I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too.

Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with.

The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them.

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publicdebates 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts.

	▲	munificent 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car.
	▲	netsharc 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I heard the unofficial motto for BlackBerry from friends, something along the lines of "make distant friends be nearby, and nearby friends distant"

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SchemaLoad an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This problem is not going to be solved by individual action. Sure there is some things you can and should do, but for it to be solved at a population scale it has to involve changing the actual structure of society that caused the problem in the first place.

Tackling phone addiction and lack of public spaces is going to be critical.

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chasd00 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

just find a hobby that involves other people. any kind of team sport, r/c airplanes, shooting, bird watching, the options are pretty endless. You'll meet other people, make friends, and not be so lonely.

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dingaling 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You'll meet other people, make friends

'Making friends' doesn't occur by just being in proximity to people.

Quite likely at the end of the night they'll return to their lives and you won't be invited to interact with them again until the next meeting. That's if you're not excluded from existing club cliques - I've gone to many different meetings and come away at the end feeling more alone.

	▲	olyjohn 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You're right, you have to take a risk and go introduce yourself and talk. The thing with joining hobby clubs or groups is that you immediately have something in common to talk about. If you're lucky, some groups will have a person in the group who will see someone sitting alone, and go introduce them and drag them in. But not everybody picks up on that stuff or wants to make the effort on your behalf. And yes, it's normal that people don't just immediately become best friends and want to hang out with one person they just met for an hour at a meeting. Especially if that person doesn't even say hello. Sometimes it happens though! It helps a lot if you just go back a couple of times. The thing I love about car meets is that I can just go up to someone, ask them about their car, and tell them that I like it. You can do the same with any hobby, just go to meets where people are doing things, and not just showing up with nothing. Bring things to share, and a lot of times that brings people to you. Another thing you can do is ask for help with something. People love to help! Ham nerds are the same way. Electronics nerds are the same way. Computer geeks do the same thing too. I'm sure every hobby is the same way. Find something you like doing and it makes it a lot easier. But the point is if you don't put in any effort, nothing will happen.
	▲	drekipus 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think the real cause of the loneliness epidemic is that the older generation never taught us how to socialise and make friends. I make an effort to talk to people and now we have "come over to dinner" friendships with people we met at a public park.

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dmoy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> just find a hobby that involves other people... shooting,

Ok that one made me chuckle just from the initial reading of the wording.

I don't disagree though, I do competitive bullseye, and it is definitely a communal thing. Many old guys at the range in particular seem to be there for 99% talking at you, and 1% actual shooting related stuff.

If I'm going to the range for a set of three position, a 120-shot session by myself takes like 2.5 hours including setup and teardown. If there's talkative-old-guy at the range, then I'm there for 4 hours, and I don't even make it through 60 shots lol.

Which is fine for someone like me who is a competitive shooter but not like really trying to be the absolute best, I don't mind spending 60 minutes doing bullseye and 180 minutes chatting about whatever. The actual competitive shooters at the range though, they'll either have someone screen talkative-old-guy for them, or just otherwise make it clear that they are Serious and not to be bothered.

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munificent 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Activity partners" are pretty easy to find. What's harder is getting them to make the transition to deeper friendship where you spend time together outside of the activity.

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pfdietz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Birding is great.

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encrypted_bird an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

A big problem for me personally is that, well, frankly, there really aren't many options around me. I live in a small farming town of 6000 people, and most things are 25-45 min away *by car*.