Not the article I was thinking of but very interesting information here.
First the difference between social isolation, an objective measure, and loneliness, a perceived state.
Also this:
Just FWIW and interest.
Fucking Freinds are found on Tinder. I believe that is the whole point of the web site.
I have no idea what a Post Malone is. Some kind of garden enclosure maybe.
Yeah. Since 2005 for me.
I got a bit frustrated once with somebody in my office who didn’t “get it”. So I got out the vacuum cleaner, turned it on and stood about 20 feet away and moved back and forth until the vacuum sounded about as loud to me as the noise in my head.
Me: OK. You stand here (the sweet spot I’d found relative to the vac), I’ll stand over there (20+ feet farther from the vac) and we’ll have a conversation.
Us: Blah blah blah back and forth for a few sentences.
Them: Oh. Wow. I had no idea!
Sadly, their epiphany lasted about 12 hours then they were back to mumbling absent-mindedly over their shoulder from the other room, expecting me to catch every word. Perhaps had I simply hit them with the vacuum cleaner instead the message would have stuck.
And higher than that, I’d wager, on the SDMB.
I’ve said previously that SDMB is methadone for social isolation. Not as good as the real thing, but forestalls some of the heebie-jeebies and cravings. Some.
Huh, I suppose a good analogy. And you can’t walk into a bar and say “Anyone with lower than an average IQ, get out NOW” That’s just a natural progression on the SDMB.
Or as Jerry Seinfeld said “People, they’re the worst”
Unless it’s one on one conversation, I MUCH prefer typing. Has to do with my job as well. I want a record of what projects I’m working on. Not some mumble saying “Could you …”
Posty is a great musician/singer! He has face tatts.
Same. While I love talking to people one-on-one, I’m so much better at expressing myself in writing. Whenever I have a conversation in person, I always later think of a thing I could have said, but didn’t. In social settings, people interject before I can say anything. I just have a brain that moves at a slower pace. Like when my boss gives me a challenge and says, “What do you think?”
“I’ll tell you in two days.”
Sort of disagree. You’re processing. Perhaps taking notes in a meeting. I’m a programmer. I can multi-task. But many folks blurt things out and I am thinking “what?”
Yes, as we age (well myself). I see it bad to switch horses in mid-stream. My approach is to get this figured out before we move on. I recognize that I’m a bit stubborn, that comes with knowing yourself and your capabilities.
My Wife sometimes does this to me. She sometimes starts a sentence in mid-thought about what she wants to convey. “Start at the beginning honey”. Is my usual response. And well, my problem is that I may not have heard her. THAT is my problem, but a little help please.
My wife can switch from our new septic system install to vacation planning with out skipping a beat. ummm.
I tried to link to “Sunflower”, which is my current favorite song, but I no longer know how to link video. That song gets stuck in my head so bad! So then I listen to “I like you” and that gets stuck in my head.
I’m a little bit obsessed with his music at the moment. I really enjoyed his Tiny Desk Concert on NPR.
I seriously don’t know. I think on line connections, while very different qualitatively than in person connections, still are social connections.
I also suspect many here are connected in real life, even those who in this thread bemoan a lack of connections they’d describe as friends.
Loneliness is a related item to social isolation but not the same thing. Social connectedness is a tricky to quantify objective thing. Loneliness is a subjective state. As the article puts it: “Individuals can lead a relatively isolated life and not feel lonely; conversely, individuals with many social contacts may still experience loneliness.”
And here is where I read about the importance of weak ties!
- I’m lonely and have real world social contacts
- I’m not lonely and have real world social contacts
- I’m lonely and have few to no real world social contacts
- I’m not lonely and have few to no real world social contacts
0
voters
So a poll not counting online connection. That could be a separate poll: is online connectivity protective or contributory to loneliness?
I’m not lonely most of the time, and I have real world social contacts; but I can and often do go days without talking with anybody human.
Where does that fit?
I think that is real world social contacts. “Few to none” is a judgement call though admittedly.
Hard science this poll is not.
No, it’s not hard science. But I start comparing notes on my dad, ex, brothers and my close male friend who is 35 years younger than me and most of the come up as very similar to what I read here. My dad lost touch with all his good friends as a parent, his friends became the other guys he coached boys sports with and the neighbors, but those fell away until his male friends were the spouses of his wife’s friends. It worked for him. He even had a hard time making an effort to stay in touch with his family.
My older brother had most of his friends through his ex-partner who had a habit of making enemies of everyone, thereby cutting my brother off of contact. T1 now lives with middle brother, T2, who has managed to maintain one good friend from childhood, through age 60. T3, has kept one friend from high school, too. But has lost several, sometimes due to his actions and sometimes do to theirs. But they are indeed a band of brothers, which cuts me (Sis) out of their main loop. I finally quit trying to be a part of it. They weren’t even aware they were cutting me out, but they know now. And chose not to change. Strangely enough, T2 is friends with his technically-not-ex and her boyfriend and that whole group is like I always imagined friendship with a close group of cousins might be.
I manage to make friends where I am and am grateful for not having age as a factor in my friendships. My much younger friend, a guy I met when he was still in high school, and I have a good friendship. We’ve acknowledged many differences and many similarities and have a hoot of a time when we are together. He just sent me a screenshot of some cheese he bought as we are both foodies. Also we are both fans of engineering, architecture, and science fiction.
I also picked up a friend at my condo that I am still in touch with. She’s good people and worth the effort to keep up with despite my having moved across town. Friendship takes work. But if you can get along with others, ignore differences of politics and religion, and bother to stay in touch, boom. Friends.
I think you need a mix. I have a bunch of old friends I see from time to time, mostly on special occasions. But it’s also nice to have a regular group of people to do stuff with.
The problem with old friends who “transcend time and space” is that unless you own a TARDIS, those meetings tend to get further and further apart. And I’ve found there can often be a bit of “living in the past” where you meet up only to tell the some dumb stories from years ago instead of making new ones.
I made a new friend yesterday. I am 71 and he is 77. I put a posting on Facebook looking for musicians to play with and he answered. We got together and clicked.
It can be done at any age. Shared interests are the key.
I’m often lonely and have real world social contacts. I think this is especially true when I’m depressed or something because I turn inward and avoid people at the time when social contact would be most helpful. We usually do something social every weekend, but it’s always with someone different, so with the exception of one friend we see every Monday for movie night, I’m really only seeing individual friends/relatives once every two months or so.
When I had my writers group, we met every two weeks like clockwork for eight years. That was my sanity anchor. Even if I had to take anxiety meds, I went. Then COVID happened. Between long COVID, work and kids, everything fell apart, and I’m not sure what to do.
So the poll, as unscientific and small n as it is, is still interesting.
As of now -
A bit more than the article who are “socially isolated”, using “few to no real world social contacts” as the measure: 31 to 25%.
37% feel lonely and 63% do not.
But most intriguing to me is social contacts does not seem very protective from loneliness in our cohort. The ratio of lonely to not lonely is not far off between the groups.
Huh.
@Spice_Weasel ’s self observation is pertinent I think: the causal arrow may be more often (not always) depression causing the sense of loneliness whether there are objectively lots of real world social connections or not?
I have a few theories, although they may not necessarily be applicable for everyone as they more or less skew towards my own experiences and observations.
Generally speaking, one needs to have a healthy network of relationships at various levels. If I were to model out an ideal structure, it might look something like this:
1 Best Bro - Think something like a hetero life-partner like Bill & Ted, Maverick & Goose, or Jay & Silent Bob.
Crew of 4-5 - Basically the number of close friends who could comfortably fit in a large sedan or typical restaurant booth without someone having to feel excluded. The Crew might only work as a whole or break up into separate teams of 1-3 from time to time. Like the cast of Entourage. Vinnie and Eric are Best Bros. Turtle and Drama are Best Bros. They work fine all together, but sometimes it was a bit weird when just Vinnie and Drama hung out.
Close Network (up to about 30 or so) - These would be people you are friendly enough to hang out with from time to time or go to activities with. Like if you were to throw a party, these would be the people you invite. If you don’t have much of a network outside of your Crew or Best Bro, then you end up just sort of spending all your time doing stuff with them, which IMHO isn’t healthy in the long run.
Extended Network (up to the “Dunbar Number” of 150 or so). The people from your various groups and hobbies who you know on site. Maybe you don’t know them well other than as “Bill from basketball” or “Sarah the Bartender”. I think it’s important to have good relations with your extended network, as that’s how you feel connected with the larger community.
One of the tenets of this theory is that people have limited bandwidth and resources to build and work on friendships. It’s easier to go on a double date than a triple date. The F-14 Tomcat only sits 2. I can’t have 20 groomsmen at my wedding. I can only go to so many outings on the weekend. Like it or not, decisions will have to be made on how much I value someone’s friendship.
Similarly, I don’t want to celebrate my birthday or other big events with a dozen randos I kind of know from the bar or parents from my son’s lacrosse team who I met a couple of times. Or all my friends to be “work friends” where we will promptly forget each other as soon as one of us changes jobs. Nor do I want to be a sort of “Jay Gatzby” throwing huge events for everyone on the planet who don’t really give a crap about me.