There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy

throw310822

> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet) No but those who claim to have observed a worrying phenomenon will be interviewed by the press, invited to conferences, listened to by politicians, and will be first in line to receive further grants to study the worrying phenomenon. It's not corruption, it's just normal gratification for your hard work and a feeling of being relevant. Better than studying things and having to report on the absence of any finding.

TFNA

> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet) There is already an ecosystem of for-profit social events in European cities (and probably elsewhere) profiting off people's desire to meet up with other human beings when social opportunies have shrunk. Once has seen this on e.g. Meetup.com or Facebook for years now, where bot profiles are used to swell event-signup numbers so people think they will meet more people. Indeed, with the enshittification of Meetup, the only forces that prosper on that site are for-profit ones.

dudisubekti

This "loneliness" part of this article is confusing to me. > People are more alone than ever, but they’re not feeling much lonelier than they used to. So maybe all this extra solitude is...fine? Okay but the data examined for "more alone" is US data with unclear age range (most likely adults). But the data examined for "not feeling much lonelier" is UK data and US school teenager data. I feel like there's a massive blind spot with the fact there's no US adult data...?

stub_out

The scurvy part definitely tracks. So many developers live on ramen and energy drinks; basic nutrients become an afterthought.

bcjdjsndon

He makes good points on statistics but at the base of all of the data, it's just surveys... I know it's not feasible to survey everyone all the time, but I wouldn't make any conclusions off such data

ThrowawayTestr

Do people not like juice? How do you get scurvy in 2026?

doginasuit

I'd be interested in a good article that questioned the loneliness epidemic narrative, but this isn't it.

delichon

> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet) Annual sales of antidepressants in North America are about $8 billion.

ShadowOfThePit

Weird post. I like the way it's written, there are lots of very interesting links, and the images are quite unique. But it goes on and on, and the conclusion is lacking. I'd enjoy it for fun, to pass the time, to read a dozen follow-up articles. But as a one-off post to learn and inform myself? Ugh. Unrelated, but two of the many links have ChatGPT referals. I'm not sure what to think of it. I guess it's fine?

ShadowOfThePit

Interesting factoid: > Over and over again, studies[0] find that people think that their past conversations went worse than they actually did and that future conversations will go worse than they actually do. But when you just make people talk to each other, they end up having a nice time and feeling more confident[1] about their conversational abilities. [0]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15298868.2020.18... [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210312...

Razengan

"There is no epidemic of loneliness" say the people who don't know what loneliness is (by the very fact that they have channels to broadcast anything, and colleagues to study such things with etc) ≈ "Just stop being so depressed!" reddit.com/r/thanksimcured What's undeniable is the disgusting monetization (and control) of connecting people.

crazygringo

> All of this can be prevented with a few tablespoons of lemon juice, but people suffering from scurvy do not develop a hankering for citrus. They will suffer and wither and collapse and never even ask for a grapefruit. Funny, I absolutely do develop a hankering for citrus whenever my body needs vitamin C. After a workout, and after getting sun at the beach, or just whenever I've gone a couple days without getting enough vitamin C, I absolutely develop a sudden craving for oranges/grapefruit/pineapple/orange juice/Emergen-C. And it doesn't go away until I have enough. I assume that this is a kind of learned association, that you can recognize the feeling of vitamin C depletion and your body quickly connects that that goes away when you eat certain foods. But my body absolutely tells me when I need vitamin C. And whether it's at a level of "it would be a nice idea to have some now" or "you need a LOT more vitamin C RIGHT NOW".

b3lvedere

I love being alone. I'm never lonely. Maybe i'm crazy.

iamacyborg

Go drink Margs with friends. Cures both your scurvy and your social scurvy.

vintermann

> Remember 2017, when everybody was making slime at home? Remember how the coolest slimes were the ones that are liquid when undisturbed, but turn solid when you squeeze or poke them? The human mind is kind of like that slime: it only has shape when prodded and pushed by the presence of other people. When left to its own devices, it turns to ooze. And that sticky, shapeless substance provides the perfect Petri dish for all of our current pathologies. The penchant for voting for extremists, the hyperfixation on gambling away your life savings on sports and crypto, the dream of perpetual gooning—these are the disordered desires of a mind that’s been liquified by solitude. I don't necessarily disagree with this, but author, you just spent the article up to now complaining about people asserting that people are more lonely without evidence.

alexpotato

> She ended up flirting with her GoPro cameras, hallucinating the sound of shamans beating drums, and accusing her electrical equipment of poisoning her with sound waves. There is an interesting phenomenon called "the Firehouse Effect" that is similar but on a group level. The idea is that if you take a group of humans and isolate them, they will begin to believe wilder and wilder ideas and communicate those ideas amongst themselves. This happens because the group is not routinely "reconciling" with broader society which in turn is slower to adopt new ideas. It's named after firemen who would spend a lot of time together in firehouses. https://absoluteengagement.com/blog/are-you-stuck-in-the-fir...

alexpotato

So this is anecdotal but lines up with the points of the article: - texting has given me the ability to stay in touch with lots of my friends - being a suburban dad with 3 kids who have activities has made it VERY difficult to see other dads in person Couple this with a lot of the other families having two working parents, spontaneous "let's go hang out, dude" is effectively zero. What's more common is having to either: - have a routine scheduled "dads hang out" event - scheduling a hang out 2-3 weeks in advance (which also sometimes gets cancelled due to "sick kid", "wife got stuck in traffic" etc)

boilerupnc

Surprised nobody has mentioned the rise of pet ownership into our lives (at least in the US) [0] and it’s resulting companionship benefits. Seems to me like a potential behavioral reaction to the “social stat” to help correct in some way. [0]. https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/pet-ownership-sta...

VCFundedGenYer

Someone in my town just randomly lit his house on fire and went insane after being a shut-in for years. This is just one of many stories. Don't you tell me straight faced that mental health isn't an epidemic.

k310

It's real. Try growing old. You move to the woods because of the divorce, you have half the money and can't afford to live where there are people. The nearest towns with people (say, universities as well) are 50 miles away. People don't even answer text messages and emails, as if they are coming from Mars and there's a surcharge on long distance calls. Who here wakes up, looks at the phone and there are zero dots? Geez, I send messages, really nice photos, encouragement, invitations. Growing old ain't easy.