[blacksmithgu]

Being social nowadays is like exercise - it not longer naturally happens frequently in our lives and so we have to consciously choose to do it. Also like exercise, it seems impossible when you start and takes months of effort to really feel comfortable about it.

Given only ~25% of the US population exercises regularly, this bodes poorly for actively being social. I suspect we need to "artificially" engineer living conditions to push people together naturally.

[numtel]

I feel like the designs of our houses have a lot to do with this. Recently, I explored the idea the implications of larger houses:

https://gist.github.com/numtel/28ffb7181ad1a296a077db76c474b...

[landemva]

Walking, hiking, paddle boarding, skiing, biking on recreation paths all have existed for years. People can choose to do activities that have normal social interaction. Or not. Don't blame a particular economic system.

Life has choices.

[Aicy]

It's funny that in your examples you entirely chose excercise.

The point is that it used to not be a choice. Most people were constantly socialising because their work involved lots of socialising, and their housing was shared with lots of people. Those things are a lot less prevalent than they used to be.

At school it's very easy to make friends not just because you're a kid or that you're choosing to socialise, but just by default you spend 6+ hours a day with the same people.