For one thing, I was severely traumatized as a kid, which delayed a lot of my social skills. I'm catching up but not all the way there yet. When my social battery is full, I can do pretty well, but if I'm even a little down, it's basically impossible to act normally.
I also had it hammered into me as a kid that nobody wants me around, nobody could ever love me, I'm a failure, a burden, a creep, a weirdo, and nothing but a bothersome nuisance that nobody would ever want to spend 30 seconds alone with. I'm trying to reject these thoughts, but it's difficult when you have nobody to talk to. It's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I wonder how many people have the same issue. I've made a few friends in person, but I rarely get to see them.
Well I've started doing public surveys in my nearby big city, and documenting the results. I just hold out a posterboard that says "how alone do you feel" or "have you ever been in love" etc, and hold out a marker, and people come up and take the survey. At first I did this out of sheer loneliness and boredom. But I have done it for enough months that some people have come up to me and told me that I've helped them, or that they look forward to my signs.
I'm trying to reach those people who feel the way I feel have no way of connecting with anyone, or at least feel that they don't. Do you have any new ideas of how to achieve this?
https://web.archive.org/web/20250212233145/https://www.hhs.g...
I am a tail-end boomer in the U.S. so my experiences were with a world where socializing was more functional: we shopped in public, played in public, read in public libraries, watched movies in public, rode transit together, etc. Being in public was a requirement, not a choice. While there are still remnants of this older culture still active in today's world in urban life, there are so many options for not being in public that it is simply easier to avoid it. We all want our space in one degree or another.
On the playground growing up, my world was filled with name-calling and backbiting. I was a heavier kid, so that was my burden. Other kids had bucked teeth, warts, limps, they were too short, or too tall, uncoordinated--whatever--nobody really escaped the wrath of the crowd. We were forced, by our parents, to just deal with it.
My parents like many others in their generation recognized this behavior for what it was--natural. Watch an episode of the Little Rascals--you will see what I am referring to.
Most if not all of those kids who were called names and isolated in some way found ways to break out of their pigeon hole: playing sports, playing music, making art, studying hard at school, boxing, singing, dancing, cracking jokes, whatever. Then they were heroes, and the crowd could celebrate them--and they thrived.
I know this sounds overly idealistic, but it is true. I experienced this first hand in a neighborhood of several hundred kids from broken homes, poor homes, ethnic homes, etc.
Voiceless people must find their voice. The responsibility is their's. The crowd will not come to the rescue of the person who won't stand up for themselves and make their way in life.
Loneliness is very, very sad. The cure to loneliness is in the powerful hands of the lonely person. Do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to work on those things that hold the lonely person back from achieving something--anything--for themselves and then engage with the crowd with more confidence.
I appreciate what you are doing by helping others--that is one of your superpowers. Live a good, strong life!
And that can happen even when you are among 1000s of people, not just alone , if you are among people thinking of something else, staring into the void or that you can't connect etc. you are a deep person.
Deep person + deep thinker is the worse. Also people aren't doing them any favor by singing the praise of being a deep person and a deep thinker.
It also has to do with abundance of everything and being not in need of cooperating 24/7/365 to avoid starving ....some people slip into deep thinking and deep emotional introspection...yeah fuck that
My thoughts on this are you need to have multiple roots into your community. This is something that you go to often and talk to people, become a regular, say hi. Think back to how your parents or grandparents did it: They went to church/temple/synagogue, they went to PTA meetings, they talked to their neighbors, they were in clubs, they went to the same bar.
So I think doing things that get you out of the house, consistently the most important part:
1. People need to make a point to talk to their neighbors, invite them over for dinner or bbqs, make small talk. How towns are constructed now is a hindrance to this (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches).
2. Join a religious organization. Go to church, but also join the mens/womens group, join a bible studies class. Attend every week.
3. Join social clubs / ethnic organization. The polish or ukrainian clubs, knights of columbus, elks, freemasons. Go every week.
4. Join a club / league. Chess club, bowling league, softball league, golf league. Tech meetups, DnD Night etc. But you have to talk with people and try to elevate things to friendships.
5. Have lunch, happy hour, etc with coworkers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic#Causes_of_...
1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you.
2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will.
Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side".
Anecdote: I had a friend in SF. He and I would hang out once in a while, and I always looked forward to these hangouts (we'd meet up for coffee, or go for a walk, hang out at Dolores Park, etc.). He is gay, I'm not. His perspective on things was often quite different than mine and I found that interesting. I got married, he stayed single. Even after marriage we would still hang out (though not as often as before). Then we had a child, which sucked all spare time out of my life; but even then we hung out once in a while. Then one winter there was cold/flu/COVID going around. We planned on hanging out and I unfortunately bailed on him at the last moment. This happened 2 more times. Then that bout of illnesses passed and I reached out to him to hang out again. But this time he seemed cold and distant. So I dropped it. And I didn't see him again for almost 3 years.
Then one day I ran into him while walking through Dolores Park. He didn't see me, but I hesitated and still hollered out at him, for old times' sake. He responded and walked over. We chatted a little, I gave him a parting hug and we agreed to hang out again.
A couple of weeks later we managed to hang out again. What I gathered from our meeting was that he had been miffed at what he thought was me blowing him off; and I, when I felt he was cold and distant, had misread his grief at losing his cat. We both misread each other and wasted 3 years.
Moral of the story that I took away from it was: be more forgiving. Friendships are worth the extra effort.
I have a fear of crowds and bums. Not where I'm paralyzed/medicated but one thing I'm trying to do is go downtown and do street photography. I wonder how do I say no to a stranger asking me for money. Or fear of getting robbed. It's not like my camera gear is that expensive but yeah. This would push me to get out there more as I've lived in the same place for 10 yrs and I haven't really explored/gone around much. Other than when I did Uber Eats, I would go all over the place. I would get wasted/drink at bars but end up with nothing end of the day, temporary day-long friends.
Funny I was at the gym yesterday, guy said hello to me, as a guy that keeps to himself usually (unless around friends) I gave him a bad look (not on purpose) and then I responded. I'll say hello next time I see him.
Yeah for me it's just fear and lack of exposure. I do make a lot of "work friends" go on walks. But yeah real friends I think I have 4 or 5 lifelong real friends. Women nothing, haven't been laid in like 12 years pretty said to say. Unfortunately it's something I value myself like "I'm a loser by not getting laid". Even though rest of my life is good, 2BR apt, sporty car, six-fig job, but yeah. It's my social awkardness, but I lift/improve myself, cutting down on weight I want abs. Idk I'm not going after women anymore either just trying to live life now, do shit, get out of debt, get out of 9-5, mental freedom.
It's funny if it's guys I'm very "charismatic" like I can be "everyone's friend" which doesn't work out due to conflicting interest. To that end it's really about taking an active interest in the other person, engaging them, asking them questions and remembering.
My thing with women is I don't get along with them like a guy (where I don't want anything from them physically). If they're not attractive then it's easier to talk to them but yeah, I guess that comes from a desperation mindset.
Try an A/B test. Do days with zero screen stimuli - no TV, no phones, no online interaction. Go into the world to a cafe, or a common area with people and do stuff. See how you feel and what you feel up to. Vacations might be good and relaxing because you disconnect. Maybe do it without paying for it.
I am a solo bootstrap founder, ultra lonely.
Make them interact and do things, generally they will be less toxic because it will reduce their online disinhibition effect.
Make them have meals, meet, walk at the park, whatever.
They say they want to “make meeting like-minded people easy, natural, and fun” and “ Loneliness doesn't have to be the norm.”
It could be argued that it was all inevitable given the development of the Internet: development of social media, the movement online of commerce and other activities that used to heavily involve "incidental" socialization, etc. And maybe it was. But "we" are still the ones who built it. So are "we" really the right ones to solve it, through the same old silicon valley playbook?
The usual thought process of trying to push local "community groups," hobby-based organizations etc is not bad, but I think it misses an important piece of the puzzle, which is that we've started a kind of death spiral, a positive feedback loop suppressing IRL interaction. People started to move online because it was easier, and more immediate than "IRL." But as more people, and a greater fraction of our social interaction moves online, "IRL" in turn becomes even more featureless. There are fewer community groups, fewer friends at the bar or the movies, fewer people open to spontaneous interaction. This, then, drives even more of culture online.
What use is trying to get "back out into the real world," when everyone else has left it too, while you were gone?
When you are younger, you belong in school. When you get older, you belong at work.
If you fall out of any of these social structures its extremely difficult to find your way back in.
I was already pretty disconnected from society and people in general when my divorce hit and now I am completely untethered from any kind of community. Living is miserable I hate my life and I do not want to exist like this anymore.
None of the solutions people provide are easy or functional. "Go meet people" is the most vague, unhelpful bullshit ever.
I think the reality is some people, no matter how intelligent, caring or otherwise full of empathy they may be are just "too far gone" for anyone to have the initiative or concern to care about us. The world is so corroded and socially poisoned that any kind of meaningful effort in this kind of thing is pointless. Anybody with time or money is busy making money.
You can't solve the epidemic because it is a byproduct of multiple irreparably broken systems. People will continue to fall through the cracks and it will get worse. I don't know what happens after that but we'll probably all be dead.
Fund free places to hang out.
From a practical perspective, there is the whole "3rd place" issue. How can I open a business that caters to the public, who will just sit there and loiter on their phones and laptops all day and be profitable. Starbucks sort of did it in the 90s, but they're not tolerating that anymore.
Forget businesses, can you walk to a park, a beach, a hiking trail on a whim and run into people? Can you hold events, watch parties,etc.. on public places easily like that? It's not easy at all these days.
I blame cars. I despise the idea that electric cars are the replacement to cars, without considering changing transportation so that it is more efficient with trams, trains,etc... The side-effect of that is you run into strangers on public transport. This doesn't just affect the loneliness epidemic, it is in my opinion a direct cause of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, and of course obesity. You can't even be homeless and sleep on the streets these days. Even the park benches are built to be hostile to anyone that wants to chill there for too long.
Society was restructured between 1950s-1980s so that it is suburbanized. It's all about the family unit, single family homes, freeways and roads built to facilitate single family homes (after WW2, starting families was all the rage, plus white-flight didn't help). Shopping centers built to cater to consumers driving from their suburban homes. Malls you can walk in, after you drove some time to park there. Even when you buy food items at grocery stores, pay attention to serving sizes, it is improving a little, but you'll see at minimum a serving size of two typically.
Society was deliberately engineered so that you have more reasons to spend more as a consumer. Families spend more per-capita. suburbs mean more houses purchased, entire generations renting with their bank as a landlord via mortgages, home repair, home insurance, car insurance, car repairs, gas stations for cars where you can get the most unhealthy things out there in the most frequented and convenient places. Make kids, make wives, make ex-wives, get sick the whole lot of you for hospitals, health insurances,etc..
It wasn't planned by some central committees or secret cabal, but it was planned nonetheless by economists and policy makers.
If everyone just got married and had kids, they won't be lonely would they? you don't need to hang out at park with strangers, you'll feel less of a member of your local neighborhood who look and think like you, and start thinking more as one people.
All the interpersonal interactions and opportunities to build relationships with people are commercialized and controlled.
For one reason or another, people are just not getting married in their early 20's anymore, or having that many kids later on like before. Even when you get married, your interaction is by design with other married people, who are busy commuting in their cars to and fro work, kids school,kids sports, plays,etc... imagine taking your kids on busses and trains every day to these places which are fairly near-by, by necessity. you'll be spending time with them instead of operating machinery. They'll be meeting stranger kids from other schools, seeing random strangers all the time, you'll be talking to randos as you walk to the train, wait on the bus,etc.. but this can't be monetized.
Blame the economists and policy makers if you want to blame someone.
If you want solutions, let's talk explicitly about the policy changes that need to happen.
Too much traffic? tear down the freeways instead of building more lanes.
It costs $10B to build a simple metro line? pass better laws to regulate bidding and costs, investigate fraud and waste.
But to dig even deeper into the root of the matter, look at what is celebrated and prized in society. Most of its ills come from there. For most Americans, it is inconceivable to be able to just go out of your house without any plans or destination in mind and just start walking and see where you end up, and who you run into. That's a crucial and tragic ability that's been lost. We really have more urgent things to address to be fair, but ultimately, this can only be solved one small step at a time, but also big sweeping changes are needed. The first step is to define and accept what the problem is, and where the blame and cause lie.
Also I think there's more groups whose social norms online teach you to be repulsive offline and again there's not enough social pushback against it. We do need to be harder on casual edginess online because it is teaching habitual behaviors that make it hard to engage socially. Your 50 year old hiking buddy is not going to understand your soycuck joke you are trying to show him on your phone. Your average wine mom at women-only book club is not going to love if you insist on talking about banning trans people from the club because they're "men invading the women's spaces" especially when there's very likely 0 trans people to exclude in the first place on account of trans people being rare.
Lastly there is usually a ton of stuff happening but the instructions on how to engage with it is nebulous. People who know the algorithm find it easy, the people who don't know the algorithm find it super hard. And IDK how to solve that because there's so much going on in people's heads that they don't realize the people around them seriously aren't scrutinizing them that much. There's like a socialization death spiral where every small awkward interaction hurts way more when you don't have enough experience to know that the small awkward interactions are normal. So you can't tell someone "just go to book club" because they'll go, have 1 normal situation like mishearing someone and then decide they are so embarrassed they can never go to book club again-- but since it is so normal it happens at every social event and they end up lonely.
/s
This community is not going to be the one to solve that problem, sorry.
0: https://news.gallup.com/poll/655493/new-low-satisfied-person...
1: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community
- Give users a modern Tamagotchi
- Give the digital pet a need to socialize.
- Strap a basic LLM to it so users can talk to their pet.
- Have the pet imprint on its owner through repeated socialization.
- Owner goes to bed, pet still has social needs, goes out into the digital world to find other pets.
- Pet talks to other pets while you're asleep, evaluates interactions, befriend those with good interactions.
- Owner wakes up the next morning, checks their pet, learns it befriended other pets based on shared interests, and is given an opportunity to connect with their pet's friends' owners. Ideally these connections have a better-than-random chance of succeeding since you're matched via shared interests.
I'm sure there's a ton of unsexy technical reasons this is hard to make work well in practice... but dang, I think it would be so cool if it worked well.
I realize this exacerbates the issue in some ways - promoting online-first interactions. But, I dunno. I'll take what I can get these days, lol.
It’s “third places” where folks can just hang out and work, play, share, and commiserate without having to pay money to do so.
It’s bringing back establishments that promote lingering and loitering, like food halls or coffee shops, rather than chasing out folks.
It’s about building community centers inside apartment complexes, more public green space, more venues and forums.
Giving people space that doesn’t require a form of payment is the best approach, because humans will take advantage of what’s out there naturally. Sure, structure helps, but space is the issue at present I believe.
Yes, you'll be less lonely if you join a group, get out of your house, etc... But how do we actively incentivize that? Social media and whatnot have hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to find ways to suck you in and monopolize your time.
While "everyone should recognize the problem and then take steps to solve it for themselves" is the obvious solution, it's also not practical to just have everyone collectively decide they need to get out more without SOME sort of fundamental change in our society/incentives/etc
Data from various studies, including those from academic institutions and public health organisations, supports the idea that regular church attendance helps reduce loneliness by fostering social connections, support networks, and a sense of community.
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3551208/
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/human-flourishing/20...
3. https://hrbopenresearch.org/articles/7-76
4. https://www.cardus.ca/research/health/reports/social-isolati...
5. there are plenty more...
also if you allow anecdotal data:
I have been going to a church half a year now, and the sense of community is amazing, made new friends and know more people I could dream of. So there is a way, there is a light. Never felt lonely again since.
The naive solution is to place blame on the people who are influenced by the most advanced behavior modification schemes ever devised by humans. Kinda like how the plastic producers will push recycling, knowing they can shift blame for the pollution away from their production of the pollution, because people love blaming. You'll see commenters here telling us that the answer is for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get out, get involved in their communities under their own willpower. These ideas are doomed from the outset.
The real solution is already being enacted in a number of US states and countries[1]: legally restricting access to the poison, rather than blaming the people who are at the mercy of finely honed instruments of behavior modification when they're unable to stop drinking it under their own willpower.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
Having barely room for little more than a bed forces you to get out during the day. Stuff happens when your default for where to spend your time is not at "home". SRO halls also usually had more room for common spaces to meet and socialize with other people in a similar position in life, and of course, SRO is a very cheap housing option.
My #1 top priority this year is _social health_. I'm taking it into my own hands. Mostly just continuing things I'm already doing with tremendous payoff. My measurable result is going to be throwing my own birthday party in fall. I've never done that before, I've never had enough friends in my city!
No one group or app is going to come save you from loneliness. You have to get up, go outside, and find people.
0. Say yes to everything, at least if you're new in town. Don't care how scared you are of X social situation. "Do it scared" - @jxnl
1. I am part of my community's swing dancing scene. I take classes, go to social dances, I _show up_ even when I don't feel like it. People recognize me now, know my name, etc. I'm also a regular at my gym. Find a place and be a regular face there. (_how did I become a swing dancer? I got invited, and my social policy prevented me from saying no!_)
2. If I have no social plans for a week I do a timeleft dinner (dinner with 5 strangers). Always have something on the books. I call this my "social workout". If I vibe with anyone I ask if they want to grab ramen the following weekend. Leads me to point #3..
3. Initiate plans. Everyone is waiting for that text "hey, want to go do x with me?". Be that person. I have an almost 100% enthusiastic response rate to asking people to do literally anything. Go on a random walk? Go to costco? Go checkout ramen or pizza spot? You don't have to think of anything special. Whatever you're already doing.. ask someone to come with! Soon they start inviting you to do random stuff.
4. (experimental) I don't drink, which does curtail my social opportunities. I'm considering updating my drinking policy this year. My hypothesis is that the benefits of having a strong community out-weigh the health benefits of abstinence.
I wrote an article[0] on Tiny Neighborhoods (aka “Cohousing”) that starts with:
> “I often wonder if the standard approach to housing is the best we can do. About 70% of Americans live in a suburb, which means that this design pattern affects our lives – where we shop, how we eat, who we know – more than any other part of modern life.”
We have been so uncritical of the set of ideas that make suburbia—single family homes, one car per adult, large private yards—even though these play a big role in how people act.
Some people want to address loneliness by making incremental changes. But if the statistics are right and nearly everyone is somewhat lonely, we should expect that the required adjustments feel “drastic” compared to the current norm.
People would be less lonely if they could live in a community of 15-20 families with (1) shared space and (2) shared expectations for working together on their shared space.
Get involved with volunteer/gratis work. Join an advocacy/charity group. Do stuff for free.
HN members have really valuable skills that can make an enormous difference.
Joining a volunteer organization brings together passionate, action-minded people that already share a common platform.
It can also teach us a lot. My personal career was significantly helped by what I learned, doing volunteer work.
Boom. Loneliness problem solved.
You'll find virtually every dimension of your life will improve if you're on top of these four things. It will make you more ambitious in pursuing social engagement. And that will make socialization much easier.
First, social media. It's too easy to temporarily forget about your loneliness by staying home and doomscrolling or watching TV.
Second, increased mobility. People move around the whole continent now for work, removing them from their closest and oldest social connections.
Third, God is dead. Churches as community centers are dying out. Young people don't trust them anymore, because they don't believe in God, and because churches had many scandals. Secular community centers are very rare and struggle with funding.
Fourth, work is more stressful now. There used to be more time to socialize, but in our quest for productivity, work became denser with fewer idle times.
Fifth, fewer people want to have kids. Much has been written about this.
Now what can we do at societal scale? First of all, study the phenomenon more closely. Who is lonely? Who isn't? Which interventions work? Which cultural factors are important? At your local scale, you can just call or meet a friend.
The problem there is that it's the responsibility of groups or society to arrange that. There's not much that a single lonely person can do there.
The less common denominator, that an individual may partake in until society concocts a better solution, is to intentionally visit existing shared spaces even where they otherwise wouldn't (hint: bouldering gyms are good for this because there are repeat faces as well as a social okay-ness to congratulating strangers, or asking how certain challenges can be solved).
Or break with convention, comfort, and perhaps etiquette, and instead just talk to people. Even outside of those spaces. (This is the advice that will piss a lot of people off if it's presented as their only option.) This advice is horrible until it isn't. It does, with enough practice, 'just work'.
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For an entrepreneur or organizer: it would just go a long way to think about things in terms of allowing conversation to happen unimpeded. Pay attention to where people talk, and about what. Conversations happen a lot in hallways but famously by water coolers, perhaps because it affords people enough time in a shared space to muster the internal capital to start a conversation.
In college I ran a forum for people to meet others and some of the most self-reportedly successful participants just asked questions into the void and were surprised by the number of responses.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/31/are-relig...
Not saying this is the only way, but it made a big difference for me and my friends. I realize the physical challenges are artificial, but so is an Advent of Code puzzle when you already have a day job. Hard things are worth doing because they're hard, and they're even better when done together with those you love.
There's your problem. Fix that.
If there aren't any local groups then help create one. If there are, go along, meet some people, see what works for you, join a different one if you didn't like the first one, keep going until you've found your people.
If you feel like you can't go to a group then create a support group for people who feel like they can't go to groups. Or go online and find the virtual space for people like you and then travel to see those people (or invite them to see you).
But there is no fix for you having to socialise if you're lonely. You're going to have to find a way in.
IMO the biggest barrier to entry to the hobby is the price, coupled with the existing communities being really old. I'm trying to get people to print their own cards for casual kitchen table play through https://cardstocktcg.com.
- Internet and Social Media
- Neighborhoods no longer are walkable especially suburbs at least in America. Kids are not encouraged to go bike to their friends place anymore because of traffic risks.
- High Trust societies have degraded into "lets keep ot myself, I can't trust anyone these days". Decades ago, you could just walk into a neighbor's home and say hello. Now, you need an appointment just to talk to a neighbor or are too worried what they will think of you.
- No real friendships after school/colleges. This is a huge deal once you are out on your own in the real world. Work relationships are meh at best and with remote work nowadays, it has become even worse.
- Even if you join a club or activity, they are too "planned" and "robotic". For example, my kids take a dance class and they said they don't like it. I realized why. There is no break. They don't even get to spend like 30 mins with other kids socializing etc. There is a fixed schedule. You go, you dance, you leave.
But this is the world today. So I don't know how to fix it.
People, together, doing things, ideally having fun.
Spaces and activities that provide venues for communication, humor, authenticity, play, touch, collaboration.
I started https://musiclocal.org, a 501(c)(3), as a curated live music events platform for my local area (and hopefully others). We list all the live music events in the area, and we optimize the software for usability, performance, SEO, etc. The goal is to make discovering local live music events as easy as doom-scrolling. We have had an outstanding reception in the area we serve. We are not self-sustaining yet, but I am optimistic about our chances. As a non-profit, we do not do any of the dark-pattern garbage that has become omnipresent in social media and other consumer software. We just do the right thing as best we can.
Here is some more background (from our "Issues" page):
At MusicLocal, we focus on the root challenges facing local music communities to address endemic issues of negative social media practices, isolation and community polarization, and economic concentration and monopolization. Specifically:
• We believe convenient, comprehensive live music event listings are critical to reversing the decline in local music journalism. • We believe ethically designed, steward-curated live music event listings provide a vital alternative to addictive social media platforms. • We believe that making live music more visible and accessible encourages in-person interaction, strengthening communities and alleviating loneliness and social isolation. • We believe that local live music listings are a critical component of strong local economies, helping to lessen the negative economic consequences of big tech and music industry monopolies.
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"Technology has a purpose, and that purpose is to do good and to share" --Steve Wozniak
Another thing that you'll likely find in your area is a chess club.
Maybe you won't love the chess itself, but it's an excuse to hang out with people.
Another one is volunteering work. Elderly, dogs, etc, many communities need help.
In my village I have started a "clean up" program where average citizens take few bags a picker and we clean areas of our village.
Most of people are "this is the job of the garbage collectors, the mayor should do it", so what? It also costs money, and nobody will do as carefully as the people living there.
Even if 95% of my village won't care few will and we make an impact and socialize, etc and more start taking part of it.
Genuine loneliness, like what you described, can only really be solved by touching grass. Figure out your hobbies, or find one if you don't have any.
My answer to what a lot of people call "the male loneliness epidemic" as a woman is to say it doesn't exist, you need to figure out how to be attractive. We aren't throwing ourselves on shitty men, and most of the men that complain are complaining because they feel entitled to us and thus put no effort into being attractive. The quickest way to be attractive is have empathy and not be a douche. Listen to peoples needs, and don't feel entitled to our attention
When I'm feeling lonely, I stop feeling lonely and feel awesome instead.
There are lots of good suggestions in here. People just need to go do them. And if there are structural impediments to doing them, then eliminate those impediments.
I wasn't getting out enough during the day because I share the car with my wife. So I bought an EBike and now I go out all the time.
I chose to live in a place with things near by that I can go to.
Whenever I'm thinking, I'd like to go do an activity, but I need something else first, it's usually not true, or the other thing I need is easy to get.
People just need to decide to stop doing things that make them unhappy.
The 'fixes' has been established for just as long. My nearby 'community centre' was built in 1987. Has this been successful at all? Not in the least bit.
The reality of what is causing this hasnt changed. Without fixing this key problem, the crisis obviously has continued for 30+ years. I'm not nostradamus here. However, from many previous conversations it's crazy how absolutely nobody is ready to talk about the cause. They'd rather just call it a paradox or feign ignorance for why this is happening. Honestly it's rather conspiratorial creating when you think about it.
Out of curiousity I asked what gemini 3 pro thinks.
1. Revival of third places.
As if that hasnt been tried for 30+ years... fail.
2. replacing 'socializing' with "service"
The idea is that cleaning a park will somehow make you less lonely is laughable at best.
3. Bridging the generational gap.
Elderly teach the young skills? while youth teach digital literacy. My community centre literally has this. F mark.
4. Urban design and walkability.
We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
5. digital hygiene
social media is a sedative? crazy.
I love gemini, but man they are getting it so wrong. All of this will likely just caused the crisis to be worse in my opinion.
To me, has this been done unintentionally through the typical 'road to hell is paved with good intentions' or has this been intentionally done and maintained? The refusal to acknowledge the cause seems to push toward intentional. Guess we just live with the loneliness epidemic.
20 years ago, the Pope warned of the coming "epidemic of loneliness" that the tech industry would bring us, and the tech industry laughed at him. They said he was just an old man who didn't understand and that technology would bring us together in unity and happiness.
And yet, here we are 20 years later, and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't submit an article to HN about loneliness.
It is up to them to change. They won't change, and this "loneliness epidemic" is starting to become really fucking annoying. It is almost a grift now to shit on tech by mids.
These people don't want to go outside or engage with other people.
It is like people who are drug/alcohol/tobacco/gambling/sex/etc addicts. It is up to the individual to change. How is it anyone else's responsibility?
I surveyed a bunch of people on reddit, discords, etc. a couple years ago to figure out why people are lonely, back when this whole "loneliness" movement was starting.
A lot of these people say they have "trauma" or some other mental block as a primary reason why they're lonely (btw they're in discords with thousands of people, and playing online games with OTHER PEOPLE). I'm sorry but everyone has shit going on in their lives. You aren't really that special.
Maybe 1-5% of people have dealt with actual, really horrific trauma, and even they have managed to go on to have fulfilling lives. They chose to move on.
I'm an asshole, no doubt, and I've dealt with my own traumas in the past that were honestly way more fucking horrible than "I'm shy" or "nobody likes [insert some esoteric niche]" and guess what? Who cares? Go outside.
There is no helping these people, or anyone to be honest, unless they really want to make a change. These aren't starving Sudanese or people who live in India or something where you can't just "go outside". Mfs be in CALIFORNIA and crying. I'd understand if they were lonely because they were living in Iraq or Venezuela or something.
The only solution is we build a Matrix, and put all these people into it. I will bet 100% of my net worth and any earnings from my entire lineage for perpetuity that they will still fucking complain and be lonely. I was really hopeful for metaverse, too bad but maybe there's still a chance.
I never want to hear about "loneliness epidemic" again, to me it just sounds like DEI/ESG/Eacc and other bs grifting now to hate on tech. Everything is a choice. You press A in a video game even though you're lonely, why not press A to go outside?
These people aren't lonely, they exist in massive online echo chambers with other people. And honestly? I think they like it. Most drug addicts loved being on drugs even though it was a horrific existence. They don't like it when they're narcan'd during OD. But when they decide to get clean, I am proud that they actually did it how amazing is that? SO these lonely people have to stop crying and step outside.
A dog gives you a reason to be wherever you want to be - take a walk around the neighborhood or to the park. You're not a rando taking a walk for mysterious and possible nefarious purposes, you're walking the dog.
But for for goodness sake, pick up after the pooch. If you can wipe your own arse you can pick up a dog turd with a plastic bag.
It goes beyond car culture. It's probably illegal to build a cafe within walking distance of your neighborhood or into the first floor of your apartment complex.
Americans get an idea of how bad we have it when we go on vacation, but we don't see it as something that can be built at home.
If you want to fix it:
- More free public spaces (parks with benches, squares)
- More free public events and activities (free concerts, art installations, plays)
- Greater physical proximity (it's hard to make eye contact if everyone drives)
- Wealth distribution (create a society where one's value is not based on their net worth)
- Encourage days off for community service
In other words, provide socially-funded incentives for people to be close to one another physically and remove income as a measure of value.
It's a twofold problem, I believe. People are lonely because of fear of rejection and also actively avoid new people out of caution and high standards.
So two people who are otherwise lonely will make no effort to connect.
I think social networks have done a tremendous amount of damage to our collective psyche. Because on the web, you can single-click permanently block someone and never see them again. If you are admin of a group this person is in, you can also ban this person and prevent them from interacting with members of the group (in the group, that is, you cannot control private messages, but by banning someone from a community you are effectively isolating them), and I think we haven't considered how much power we are giving to random Reddit mods due to this.
From the few numbers I got, I figure out it help. Maybe one day I don't need to work and can focus on it again.
Some things I do: I organize a monthly brunch for friends. I try and grow it, invite people I've recently met.
If someone asks me to do something, I try and do it. Get invited to poker night, I'm there. Asked to play Fantasy Football, yep! Even though I don't watch football and have never played.
Go to church, and be intentional to connect. Find a bible study, fellowship group, volunteer opportunity, or prayer meeting. Sit at church on Sunday with somebody from the bible study. Get lunch with one of those people. Find somebody at church who shares a hobby. Do your hobby together.
You have to put in the effort. Growth is uncomfortable. Real connection takes time.
Maybe you find something similar in other spaces, but I am certain you can find it in church.
While it is true that loneliness can arise from a lack of community, people, and related factors, for some people, the problem stems from not knowing how to be alone. At its core, the question becomes, "Am I externalizing my world, or internalizing my world?" When you externalize your world, you require something external. We are social creatures, and I do believe we need other people. I'm only suggesting that sometimes people need to look internally first.
Personal anecdote: No amount of community would have helped me feel like I wasn't alone, because I needed the world around me to provide some sense of my self-worth. It felt counterintuitive, but for me, I had to learn to be alone. Only then could I feel like I wasn't alone. It all came down to attachment theory and self-worth.
* In line at the BMV, bored and feeling lonely. Should resolve loneliness by talking to strangers in line... mostly chit-chat, but sometimes you make a friend! Social media turns this into doom scrolling.
* Sitting in the living room by yourself, feeling a little lonely. Should result in calling up a friend or relative, or heading to get a coffee/beer where you can interact with people. On demand media turns this into low risk watching shows (yes, old school TV was an option, but on demand, there's always something on that is interesting).
So the trick is to make yourself ask if you should give someone a call or go somewhere public when you are pulling out the phone with intent to scroll or watch a show. When you find something you are interested in because you are watching lots of videos about it, or replying on forums, force yourself to engage in the real world. If you are arguing politics, find a group advocating your position and get involved (I've got to meet three majority leaders and two Presidents, plus a bunch of congresspeople you see on the news all the time as a side effect of getting involved because I was pissed off on the internet about business taxation issues). If you find a hobby, find a local group that does that. Learning to play the guitar from YouTube was fun, but jamming with other musicians? Off the charts fun and far more educational that just playing along with videos.
Finally, and this is the big one, try to never eat meals alone. Never say no to going to lunch with coworkers. Join stuff that meets for breakfast. Dinners are hard, but it's surprising what happens when you invite a couple people over for dinner and a beer once in a while.
Really, I think that it comes down to make making or joining a space with a shared activity and moderating out the crap.
The problem is most communities are losing those spaces in favor of private social clubs. That's what we need to fight.
Is the shift from how society used to work to how society has come to work real or just a grammatically correct statement?
Statistics are biased by those who compute them. Have we asked everyone or inferred and p-hacked up data points?
The single salary family is largely a myth. A relatively small percentage of the population ever achieved that. Is the same true for loneliness? Is it a bigger problem now than it has been?
Is this like in medicine where we think ADHD is up, cancer is up... it's an epidemic! When in reality as a percent of society things are normal, we just had no idea before how prevalent those things were before we measured.
With the Internet giving us the ability to interact with our chosen niche with little effort, we are willing to accept this still-impersonal alternative to our stagnant communities.
I have found that, as a city-dweller, I benefit from separating myself from social media and going out into the world looking for more personal connections, but this is somewhat of a privilege afforded to those people who live in more densely populated areas. Even then, my distance from social media can sometimes be a handicap when you interact with people who are still reliant on it to coordinate everything.
For most people, the social opportunities that existed in the 70's through the 90's simply doesn't exist anymore. If you aren't using social media, you're practically being anti-social, but there is something inherently anti-social about social media to begin with, so you're screwed if you do and screwed if you don't.
Social media has (IMHO) exacerbated this by allowing us to selectively surround ourselves with people we know we'll agree with. It's a nice reprieve sometimes, but it's so, so unhealthy beyond short-term.
Also talking to people in-person is very important. The less you do it, the harder it is, but it's worth doing. The natural humanizing effect of conversing with a person in meat-space does wonders for increasing understanding. Don't talk about topics you disagree on, focus on agreements and common interests. A good friend of mine is a trans-woman married to a woman. She decided to get into target shooting and approached others in good faith, and she said something like (not a direct quote): "I was worried they would be assholes, but it turns out they're just nerds like me, they just love to kit out their rigs".
Another friend of mine fell into the right-wing youtube rabbit-hole and "infiltrated" an Antifa group. He's a good guy overall, but got a very clouded exposure to "the other side." After he was done, he said something like (not a direct quote) "I was actually really surprised at how accepting, respectful, and intellectual most of them were. We wouldn't agree on politics, but they were a lot more interested in real analysis and dealing in facts than I ever would have thought, and we ended up having some good conversations."
Yes there are going to be assholes out there, but give people a chance before jumping to conclusions. You might be surprised! Don't jump in the deep end all at once, and be mindful of personal danger and comfort-level, but don't be so afraid to reach out to humans (in-person) and try to connect, even if you think on the surface there's no way you could get along.
Start a bowling league, a DnD group, a book club, a charitable organization... whatever.
Have a dinner party. Join the chess club. Start or join a sports league.
Many of these community events aren't happening because nobody has created them yet and it might just be up to you to do it.
Part of the loneliness epidemic is somebody actually has to initiate things and not enough people do. YOU can do it.
https://soatok.blog/2025/09/16/are-you-under-the-influence-t...
I've written at length about related topics. Unfortunately, there are powerful invested interests in keeping things shitty. It's often critiqued as "capitalism is bad" but we're seeing today is better described as techno-feudalism than capitalism.
To me the male loneliness epidemic is more about a lack of ability to find meaningful romantic relationships. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and as somebody who has been doing online dating since it essentially started, I am pretty sure that the problem (or at least a major piece) is that match group has commodified romantic relationships.
I know a lot of people will focus on meeting people in public or whatever, but it has been my experience that dating has become completely garbage and a large part is because all of the current popular dating apps disallow index search and funnel you into swiping. From a mate selection perspective this makes no sense. Not only does it muddy the waters about who is actually a real match, but it also does psychic damage to make so many shallow judgements.
Back before match group bought OkCupid, I used to have excellent results finding people their who shared a lot of common ground with, messaging them with a thoughtful message, and going on dates. Swiping is an absolute crap shoot, and often I feel like I am being used.
I have become intimately convinced that engagement-based feeds are the root of many evils of our time, loneliness included.
Here are some of the perverse effects (if ever they needed be told), and how they relate to the loneliness epidemic
- they incentivize individuals from a young age to find stimulation from scrolling mindless content through short dopamine loops instead of seeking satisfaction through longer-term endeavors (e.g. projects, board games, bands, sports teams, etc.) which tend to foster connections with friends, neighbors, family, strangers
- they radicalize and polarize into extreme niche communities (political extremes, conspiracy theories, manosphere, etc) so that it's more difficult to find common ground with a random average person, giving you the impression that everyone is your enemy
- they reflect a skewed version of reality where societal standards (beauty, intelligence, success, wealth, etc) are distorted and artificial, which drives people to believe they are insufficient and ostracized
I firmly believe that engagement-based feeds should be heavily regulated, the same way that other addictive behaviors have (e.g. tobacco, gambling, etc.).
You deserve it, because you are a human
Overcome any addictions (scrolling, gaming, etc.) that stand in the way would be easier if the goal was clear.
Overcoming attitudes and defensive beliefs (too many cliques, they won't talk to me...) go away when you can either recall a time when you had friends or know others who do.
Convince people it's better (in their own value system) to be social, have friends of all kinds, and let them know their value and meaning increase by being a friend, I think you'd have a hard time stopping people from becoming social.
Use AI to scaffold relationships not replace them.
In my book "Leave the Door Open" I suggest simple, high leverage moves anyone can do. Three examples of practical moves that cost nothing:
-Turn your chair to face the door instead of a wall. Your nervous system relaxes when it can see who's coming.
- If you live alone, open your door or window four inches for an hour. The sounds of life beyond your walls remind your body you're not alone on the planet.
- Put out a second chair. Even if no one visits. It shifts your internal posture from "no one is coming" to "I'm expecting life to enter."
Small changes, I know. But the room shapes you as much as you shape it. It's a virtuous cycle.
I write about this at oedmethod.substack.com if you want to go deeper.
We’re lonely because we are wired to avoid rejection and uncomfortable social situations, and because technology has given us hundreds of alternatives to sitting in the mess of connecting with people.
You can only solve it in your own life - by being courageous and spending more of your time in the physical world than in the digital one, willing to gro through the shitty feelings that come with being a human trying to meet other humans.
You cannot solve it for other people. There’s no sexy solution here. Meetup.com or whatever dating app or tech platform or not for profit will not fix it, because it takes individuals choosing the hard path and that will never happen en masse.
In other words, the problem is structural. Moving to a new city where you don't know anyone, only work with people for a few years, and where there are no longer institutions like the church, how is anybody supposed to meet anyone? Meetups? Half the people can't even afford a car.
There is no solution other than meeting a lifelong partner.
Because it doesn't. It's been a phrase used for over 40 years to decry basically any change the author didn't like, from different technology, the rise of the 'me' generation or the declining religiousness of the US.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/202504/loneliness-is...
Individuals may be lonely, but that has always been true. There is no evidence this is different than before, growing, or in anyway an 'epidemic.'
The kid(s) are tremendous source of connection. You may trade for a feeling of exhaustion, overwhelming responsibility, etc. but a lot less loneliness.
Also go a step further and join support groups for parents. Community resources where kids play and parents can hang out and chat. Connection is built through shared experiences, and parenting is an experience you can share with other parents.
Between having kids and participating in events with other parents, there will be a lot less opportunities to feel lonely.
I’ve been working with https://fractal.boston/ and adjacent communities for the last year and my loneliness has been cured. I now have the opposite problem where I don’t get enough time to myself!
just this week i was stuck with a machine i could use to log on websites, so I just browsed reddit anonymously, no profile, no suggestions, no "me" at all.. and it was delightful, suddenly I'm not here to respond or be heard and my brain went into focus mode, i was eager to read the article linked and not the comments.. very very refreshing
except for critical needs, we should go back to paid limited network access, this will make people allocate their time and attention much better and also do more things outside potentially meeting people
Cults have been viciously slandered by mainstream information sources, often because lurid cult stories generate clicks and headlines. Of course some cults are abusive, just like some marriages are abusive. But we still think marriage is good in general.
If you think all cults are bad, you're implicitly against all religion, since every mainstream religion was once a cult. Being anti-cult is also profoundly un-American. America was built by cultists. Freedom of religion is literally the first principle stated in the Bill of Rights.
A cult is really just a professionally managed social environment. If you trust professionals like lawyers, doctors, or teachers with their respective duties, there's no reason in principle you shouldn't trust a cult leader to manage your social environment for you. Of course you should vet them, ask about their reputation, etc.
An old guy approached me and said "put the music on my phone mann".
Alright.
My response: "Search on YouTube"
He keeps insisting on ME doing it for him.
3 steps
First his data was off. For presumably a while he's had his data off ( it's metro PCs so it's prepaid anyway) and I guess he was relying on WiFi.
Ok.
One click to fix that in the Android tile menu.
His Bluetooth was off too.
Turn that on. Turn on his headphones. Luckily it was already paired.
Finally I had to open YouTube and find music for him.
3 or 4 steps.
Now he's happily listening to music.
But beyond that, he got to introduce himself to me, and I guess the next time he accidentally turns off his data he can ask for help again.
I also like to help people.
Old people are awesome when it comes to this. They'll just ask someone to help them out, that's how you build community.
Don't know how to change your oil ? Cool Billy's a car guy he can help you out. Having trouble with your water pressure, maybe Sarah's a plumber and she can help.
Of course if something serious you're still going to be expected to pay these people, but if it's something quick they'll help you free of charge. Maybe you'll bake them a cake for their kids birthday.
I recall when I was young a neighbor basically gave my mom a car. It was an absolute piece of crap, and out of the goodness of his heart he would come and fix it every now and then.
I didn't realize it as a kid, but if you're passionate about cars and you get the emotional satisfaction of both helping a neighbor and seeing how long you can keep that old car running, that's its own reward.
How many of you would love for a non technical neighbor to say their computer is slow. I recall someone on HN even offering to send out a free laptop to someone in need.
Traditionally communities would have a blacksmith or a baker. That's what that person did and they had a status tied to it.
In modern economic systems what exactly we do is so abstracted away from anything meaningful we lack this connection.
On a very fundamental level people need to feel needed.
TLDR: Help others.
Regardless, there are four steps worth taking as an individual: (1) go out, (2) make friends, (3) turn friends into community, and (4) maintain community.
If you're feeling lonely, you're probably failing at one step along this chain.
1. Going out. I don't have a lot of tips here. Except to go to things that actually facilitate interacting with strangers. Don't just go to a bar or go work from a cafe. Go to a meet and greet, an event for strangers to mingle, etc. Or, if you're having trouble motivating yourself to go out, then that's something inside yourself to work on. I find that a shakeup to your life routine (e.g. moving cities, going on a vacation) can provide a good window to change your habits, where you'll start doing things you don't normally do in your home city.
2. Making friends. This one is simple but hard for some. Basically: be personable, smile, engage in conversation, ask questions, be interested, avoid being threatening or clingy, dress and stylish normal-ish unless you really don't want to, etc. Then talk to people at these events, and if seems like you'd like hanging with them and have things in common, ask to exchange numbers.
3. Turn friends into community. IMO this is where you go from the basics into the advanced, and where the most benefits lie. However, most people stop after #2, even though this step is easier than steps #1 or #2, and is extremely rewarding. Community is an in-person social network. The number of connections between people in a community determines the strength and stickiness of that community. Thus it's very important that you introduce your friends to other friends. For example, instead of going on a coffee date with a friend once every month or two, invite 2 or 3 friends to dinner. This has numerous benefits. All of your friends will meet each other, and suddenly they'll know who you're talking about when you mention other people. Also, conversation is easier when there are more people. Also, you'll find events and hangs happen more often, because (a) more people are able to initiate them, and (b) there's more reason to go. People are more motivated to go and less motivated to cancel when there's an event that allows them to see multiple friends at once.
4. Maintain community. People move away. People have silly fights and disagreements and stop talking to each other. People get into relationships and disappear. People get sick, or old, or antisocial, and disappear. Shit happens. So you have to keep doing steps #2 and #3, at least occasionally, forever. You don't necessarily need to do step #1 as much, since the people in your community will naturally bring friends and whatnot to your events. But you still need to get to know these people, exchange numbers, and invite them to future events.
When the economic necessity to form relationships with others disappeared, the naked truth was exposed - most people don't fucking like each other. Yes, when you're starving to death you'll be friends with the guy who has potatoes, but when you can buy the damn potatoes yourself in the supermarket, you're not going to tolerate his smelly ass.
Most friendships form over common participation in a project. Doing something together, knowing that you have to put up with the other one to achieve higher goals. Without those goals, there are no incentives to deal with others. And what goals am I supposed to have if by doing nothing I already have a roof above my head, full fridge, clean house, and an entire library of video games?
Think about the main message of feminism: "Girl, you can make it in life without a man. Don't settle for an aggressive alcoholic just because that's the only option. You can do it yourself.". It perfectly captures how forming relationships turned from an asset into a liability.
Really, that’s it.
You want to play D&D together, you host and DM.
You want to just hang out, you reach out and propose what you’re doing.
You want more purposeful and meaningful time, join a volunteer group you vibe with.
Even if it’s meeting for coffee. You have to be the one who reaches out. You have to do it on a regular cadence. If, like me, you don’t have little alarms in your head that go off when you haven’t seen someone in a while, you can use automated reminders.
I have observed my spouse (who is not on social media) do this and she maintains friendships for decades this way. Nowadays she has regular zoom check ins, book clubs, and more, even with people who moved to the other coast. You do now have the tools for this. I have adopted it into my own life with good results.
Note: you are going to get well under a 50% success rate here. Accept that most people flake. It may always feel painful (and nerds like us often are rejection-sensitive). You have to feel your feelings, accept it, and move on.
You are struggling against many aspects of the way we in the developed world/nerd world live. We have a wealth of passive entertainment, often we have all consuming jobs or have more time-consuming relationship with our families than our parents ever did. We move to different cities for jobs, and even as suburban sprawl has grown, you’re on average probably further away from people who even live in the same city! You get from place to place in a private box on wheels, or alternatively in a really big box on wheels with a random assortment of people. You don’t see people at church, or market day, or whatever other rituals our ancestors had. On the positive side, you have more tools and leisure than ever before to arrange more voluntary meetings.
I'm working on an open source non-commercial website to drive up demand for public spaces. https://createthirdplaces.org/
I've always wondered why applications like Tinder etc... have not been completely destroyed by open-source already ?
We also forget that communities are essentially what allowed this escape in the first place ; I remember going to psytrance festivals but there are so many more escapes : theater, cinema groups, even in tech you have meetings for rust, programming languages and what not
There is definitely some kind of knowledge around being active in life ; and on that point I do not think that working count as active (I'm myself a workaholic so i'm definitely not the best example here)
There are other drivers for isolation than not knowing how to integrate though - it's not always easy to find people who share those common interest or mindset.
It's a very polarized time period which only exaggerate this - the best way to fight it off is to literally do something meaningless with people (eg : play)
the first place to think about serious change is city planning since the invention of cars & then suburbs
we used to be forced to live next to each other, walk and see each other
it turns our car based city planning doesn’t work on any level if you look at cities which didn’t go all in
Going out and trying to be comfortable in non-ideal situations (i.e. you know hardly anyone there) is a skill you can learn. I often think it's probably like sales cold calling. After a while you develop calluses.
Try to resist! Yeah it's scary but most tech-heads are as nerdy/goofy as you and are interested in all the details of whatever you hacking on.
In that spirit I have created and deployed a vibe coded app: come have dinner.com (not the real website).
A simple website we share with my SO to our loved ones, friends, co workers and more. People can register to come have dinner at ours, with an attendance they don’t know.
The website has an admin interface with a simple password, some good jokes, email reminders and calendar invitations.
Should I open source it?
- Get rid of AI chat bots, limit social media use to federated platforms, get out more.
- Encourage cities to build spaces for people rather than cars where folks can meet up without the pressure to buy things and leave. Spaces for walking and hanging out.
> sit alone every day and have no one to talk to, people of all ages, who don't feel that they can join any local groups
I do not fit the
> So they sit on social media all day when they're not at work or school
I'm bringing this up because, at least for me, the issue is has nothing to do with social media, at least not directly.
1. People have obscenely high standards for social interaction. If this person is not an outlier (in a good way) with their behaviors, it's just not going to happen. Most people have a very low tolerance for new people in their life. This has always existed to some degree but people today much prefer to listen to endless content from their favorite streamers, comedians, etc. and form parasocial relationships.
2. The environment for interacting with people has much higher stakes. Think about all the people who get recorded and posted on TikTok every single day. These are people doing it where you can see it - not just the Meta glasses people who remove the recording light. You can act like being a weirdo has no consequences but everyone has this extremely powerful device that can broadcast whatever you do to billions of people immediately - and you can suffer real consequences from this. Every crashout you have in any kind of crowd will be posted for eternity so that the world can see.
3. There is less and less benefit to having social networks/friends. Your friends aren't going to help you get a job, buy you a house, or meet your spouse. Meeting a spouse through friends is increasingly rare as online dating is dominating. As much as everyone complains, it is the major way people meet their spouse in major cities. People assume this is because friend networks are getting smaller but it's not due to that. It's because standards for interaction within friend groups has changed and standards for partners has changed. Unless you are prolific top 1% social maximizer, you are not going to run into anywhere near enough eligible people in your social network to meet your maximized match. We expect to completely maximize and find the best possible fit for our spouse now. Compromise of any kind is considered worse than dying alone. Cost of housing has exploded, jobs have become very hard to keep/find, and this turns everything into a transaction. Living with friends and kicking them out when they can't make rent is a tough but very real situation. People are more transactional because the economy dictates its necessities. Your family is the only thing that will bail you out - your friends can't overlook you skipping $2000/month in rent for 6 months.
There is more but anyway - loneliness epidemic is not going to get solved. It will continue to get worse until some kind of revolution which would require a complete reworking of our entire economy. I would accept this as the new normal and try to figure out how you can optimize your own individual experience in spite of all these things that are working against you. It is not worth trying to fight it on a systemic scale because there are simply too many components and the core cause is one our entire economy is based around. (A good investment is inherently counter to affordability)
When you stack a two hour trip each way on top of the rising cost of doing anything at all, on top of already crushing housing and living costs, you end up with a perfect storm where staying home becomes the default. Not because people don’t want to socialise, but because the effort and expense make it impractical.
This has been a prolem where I live for years and I've actively watched it become worse over time as people have been forced to move further and further apart, and further and further away from the active areas of the city in order to be able to afford to keep a roof over their head.
They could literally find people who are working on he same things and recommend them for networking etc.
But that would take you off platform. Off attention.
Who wants to build this. Others must be thinking the same thing?
I'm not very good on a skateboard, better on a BMX. In any case the vibes are usually good.
Sometimes you think people aren't even noticing you, till you finally land the trick you're working on and a total stranger yells 'whoo!'
Basically all discussion platforms are broken for any sort of long term meaningful discussion which I think is at least part of the problem. Even this thread and this comment just the fact that the thread is now 4 hours old the amount of views and chance of getting many responses drops precipitously. On most platforms unless you are someone with a large following you basically have to think like a marketer and post often and early on posts to stand a chance of getting a discussion going. It's always so ephemeral too. Even though posts on a platform like HN on reddit still exist and you can comment on old threads probably 99% of the activity happens in the first 6 or so hours and then it largely ends.
It makes me miss forums where at least you had long lived threads with simple time based post order and a good chance of replies. This doesn't seem to exist on only platforms now and forums have largely faded away.
The fragmentation of discussion has also messed things up. For example yesterday I was listening to a HardFork podcast episode which is a fairly popular pod, topping the charts in at least the tech category, and after listening I wanted to check for discussion around the episode and probably leave a comment or two. I assume this episode had to have gotten at least in the low tens of thousands of plays though perhaps that is way off. I went searching for discussion and basically found a largely dead subreddit for the podcast with no threads being regularly created for the episode and an empty comment section on nytimes which any site comment section is a useless place for discussion anyways. The pod is also posted on youtube which the youtube comment section had the most activity of anything I found but the youtube comment section and the way it is structured/operates is perhaps the most useless of all the platforms for trying to have any discussion. I just don't understand how if at least say ten thousand people listened to the episode surely at least 1% would be interested in discussing it and 100+ people going back and forth would be a large, active, healthy discussion somewhere.
Even threads that seem "active" on sites like HN or Reddit in the context of the actual audience sizes are shockingly small and confuse me. For example The Pitt season 2 just premiered and posted 5.4 million viewers, the subreddit post ep discussion currently has 5.3k comments which is quite high for a show. That is a joke of a percentage though, 0.1%! and even worse in the context of people that are posting probably post more than once in the thread. I understand many and even most people not wanting to post to discuss a show they just watched but how the hell is less than 1 in a thousand!
This post got long which also damages the chance of any engagement due to TLDR culture.