Gift link shared by author on social: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/america...
I think old distinction between the words "unsociable" meaning not wanting to socialise, and "anti-social" meaning causing trouble to society, is useful. I guess I'm swimming against the tide with this one though
GP is referring to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour
"Asocial" means being non-social. "Anti-social" means being a problem to society. It's terrible terminology to be sure, but those are the current definitions, and it's surprising that no one in the chain of publication for this article flagged that.
> It's terrible terminology to be sure
It's a fairly common pattern in English: e.g. "moral - amoral - immoral", or "political - apolitical - anti-political".
> it's surprising that no one in the chain of publication for this article flagged that.
I think the choice here is deliberate: the century stands accused of being hostile to social life, ergo it is anti-social, not asocial.
The article does describe how these changes are hurting our society, e.g. increased opioid overdoses, increased political polarization; so it could be an intentional word choice to call it "anti-social".
I made a point to improve my social skills before covid and I'm now I'm having an absolute field day. The number of people who are lonely and wish they had something to do means that when I ask someone to coffee, drinks, or just to hangout, chances are they'll say yes. I'm an active member of one of my city's discord servers, so there's a substantial pool to draw from. I've organized in person book clubs, movie nights, and group coffee outings, all from the same pool.
More recently, I've engaged with my city's kink community which has no shortage of public socials. I'm at the point where I have to be choosy about how I want to spend my time because it's easy to get over booked.
Maybe I have higher initiative than most, but I found the experience to be dependent on how much effort I put into it and incredibly rewarding.
Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, if you are “engaging [your] city’s kink community,” you are probably a strong outlier!
I was already checked out when I saw "discord".
This isn't an insult, it's just that the variance in discord users is narrow enough that that common trait alone is enough to make a viable social group of broadly like-minded people.
In my experience, the variety of people on Discord is just the same as that in real life - more so, in fact, since I'm unlikely to meet many people who live in various places around the world in real life ;)
Those are good points. I usually score quite high on openness [1], though I lean more introverted overall. While focusing on courage has been helpful for me, I may have overgeneralized my own experiences. Maybe my approach isn’t something everyone can take on — it certainly didn’t come naturally to me.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
Has not kink become mainstream? Especially for software devs (HN crowd).
No. Hacker News is a very shifted selection of software developers.
Furries, maybe. Rest of it, not really.
Outside of tech circles, I don't think us furries are all that mainstream either. Or at least, no more mainstream than we have been all along — we've always been there, e.g. Disney's Robin Hood, but most of the cultural memes today seem to be varieties of disapproval.
Inside tech, of course, there's loads of us. Emergency cat ears for the sysadmin, etc.
Errr... no.
It's an outlier to the common case: HN'ers who have kinks but feel resigned to tacitly explore them only online.
In other words, OP's action isn't orthogonal to the average HN'ers interests-- it's a healthy alternative (well realistically, supplement).
I'd add that some aspects are profoundly healthy.
There is a regular cuddle party event in my area that begins with an informative and interactive workshop on consent and negotiation. Being able to practice delivering "no", negotiating to find common ground, and asking for what I want has been transformative experience for me. I'm a better communicator - something that I use now in both my vanilla and non-vanilla lives.
IME this is the right of it- it is harder to develop the muscle to take the initiative to be social. It's hard to consider but socializing is an active investment, not a passive one to be consumed easily like social media feeds. It's very easy to say "I signed up for a thing, but I'll flake instead because I just don't feel like it".
It's not that I want to stay at home. It's just that I find it impossible to have a fulfilling social life. I don't know why these articles always seem to assume that these home bound people have good social opportunities.
Very fair, and worth addressing. May I ask- what are the main barriers preventing you from socializing? Could intentionally designed apps or social structures reduce those barriers? What do you think would be most helpful?
1. I would go out alone to some events, but most of the time I would end up not speaking to anyone because people were not approachable. Everyone else is typically in groups and closed off to outside interactions. There were some exceptions but that was the norm.
2. I'd search for some hobby/interest groups that would fit my interests, but nothing really fits. Either there are no meetups for such interests or there are meetups but the demographic at those meetup is not the demographic that I am interested in meeting.
3. Out of desperation I tried to be open minded and joined some hobby groups and did some sports that were really out of character for me. Here I did meet some interesting people, but I did not make a good impression because I was so obviously out of place.
4. Eventually my Friday nights consisted of going for a swim at 21:00-22:00 or going to the library of the nearest university so that I could feel some kind of social warmth sitting in a hall with all the other people.
1. I think you would be surprised how much people are friendly in a socializing event if you just showed up and said hey I'm new, can I join in this conversation. Then just listen 80% of the time and maybe ask a question or two. Then do it again with a follow up of what you listened to. Just keep at it.
2. What are your interests, precisely? And what do you mean the demographic you are interested in meeting-- what is that demographic, precisely?
I feel like these things really compound on top of each other. It’s so much easier to go to these kinds of things and meet people when you have a group of likeminded friends to go with.
>2. I'd search for some hobby/interest groups that would fit my interests, but nothing really fits.
You can just start your own group in this case. That's what I did with Lisp Ireland.
That is not "just" for people who do not have social skills, do not know how to fit in etc. Starting something is a thing people with good social skills and confidence do. If you already feel rejected and do not know how to make interactions work, trying to start something will make you feel even more rejected and lonely.
I believe you’re overestimating my social skills and confidence. I created an event on a meetup site and people showed up.
I can relate with point number 2 about demographics. I've been involved in organizing and playing at local raves and parties since forever but this year I stopped completely because as I age I don't share that much with the people there. Being in my late 40s while everyone has 20 (or even less !) sucks. Some people will give me the look that I'm out of place and others will just share concerns of their age that are too far from mine. This and the booze/drug thing that is frankly not compatible with an aging body and a dad's responsibilities. So that's it, no more friday nights for me, I'm better off at home. I'm not sad though, change is good and I started shooting a few years ago and the range is now my new meet up. Kids are welcome, so I can both socialize and spend time with them and have fun, it's great.
I'm sure there are other hobbies that would suit you.
Age is a big one. But also for me it was a realization that I have different needs and the people I'd meet through my interest in some nerdy hobby were not going to fulfill all of my social needs.
Where do you live? I'd love to go grab a beer with you.
Thanks for the offer, currently I'm road tripping around southern Europe, partly as a way to escape from all that.
"people were not approachable"
frankly this is just a bad mindset and not a true description of reality.
For many people, it's probably no deeper than the question, "where would I go?".
Depression, avoidance, not finding yourself fitting in etc, old friends all live somewhere far away
This is the issue that is top of mind for me at the moment. If you're frustrated by political polarization, this is one of the root causes! I'm very eager to hear any ideas on steps we can take to systematically reverse this damage to society.
Read the UN report on the Attention Economy. Everything is connected to Attention being over fished by platforms.
The human pool of Attention is slow growing and finite (the limit being number of minutes in a day*people). Yet Content keeps exploding to infinity.
Just like inflation devalues money, content inflation devalues individual Attention.
In traditional economics, more money chasing the same goods = inflation. In the Attention Economy, more content chasing the same attention = engagement inflation (harder to get noticed, costs more to be seen).
The real winners - Platforms, since they act like central banks controlling both supply (content) and demand (attention via algorithm).
The Attention Economy behaves like a manipulated market where demand is fixed but distorted, and supply keeps increasing, benefiting the gatekeepers (platforms) while exhausting the participants (creators, advertisers, businesses, users).
History teaches us where the story goes.
> Just like inflation devalues money, content inflation devalues individual Attention.
In some sense perhaps, but I now value my attention more since there is so much more competing for attention. Out with Twitter/X, in with Hacker News; out with daily papers, in with long news: Aeon and Atlantic and Foreign Affairs. And zero broadcast TV.
This requires conscious choice and some discipline though. For the average person, content competes for attention on their behalf before their conscious brain kicks in. Social media uses cheap tricks like rage bait that your local book club just can't compete with. Yes, an emotionally healthy person with some free time who enjoyed books as a child (already a minority of people it seems due to many factors) may choose the book club, but the higher barrier of entry just keeps most people from ever considering it.
It's just so damn hard for any in-person activities to compete with instant gratification and addictive rage. In college in 2022, I was a member of several clubs with varying subjects and members. Every one of them struggled to get anyone to attend. The CS club hosted drone races and 3d printed model painting. The improv club had weekly themed meetings. The theater department hosted at least 1 large and 1 small show per semester and we couldn't even get people to sit in the audience. And this is college, where demands on participants' time are relatively lacking (compared to kids and a 9-5). I imagine a lot of social activities have failed to get members and then just ceased to exist as a result. Several of the clubs I was in no longer exist due to a lack of participants to take up leadership after my class graduated.
Don't even get me started on how people talk and talk about causes they admire on the internet but then never actually volunteer their time to make anything better.
I really think society has just fucked itself over by letting social media companies run rampant with our attention, feeding us lies and gossip that doesn't matter 24 hours later. I genuinely just don't know if most people can be conscious and disciplined enough to get themselves out of the trap. At the very least, it will take a few generations to develop new mores and standards and who knows what new tech will be around to ruin their lives by then. I find it hard to believe that anyone was ever hopeful about working in this industry.
Thanks for your insights. I am old enough that all I need to do partly is revert to habits I had when younger. I make an exception for Hacker News since that quality of discussion is usually so high.
> History teaches us where the story goes.
Does it? When else has this happened before? Or do you just mean manipulated markets specifically?
>History teaches us where the story goes.
I think my book is missing that chapter -where does it go?
I've been working on a project to solve the social connection problem using a new approach. In a post third space society, I want to make it easier for people to connect with others nearby in small groups around shared hobbies and activities. Having a small group size makes it easier to host at someone's place and it's also cheaper than going out.
I did a soft launch earlier this week by posting on NYC subreddits to get early feedback and test out my hypothesis . The reaction has been very positive with many comments saying they like the concept. Obviously there's a long way to go to really nail down the product market fit and build a sustainable business around it but the early feedback makes me feel like there is really something there.
Your project seems very cool and like a great way to tackle the problem. Although between apps similar to yours and dating apps like Tinder, I can’t help but feel a little uneasy that more and more frequently, people only meet by first filtering out dozens or hundreds, if not thousands of other people through an app.
I suppose theoretically it should lead to more connections based on interests and commonalities, as opposed to superficial characteristics (at least in the case your app, going off of your Reddit post; Tinder is a bit of a different story). I do feel like something is lost in the process, though. There are many people who have good friends that they have very little in common with.
Really love your comment about filtering people. It's something I thought a lot about when designing the user experience. A few hypotheses I want to test with my approach are:
1) Swipe based interfaces inherently cause users to see other people as more disposable. I'm trying to have my app be centered around plans, which is a mix between a traditional event with a set time and location and a social media post.
2) Paradox of choice. I'm testing whether providing people with fewer good options will make it easier to commit to something instead of having endless choices.
3) Friend dates are awkward. When people meet through traditional friend making apps, the first meeting is usually dinner, coffee, etc. I think people become pickier when this is the common mode of meeting because if you don't really click at the meeting, it's a waste of time. My theory is that when the meetings are more focused on doing an activity you already like, even if you don't completely click with the group you meet with, it can still be an enjoyable time. I'm hoping this makes people more open to getting out there more.
I've used a website like this a decade / decade and a half ago, and it was pretty great (even despite heavily leaning two generations older than me due to the demographics of that location).
Good vision, but why is it an app? In general "We want to install an app on your phone" is a no from many people unless there's a compelling reason. Not to mention the whole cross platform issue.
Could help me find your reddit posts? I'm interested in learning more, but am having trouble locating them through search...
I share your enthusiasm for making it easier for people to connect in person, focused around shared interests (incl. established online social networks). I'm sincerely concerned about the potential outcomes of our current and growing social isolation.
That said, I believe that "third spaces" are still essential. Effective third spaces can provide safe, neutral ground for those who are unacquainted to get to know one another on their own terms. I think that the thought of inviting a strangers into your personal space is pretty uncomfortable to many people. I also think people want to get out of their cave every now and then--especially with the rise of work-from-home.
I think the failure of traditional third spaces (cafes, bars, social clubs, libraries, etc.) has more to do with them being unable to adapt to the needs of modern society & socialization.
My thought is that there needs to be a new type of third space which meets those needs. Perhaps something like WeWork, but geared towards the third space? Something that can adapt to and support the diverse interest/hobbies/networks that have come about due to the internet. Something that tics all of the "Great Good Place" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) boxes and more. I have some ideas, but need to develop them further.
https://www.reddit.com/r/astoria/comments/1hvw7m5/i_created_...
I agree that third spaces are very valuable but the reality is that they are declining in the current market and the trend doesn't seem to be changing any time soon. I think some venues will figure out how to make it work in the modern market but ultimately there will be fewer of these places in general.
And you're right about people being uncomfortable with strangers in their home but most people will meet in public first before having people over. This is a pattern I've seen a lot in NYC where a community will have public events to attract newcomers. Once these people are vetted, they are invited into a private Whatsapp or Discord. Once accepted into the private chat, people will organize private events which sometimes takes place at someone's home. In a way, my platform hopes to formalize this pattern and make it more accessible for individuals so it's less dependent on having formal organizers/hosts. This pattern still requires public spaces but I think it's a bit more flexible.
Hmm, what happens to the people that refuse to use WhatsApp/Discord ?
If that’s where the group is, you refuse to be part of that group. Nobody is going to inconvenience themselves for an outsider.
There is obviously variety is what tools groups use though.
A social crutch I really like is games. I’m terrible at talking to people, but I love playing competitive but social games. Stuff like chess boards, card games could go a long way.
I ran a company for 3 years working on this, let me know if you want to chat! I've moved on but I'm always happy to talk about solving this problem.
Yes definitely! How can I reach out to you?
devlin . bentley @ gmail.com or if you have xmpp devlinb@thawd.net
I'm also on discord as com2kid
Unfortunately it involves stopping staring at screens 10 hours a day, which is the funds supporting half of this forum's careers.
How many people think today's children are having better lives than the last generation? 25% of US university students on antidepressants.
We optimize for a big GDP number but never for a population happiness level.
> How many people think today's children are having better lives than the last generation? 25% of US university students on antidepressants.
Are they on anti-depressants because life has gotten worse or because of decreasing stigma resulting from greater accessibility to better-informed patients? Until the turn of the century, just mentioning you saw a shrink in any sincere capacity would get you funny looks in most parts of the country.
> Unfortunately it involves stopping staring at screens 10 hours a day, which is the funds supporting half of this forum's careers.
There's an old joke where a reporter asks a bank robber why he robs banks. The latter's response: "Because, that's where the money is". The bank and bar of today is the Internet. It's what funds and facilitates most social ventures, even the ones that take place IRL.
Happiness isn't a quality you can optimize for on a national or global scale as it's a purely individual affair.
> Happiness isn't a quality you can optimize for on a national or global scale as it's a purely individual affair.
This right here is exactly what's wrong. People are put into impossible conditions and then blamed when they can't magically make themselves happy with the arrangement.
Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?
Happiness isn't self-induced solipsism. I don't claim that external conditions have no effect on individual happiness, but rather that external conditions do not uniformly or systematically determine an individual's happiness nor can one reliably use such conditions to extrapolate the happiness of others. A policy that addresses a so-called collective need often comes at the cost of individual agency and thus individual happiness. It is therefore, necessary to recognize that the domain of happiness and its relevant parameters does not belong to an abstract blob, but solely to the individual.
> Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?
Not every animal views a zoo (or for that matter, a farm or a pet-owner's house) as a prison. For a significant population of zoo animals, life in captivity is the only life they know. For the most part, they are as happy and content as they are well-fed.
>Not every animal views a zoo (or for that matter, a farm or a pet-owners house) as a prison. For a significant population of zoo animals, life in captivity is the only life they know. For the most part, they are as happy and content, as they are well-fed.
Not if they are given a space which is too small and not stimulating enough for them, then they just pace around for their whole lives.
I'm not sure I completely agree with your last assertion (except according to a very rigorous definition of "optimize"). While people do very much differ, there are certain things that predictably make the majority of people happier. Social connectedness, for example. We may not be able to truly optimize for these things, but I think we can reliably improve human wellbeing at scale. A successful example from the past would be the efforts to add more green spaces to cities. People like parks, and they're happier on average when they have access to them.
Maybe an increased stigma was better? Why is that you can “optimize” unhappiness nationally but not happiness, if you discount the former I think there are some examples.
> Why is that you can “optimize” unhappiness nationally but not happiness
The conditions that make someone miserable are just as variable. Some of the most content people possess little education and are mired in the throes of poverty. If you started a national misery program where the government impoverishes its population left and right, there would still be a minority who find enjoyment, even thrive, in such circumstances.
I mean you are talking about anomalies which is not what people mean here. Obviously masochists exist but that’s not very interesting
Yeah increasing treatment of medical conditions seems like a very poor proxy for proving an increase in incidence.
> 25% of US university students on antidepressants.
You need to factor in alcohol and drug use rates for previous generations, crime rates of youth and so it. It is not that current situation is optimal, but when I was young, you would not get antidepressants even if you actually desperately needed it. The taboo against admitting even to yourself that you might have mental health issue was too high.
Conservative minded people like to complain about lack of risk taking among youth ... but quite a lot of risk taking was pure self destruction or destruction of whoever you got pregnant (if you was a guy).
> 25% of US university students on antidepressants.
Is it because they're emotionally worse off, or is it because pharma is advertising them more aggressively, kickbacks, etc
There are many studies showing US youth report feeling worse than previously. The CDC: "Youth in the U.S. are experiencing a mental health crisis."
https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/mental-healt...
Increased pharma pushing is an easy scapegoat, but it would have to be making these youth more depressed before they were ever taking antidepressants.
Social media and phones have been disconnecting real interactions and pushing people onto fake digital "connections." Then when people are more lonely than ever, we're now pushing them "AI bot connections" to help loneliness, purely because VC's see $ in it, basically giving desperate people soda to help their hunger.
I think social media even promotes this hyper therapy and medication seeking behavior. My guess it probably even creates a kind of Overton window sort of thing for physicians, big pharma notwithstanding. It’s very easy for people to get prescriptions for these drugs and a lot of doctors seem to think “patients reports depression so I prescribed SSRI” or whatever is popular.
When I was 20, no one my age had got incredibly wealthy or famous who wasn't an actor or musician.
It is like a hyper version of de Tocqueville now. No matter how poor someone is, they still don't feel that far from being rich and famous in America.
This creates enormous status anxiety coupled with the reality of student loans and inflation it is a really bad deal for young people's mental health.
I totally agree with you but there is a lot of tech that is not social media related. But, that fact probably doesn’t change your quantitative observation.
Capitalism can't reproduce itself through happy people. It needs enormous amounts of suffering to continue, and as a kid growing up you'll at some point notice this. At least you did, before the screens became dominant over reality.
Modes of production are not modes of consumption. The system doesn't change if the "plastic trivia" companies go bankrupt from everyone suddenly growing a sense of thrift.
What does any of this mean? What is capitalist reproduction? How is any of that true? Does a system in which someone has a right to your labor somehow solve this?
It's an expression from economics. Do you disagree that societies reproduce themselves?
We're living in a world system where almost all societies are based on the idea that one class of people has a right to the labour of almost all the rest. I'm not sure why you suggest furthering it is a solution to our current predicaments.
I'm sure people will disagree on the significance, but I think it seems obvious that a society that encourages (and in some cases requires) its members to isolate themselves in mobile metal boxes is going to be more antisocial than one that doesn't.
I'm with you on this one, and I think my time living in a fairly walkable city vs. previously living in a non-walkable suburb really underscored this point for me personally.
I'm failing at finding it via google, but I also recall a study that showed drivers tended to view other drivers/cars on the road not as a person in control of a vehicle, but rather an inanimate object, which I think further supports your point. If anyone has a link to the study, I'd be grateful.
I think cars are a symptom of a philosophy, not the root cause.
I'd say they're both, and it feeds into itself.
Fair
I feel like there is a political side that loves and thinks it clever to shame car ownership or blame everything on cars because because of sone socialist nonsense or something. People have been very social up until 2000 perhaps even later and so-called “metal boxes” have been a big part of American life for a long time. There have even been times when cars were an integral part of socializing in many circles. I get it “America sucks and ancient cities on the Continent are superior” or whatever , but isn’t this kind an f a cliche take at this point?
I think it’s a combination of things and car centric transportation makes our online addled communities worse.
One major issue is that affordability is down bad, many people cannot afford cars and they are stuck in environments where cars are required to do everything and as a result have turned to the internet for their social needs. Which as we know is a mirage for social interaction.
Dense areas where walking/public transit are enough to see friends are becoming more expensive as well.
It’s just compounding.
If your environment is isolating and the internet replaces easy socialization then you become isolated.
If your environment is low friction for socializing it is less likely.
[dead]
until people realize that “social” media is the root of most evil plauging society currently nothing will change. and people will not disconnect from “social” media because of pure addiction.
my life is drastically different today since I’ve ditched ALL social media. unlike other addictions, this came without withdrawals (10-20 minutes on HN helps :) )
I think you’re more on point than anyone else. Social media not working but affects connections but it hinders connections in both platonic and romantic relationship for so many reasons.
The article recommends seeking out interactions with others even when (especially when) we would avoid it.
I don't know how to make that a movement, but I'll be more mindful of it.
Aren’t there many countries which are happily anti social?
In any case - approaching this as if it is damage, will end up putting you in opposition to choices people are making.
You can be incredibly alone in a crowd of people. You can be empty when people are singing your praises.
Meaning - is different simple social interaction. People can find their comfort zone of personal interaction is much smaller than others.
TLDR: Treating it like a problem, results in bad suggestions. Treating it like a choice, suggests that one look at the options available to people.
It may turn out that people aren’t hanging out at bars, but at home. Frankly, why wouldn’t people stay at home, if home is where they have put their time and effort into setting up.
If you want a good place to find solutions, look to boredom and monotony.
Do note - polarization started well before the personal computer showed up in the geological record.
> Aren’t there many countries which are happily anti social?
Yes: Finland. Purportedly the happiest country on the planet. A bilingual nation who will merrily shut up in two languages simultaneously. Whose complete lack of small-talk is legendary.
Hell is other people.
Ob-disclosure: I'm a Finn.
Quality over quantity, right?
The article thinks the problem is declining quantity, but I'm unconvinced. Americans have always been low on quality, since as far back as slavery and native american genocide.
If anything I think the "meditation" mentioned in the article is a really good sign.
I suspect it might be the smaller quantity in general.
90% of everything is crap. 90% of everything that remains is still crap. With the endless yammering cut out, there is simply a lower volume of garbage competing with your limited bandwidth and attention.
> Americans have always been low on quality
I'm intentionally stripping this out of your provided context, because I don't think aligning the sentiment with atrocities helps. Obviously this is coming from an outside observer's point of view, so take it with a grain of salt - from what I've seen, the American culture is obsessed with self-promotion and hustle. Peoples' ear canals are flooded with demands for attention, and everyone is incentivised to drown out everyone else.
Almost as if the agreed solution to the needle-in-a-haystack problem is "more hay".
Unfortunately, there is evidence that the provided context greatly matters. Here's a quote from the book “The Sum of Us”, by Heather McGhee.
>He was building on global comparative research by Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, which found that “societies that began with relatively extreme inequality tended to generate institutions that were more restrictive in providing access to economic opportunities.” Nunn’s research showed that although of course slave counties had higher inequality during the era of slavery (particularly of land), it wasn’t the degree of inequality that was correlated with poverty today; it was the fact of slavery itself, whether on large plantations or small farms. When I talked to Nathan Nunn, he couldn’t say exactly how the hand of slavery was strangling opportunity generations later. He made it clear, however, that it wasn’t just the Black inhabitants who were faring worse today; it was the white families in the counties, too. When slavery was abolished, Confederate states found themselves far behind northern states in the creation of the public infrastructure that supports economic mobility, and they continue to lag behind today. These deficits limit economic mobility for all residents, not just the descendants of enslaved people.
That "public infrastructure" mentioned includes healthcare and welfare, contentious issues in the US even today. Without them, we get inequality, hustle culture, and the US dropping in that list of "Happiest Countries in the World".
I'm not sure which happy, anti-social countries you are referring to.
"It may turn out that people aren’t hanging out at bars, but at home." I understand that entertaining at home has been in decline over the last few decades, and is at or near an all time low. Putnam discusses this in Bowling Alone, and all research I've seen lines up with that.
My belief is that most people agree that the decline of community is a problem (I'll cite the Surgeon General's report, for example). I'm open to reconsidering my position if you have sources for the opposing viewpoint.
I was thinking of Denmark, but as someone pointed out above, Finland.
I went through the surgeon generals report to better understand your point.
Hopefully this brings us closer to congruence:
1) Loneliness and being Alone are different. You can be lonely in a group of people. The Surgeon General captures this where they talk about quality of connection.
2) An underlying issue highlighted in the report, is economics. Resources can set of virtuous cycle, increasing health and time for social connection. Lack of resources decrease this.
If there is a short answer, it’s worth pointing out that causative factors are what solves problems. Forcing people into proximity, for example, wouldn’t alleviate loneliness.
Meaningful interactions, and the ability for people to afford them, is what matters.
I think the primary point is that until the 20th century, most people did not ever have a choice. Communal living was the only primary successful strategy for survival, so we are fairly hardwired for that environment. In that environment occasional solitude was probably a benefit.
It’s like the physical exercise which until the 20th century was just a part of everyone’s life. We sought relief from it whenever possible, but that wasn’t often possible. But in modern life we can go weeks without much physical exertion. And we know the consequences of that.
> polarization started well before the personal computer showed up in the geological record.
What do you mean?
I think "well before the personal computer showed up in the geological record" is a bit of hyperbole, but it is not a new phenomenon:
"We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing"
"Partisanship has been attributed to a number of causes, including the stratifying wealth distribution of Americans [2]; boundary redistricting [3]; activist activity at primary elections [4]; changes in Congressional procedural rules [5]; political realignment in the American South [6]; the shift from electing moderate members to electing partisan members [7] movement by existing members towards ideological poles [8]; and an increasing political, pervasive media [9]."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Oh thank god, this is the report I was looking for, and I couldn’t remember what it was. Thank you.
The Reformation is one famous example.
Reformation was itself really about long-standing conflicts between countries/nationalities. Few people really care whether they are saved through faith alone or not, just as East and West weren't really having wars over whether "filioque" belongs in the Nicene Creed.
The Internet does give ordinary people the opportunity to be mean to each other on a daily basis rather than having wars. I'm genuinely not sure that's an improvement, since at least people would think twice before going into combat. The level of desiring to harass each other seems roughly constant.
The reformation broke out in the middle of the hundreds of tiny German microstates that comprised the "Holy Roman Empire". In fact that's the only way it could have broken out; power was diffused among hundreds of princes and the mechanisms of central control weren't strong enough to stop it. That's why it happened when and where it did. Nationalism and politics didn't enter into it for the better part of a century.
I recently started reading "The Art and Science of Connection" by Kasley Killam, who argues that social health should be considered the equal to physical health and mental health as three essential, interdependent pillars of personal health, and lack of social connections can be as deadly as, say, smoking cigarettes, to the extent that shortens your life.
Is the "deadly" due to an increase in confounding factors related to social isolation – drinking, lack of exercise, etc? Or does merely being alone, while still maintaining an otherwise healthy lifestyle, shorten life?
The latter, according to the author. For example:
> In 1979, two epidemiologists published a paper that would trigger a seismic shift in the scientific community's understanding of and interest in the link between relationships and life span. Lisa Berkman, then at Yale University, and Leonard Syne at the University of California, Berkeley, followed nearly seven thousand adults for nine years. In that time period, men with fewer social and community ties were twice as likely to die—regardless of how physically healthy they were at the start of the study, their socioeconomic status, and whether they smoked, drank alcohol, were obese, exercised, or used preventative healthcare services. For isolated women, the risk of dying was closer to three times that of their connected counterparts.
There is a lot in this piece, but one of the things mentioned was public spaces.
While it likely doesn't play a huge role, it can't be ignored that the last ten or so years in the US, public spaces have generally deteriorated due to the lack of enforcement of quality-of-life laws, and general absence of social norms. If your government decides to allow tent cities (everything that comes with that) in your local park, people of means will take their kids to SkyZone. When public transportation becomes unsafe, people of means will opt to rideshare. It points to a failure in leadership of many large US cities. Hopefully that changes.
A lot of the observations are true but it's really funny to me to frame this through the "21st century" post-pandemic, lens in particular the part about self-optimization, "secular monks" as the article calls it. Immediately reminded me of Baudrillard, (America 1989):
"The skateboarder with his Walkman, the intellectual working on his word- processor, the Bronx breakdancer whirling frantically in the Roxy, the jogger and the body-builder: everywhere, whether in regard to the body or the mental faculties, you find the same blank solitude, the same narcissistic refraction. This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary. It is the only object on which everyone is made to concentrate, not as a source of pleasure, but as an object of frantic concern[...] This ‘into’ is the key to everything. The point is not to be nor even to have a body, but to be into your own body. Into your sexuality, into your own desire. Into your own functions, as if they were energy differentials or video screens. The hedonism of the ‘into’: the body is a scenario and the curious hygienist threnody devoted to it runs through the innumerable fitness centres, body- building gyms, stimulation and simulation studios that stretch from Venice to Tupanga Canyon, bearing witness to a collective asexual obsession. "
He was one of the first people to point to the irony of a health and beauty obsessed culture that doesn't actually use their health or beauty for anything, because they've removed any real social contact from their life, just existing in isolation in front of a screen. This is the gym goer / instagram influencer who Baudrillard would have compared more to a corpse in a morgue than an actual person.
Except it wasn't fully isolated then or now. Then people would use their solitary efforts to find a mate. Now they do it to find a mate, sometimes more indirectly by broadcasting their efforts and accomplishments online instead of at the bar, school, church, club, etc.
Perhaps one could argue the men going their own way movement has coalesced or even grown. But that's harder to quantify.
Is there any research on consumer preferences and why, for example, people might PREFER to be alone vs. eating in a diner? It feels like socialization used to be a forced mechanism, regardless of whether that created positive feelings in both parties. People have such limited time now between caring for children and demanding careers that any time spent meeting new people generally feels wasted unless you have significant energy to invest in that relationship (which generally means less “me” time). I personally don’t feel like this is the fault of technology as much as it is the fault of rising costs and long, intense work hours to pay said costs.
> This neededness can come in several forms: social, economic, or communitarian. Our children and partners can depend on us for care or income. Our colleagues can rely on us to finish a project, or to commiserate about an annoying boss. Our religious congregations and weekend poker parties can count on us to fill a pew or bring the dip.
I think that this point is the underlying rationale for writing the article. "Not enough" people are making sacrifices. It isn't that they're less happy, it's that the author doesn't want them to be happy. They'd rather rewrite the definition of happiness
If all you're doing is giving, why bother? You could have a wife and kids, or you could do FIRE. If you go the wife and kids route, suddenly all of your money and time are no longer "yours"
I think, if some people look at society and institutions and say "I'm giving more than what I'm receiving here", there's nothing wrong with that. Framing it as the individual's problem is dumb and counterproductive. Religion is on the way out, people are getting sick of lying to themselves
> It isn't that they're less happy, it's that the author doesn't want them to be happy. They'd rather rewrite the definition of happiness
Where do you get that? Here are some quotes from the article:
"activities at home were associated with a “strong reduction” in self-reported happiness."
"Afterward, people filled out a questionnaire. How did they feel? Despite the broad assumption that the best commute is a silent one, the people instructed to talk with strangers actually reported feeling significantly more positive than those who’d kept to themselves."
These are self reports, not another person's definition.
my point is, the end goal of writing this kind of article isn't increasing the net amount of happiness in the world. the happiness argument is just a bunch of anecdotal evidence that always conveniently supports the premise
put differently, if enough people were getting married, having kids, etc, you wouldn't see this kind of article. it's not about making people happier, it's about pressuring people to do shit that's not in their self interest
> if enough people were getting married, having kids, etc, you wouldn't see this kind of article.
Having kids is pretty isolating and lonely experience in current society. Especially if one parents stays home for some time, that parents usually ends up super lonely.
And when kids grow up, they are expected to leave and move for work or family. So you need to create yet another social network for old age.
> if enough people were getting married, having kids, etc, you wouldn't see this kind of article. it's not about making people happier, it's about pressuring people to do shit that's not in their self interest
This is both exceedingly cynical and completely unsupported by the text of the article, which talks about things like public spaces, TV, smartphones, and dinner parties. Where exactly does the article prescribe marriage and kids as the solution?
> Men and women alike have been delaying family formation; the median age at first marriage for men recently surpassed 30 for the first time in history. Taggart wrote that the men he knew seemed to be forgoing marriage and fatherhood with gusto. Instead of focusing their 30s and 40s on wedding bands and diapers, they were committed to working on their body, their bank account, and their meditation-sharpened minds. Taggart called these men “secular monks” for their combination of old-fashioned austerity and modern solipsism. “Practitioners submit themselves to ever more rigorous, monitored forms of ascetic self-control,” he wrote, “among them, cold showers, intermittent fasting, data-driven health optimization, and meditation boot camps.”
That wasn't a solution. It was just one of many statistics listed by the article.
Also, the comment about secular monks mentions friends before spouses and children. It's about the total lack of other people:
> What is most striking about these videos, however, is the element they typically lack: other people. In these little movies of a life well spent, the protagonists generally wake up alone and stay that way. We usually see no friends, no spouse, no children.
The article talks about sixth graders, who are kids themselves and obviously can't get married and have kids:
> In 1970, just 6 percent of sixth graders had a TV set in their bedroom; in 1999, that proportion had grown to 77 percent.
And marriage in itself is obviously not the solution:
> Time diaries in the 1990s showed that husbands and wives spent almost four times as many hours watching TV together as they spent talking to each other in a given week.
Again, kids and teenagers can't get married and have kids:
> American kids and teenagers spend, on average, about 270 minutes on weekdays and 380 minutes on weekends gazing into their screens
The article talks about young people meeting friends. Again, this is not about marriage and having kids:
> Young people are less likely than in previous decades to get their driver’s license, or to go on a date, or to have more than one close friend, or even to hang out with their friends at all. The share of boys and girls who say they meet up with friends almost daily outside school hours has declined by nearly 50 percent since the early 1990s, with the sharpest downturn occurring in the 2010s.
I could go on and on:
> The best kind of play is physical, outdoors, with other kids, and unsupervised, allowing children to press the limits of their abilities while figuring out how to manage conflict and tolerate pain. But now young people’s attention is funneled into devices that take them out of their body, denying them the physical-world education they need.
It's only in your mind that this article is somehow a "marry and reproduce" message like in the movie "They Live".
Having kids is very beneficial. Money is not an end in itself. I think the fact that the child-free subreddit exists and that there so many “sinks and dinks” on social media highlight their “fantastic” lives with no kids says a lot more about them then they think it does.
Well yeah, of course it’s not an individual problem. Reading your comment, though. it’s very clear that you’re responding the way that you are partially because of how difficult you perceive these interactions to be. That’s not your fault, it’s a consequence of how we have constructed our society. That’s the problem. To put it a different way, while it’s fine to choose not to walk sometimes, it wouldn’t be healthy if you were against the idea of walking because your leg muscles had atrophied from constant sitting.
I don't think the choice between wife->kids->retirement->death and something else is analogous to choosing to walk or not walk. Walking is a natural thing that's intrinsic to our biology, the other thing is a product of culture, policy, time, etc. Other cultures have alternate ways of doing
if you're equating that lifestyle pipeline to walking or participating in society, it's not really a valid point
>I don’t think the choice… is analogous
It seemed less like a wife-kids-retirement pipeline and more like a general aversion towards any kind of social/communal obligation. The former is unnecessary, I agree, but the article makes the case and I agree that we have a certain innate need for the latter kind of relationship.
every community wants more engagement, resources, etc
not every community is worth the engagement
my point isn't that community in general is bad, it's that communities aren't entitled to engagement unless they actually make it worth it for the participants. if the social pressure to join goes out the window and communities have to exist via their own merits, that's not a bad thing. it's a correction
In this case I don’t think it’s a lack of pressure to join, but the introduction of supplementary technologies that poorly simulate aspects of community, but don’t address some evolutionarily derived needs. My concern would be that we’ve developed poor facsimiles of things we crave, but haven’t, and can’t yet, account for all aspects of them. It’s a bit like trying to make a food substitute and missing essential nutrients.
> In this case I don’t think it’s a lack of pressure to join, but the introduction of supplementary technologies that poorly simulate aspects of community
There are two big cultural shifts I have in mind here:
the "liberalization" of American society (divorce is more common, LGBT acceptance (and in general, the freedom to have a non-hetero life)). hetero relationships come with an "escalator" that ends in having a family, etc. But as long as there's a socially accepted alternative to this lifestyle, it has to justify itself against the alternative. (Imo, this is the real reason why LGBT was stigmatized for so long)
also religion dying out, less pressure to buy into religion, that's one big third space that's gone
since this article is US focused, 66% of households own pets. People would rather hang out with their pets. People bring their dogs to shop and people used to bring them to bars in the late 2010s.
I really hope this trend doesn't grow or return, especially to places like super markets.
People getting tired of the status games.
One factor for lack of dine in customers is the exorbitant tips and extra fees that restaurants like tacking on. It’s harder for them to do it with take out customers.
It is funny to see a tip prompt when ordering, before you've any idea how good or bad the service and food will be
> A 2023 Gallup survey found that the share of Americans who said they experienced loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday” declined by roughly one-third from 2021 to 2023, even as alone time, by Atalay’s calculation, rose slightly.
This seems particularly interesting.
I'm waiting for schizoid personality label to become en vogue so I can claim I was ahead of the curve.
If you can start a movement about it being a “spectrum” then you will probably get a lot of success out of that.
Very concerning
If you ever want this back, the solution is simple: less work hours for the same pay. I suspect that societal health isn't a priority of capitalism though.
If everyone just (on average) worked less, rent would be lower.
And houses would be proportionally fewer, smaller, and and in need for repair.
That is unless we assume builders and maintenance people are exempt from working less
I take it you haven't been to Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the world. It's a place where everyone is hyper competitive and works as much as they physically can, and then some. And those are the slackers, the ones who truly want to get ahead optimize their sleep schedule to need only a few hours. It's also a place where poorly built and maintained budget housing from the 1960s sells for several million USD.
Or you know, Japan. They are such slackers that they have a special word for death by overwork (karoshi). I hear they live in giant mansions.
I don't know what point you are getting at. Can you say it plainly?
My point is simply that if everyone works less, society will have proportionally less material stuff.
As a vague platitude yes, total output has to be reduced by some amount if labor input is reduced. When actually thinking of concrete impacts on society, though, the quantity and quality of many kinds of societal outputs do not scale linearly with overall work-hours, nevermind that relative allocation of work-hours across different fields and disciplines would be scaled in nonlinear ways (see also: complaints about make-work and "bullshit jobs"). And housing in particular is almost universally bottlenecked by the supply of land and limitations in organization/planning of cities and towns rather than any shortage of construction labor.
Given all that, "houses would be proportionally fewer, smaller, and and in need for repair...unless we assume builders and maintenance people are exempt from working less" is not actually self-evident, and is more likely to be taken as an attempt to paint an exaggerated picture for rhetorical purposes.
I think it is a less exaggerated take than the idea we can all work half as much and have the same amount of stuff.
There are lots of things that can be done, but they revolve around increasing either productivity or increasing efficiency. Neither of these is synonymous with simply cutting back on work.
He's saying that, in the places where people do work harder, they don't actually have more/larger/better houses. Rather, the work just becomes part of a zero-sum competition that bids up the price of the (fixed) quantity/quality of houses.
This partially contradicts your point.
What I would add (to reconcile the two points), is that one kind of work is not fungible with another kind of work. Yes, people work very hard in Silicon Valley -- but they are not working hard at building houses. If they were, there'd be a lot of supply, and the price would fall.
Overall, this is perhaps a comment about the (mis-)allocation of work in society.
I would agree with that. Neither work nor houses are fungible.
Time and effort and suffering are distinct from value creation.
Working less might give people more time to "sharpen the axe", both on an individual level and as a society.
A large portion of workers believe their own job is "bullshit" and does nothing to benefit society. Perhaps if we had more breathing room we could find ways to move workers into meaningful jobs.
It's complicated, and working fewer hours doesn't necessarily mean less productivity.
And that would be okay!
I agree, as long as folks realize there is no free lunch.
There may be some. I can’t recall where I saw it, but there can be large productivity increases when the work week is shorter. If the main tasks aren’t constant time but dependent on worker performance, there may be a free lunch to be had.
I doubt it because demand would be the same. For lower prices you need an increase in supply for housing. This is why the YIMBY movement exists.
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There’s another side to this coin: the exultation of and obsession with trauma. There is an unstated and unnamed assumption in modern American culture: that you have experienced trauma, and more importantly that trauma is what has constructed your personality.
This view has _some_ merit, but has been taken in uncritically as a fundamental assumption of life. Forcing yourself to imagine traumas, or constantly revisit legitimate traumas is deeply unhealthy. There was a time when no one could talk about their psychological issues, but now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction: we has been discussing our trauma to a greater and greater degree for the past 30 years, but mental health outcomes are only getting worse. I’m undecided if this is casual, but there is no evidence it’s _helping_.
>There is an unstated and unnamed assumption in modern American culture: that you have experienced trauma, and more importantly that trauma is what has constructed your personality
This is not "American culture", it's American leftism. Almost no conservative American thinks like that. And it's dying out by itself because American liberals aren't having enough children and views/values are partially heritable.
Religion is what is dying out in the US, despite being "partially heritable", and with it a framework for recontextualizing trauma.
And since we're talking about trauma, it's important to remember that suicide rates in the US are highest among middle-aged white men.
I'd say religious indoctrination turned out pretty traumatic for me. Gotta teach those kids that they'll most likely burn in hell for eternity while they're still young and impressionable.
> Almost no conservative American thinks like that.
Of course they do. Victimhood is a common driver of all politics.
That's exactly right. Leftists are victims of the past, conservatives are victims of the future. Conserving the past to protect it against the future is, in general, the guiding sentiment.
> The USA is the land of trauma, multifaceted and pervasive, and telling people to touch grass or go to their local bar won't stop it nor heal the damage.
You might find something resonates in this essay [0]
I don't think it's unique to US America. It's well documented via writers like de Toqueville and Putnam, but the same phenomena are there in the UK, in Australia, and elsewhere.
Technology lets us see ourselves, and we are quite sickened by how we treat one another.
[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/radical-disbelief-and-its-ca...
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> Scary laws favorable to women ensure men wouldn't dare to look at women for more than 2 seconds, leave alone starting up conversation.
I’m sure it’s the scary laws that stop you from talking to women.
It's the risk. Marriage is a risk, having children is risk, all commitments are risk. Any deviations, randomness and failures are prohibitively dangerous. Where does this risk come from? mostly from laws.
Do autocrats not want efficient workers for some reason?
Autocrats are not crazy about votes and economy progress. Infact they are more community-minded than the votes-bank leaders who always worry about next elections, coalitions and political survival. Look at the churn of leaders in Europe.
> In 2023, 74 percent of all restaurant traffic came from “off premises” customers—that is, from takeout and delivery—up from 61 percent before COVID
Sounds like people are just eating out more?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/239410/us-food-service-a...