Slashdot Mirror
How Social Isolation Is Killing Us (nymag.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from The New York Times: Social isolation is a growing epidemic (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source) -- one that's increasingly recognized as having dire physical, mental and emotional consequences. Since the 1980s, the percentage of American adults who say they're lonely has
doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent. About one-third of Americans older than 65 now
live alone, and half of those over 85 do. People in
poorer health -- especially those with mood disorders like anxiety and
depression -- are more likely to feel lonely. Those
without a college education are the least likely to have someone they can talk to about important personal matters. A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted
sleep patterns, altered
immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of
stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent. Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age. Loneliness can
accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early:
Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as
obesity and smoking.
I'm sure you're going for the funny mod, and I hope you get it, but you're on the edge of insight, too. Superficial network-mediated social relationships are no substitute for the real thing, and human beings are extremely social animals. My joke on the topic (from many years ago) is that too much computer usage is not good for your mental health.
Slashdot is quite bad, but Facebook is vastly worse.
Could technology help solve these problems rather than make them worse? I think so, but it would require different economic models than are currently being used. In the worst-case example of Facebook, the primary metric driving their "success" has nothing to do with improving your social life or helping you find real friends (not to be confused with whatever Facebook means by their increasingly bizarre use of that word). Facebook just wants you to waste as much time as possible on their website.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
There are actually some people who are either happy or at least nonplussed to be alone.
I think this is true. The trick is really knowing if this is really you.
Let me give an analogy. A few years ago I was driving home from Christmas dinner at my sister's house when suddenly I couldn't unclench my hands from the steering wheel. I went to the emergency room, they did a blood test and my blood sugar was over 600. "You're diabetic," the doctor said, and she gave me a shot of insulin. Suddenly, I felt better than I had in twenty years. The things is, I had been feeling like crap for years, but I didn't know it. I thought I felt normal, but that's because "normal" is how you feel every day.
After that experience I've come to doubt self-reports of well-being. I look at people who sincerely believe they are happy, but they don't look like happy to me. They seem miserable. Resentful. Sour-tempered. On a good day they might manage smug. Now maybe the problem is I don't have access to their rich inner lives, which they must keep bottled up like they're in a thermos. But it's just possible that they're deceived by the extraordinary human capacity to get used to feeling like crap.
You don't have to believe the notion that social connection leads to greater levels of human health and happiness -- although it seems at least plausible given that this is true for practically every other primate species. And even in you believe it is true for most people, that doesn't necessarily mean that applies to you. Maybe you're a special case.
But it seems to me rational to approach life as an experiment. You might think you are as happy as happy can be, but why take it for granted this is your best version of "normal"? And of course experiments force you to sharpen a lot of fuzzy concepts, like "social connection" or "isolation". I am an introvert. It doesn't mean I'm shy, or socially awkward, or misanthropic. It doesn't mean I don't need social connections. It just means I need different things from those connections than an extrovert would.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Even worse, the kind of land use patterns that encourage social interaction have been outlawed in much of the USA. We are no longer allowed to build cities the way we used to.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
That is denial.
Denial that social isolation is harming. Look, even in this thread there are so many people who are saying that they are happy alone.
More importantly, many magazines for women are pushing never ending message (never supported scientifically), that older women, after divorce are just better off.
Increase in mortality by an average of 30% would normally be declared an epidemic health hazard, on par with smoking and obesity.
Another fascinating fact is that probably a fifth of adults in USA are (or were) on antidepressants. Other studies have shown that having a partner, or a friend, to whom you can talk to, drastically reduces depression risk.
Finally, the ultimate statistical fact. In USA average life expectancy is 79.3 years (source: wiki). Costa Rica has life expectancy of 79.6 yrs, and Albania has 77.8, while Costa Rica spends one tenth of US healthcare spendings and Albania spends one thirtieth of US healthcare spendings?
Perhaps there is something wrong with US? Also, it is so difficult not to be suspicious that many purely american phenomena are known to the number crunchers, yet are allowed to stay the way the are intentionally.
There are many aspects we can look at that created this mess, but one that seems to be overlooked here is the concept that people don't want to grow old anymore. Sadly, many find they can't afford to. Think the average Millennial is looking forward to retirement when they can barely afford to make ends meet? What's the point of growing old when you're going to be forced to blow your entire retirement nest egg on some major health issue that will inevitably crop up?
The constant threat of liability leading to lawsuits forces most of us to waste our incomes on countless forms of insurance. The social media lifestyles of the narcissistic elite are held high on an entertainment pedestal, and I wonder how watching that shit doesn't ultimately feed depression. Life is hard these days because it isn't getting any cheaper, and that chasm between the 99% and the 1% sure as hell isn't getting smaller, so don't assume Greed who helped create this mess is going to suddenly find compassion.
As if all that wasn't bad enough, here comes automation and AI to help shrink the human worth down to nothing.
It's sickening. Literally.
Don't underestimate the car. In the not too distant past, you would live close to work, and most likely not too far from where you were born, in a community you'd consider to be yours. Now you can live a vast distance from work. Your coworkers are people from other communities as well, so there is no bond there, and you don't spend enough time at home to build meaningful bonds in your local community either.