in point: one summer in Italy, there was a girl that no one really liked but she was always included in any groups activities. It was unthinkable that you would exclude someone just because you didn't like them.

I chalk this up to American "individualism" vs an older European model of "your town is basically an extension of your family". In the American model, what identifies you is what's different between you and someone else whereas in Italy, the group is how you identify yourself.

There are certainly pros and cons to both. E.g. "Going along with the group" can certainly lead to problems. On the flip side, rugged individualism can lead to the type of loneliness described in the article.

dorchadas• 7 years ago

This is one of the main reasons I'm really looking at moving to Europe. The lack of these things is definitely an issue, and even more of one in rural areas.

dominotw• 7 years ago

When I'm old and will not be able to drive anymore, this will get even worse.

Given you might have good savings, I know lots of old ppl buy condos in the city.

acolumb• 7 years ago

I've traveled to France a few times. Whenever I walk through the towns, I notice a sense of noncompetition and inclusivity amongst the school-aged children there.

This social system eliminates the temporary high that one gets from their "15 minutes" of being the king of the American hill, while substantially decreasing the amount of depression and anger.

baroffoos• 7 years ago

I have been thinking about this recently. Suburbs are spaced out and empty and cities are loud and uncomfortable. I cant think of any public space I can just hang out around other than the library but that is a quiet space. Most public spaces are owned by businesses and they are designed to get you in and out as fast as possible while spending money the whole time. I wish there were indoor public spaces with comfortable seating and tables where you could just spend time at, meet people and meet with friends.

Unfortunately such a space would cost a significant amount and only works if the government funds it entirely. I still think the benefit to society may be worth it.

edisonjoao2• 7 years ago

Hey that's why I've built this! http://foxie.cool hope you can find some use in it.

mirimir• 7 years ago

I'm sure that loneliness is depressing, unhealthy, debilitating, etc, etc, etc. For many people. Maybe even for most people.

But I'm happiest when I'm doing something that's interesting and challenging. And when I'm focused, other people are mainly a distraction.

So for me, a few friends are enough. Plus chatting online. Sharing what I know, and asking for help.

BurningFrog• 7 years ago

If you have a few friends, you're not lonely.

gingabriska5• 7 years ago

Think a lot of people coming to US are immigrants.

And some also come from countries where they had much tighter community and shared life. But they choose US because it allows for more individualistic freedom and upsides (as you don't have a socialist government who eats into your income/wealth through taxes in order to equalise the whole society), so people feel more rewarded here.

Constitution guarantees strong property rights here and your land can't be taken away from you for "social good" like in most European countries.

Obviously, with this in place there is no reason for an invidual to share his resources like land with any other person, because in his mind, it's his hardworking which got him those nice things and now no one but him as any right over them. This over time creates more loneliness as people don't really see benefit of dealing with you. If I share my ranch with my neighbors, obviously, they'll want to maintain good relationship with me but what if I don't even let them roam around it? Or shoot their dog if it tries to trespass? Now you see the problem?

This system optimizes for greater individual gain but come with some side effects like loneliness as you live in a very competitive society, it gets hard to trust others. If you become way richer than your neighbor because your company did good, you might no longer want to make your neighbor part of your life because they can no longer relate to your problems and wonder that even tho this person have lot of money, how come this person isn't happy?

As I understand those who are in US feel everyone must work to support themselves and government should not support anyone through tax revenue for them to sit at home and watch Netflix or play Xbox etc...

They always had a choice between going back to home and living in a tightly knit society but they choose America only because the upsides are greater here and it attracts those who optimize for individual interest like individual freedom/wealth etc...

Many of my American colleges do not understand why I was working for 30K euros a year back in Europe when I could easily get 100K job here in states.

Pace of life is also quite fast in US. Now I don't mean that Americans walk 10x faster to work but that due to the large size of the market, if your product takes off - you can become very rich over a year or month and your life changes completely. Very few places have this ability to support entrepreneurs, sure in a third world country like India, if you become a celebrity, it might take a year to become very rich but what if you are an entrepreneur simply creating products in your garage or coding from a coffee shop? Nearly impossible and unheard of.

I've lived in Europe, US and currently living in India (as wife is from India) and there is growing dissent in middle class here because government have been put lots of taxes on middle class and offering lots of benefit to poor people as a result middle class people don't feel justified in paying taxes and try various loopholes and under table tricks.

It makes sense if you think India is large and size of poor population is large compared to the middle class who are getting taxed left and right. If you give them a chance, most will just love US and strong property rights US has.

If you want to test this, simply ask people to cast their votes in a ballot. Do you feel like you are not getting benefits for the taxes you pay? If you only allow middle class in India to vote, you'll see a lot of them somewhere around 90% in non metro cities gonna vote, "yes". Only people in big city might feel differently as they really get some benefits like better transformer, 24/7 power and clean water etc...

Even the villages are slowly getting empty and parents complain that the kids are not able to come to their place even on key celebrations like Diwali ( which is huge over here)

Only difference is there is no party in India which supports individualistic views like we've in US.

pertymcpert3• 7 years ago

A lot of people move back as well. I see it all the time now, it’s just not worth it.

thewarrior• 7 years ago

What’s not worth it ? Moving back or staying in the US ?

solidsnack90003• 7 years ago

If I share my ranch with my neighbors, obviously, they'll want to maintain good relationship with me but what if I don't even let them roam around it? Or shoot their dog if it tries to trespass? Now you see the problem?

I found this somewhat comical because it’s the parts of the US where people have ranches and would even have to worry about a neighbor’s dog running around that are the least alienated.

It’s the progressive and modern, densely populated cities where people don’t talk to their neighbors and don’t recognize people on the street from day to day.

reubenswartz4• 7 years ago

Just as modern technology has given us cheap, convenient fast food that isn't very nourishing, it's also given us cheap, easy "social" interactions that don't provide real connection.

Social media is a nice compliment to, but not a good replacement for real conversations.

"Success" often seems to correlate with cutting yourself off-- having a nice house with a big TV, a car that takes you to and from your job with minimal interaction with other people, and if people do have a few minutes of free time, they are often nose down in their phones, not taking to people around them.

Especially after you have kids, it's easier to pull up Game of Thrones on your phone than head out to meet people. Is it any wonder that many people know more about what's going on in Westeros than in their own community?

A few years ago I started paying more attention to what I eat, which has been great physically. Over the past year or so I've tried to be more intentional about relationships and conversations. As an introvert, it was weird at first, but it's been amazing. I actually look forward to calling people. (I call it my "Reconnection Challenge" and you can start by calling 2 people per day-- outside of your "have to" calls. Try it.)

joe_the_user• 7 years ago

Just as modern technology has given us cheap, convenient fast food that isn't very nourishing, it's also given us cheap, easy "social" interactions that don't provide real connection.

And just as it is somewhat difficult to get experts to agree what authentically nutritious food would actually be, it is also difficult to sort "shallow" social interactions from deep social interactions.

Back when the Internet was young and I was working as a contract programmer in the mid-West, I met a young woman who was engaged to marry a man she'd met over the net and had not physically seen. In ways, it seemed impressive since it seemed to imply a mental connection rather than a physical.

Today, social networks are universal and universally denigrated in favor of immediate personal relationships. I'm not sure such a simple return is possible or desirable.

indigochill4• 7 years ago

I am a big believer in online relationships. Most of my relationships, friendships and otherwise, have been there. I even got engaged to someone I met online (though we did meet in person a couple times first).

However, it's not difficult at all to sort between shallow and deep social interactions. There's a massive difference between social media interactions and the interactions core to a deep relationship. I'll enumerate some examples here:

Social Media:

* Like

* Write short reply

* ...?

Meaningful relationship:

* Long talks (over phone, email, forums, whatever)

* Discussion of intimate topics (not suitable for the public space of social media!)

* Sharing experiences (and not in the "look what I did" sense of social media, but in the actually doing things together sense of, say, a gamer clan)

* Some semblance of shared beliefs or interests (the focus of a forum, perhaps)

So by all means let's continue building relationships online. But let's never confuse the shallow-as-possible interactions of social media with actually connecting to another human on any more than the most superficial level.

raverbashing2• 7 years ago

Boo Hoo. This sounds too much like social ludditism and "blaming it on technology".

While, sure, a lot of shallow connections exist in social media, it's the same in "the real world" as well

Societies change, connections change.

People are using social networks as a stepping stone to deeper connections. It's that simple. As in the past the main "social networks" were school, church, hobbies, etc.

Which I think it's even better as I don't need to pretend to worship a deity or do some hobby that's out of my comfort zone.

And calling people sounds ever more like this weird technological stepping stone that's inferior to in person conversations and to texting/social network interactions

reubenswartz4• 7 years ago

Perhaps. But I'm not against the technology. I'm for it. I love that I know what my friends' babies look like thanks to FB. I credit email with helping me stay in touch with high school friends. And I'm all for the convenience of technology to facilitate deeper interactions.

My point is that if we are not careful, we can end up eating the junk food to the exclusion of the good stuff, just because it's so convenient, instead of as an appetizer.

This community is very well aware of the market cap dollars at stake through user engagement and controlling attention. ;-)

Agree that calling is inferior to in-person, but it's far better for conversation that asynchronous text-based stuff. Humans don't have a command line-- we're built to appreciate body language, tone, etc.

lm28469• 7 years ago

Why is there a loneliness epidemic if everything is equal and social media is just as good as real connections ?

Societies change, connections change.

Change doesn't mean change for the best. Asking questions is totally reasonable when you look at the changes happening in the last decade. How come people, teenagers especially, are feeling more lonely while they're infinitely more connected than 20 years ago ? Why is suicide becoming the leading cause of teenagers' death ? &c.

Looks like a lot of people think change = progress = good, without even questioning it.

I don't need to pretend to worship a deity

The irony is that technology is becoming a deity. "Don't question tech", "Tech is good, always good", "We must thrive for technological advancement at all cost", "Technical advancement is always progress", &c.

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-43711606

https://www.prb.org/suicide-replaces-homicide-second-leading...

badrabbit• 7 years ago

Curious,any reason why I see similar articles on HN?

The topic resonates strongly with me, is it especially a problem with tech workers?

vonnik• 7 years ago

It's probably worthwhile to point out that the trend toward remote work poses real risks to remote workers by increasing their physical isolation. I work at a remote-first company, and I've worked remotely for other organizations, and the high-bandwidth, spontaneous and accidental interactions and information sharing, the sense of togetherness, are distinctly absent in a lot of remote work, regardless of such benefits as avoiding a commute.

forgetme2020• 7 years ago

This article struck a chord with me. I am a middle aged immigrant in the tech industry battling loneliness since I was about 15. Outwardly I probably seem to be doing ok.

While I see a lot about the challenges to public health and society by the loneliness epidemic, I haven't been able to find much in the way of what lonely people can do do build community especially in the atheist / agnostic realm.

Over the course of reading the comments, I found a few resources that I've compiled, please pile on if you know of others

Sunday Assembly https://www.sundayassembly.com/

Unitarian Universalist churches https://www.uua.org/

Meetups https://www.meetup.com - I've tried several meetups but nothing has really stuck as in finding people who consistently come for an activity and the opportunity to connect more deeply

As I think about it for someone like myself I am looking for more "church without the religion" outlets than say activity groups like say hiking etc because i find the activity groups more focused on the activity than generally making friends that you can call on for any kind of emergency, real world problem

gingabriska5• 7 years ago

Once I found a really bright employee and I asked him, why don't you talk more and socialize more? He said well once I did exactly that and someone with large follower count on twitter made mockery of my views since then I keep my personal opinion to myself.

Another one told me, that he doesn't really have a lot in common with people around him and that he considers online community where people are exactly interested in what he likes requires lot less mental overhead.

Due to social media follower count, some people love to pick out others and insult them on social media only because they happen to have a different opinion, here you don't even need to hold on wrong opinion - holding a different opinion does the job.

Before internet/social media, there were very few and expensive ways to get together with people across the geographic boundaries so you always had to please people around you and sometimes get them interested in the things you like, to have fun with them.

But this changed with internet, now you can choose some very obscure topic and you'll find other people who are interested in the same thing several clicks away.

And your mom is sick at home and can't go to supermarket for shopping? No problem, Amazon home delivery is one click away.

Before that, you had to keep a friend who lived close to you and also help him and keep him happy so that he helped you when you need him, like buying some stuff for your mom while she's sick and you are away.

Due to technology, there is simply less need of friends etc... And many don't consider it a good ROI over their time to keep friends. I heard it several times in valley, if you want a friend, get a dog.

Simon_says• 7 years ago

if you want a friend, get a dog.

I have no doubt it was said by plenty of people in the Valley, but that's an old quote about D.C..

ok_coo• 7 years ago

I find this observation interesting because, in my own biased perspective, people are finding it more and more difficult to compromise. And maybe that's because we're not forced to compromise with people to live our lives anymore.

We can surround ourselves with people who believe what we do and if we don't want to interact with anyone, we can just order stuff online. Creating and existing in our own little bubbles.

HNLurker22• 7 years ago

Another one told me, that he doesn't really have a lot in common with people around him and that he considers online community where people are exactly interested in what he likes requires lot less mental overhead.

You're right, but peer pressure gets to you and one need to stand for itself.

temp99990• 7 years ago

I suspect the loneliness epidemic will be a catalyst for worshipping of AI gods in the not so distant future, which is a bit unsettling but seems inevitable.

skookumchuck• 7 years ago

I miss living in the dorms in college. Sure my standard of living is much higher now, but I think I was happier in the dorms surrounded by interesting people.

atoav• 7 years ago

Alibaba/aliExpress specifically had studies that singles spend more money online. That is why they introduced the singles day and made it such an event.

Loneliness is a problem, but we need to be aware that there are entities who specifically profit from a culture of solitude: “And there I was.. Alone with my ads, looking at made up pictures of other people’s lifes.”

We are in the middle of the creation of a perfect consumer, which has to have a hole in themselves that can never be filled, a itch that never goes away when scratched, in constant need.

And arguably there is solid economic incentive to go further down that road.

w_t_payne• 7 years ago

There is one facet to this which I find interesting -- and that's how disconnected we become from the emotional impact of our decisions.

In a small closed community, we cannot help but be part of a system of social and emotional feedback. The decisions that we make have consequences, and this is very much the social environment that we have evolved for (confined to prehistory for obvious reasons).

Those feedback loops have been largely severed in "modern" (i.e. last few thousand years) large-scale, urbanized, literate societies -- a fundamental change in the control systems that govern human behavior.

With so many of us running partially open-loop ... is it any wonder that we see a proliferation of pathological behaviors?

Can our latest (early 21st century) technology help to restore some of those connections? To help us get feedback on the impact of our speech, our writing, our choices? Could this help us re-establish an earlier, more natural way of relating and connecting to our fellow human beings?

spiralx2• 7 years ago

I think a lot of this has to do with the lack of stable groups of a size that enables social effects and feedback to dominate - things like guilt, shame and reciprocity. Without this sort of group interactions become much more stressful and we don't feel like we belong.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-med...

maxheadroom• 7 years ago

Reminds me of stories like these[0]. :(

[0] https://www.oddee.com/item_98735.aspx

justaguyhere• 7 years ago

Is this limited to US? How about Canada, Australia, England etc? Anyone who lived in US and one of these first world countries care to comment?

m23khan• 7 years ago

can't comment on this topic as whole but I would like to chime in from IT perspective -- lot of folks in IT industry with educational background in Computer Science or Mathematics tend to have anti social / cold / weird personalities. Maybe Universities and Colleges should incorporate 2 courses on how to act more social / warm as part of their curriculum.

scottlocklin• 7 years ago

This article is one of the most disgustingly bugman things I've ever read. It doesn't matter that America is a soul crushing gladiatorial pit; a miserable scramble over a few crumbs tossed us by the reptilians at the top, it matters that American corporate efficiency may be at risk.

Virtually everything about modern American life is alienating, mostly because of this mindset and the downstream products of it. But if it were good for corporate efficiency, I'm pretty sure Harvard Business School types would be all for it.

edisonjoao2• 7 years ago

this is why I'm working on this http://foxie.cool we need an easier and simpler way to interact with the world around us!

America's loneliness epidemic: A systemic risk to organizations

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