You Are Probably Lonely
In a recent poll on Hacker News 132 users bravely answered how frequently they feel lonely.
Here are the results:
- Always: 19 points
- Often: 50 points
- Sometimes: 33 points
- Rarely: 19 points
- Never: 11 points
This is pretty staggering. 69 out of 132 people (52.2%) feel lonely often (more than sometimes).
At first, I thought this high number was due to some sort of “entrepreneur bias” where the main source of loneliness was due to working in the startup culture of intense focus and burnout hours. However, after doing some research, the cause appears to be deeper and more widespread than that.
Recent studies are showing two disheartening facts about our culture’s current state of mind. First, there are links between social media usage (specifically, Facebook) and increased feelings of loneliness. Second, we have fewer “close friends” to share our troubles with.
The market has responded to both of these issues by creating 30x more clinical psychologists and 100x more marriage counselors since the 1940s. There’s good money to be made trying to help people through issues that our grandparents used to trust close friends with.
Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years. -The Atlantic
How we feel affects how we think. When we’re lonely we are unhappy and unproductive and can’t live up to our full potential. The human brain craves close and meaningful interactions with other humans. We’re made to have a small number of deep connections not a large number of shallow connections. Who cares how many twitter followers you have when you can’t seek advice from them regarding real issues in your life?
I think one of the Hacker News comments sums things up quite nicely:
I feel really envious of friendships on TV shows - the idea of a tight knit group of friends who are there for each other and get into shenanigans. It seems like that’s how your [supposed] to live, but I haven’t had more than a few friends in one room since college. -coralreef