There Is No Loneliness Epidemic, but There Is an Epidemic of Scurvy
There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy
The loneliness epidemic is a statistical illusion: we lack historical data and mistake age differences for trends. Yet people are more alone than ever—weekend time with friends has halved in 20 years. This isolation is like scurvy: we evolved without a craving for the missing nutrient. Our social-stat is too weak to signal the need, so we wither without knowing why.
We are not living through an epidemic of loneliness. We are living through an epidemic of social scurvy.
- 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...
- delichon
> no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet)
Annual sales of antidepressants in North America are about $8 billion.
- 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...?
- 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...
- 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".