[dm03514]

For the us, I feel like it’s late stage individualism. This is what happens I think when people prioritize themselves over their communities, I think we have less dependence on our communities than ever thanks to the internet and being able to physically avoid community. We have less interaction than before. We can order grocery pickup and not even have to be physically around people for basic life tasks. We order next day delivery on Amazon and don’t even have to go out in the world and be in the physical presence of others :(

The article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships

I’m grappling with this myself, it requires a lot of energy to form adult friendships. I keep seeing my neighbors out at the playground, I reach out and say hey and hi and ask them how they are doing but stop short of investing the time necessary to form real friendships with them and I know deep down that it’s perpetuating late stage individualism

[kace91]

It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness.

Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available.

Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there’s no plan, Netflix is just a button press away.

We need moments of boredom and reflection to push us into action, the attention economy is robbing us from that.

I’d even say the increase in anxiety related symptoms is due to this lack of idleness. The mind feels as if it’s super busy moving from active task to active task when in reality there were hours of just defaulting to reels.

[paulryanrogers]

It's not only modern technology taking up time. I foolishly bought a project house and have spent nearly every weekend and some weeknights doing repairs and improvements. My SO also tends toward time consuming hobbies like gardening and aquariums. Add young children and every free moment in between is precious.

[creata]

I don't think it's just the attention economy. I think the Internet was bound to replace a lot of the time that people spent with friends. There's just too much interesting stuff too conveniently accessible.

[AbstractH24]

> It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness.

While I enjoy listening to podcasts I recognize how much its reduced the amount I'm idle. Particularly while commuting.

[highstep]

you're right. Now delete that app!

[caseyy]

Maintaining adult relationships post-Covid is hard as a millennial. Or rather, getting friendly relationships started/restarted has gotten very awkward. But I’ve noticed that most people respond very well to my efforts.

I started texting my acquaintances and old friends at random just to ask what’s up every once a week or two. I also started calling some people instead. Almost everyone responded really well to that. When I go out to eat, I often check with a few people if they want to go if I swung by and picked them up.

This is how things used to be for me before the pandemic. But it was difficult to get back to it. What I found though is that most people are lonely but they don’t want to put much effort into building friendships. And that’s ok, I can be the one who initiates the outings and chats.

It’s okay to be the one who initiates. It seems like not everyone can, somehow the level of social anxiety has gone up in the world. In the end, I get my socialization full and so do they. So I’d recommend to whoever feels a bit lonely — reach out to your past friends and current acquaintances.

The only issue with always being the initiator is that no reciprocation is a bit of an… issue to our social brains. Validation, trust, confidence, and friendship itself forms better when there is reciprocation. It’s best not to overthink it, the world is different and what it means to have friends has changed. This is the new normal. It’s better to be the one who leads all the friend groups and activities all the time than to be lonely.

[cherryteastain]

> Almost everyone responded really well to that

That's the impression I got at first as well. However, then I realized a really big proportion of people I'd contact this way would say they'd love to meet up but either repeatedly decline suggestions to meet up or even ghost me. I feel like the positive response is just out of general politeness, not willingness to reconnect.

> It’s okay to be the one who initiates...The only issue with always being the initiator is that no reciprocation is a bit of an… issue to our social brains.

It's also about gauging whether the other person cares about you. I carried out the experiment where I stopped texting people with whom I was always the contact initiator. Years later, they still haven't written a single message to me. To me, it's clear that those people never cared about me, I was just their plan B for a saturday hangout in case their real plans fell through.

[stuxnet79]

> It’s okay to be the one who initiates. It seems like not everyone can, somehow the level of social anxiety has gone up in the world. In the end, I get my socialization full and so do they. So I’d recommend to whoever feels a bit lonely — reach out to your past friends and current acquaintances.

Agreed. Before Covid I used to have a pretty vibrant social life but I was the initiator and back then I could easily set up physical events. Covid obviously added a lot of friction to that. Now that we are half-way through the 2020s I have enough perspective to say the bad habits that a lot of folks developed during Covid have stuck and it's a shame.

> The only issue with always being the initiator is that no reciprocation is a bit of an… issue to our social brains. Validation, trust, confidence, and friendship itself forms better when there is reciprocation. It’s best not to overthink it, the world is different and what it means to have friends has changed. This is the new normal. It’s better to be the one who leads all the friend groups and activities all the time than to be lonely.

How do you set boundaries?

It would be great if I could go back to how things were, but unfortunately I've changed. I was a lot more naive back then, and usually leaned into giving people the benefit of the doubt. It didn't help that the friendships / acquantainces I'd developed weren't exactly high quality.

In retrospect none of it was sustainable. All this happened when (1) I had lots of free time (2) Could physically meet with friends and (3) Hadn't suffered through betrayals from people I thought I was close to.

As much as it pains me to admit, I just don't have the emotional reserves to deal with one-sided interactions anymore. I would really love to hear from folks who have been in such a situation and have gotten over the hump.

[tayo42]

Being the one that initiates triggers my own anxieties lol. I start wondering how come no one else ever is?

[AtlasBarfed]

Honestly, I think that is related to the algorithmic collapse of facebook. Facebook was legitimately good for keeping people connected in the first decade or so.

Then the monetization enshittification happened, both at the overarching corporate level of facebook and internet advertising in general, and with people becoming exhaustingly self-promoting, which devalued trust between friends and degraded new connections.

The weird thing about the world is seeing everyone turn into me when I was in my teens and twenties ... and I was a product of extreme social bullying that really only alleviated in my 40s.

Which scares me because it means there is some either low-key or high similarity to the trauma / rejection / betrayal I felt from society being exerted on a massive scale.

I used to go around errands trying to engage with people as little as possible, but now, maybe it is projection, I see the effects of isolation on so many people in public, that I get great joy in having a quick exchange with someone. Granted I am now far better at making smalltalk, strangely I slingshotted from being absolutely abysmal at it to well above average.

Smalltalk almost seems like rebellion against the oppressive antisocial time-stealing inferiority-inducing powers that have gatewayed using the mobile phone into all parts of people's lives.

[ryandrake]

> The article talks about how it’s more of a younger generation phenomenon suggesting older generations still maintain their friendships

Yea, this tracks my observations. A lot of adults make connections in their community through their kids and kids' friends. Kids pick their friends and their parents and guardians just go along for the ride, so when the kids play together, it kind of forces the parents to meet and interact.

Without exception, the parents I meet in the 25-40 age range are what I'd charitably call totally anti-social. Not actively mean (although some are), but just not interested at all in even saying a word to you to pass the time when the children are playing together. They just sit there on their phones trying to get through the experience. In general, these parents project outward an attitude of vague grumpiness and annoyance.

A few of the kid-friends are evidently raised by the 50-70 year old grandparents (never even seen the parents), and these folks tend to be much more social and will shoot the shit with you while the kids play. Much more pleasant and willing to interact while we're forced together. My relationships with them have been civil at worst and friendly at best.

Of course, this is just one person's observations, and yea they are a crude generalization. I'm in my mid-40s so don't have that much in common with either of these groups, but the attitude and behavior difference has been stark!

[jvvw]

This sounds weird to me. What's the context? Toddler group? Play date? Playground?

Also as somebody said, if you are male which from your username I guess you are, then that will change the dynamic - it will be easier for an older person to make conversation without there being any worries of sending the wrong message.

If there are lots of children playing together then parents aren't always social but at a play date I would definitely expect them to be. Also looking after young children is intensive and it might be the only break they get.

I mostly went to toddler groups when mine were young so that I could socialise not them!

[flopsamjetsam]

I see this in other social situations too (though social may be stretching it a little bit) e.g. in the gym, on the bike paths, and inside my apartment complex. I'm in my early 50s and people in their 20s and 30s aren't interested in saying hello in a polite way (and as neighbours especially), whereas older people (my age or older) are always interested in at least being friendly.

You can argue that, in gyms and on the bike path, people are more focused on their goal, but I still find in those situations that oldies are happy to chat for a bit, but younger people just want to block you out.

TBH I hate saying "young people" in this way. I feel like I'm running them down for what is their choice, and that feels bad. But it is something I have noticed in general i.e. not just 1 or 2 individuals.

I recently went back to studying, and it's almost the opposite there. Lots of people need "tutorial/lab friends," and so the barriers to conversation are really low. You literally stand next to someone and bam, instant friend (at least during the lab).

[AtlasBarfed]

Social networks invite an inner monologue of extreme critique ... and an inevitable self-critique.

Which leads to social paranoia of judgment and withdrawal.

This is of course by design. Because while people like this are less social, they consume more.

[thimkerbell]

If the young parents are women and you're a guy, the situation could fall into a different category to them.

[tdrz]

Maybe they are not anti-social, they are just not being social to you! They have no obligation to entertain you even if your kids are playing together.

[mjevans]

What community?

Many of us still can't afford housing anywhere near where the jobs are. How could we possibly put down roots and be a real part of a lasting community worth investing time, effort, and possibly savings in?

[Braxton1980]

What if you can afford the housing but don't want what you can afford? How many immigrant families lived in 2 bedroom apartments in brooklyn while working in the city?

[kortilla]

You don’t need that at all. I’ve seen people temporarily renting in a location act as better community members than someone who has owned a home for 10 years.

Look at the communities that form in dorms

[sltr]

> it requires a lot of energy to form adult friendships

My experience corroborates this. Reminded me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43473618

[SecretDreams]

Do you actually want to make friendships/connections? If so, the park is probably not the play.

Identify your hobbies/interests and figure out which ones have budding local groups. E.g. sports, bird watching, hiking, camping, volunteering, etc.

It takes a ton of energy to form and grow new friendships, but once you pass the critical phase, it's much easier to keep them.

I don't think what we're seeing is late stage individualism. It's more like forced/bred isolationism invoked by modern technology. Newer gens are more trapped since they were bred to be on a screen. It's pretty evil, albeit unintentionally (by their parents, at least). Tech giants absolutely love it.

[ddr123]

This sounds the most legit to me out of any comment so far. I think there's a tendency to want to either 1.) innovate our way out of this with a novel solution, or 2.) be really passive like "this happening to me and it's hopeless." I think the way out is less profound, less complicated, and ultimately more fulfilling and efficacious than people imagine. Virtually everyone who is researching/writing in the friendship space talks about finding common interest groups, regularly occurring interactions, consistent effort (supposedly 200 hours to form a close friend), candid conversations to strengthen commitment, etc. Honestly, it's all the same stuff that a romantic relationships requires, just with a couple significant variations ;)

A helpful corollary (from writer Shasta Nelson author of "Frientimacy") is that we all understand that working out requires some amount of pain and struggle (also fun, enjoyment, accomplishment, etc...) in order to get a great bod. We would do well to expect the same experience in friendship. It's not a question of access to people, like Facebook, or even Bumble BFF would have us believe. Again from Shasta "We don't need better friends, we need better friendships."

[redczar]

The less dependence on community started with desegregation. There used to be community pools and rec centers. Garbage pickup was a municipal service. Ambulances were free. These things and more all ended with desegregation. Now we live in a society in which people don’t walk and don’t have places in their neighborhood where others congregate. Kids rarely play in the street anymore. The notion of it taking a village gets laughed at and as you say get individualistic. We live in a deeply unhealthy society from a social standpoint of view.

[paulryanrogers]

Having talked to folks from the segregation era, you may be thinking of red-lining and white flight. As folks realized cities and schools were desegregating many moved out of urban environments to suburbs and rural areas, then excluded POC through zoning.

Even if we accept that as the primary cause (which I don't) that would mean cowardice and racism are the root cause. An irrational fear of people who don't look and talk like us.

[BigGreenJorts]

> There used to be community pools and rec centers. Garbage pickup was a municipal service. Ambulances were free.

I live in place where this is still true. The rec centers are barely solvent and it's mostly retirees and summer camps (cheap daycare) that keeps them afloat.

[thayne]

> There used to be community pools and rec centers. Garbage pickup was a municipal service. Ambulances were free.

All of that is still true of everywhere I have lived in the US, except for the free ambulances. And I think the cost of ambulances has more to do with the evolution of health insurance in the US than desegregation.

[graemep]

If that was true it would only be a problem in the US. It is not. The same has happened where there never was segregation.

[rendang]

Which area are you speaking about, exactly?

[TimByte]

The convenience and isolation are so baked into modern life that choosing to invest in community feels weirdly countercultural now for many

[mantas]

Anecdata, but quite a few people I met in alternative music and politics sphere a good decade ago, I meet again in unrelated non-music/political bubbles focused on heavy community involvement.

Further confirming the joke, many of those either apreach own or look to buy a bunch of power tools.

Today’s grown-up counter culture seems to be building sheds and growing wide variety of tomatoes.

[Ozzie_osman]

Agree. The book "WEIRDest" people in the world was kind of eye-opening in arguing that the Western world (especially the US) is unique (both in time, and geographically) in being so individualistic.

And it's getting worse. Decline of the local church or equivalent religious community, decline of even the workplace especially after Covid, etc. And of course, social media giving people a way to consume time and feel some (fake) version of being connected.

My wife and I moved our kids from the US back to our country of origin last year. Partly because we wanted to be closer to family. But partly because we didn't want them growing up in a society that lacks community and social fabric.

[coldtea]

>I think we have less dependence on our communities than ever thanks to the internet and being able to physically avoid community. We have less interaction than before.

And are more depressed, sexless, purposeless, and lonelier than before...

[zelphirkalt]

I think you are on to something there. Already doing more than most people, I guess. Most people wouldn't even make the effort of going to the neighbors and saying hello.

I often ask myself, why some people, who are closest to what I would call friends, do not initiate any shared activity at all and how they can always be "busy". Do they not realize, that they are squandering the time they could have with friends?

[trod1234]

Older generations who received a proper education recognize the dangers, but are often unable to communicate it effectively to others that have been indoctrinated during their formative years.

Specifically it relates to what putting your ability to communicate with others into malicious hands represents. If you allow third-parties to dictate what you see, you'll never be able to make correct decisions based on reality. This distorted reality, or more aptly called distorted reflective appraisal. Reflected appraisal is inherent in our ability to form culture, society, and personal identity. The distortion takes advantage of that, and it happens at a pre-awareness level. Our internal psychology warps to it without us recognizing it, to retain internal consistency.

When you are raised to believe something is impossible, you discard anything to the contrary unless you've experienced direct and extreme personal loss associated to it.

Most people today earnestly believe that they make their own minds up about things and nothing external can change that, which is untrue, but places perceptual blinders so they can't see it no matter how much you may point it out.

Most dependents are unable to adapt after being tortured (which occurs during indoctrination).

The social environment has been shifting towards isolation because that's one of the main elements needed for torture, which is the imposition of psychological stress to induce involuntary hypnotic states.

[porridgeraisin]

> individualism

Yes.

One good counter-force against this wave is dependence. If you depend on someone for something, or you owe them a lot(I don't mean monetarily), you will not cut ties with them even if you have a temporary fallout. You'll push through it. Yes, this has negative effects (abuse) but at the system level you need to optimize for the majority case not the minority case. One of the things an overly financialised society does is to commoditise/securitize every dependency. Homes, food, care, groceries, maintenance, health, everything is attached a value. It is now possible for someone to live entirely on their own, with fully commoditised dependencies. Even when they start a family, the kids go to day care, and eventually the parents go to an old age home - more things commoditised. In fact, the number of old age homes is the best sign of a failing society. Like a nail in the coffin, these commoditized fractures increase the perceived wealth of everyone, rally the stock market and the variety of casinos around us, and people celebrate it.

[rokhayakebe]

In fact, the number of old age homes is the best sign of a failing society.

Great insight.

[sureglymop]

Do you feel that politically "extreme" movements are a reaction to that and actually mostly about community and community interaction?

For example, during covid I believe the anti vaccination movement was largely about community and only tangentially about political goals. Especially because it was an otherwise hard time for people to interact.

It's probably largely the same for the maga movement, the rationalism movement, etc.

It feels nice to be a part of something and to be able to identify with something and such movements tend to easily accept new members as long as they at least aesthetically support the same cause.

[ddr123]

>Do you feel that politically "extreme" movements are a reaction to that and actually mostly about community and community interaction?

Yes. Great writing on this from Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind), Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Ezra Klein (Why We're Polarized) and Vivek Murthy (Together). Haven't read these, but I've read about them. One of their main ideas is that when people lose trust in institutions and feel disconnected, they’re more likely to embrace extreme ideologies or groups that promise belonging.

[derefr]

Is it us, or is it corporations?

Look at a specific microcosm: dating. Dating is "awful" now (according to people both young and old), in a particular way that it wasn't even ten years ago. And sure, this is in part because we do everything online these days, and online dating has a few inherent problems with it. But not as many as you'd think; online dating used to "work" at least alright, in a way that it very much doesn't today / with none of the particular pathologies that it has today.

Dating sites and apps used to do things that actually helped people meet — vaguely optimizing for relationships. So people increasingly gravitated toward using dating apps. And for a while (peaking, I'd say, around the early 2010s), this actually increased the number of people meeting and getting into relationships.

And then one company, Match Group, came along and gradually bought up every "good" dating site, and enshittified them all, in a particular way that maximizes user retention + profit margins (and thereby minimizes the chance of a successful, happy relationship being formed.) They made dating apps bad at being dating apps. But there are no good dating apps — so people now feel stuck/confused, flailing around trying to make "online dating" work when there are only bad options for doing so.

I posit that online social networking in general went through the same evolution. Not because of one asshole company buying up and enshittifying everything, mind you; more because of market consolidation under a few companies who were all willing to copy one-another's homework in advancing the frontier of enshittified social experiences.

Facebook (and Facebook-like experiences) used to be a place you'd turn in the expectation of seeing updates from your actual literal friends, and engaging with those updates. Now it's radioactive for that purpose — and so is abandoned to being a sea of advertisements (and memes from boomers too inattentive to realize when the people they're talking at have left the table.)

And Instagram and even Snapchat have just copied TikTok's enshittified-from-the-start model of "personalized TV but all programs are 10 seconds long."

I have many friends I met in the 2000s and 2010s, where I recall heavily relying on social media as a fit-to-purpose tool to maintain and deepen those friendships. But I can't imagine what social network I could lean on to serve as that kind of tool for me today.

---

Yes, IM and group-chat apps always existed and still exist today. But that's not what traditional social networks got you.

It's funny that I even feel the need to explain this, but here's what social-networks-as-tools had to offer:

1. profile pages — like dating profiles or LinkedIn profiles, but from a lens of "this is what I want potential friends to know about me"!

2. "walls" — a specific semi-public place, attached to a person's profile, to leave a message "performatively" for not only that person, but also anyone else who looked at that person's wall, to see (think: birthday wishes.) Critically, walls are owned and therefore moderated by the profile they're attached to — so, unlike a feed, you can't really (successfully) cyberbully someone on their own wall. They can just delete your message; block you (which will block you from posting to their wall); or disable non-friends from posting to their wall entirely.

3. a home page view, that is simply a dumb chronological view of anything your direct friends have posted to their own walls. Not including friends-of-friends content. It was a social norm, back in the heyday of social networking, that you'd always be caught up on on everything your friends have posted — because it shouldn't add up to much. Nobody could "share" anything out of its originally intended broadcast audience (the poster's friends), and thus there was no benefit to "posting performatively, as if for a mass audience" — and therefore, posts were sparse and personal, making it practical to truly inbox-zero your feed in maybe 20 minutes per day.

Modern social networks don't have profile pages (at least, not that anyone populates with anything — Facebook has vestigial ones nobody uses), owner-moderated public walls, or non-re-shareable "just for mutuals" posts. They have none of the tools that we originally associated with the category of "a tool that makes it easier to network socially." And yet these apps that do not successfully accomplish social networking, are what we today refer to as "social networking apps." And are what everyone therefore thinks to turn to when trying to network socially online.

No wonder, I think, that people find it hard.

[Pamar]

Personally I really miss Google+. Maybe it was not a perfect fit for what you are describing, but it sure was the best fit for my own interests and use cases.

[rescbr]

You described orkut on its heyday.

[kortilla]

This is unrelated to individualism. Individualists still can have strong communities and lots of friendships. Collectivists can just as easily be extremely anti-social.

The examples you gave of grocery delivery and overnight prime delivery are things that city people have, who generally vote against individualism and for collectivist policies.

Even in some socialist utopia where the community provides everything and individualism has been snuffed out entirely, that wouldn’t force more or less human interaction to create friends.

[somedude895]

Another factor I'd mention is, ironically enough, government social programs. Humans were always social because they needed each other. If you don't depend on your community or your family, you'll be much less inclined to invest in those relationships. It used to be if you fell on hard times you might rely on your community to help you out, which would however require you to take part in it, and contribute to it in some way. If instead you just automatically get money or housing from some faceless govt institution, that incentive is removed. Black children growing up in one-parent households was 9% in the 1950s. Today it's 65%. It's controversial what the causes are of course, but it makes sense: Make it easier for people to replace their relationships with government assistance, and it removes any need for taking responsibility for your peers. I'm not saying government-provided social safety nets should be abandoned, but the devaluing of human connection – even if transactional – is an unintended social consequence that isn't talked about nearly enough.

[watwut]

If this was true, Europeans would be much more lonely then Americans. It is not the case.