How would you solve the loneliness problem that plagues cities?

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

It's weird how lonely we are and how much it hurts but nobody really knows what to do.

[cubby]

It's weird how lonely we are and how much it hurts but nobody really knows what to do.

Social media is mostly to blame for this, believe it or not, by making us think we have more friends, except those connections don't fulfill our interactive needs.

[Muzjhath]

I think this is far more a US thing than most other places.
And for that the car is to blame.

[Santti]

I think this is far more a US thing than most other places.
And for that the car is to blame.

Pretty sure Japan suffers from it the worst. They even went and appointed a Minister of Loneliness to combat the issue. It's pretty bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

[Lynarii]

I think this is far more a US thing than most other places.
And for that the car is to blame.

I actually think that this is a huge part of it. The reliance on cars to get around is very isolating, and a city that is designed for vehicles generally doesn't have many places for people to relax and have an impromptu conversation even if they desire it. Cities designed to be utilitarian also tend to lack things to casually discuss with a stranger. It's easier to start up a conversation with a random person if there's something you can look at that is interesting or noteworthy, but skyscraper A vs skyscraper B generally doesn't do it.

[eschatological]

I think this is far more a US thing than most other places.
And for that the car is to blame.

I've been railing against cars for awhile now, even though I need to own one to get anywhere in my city because of crap public transport. I wouldn't frame the problem as loneliness because I think it's neutral, and only becomes negative based on who you are, but it is certainly isolating. I think social media is to blame, but when I live in NYC (long after social media was around), not owning a car, having to be out in the public to get anywhere, including work, meant I never felt isolated at all. In fact, NYC can give quite the opposite feeling. And when I needed to NOT feel connected, I could retreat to my home and be alone. It's why I consider it the greatest city in the U.S., and I think most of it comes to how interconnected it is.....via public transport. You can have a friend 3 miles away in L.A. and never see them because you have to drive there and it's a nightmare. In NYC, you may have to plan some time because of switching train lines or something, but it's much easier to connect and hook up.

[Omega10]

Atlanta is another place that has a LOT to do - if you don't mind dealing with horrendous traffic to get to it.

[Cthulhu 2020]

By making people less mal-adjusted and socially inept.

[Muzjhath]

Atlanta is another place that has a LOT to do - if you don't mind dealing with horrendous traffic to get to it.

It's less "having a lot to do", and more about "access".
If I want to go to the pub it's a 10 minute walk, I live far away from my closest pub for living in an urban/sub-urban environment.

I can go and meet random people, or meet up with friends, spontaneously and easily. In ways you can't if you first need to drive somewhere they are allow to build a pub.

[Zantos]

Honestly, who knows? Most people don't seem to know how to form meaningful relationships anymore. This is all from my own experience in what I have seen. Lots of people just drop a relationship of any kind the moment it gets hard or awkward. Probably because they are so used to just blocked anything that annoys them / makes them uneasy online. Everyone constantly says "get true friends who will stick with you through tough times!", but I have seen very few people who will Be that friend who will stick through it.

Just what I have noticed. So, to fix it, just need people to learn how to be a good friend themselves first. Sadly, society now a days is very self serving imo.

[Kathandira]

Here is a part of it.

What happens when you can sit at home on your computer or phone, and express all of your opinions, pondering, memories, and moments to everyone you know in an instant?

What happens is, when you see them in person, you have nothing new to talk about.

[Malkiah]

Honestly, who knows? Most people don't seem to know how to form meaningful relationships anymore.

respectfully, i disagree - i think (most) people never knew how to form meaningful relationships in the first place.
i highly suspect that the narrative about people being "more lonely" in the modern age is largely the product of of a certain subset of people being lonely because they can no longer enslave others to their bottomless pit of attention-whoring.

i know that sounds harsh but here's my reasoning:
for people who were already lonely "back in the day" (for the purposes of this discussion, let's say the 80s and 90s), the things that made them lonely back then haven't changed - they're not more lonely now, they're the same amount of lonely they've always been.
if they are more lonely, it's likely just due to age and the way that getting older decreases your opportunities for casual of fantasy social interaction.
(for example: when i was younger i could go to a night club, and i had a handful of people i 'knew' because we saw each other at the night club, and i could pretend that we might become friends even though we never did.
you could extend this same logic to malls, arcades... probably mini golf centers? wherever people went that you could technically be doing your own thing, but also served as a de-facto place for non-structured social mingling)

anyways, my point is this:
the people who were already likely to be lonely haven't seen any change in the world.
the people who HAVE seen change in the last 20-25 years are people who weren't lonely... and people who aren't lonely tend to be out-going, extroverted, and in desperate need of social validation from others - the reason they weren't lonely is because they were overcome with the compulsion to seek out interaction, any interaction, with anyone, about anything.

three things have changed in the last 25 years that IMO have made more people feel lonely, and it's not social media.
1. late stage capitalism, having no new sources of natural resources to exploit, has started to cannibalize itself and begun a systematic process of commodifying human interaction.
western culture treats human connection as a transaction: everyone views interaction as a calculation of 'what am i getting out of this' instead of just... experiencing other people organically.

2. social gathering places have gone away, because we made social gathering a strictly transactionary medium: ie, the only places to meet people are places of commerce, and as commerce has become more direct and personal due to things like online shopping the physical spaces where commerce met with casual mingling (for example, shopping malls) have largely gone away... or at least, the more casual aspects of those spaces has gone away.

3. people have been tending over the last few decades to self-isolate into predetermined interest groups - people decide what other kinds of people they want to engage with and then limit their social interaction to those kinds of people, instead of just wading into a pool of humanity and seeing what they bump up against.
this makes it far more difficult to have casual encounters, because people are drastically limited their pool of candidates before they've even started the effort of finding someone to engage with.
this used to be a behavior you found in niche cultural subgroups, the "weird kids" or nerds or goths or jocks or preppies or whatever all sought each other exclusively and kind of glommed together.
but the last 20 years has seen a significant amount of cultural homogenisation - there are less distinct subcultural groups, and when they DO pop up it's only a short amount of time before netflix makes a show catering to that demographic and then it gets absorbed by the largely cultural morass, and loses its distinct identity.

This is all from my own experience in what I have seen. Lots of people just drop a relationship of any kind the moment it gets hard or awkward. Probably because they are so used to just blocked anything that annoys them / makes them uneasy online. Everyone constantly says "get true friends who will stick with you through tough times!", but I have seen very few people who will Be that friend who will stick through it.

which is interesting on a meta level, because IMO relationships *should* be dropped the moment it gets hard or awkward.
i think the real quandary going on in the world is the dichotomy between the fact that you don't need to maintain unhealthy relationships with people you don't enjoy, and the new reality that maintaining unhealthy relationship with people you don't enjoy no longer feel so mandatory.

Just what I have noticed. So, to fix it, just need people to learn how to be a good friend themselves first. Sadly, society now a days is very self serving imo.

but technically speaking, if you're bitching about society being self-serving, isn't your complaint that people aren't serving YOU enough? is that not self serving?

there is an absolutely psychotic belief rotting under the surface of western culture that establishing a relationship obligates one to maintain it, and this delusion is predicated on a relic of the past: that when humans lived in groups of a few hundred, and those few hundred were the only people you would ever know for the rest of your life, you had no choice but to have relationships with them.

people are more lonely because the modern world no longer requires sustained long term relationships between people, regardless of whether that relationship is healthy or unhealthy.
but, most people are too stupid to recognize that healthy alone time or shallow but positive relationships are more healthy than intense ongoing toxic ones.

[Nihilist74]

It's weird how lonely we are and how much it hurts but nobody really knows what to do.

When I was younger in my teens and twenties, I felt the pain of loneliness a lot more than I do now. I worked more at maintaining relationships. Now that I am older, I don't get lonely too often. I don't really think this is an issue. It is just the way younger people feel.
I think artificial intelligence would help. Finding good chatrooms and stuff like that is always nice. When I play world of warcraft, I don't like to join guilds and try to make friends but talking to people in trade chat is nice.

[Shadowferal]

Having a meaningful relationship takes a bit of effort. And even that much may be just too much work.

[Malkiah]

Having a meaningful relationship takes a bit of effort. And even that much may be just too much work.

do they?
in my lifetime, every meaningful relationship i've ever had took no effort... that was part of what made it so meaningful, because i just naturally clicked with someone and we built a special bond.

it's the meaningless relationships that take a lot of effort, because they don't work naturally and you have to force it, and forcing it requires constant upkeep.

[Shadowferal]

do they? in my lifetime, every meaningful relationship i've ever had took no effort... that was part of what made it so meaningful, because i just naturally clicked with someone and we built a special bond. it's the meaningless relationships that take a lot of effort, because they don't work naturally and you have to force it, and forcing it requires constant upkeep.

It's not about forcing a continued relationship, which is typically one-sided. Both have to want to hold on.
I despise using the language...but, the work is a mutual investment in each other, except it's about "time" and trust and love. You get what you pay for...the meaningless relationships are worthless...that's how you see divorces in a matter of months, if not days. And the usual fly-by-night encounters.

[Malkiah]

It's not about forcing a continued relationship, which is typically one-sided. Both have to want to hold on.
I despise using the language...but, the work is a mutual investment in each other, except it's about "time" and trust and love. You get what you pay for...

i know you're going with a very common view of relationships, it's just one i very strongly disagree with.

love is like a fart.
the harder you have to force it, the more likely you're going to end up with shit.

[Shadowferal]

love is like a fart. the harder you have to force it, the more likely you're going to end up with shit.

Then it's not love.

[Elegiac]

I think this is far more a US thing than most other places.
And for that the car is to blame.

The car is part of it, yes.

The other part is capitalism and its inherent destructiveness towards public spaces that form a linchpin in human social interaction (see: the Third Place), as well as encouraging living patterns that aren't conducive to socialization (see: Japan). Which is a feature, not a bug, as overworked and atomized individuals are significantly easier to exploit than a bonded community.

[luc54]

Personally my biggest source of loneliess comes from the fact I have very hard time connecting with other people. They usually like things I don't care about and I like things they couldn't care less around. University lot of social gatherings involved drinking copious amounts of alcohol so I naturally skipped them as I don't drink at all. I did have a few friends but afterwards they sort of split out and I'm left completely alone. If it wasn't for me being GM in guild, I would probaly have very little social interraction outside of work and taking care of aging parents and relatives. I have no idea where to meet people anyway.

What doesn't help either when you are introvert and get tired of interracting with people on top of that. I like talking to people, but sometimes you get tired of it and want to be left alone so you can recharge the social batteries to be able to interract with people.

Here is a part of it.

What happens when you can sit at home on your computer or phone, and express all of your opinions, pondering, memories, and moments to everyone you know in an instant?

What happens is, when you see them in person, you have nothing new to talk about.

I mean you might have things to talk about but you do that on phone instead without even talking to people face to face. Once you stop using phones and you'll actually have more meaningful conversations outside as well.