As someone who has struggled with this, it is always quite illuminating to me to see the difference between going to a public event by yourself v. with one or two other people. Just one companion/compadre makes an almost binary difference in terms of feeling "like everyone is questioning why you are there by yourself". Two companions are best as conversation can peter off with just one. The point of this is - invite along people to things you might have gone to yourself in the past. The more advanced level is approaching people around you like this is something you do normally. Good luck, I know how easy it is to fall into a social rut - and it just takes one friend to change everything (for going out).
> feeling "like everyone is questioning why you are there by yourself"
This sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_effect In reality it's likely that nobody noticed you much at all, and almost certainly didn't care to analyze why you're by yourself or even if you really are by yourself.
It can be actually liberating to realize that random strangers you're not interacting with couldn't care less about you short of some kind of medical emergency (and sometimes even then...)
It can be more fun to go to events with people. It can also be more fun to go by yourself. Just realize either way people around you are unlikely to care or even notice either way.
Well, it depends on the event and the people. Some people are endless gossip and all they care about are what other people are doing. Some people love to hang out and people watch. Which, btw, is a great thing to do if you're alone :D
It's the same in the gym. People are there to do their own workouts and won't even notice anyone else (unless they're squat rack curling, then everyone will notice).
At least in the states, women who are perceived to be alone or merely without male companion really are noticed by a certain kind of guy as available for harassment.
Not to sound like too much of an egotist but some of us really are noticed an awful lot and spotlight effect sounds pretty alien to me. I am very tall (over two meters) so that is definitely part of it. I am very outgoing and I tend to go to events alone (because few friends share all my interests and I am fairly antisocial and impatient). All that congeals into many people remembering me and I don't remember them (except interesting stories separated from identities). I don't think most people remember me but many do, they have told me so. It would be quite an experience to just be able to be unnoticed in a crowd but it is one I have never really experienced in larger crowds as there is always some extrovert introduces themselves. I daresay intentional attention seekers and those with some physical quality that greatly distinguishes them from the norm would have a similar experience.
While I've had a decent time with a good friend, it's somewhat liberating to go alone.
Re: "why everyone is questioning why you are there by yourself": This may depend on the area. I lived in Boston for a while and people seemed openly hostile about solo guys. I remember I went to the Enormous Room (RIP: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-enormous-room-cambridge) one night by myself and got questioned multiple times why I was alone there... The funny thing is that 2 friends I know randomly showed up there on the same night, so I didn't actually end up alone after all... I just go alone sometimes because it is freeing.
I think it depends on how well your social needs are being met in the rest of your life, if you are lonely going to a event like that alone can make you feel worse.
Yes! Well, I don't know if it is particular only to the USA, but.. that is one of the freedoms I gained when I moved to Norway. Perfectly acceptable to go see music in a bar by myself, or to any social function, etc. - and I don't feel out of place doing it. Nor do I get hassled about being a female walking to/from home during the night after going to the same places.
Doing the same things in the states, you feel the aloneness more and it is much more rare for folks to do.
Eh I don't know. When I was in Paris, going to concerts alone was fine but the days when my friends were there to chat and interact with me we're far more happy and full.
Honestly, nobody cares if you are there by yourself or with friends. It's not a big deal to others if its not a big deal to you.
One way to tackle this to just view everyone as your friend when you go somewhere. Some of your friends might have bad day, but you know you are friends so you are okay with that and move on to talk with your other friends. "Know thyself" might be appropriate here.
This is from someone who has been sick for several years due to physical illness, has no friends and spends 99% of time by himself.
We are physical beings and so I don't think anyone would ever say that meeting in person isn't the optimal.
But you need to look at this from different perspectives.
The very fact that people from around the world can meet so easily virtually today is in itself a value regardless of whether it's better to meet in person.
In other words, being able to meet virtually isn't about replacing actual physical visits it's about allowing you to meet a much larger group of people and perhaps find more likeminded people and at much greater distance.
So I am not sure I buy into the premise of this study.
I also am not so sure that I believe we are getting more lonely. I would need to see harder evidence than the typical qualitative studies that are done to determine this. Would love to see how they are actually getting to that conclusion.
I went to high school in Vancouver but left for college to Waterloo, which is on the other side of the continent. The only way I could have kept in touch with friends from high school who went to college in BC was through virtual mediums like Facebook, online gaming and voice chat.
Now that I'm back in Vancouver again, we naturally started hanging out physically again, but I'm fairly certain we would all have had a much more difficult time doing that had it not been for all the time we spent together virtually over these years.
It's rather like the argument that real books are superior to Kindles; that may be true, but a Kindle doesn't replace the book you have with you - it replaces the library you don't normally have with you. You can and probably should still read books at home, but on the go a Kindle allows to have more material available than you could otherwise carry.
> The very fact that people from around the world can meet so easily virtually today is in itself a value regardless of whether it's better to meet in person.
So the standard reply to this is because we are fine tuning our meetups we are missing out on serendipity.
Travelers stay in touch with home so much they don't need to meet people.
We are connected on the bus and at a restaurant such that we are not pushed to meet people.
Then when we go to the fine matched event there is too much pressure to make friends.
I would say I'm the same, I'd need harder evidence that we are not getting lonelier.
Without a doubt we are changing, so it is troubling we don't know for sure if it's better or worse, I doubt such a big change is neutral.
Someone posts a video on YouTube about some niche work; the original creator of that work posts a comment on the work and adds a little anecdote. (The work could be a game, or movie, or piece of music, or programming language; anything, really.)
This is a pretty interesting find, and makes sense.
As someone that struggles greatly with loneliness -- what kinds of systems have people found to address it as an adult? (Presumably there's an interest on this site, since this article is here.)
I've for years found it to be an utterly crippling problem that I just can't really get on top of. I scrape by by having acquaintances at work, and trying to stay in touch with remote friends (which works quite badly). But I haven't been able to find a good balance with it for many years.
Sometimes I think maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem, but it seems to be an unnatural state for a person to feel alone.
I've had unmet social needs for years. One thing to acknowledge is when you move cities/countries, it takes years to build a network. My criteria is: You need to change jobs at least once in the same city (or student->job) before you feel like home, because you need to keep 2 groups of acquaintances. So if you've ever moved: It's not because of you, it's the integration process. I'm making my life choices accordingly: I refuse jobs which require me to travel/move, even though I'm single. Mental health is at this price.
I keep organizing parties at my place 3 times a year, for stupid reasons (Hey guys I'm a CEO now! It's like I'm king of the world, let's make a party for my sacre and all dress like Napoleon) (half-birthdays when you're >32.5 years old are another legit reason for a party). Because I have hard times making friends, the people I invite are very random: Two gay guys I've dated, a gym friend, a judo friend, a workmate, a guy from church, three girlfriends of a former flatmate... It's sometimes awkward but they have in common that they're rational people with an understanding for empathy. Yesterday was my 6th party and this little group got acquainted with each other, so they do enjoy coming. And two of them have dated, which means I upgraded to being a platform ;)
But it's a slow process. I still feel like shit depending on the season. I find it hard to manage my levels of hate (hate against the people who abandonned me, hate against the current system which privileges others, hate against smokers who are responsible for my asthma, etc), and hate is a separate thing which makes you actively wreck social bonds, in addition to depression itself, if you have any. A psy may be important.
Ah and do some sports-camp holidays, many times a year. UCPA in France is awesome for that, until 39 years old.
Join a sports league / hiking group, etc. My wife and I are both fairly anti-social by nature, and work in fairly anti-social fields, but we have lots of good friends from frisbee, skiing and climbing. For whatever reason it's easier to form friendships in an athletic / outdoor context.
i made over 50 acquaintances by going to all meetups in my city ( except: women-specific ones ) but I had hard time making a even a single "friend". As I've grown older I am not even sure what a friend means anymore. I have a theory that once you hit 30 you brain turns off friend definition and turns on family/kids definitions. I just can't stand extended exposure to people anymore; Iam mentally waiting for the event to be over so i can go back home and chill.
It's definitely harder to make friends when you're older outside of work acquaintances (at least I've found it true, YMMV). I'm an introvert, friendly but in no wise would I be called outgoing, and I'm not much of a joiner. These traits are not conducive to making lots of friends. Finding friends is important, but so is connecting with peers. What I really find depressing is the lack of intellectually stimulating conversation at work.
While I'm now in a local job, the department I'm attached to is in a satellite building far enough off campus to make it impossible to just meet up with my peers. My co-workers are nice, but they're not really colleagues or peers in terms of my professional development. I'm a technical person in a functional/business analyst role where I support a group of non-technical users. I almost never have the opportunity to discuss implementation details with the developers and I rarely meet with other analysts face-to-face. Online interactions will have to scratch that itch, for now at least. Though I do fear with the spread of the 'gig' economy, the ease of outsourcing, and increasing availability of remote work, this loneliness is only going to be a growing problem.
As I mentioned, there's something about athletics specifically. I don't think I've ever made a close friend at a meetup type event, but I have many lifelong friends from sports.
I play volleyball, touch rugby, underwater hockey, yoga. Now that its summer I've done paddleboard yoga, beach volleyball, biking ect all through meetup.com.
I'm in my mid-30's, and four years ago I started going to as many meetups that seemed remotely interesting to me in a bunch of different groups, met a ton of acquaintances, and eventually quite a few friendships (that are hard to maintain for me, but I do make an effort).
I'm fairly introverted but I think the secret to why going to a bunch of meetups worked for me is I just kept showing up and did some small talk that people eventually got to know me and became friendlier and started inviting me to things due to familiarity.
In fact my closest friends right now I made by taken a chance at a random invite to a weekly game night by someone I met once at a meetup, and just kept showing up to his weekly events, and over time I became friends with everyone there.
Shared struggle/suffering is a known catalyst for friendship. You could look at public works type volunteering, such as volunteer trail crews, if that kind of thing interests you.
Working hard together to build or care for something is a way to bond, and gets you physically active too which is good for happiness & mood.
Use meetup.com and make an effort to go out and talk to people. If you're going out and meeting new people the main thing is to keep asking them questions and keep them talking about themselves. Then gradually find out which people you like and like you. Just to re-iterate, make sure you make a real effort, it doesn't just happen easily or naturally for a lot of people.
The article doesn't seem to mention that while online meeting isn't as good the internet can make meeting people who want to meet people much easier.
If you live in a modern city and have moved you often don't have the friendship and family groups that people used to have by default. Prior to the internet this was a lot harder. With the internet you can find people who are going to a bar, going dancing, going climbing, playing board games, going to listen to speakers or whatever much more easily.
> what kinds of systems have people found to address it as an adult?
Most people find a "permanent friend" aka significant other aka spouse. I realize this is hard for some people, but that is what the majority of humans do.
There was just an article recently (on HN?) about people being lonely in SO relationships because their common interests didn't align. I can't find the article but googling "married and lonely" brings up lots of articles.
I've actually done this, and while it's a great thing, it's not really enough in itself. (Mostly because we have greatly different work schedules and are only really together on the weekends, or are asleep.)
Well, as a person who moved to a new state and worked remotely for three years, I can attest that email, texts, and voice chat are no substitute for in-person visits. Just getting out among people or the environment can help. If you stay indoors and just work all the time, you'll get even more depressed and go a bit nutty. I know this from personal experience.
I can't comment on video chat, could never get that working at the other site because their machines were locked down to the point of uselessness without special permission from ITS requiring 5 pints of blood and a signature from god. I'd be interested to see whether actual VR could fill a void.
Won't work. This is what nearly all the "social" networks tried to tap into. And look what they became...
What we need is a more open society where it's okay to speak with- and call people again. We also need the Internet where humans get to know each other without going to some dedicated "social" or "dating" service. In the past I've been on websites where over the years people made real friends - naturally, without trying. People formed groups, met in real life, maintained long-term contact internationally. Problem is, Web 2.0 destroyed most such websites.
I don't disagree with your open society point, but social networks do work for maintaining social groups and setting up meetups. I get together with people for dinners, game nights, movies, and other types of events set up with them all the time, (mostly Meetup.com, Facebook, or group texts).
But they're only tools. They merely facilitate, they don't force it to happen.
I find it fascinating that they never once mention instant messaging. As a boy, I found it very difficult to make friends. I was insecure and emotionally guarded. This was only made worse by being bullied by most other kids.
I did have a few very good friends, but was still lonely. This changed drastically when I found a few friends online (via an online game, Dungeon Siege) and we played and chatted every day. I was taken aback by the way I was able to bond with people and how easily they accepted me for who I was, when they didn't see my nervous physical form.
During this period I entered into a long-distance relationship with a girl I'd never met. She helped me overcome a lot of my social awkwardness and issues with self-confidence. We ended up meeting a year later and spent seven years in a long-distance relationship. We spent time together each major holiday, though plane tickets were expensive. In-between these visits we chatted on various IM services. This was great, but I still often felt lonely, being apart.
We're now married and have been living together for six years. Being together for real each day is an incredible improvement. Still, our time together but apart was invaluable. I also recently realised that the majority of my close friends are people I met online.
The headline that they had in an earlier version was better - instead of "blues", "loneliness".
I'll cosign all these findings because they correlate exactly to my own experience. It's the tragedy of the 21st century that we happily nuked existing social structures in favor of a "build your own social network" mentality that it turns out doesn't work that well.
While you find it tragic, I find it a blessing of sorts.
I've never had the experience of being accepted socially in these so-called social structures. My parents went to church and forced me to go. I've generally worked, and had school and stuff. It is nearly too bad I don't believe in God enough to withstand such things. I might as well been invisible at school, and I only rarely have made any sort of friendship at a workplace that carried over outside of work. Living away from family has been normal, and sometimes would go a few months in between visits due to money issues. I'm the weird one in the family - my brother in law said I was the weirdest person he'd ever met... until he met my spouse.
However, I have met friends online that I have kept for years. I interact with folks that aren't turned off by my weirdness. Met my spouse over the internet, and talking to him, though overseas, eased loneliness. The same lack of extensive social network at home allowed me to more easily move overseas when we married. Oddly, being an immigrant has made my weirdness easier and people tend to be a bit more accepting (minus the anti-immigrant folks).
I'd still venture a guess that you are fairly (within a few standard deviations of) normal. I miss the days of the Internet when it wasn't just a virtual extension of one's life. The same social memes are now embedded digitally, which makes loneliness even more prevalent because you can't escape from it like you used to be able to.
> we happily nuked existing social structures in favor of a "build your own social network" mentality
Is there evidence that this actually happened?
At least in America, I think the forces of social atomization predate the rise of social networks. The classic "Bowling Alone" was published in 2000, and it was an expanded version of a 1995 essay.
If anything, I expect that the Internet is helping. I left my home town (pop 200k) because my professional and cultural interests were too esoteric. Now I know know youngsters in towns of 500 that have an encyclopedic knowledge of anime. I see technologists working from anywhere and everywhere. Some will use that to rove, but I know many use that to stay close to family and friends.
And personally, the on-line social networks are how I arrange a lot of my meatspace social time. There are a lot of people I am now back in touch with that would have been lost to me without social networks. That isn't to deny the points of the article, which I agree with. But as much as Facebook irritates me, I don't think I can blame it for this.
Agree. For our kind, hackerspaces and similar coworking spaces are very important. Especially for starting new companies and cooperatives. Having social media like HN is icing on the cake.
At least geeks have the Net though. Huge portions of the population have no genuine social group as they get older. It is no wonder the Japanese are obsessed with high school. It's the last time their peer group was together. Things like participation in sports, religion and other quasi-social affairs are in decline.
In the UK, the existing social structures like the church had pretty much collapsed before social networks came on the scene.
Social networks actually have the potential to help restore local social structures as at root they are about connectivity. A local volunteering group can easily keep its members up-to-date via its FB group. A local Councillor can update his constituents via his Twitter account. I'd like to see a new batch of startups which work on channelling social media usage to properly social ends.
Yeah. My experience is that social networks and media are good for distributing information to a group of people who have opted in to the distribution. Which is what I think you are saying. However, social media is often portrayed as substituting for face-to-face social contact, which it does to some degree, but nowhere near good enough to replace it. Social media is a bit like spun sugar, it briefly tastes like you are eating something, but ultimately the experience is fleeting and leaves you empty.
I wouldn't go quite that far. I wouldn't be doing nearly as well as I am without my friends online, who live everywhere from the next city over to another continent. They're a huge part of my life and I'd feel empty without them. However, I do need physical contact with people at least a couple of times a week - mostly in the form of touch, personally. I couldn't cope with being around people offline as much as I can with those same people online, though.
I'd imagine people are not purposefully replacing real contact with virtual, as much as they have trouble finding real contact, so they go for the virtual?
Definitely the case for me. Most avenues of pursuing "real" contact readily available in my area and age group involve social situations that I have a great deal of difficulty navigating (which I increasingly think is some kind of neurological condition) and/or "common interests" that I lack interest in. Usually both.
Been there. I just got done spending 5 years at the end of the earth surrounded by very few people of my own age. Sometime in between 3-4 years is when I realized that the internet and all of the people on it can't substitute for someone you like coming over to hang out.
If I had both the time and the money to commission a similar study, I would design is so the "virtual" option uses virtual reality instead of say, a webcam. Ideally there would be some kind of haptic vest put around each participant so that an analog to physical contact could be approximated (e.g. a hug, a poke, etc). My experience so far building games in VR has surprised me in the sense that small amounts of haptic feedback within the Vive controllers can create a surprising amount of physicality if it is timed well with what the user sees. The brain seems to just fill in the gaps.
Interesting that "virtual" in this case means your smartphone. That is not really virtual. Anyone that has had a good conversation with someone on VRchat or Alt Space VR realizes there is a very "real" face-to-face communication going on, and this is just the beginning. Once we get facial gestures and full-body motion into it, I think true virtual visits WILL beat loneliness.
IMO it's totally possible for virtual experiences to help with loneliness, but not all experiences are equal. The differences between the status quo of social networking and real life interaction ought to be examined more closely.
I've spent my teens and beyond on text/voice chat with friends and it feels exactly the same as being with them in person. Maybe slightly less with text.
Or could it be because we play games instead of just talking?
The most recent review(for technologies to reduce loneliness) i found is from 2014[1].
The results are inconclusive:
"Two studies examined Internet-based video communication.
Tsai and Tsai (2011) focused on the efficacy of
videoconferencing to improve nursing home residents’
social support. Participants in this study were asked to
make contact with family or loved ones at least once a
week via services such as Skype or MSN. After regression,
the authors concluded that videoconferencing was
effective in reducing loneliness (p < 0.01).
Meyer et al.’s (2010) study on web-based communication
included a nine-item instrument that examined social
contact and interaction. Using a sample of 33 participants,
the authors did not find a statistically significant relationship between loneliness and the use of webcam."
Maybe it's partially depends on the technology(quality and eye-contact establishment, viewing full body language[which research says both help with trust]), and maybe on other on the social aspect of the interaction - contacts with family members should help more than chatting with people you have much stronger bond with .
I was just going to ask this too because I remember reading an article about how people felt that video calls did much to alleviate the loneliness from remote work, whereas texting and even calling didn't quite work
My two cents: I'm a remote worker. Video calls make all the difference! It's something about the facial expressions, stuff happening in the background you can comment on, people walking by and joining the conversation. That helps.
Dedicated IM channels for small talk and sharing internet-nonsense are pretty good too. Can't really do that on the company-IMs, it just clutters serious discussion, but you get to know co-workers on a different level. That's usually just on all day. Not sure how much chat reduces overall loneliness levels, but it's fun.
Phone calls are neither here nor there for me. It's just business. It's hard to have casual conversations over the phone. "so, now that we got these expense reports sorted out, how's Timmy doing, still playing soccer?"
I do need to make an effort to step out and do some social things during the work-day (coffee-&-lunch, sports, ...). These people are not colleagues, but we're all full time telecommuters. For me personally, these can't be evening dates, the atmosphere is just wrong, it needs to be somewhat business-like. It took a while to get a routine schedule with that. Took a lot of "cold calling" people, like, `hey, we met at this Meetup about BuzzyMcBuzzword.io, you want to hangout?` (luckily, getting the cold shoulder from some bearded JS-ninja is not as bad as from that cute med-student at happy hour, but dang, it gets old after a while).
In my experience so far, remote workers I see doing well seem to fall into two camps. Either very reserved and just not social, and doesn't really mind being alone, but with strong work-ethic, they're often abrasive too. Or pretty easy-going and pleasant company, so the channels of communication are kept open on both sides. If you're sort of in-between, it can be a hard slog. You need to ensure colleagues keep reaching out, which requires you to be pro-active and upbeat, and you can't tire of that either, that energy needs to come from the remote worker first, because at the other end, it's easy for colleagues to just kind of check out on that.
Biggest thing about remote work and loneliness in my experience, isn't necessarily about being physically alone for a large part of the day, or about what communication medium is best to substitute for real life interaction. A big factor seems to be how the work is going, and how the team as a whole communicates about it. Sometimes, projects just take a bad turn, and it's much more difficult to not have that be a millstone, when you have other people to commiserate with, through whatever medium. But it takes buy-in from all sides. If colleagues bitch&moan in the break-room, but don't take it to IM, you're missing out on that. So you kind of have to get people in the habit to bitch&moan on chat too. That's the hard part, getting remote-working etiquette (rule 1, there's no such thing as using too many emoticons) be shared by the non-remote workers. Because when challenges arise, you need to be part of how the team is dealing with it. If you're left out, it opens the door for loneliness to creep up on you.
Technology and modernity are definitely factors that have led to increased loneliness, but I hope it'll help lead us out too. My company, Krewe (https://www.gokrewe.com) is making it easy for people to make a new group of friends in their neighborhood and actually have an active, real world social life.
That's pretty amazing. This was something i just discussed in a Psychology class that I was in about lonliness and visits/interaction where someone is physically present bridges the gap and decrease lonliness. There have been many studies that I've read also show that the people who are lonley and online also have increase microagressionns and lack social interaction skills.
The part i don't get in all this discussion is that being alone is a physical thing, but being lonely is a choice, a perception that can be changed subjectively.
If you are feeling lonely, and don't like. Stop. On the other hand if you are enjoying feeling bad, which happens more frequently than most people seem to realize, then don't complain.
That is a interesting point to bring up indeed. By "Youre Enjoying feeling bad" I have come to understand that people that always feel bad or frequently come to use it sympathy and over milk it out.
