Why are Americans so lonely?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden

Cigna, a health insurer, did a survey and found that Americans on balance are quite lonely, with younger folks disproportionately suffering.

My thoughts:

Americans, more than most cultures, are rabid individualists. This is borne out in our economic policies. Also Americans feel cultural pressure to move out of their parents home long before they get married, and often live alone. Lack of family togetherness is a factor. Younger folks are more likely to avoid marriage and family for both economic and sub-cultural reasons. Americans are also more likely to live in suburban contexts where people are relatively close in proximity, but nobody actually bothers to make friends with their neighbors.

Your thoughts?

Well, I'm not the right guy to ask, being as I despise all of humanity and all.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...m-creating-loneliness-wrenching-society-apart

TL;DR it's a symptom of capitalism

I dunno, I'm a ragin' capitalist and I have friends and family, and I'm only a notch or two above Lanzman on the sociability scale.

I think we isolate ourselves, emotionally. While I won't put it all on Capitalism, though @Chad's link makes excellent points, it is true that Americans live in a dog eat dog world, and trusting your partner might end up leaving you high and dry. So we build walls. Money matters because money and resources equal more time to engage in activities that don't require survival.

Of course, there's no single solution to this problem, no single cause. It may also be that we're embracing technology to the point where we would rather interface with a phone or computer than we would face to face. Our attention spans are also growing shorter, so there's less chance for personal connection, a smaller chance for emotional intimacy. Hell, we have technology go through lists of people and pick out the ones its filters think would make us happy. We outsource our love to a corporation, and are surprised when it all goes to shit.

I think we're less forgiving, less compassionate. We see kindness as a weakness, and mercy as something that shouldn't extend to those we disagree with. Now I am speaking in generalities, of course, but stand in a room with a hundred thousand other human beings, and it's possible to feel completely alone because while they exist there in body, none of them are there in mind and spirit.

I can't argue with your logic. I would like to add in the fact that extended families (grandparents, cousins, uncles, etc.etc.) and any childhood friends are spread out across THOUSANDS of miles in some cases. And yes suburban living is soul draining. Fifteen feet from your neighbor's house but you don't see your neighbors except for the twenty seconds it takes to get from their cars to their front doors. Nothing is within walking distance so they have to drive. And then in a year or two your neighbor moves because their job moves. No sense getting to know anybody. The house adjacent to us on the east has had about six sets of residents now since we moved here in 2004.

social media. It provides people with the illusion of human contact with none of the substance of it.

One of the things I have learned as I aged is that most people have the same insecure thoughts roaming around their heads that I do. That realization is how I have gotten over my tremendous shyness and inability to talk to people. Why feel so insecure if the other person is also feeling insecure and might want to talk? Then I just talk, if i want to talk to someone at that particular moment. There are many moments where I have realized I don't particularly want to speak to a person that is not one of the many already talking in my head. We must finish our debate before we speak to those who are not us.

When I was a kid, we lived on a main thoroughfare, so it wasn't like a quiet neighborhood. It was always loaded with traffic at all hours, but we still managed to stay connected with our neighbors. We knew their names, invited each other over for dinner, picked up each others kids from school, and so on. Now we live in a neighborhood and we're surrounded by houses and apartments, and aside from my apartment neighbor, we don't see or talk to anyone else. No one has anything to do with anybody.

Many good points in this article.

I think the extreme capitalism we find in the US is a symptom of our individualistic, lonely culture. Culture comes first.

The OP article addresses this. Your take is correct to the extent that people use social media for entertainment and as an end to itself. But it's healthy for those who use it to seek out new offline relationships or reinforce old ones.

The others are more or less the same, and either just lying or differences are accounted for by e.g. poll bias.

You seriously call what we have in the United States "extreme capitalism"???

Aside from maybe So Korea the US pop. is pretty high up the list of those w/higher expectations & demands of work and its rewards, in contrast to opposite extreme, e.g. France where having more free time holds more attraction than a bigger paycheck (which after all you'd get to keep less of anyway).

Once you're in the race, well, see how things like 'peer pressure' and fitting in allows you to take a nap while the rest are running (i.e. not easy to just tell your employer you opt out of the 'extra' work everyone else is doing).

Some of it is distance. Many young people change jobs frequently and need to relocate. Depending on the neighborhood, the likelihood that someone's going to knock on the newcomer's door with a pie or a casserole or a bottle of vodka and say "Stop in and visit anytime" is pretty slim.

The other thing is media, particularly commercial advertising. It gives people the false impression that unless they're out clubbing every night they're losers.

Me, I can host a party for 20 people (though the clean-up is a bitch) or sit at my desk all day without feeling lonely. Maybe it's a creativity thing. The creative people I know are seldom lonely. They've got too much going on in their minds and at their fingertips. YMMV.

Name a country that's more extreme. Take your time.

Nowadays talking to strangers in public is considered creepy by a lot of people, neighbors included.

I think it might have to do with kids being told "don't talk to strangers." Without actually looking anything up, that seems like a recent phenomenon. When my parents were kids (late Boomer/early Gen-X), they were told to stay away from the creepy guy at the end of the block who lives by himself and liked to do "nature photography" near the playground, but otherwise weren't taught stranger danger. I, on the other hand, pretty much had it beat into my mind "if a stranger talked to you, he's trying to put his peepee in your butt." Which is dumb, because in reality when an adult wants to fuck kid butts they go after kids whose parents trust them. Strangers actually aren't all that dangerous.

Anyway, if children are taught to fear something, many don't change when they become adults.

Compared to every other developed country, yes. Our markets are less regulated and our social welfare less generous.

I'm comparing American capitalism to a theoretically ideal concept of capitalism.

Oh, gawd, you used the trigger word "welfare."

So it's kind of like your premise in the other thread that "words mean something, except IRL applications."

That's just heartbreaking.

Yes, this.

Other than pining for the company of girls when I was a teenager, I don't recall ever feeling "lonely" in my life.

Some of you folks are very fortunate. I don't say that to take away from anything, just to voice that thought. I feel lonely in a room full of people, and I've felt that way most of my life. Aside from a few people who I know online (many of them you guys), I've always been the oddball, the odd duck, the kooky guy who never fit in. Everything I did was suspect, even though I only wanted to make people laugh, or smile, or just to feel better if they were depressed. Ever since I was a kid, I was a firm believer that a hug could fix almost anything. It's like being a 1/2" nut in a room full of 11 mm wrenches.

Come on, now.

You're way more than half a nut.

Still hoping that will change I see...

Been married longer than you, "teacher".

This is where you find a way to channel that Angst into something creative - music, art, writing, acting, stand-up (since you mentioned wanting to make people laugh), etc. The outsider looking in is the one who has insights the Kool Kids can't see because they're right in the middle of it. When you're creating, you can be anyone or anything you want to be and, like Kermit the Frog, "make millions of people happy."

By his standards, that makes you a superior person!