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Comment by evanagon | Hacker News Reader

"Decades of research substantiate the devastating effects of social isolation. Loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and increases the risk of death by 26-45%, which is on par with risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity, and lack of exercise."

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It would be interesting to know if men are more lonely than women as everything I've seen has shown that it's easier for women to join social circles and find dates whereas most men struggle with this. As a result, I wonder if this connects to the much high suicide rate for men.

Women attempt suicide at a rate 40 to 60% higher than men. Men on the other hand die at a greater rate because of the greater use of lethal means like guns etc. It still may be that loneliness is a greater factor in male depression but gender differences in suicide rates are misleading indicators.

I've always wondered just how reliable the suicide stat is because once someone commits suicide, they are no longer able to attempt it.

It's kinda like how one has to be careful measuring people interviewing for jobs, since someone who interviews poorly will spend many interviews before being hired but someone who interviews well will only do a few (on average). So measuring the average ability of the candidate in interviews will be worse than the average ability of people who have been interviewed.

Just from looking at Meetup.com, I see all kinds of social groups just for women in my metro area, but I never see such things for men. There's social groups for everyone, and social groups just for women, and also social groups just for particular little subgroups (LGBT, [religion], etc.). I think there's something to this.

Another thing I've noticed is how many urban women get their exercise from "classes": barre, yoga, pilates, "orange theory", etc. Go into one of these and you probably won't see a single male there.

There are box clubs, amateur soccer clubs, boardgames meetups, tech meetups etc. They are not male only, but mostly males go there. I have also seen craft classes with appeal to men or with 50-50 split among members. A community tends to form around it.

Yoga and pilates attracts mostly women, but they won't kick out males either (as in, I seen guys there, but like 1-2 for full class of women).

There is an episode of Hidden Brain which touches on this subject, though I don't remember if it mentions any sort of measured differences between men and women. Either way, it is a neat discussion on the topic.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/19/594719471/guys-we-have-a-prob....

I don’t have the study on me but there is evidence for that. The key I remember is that men bond over EXPERIENCES and doing things together, while for female-female (and male-female) interactions, just talking on the phone and catching up works. It changed how I approached some of my relationships (ex. Catch up with a male friend over a sport/activity vs over coffee)

The problem with activity based socialization strategy is that it starts failing when you have less time, get sick, weak or whatever else that prevents you or your friends to regularly do the choosen activity. As in, it is easier, you don't have to think hard about topics nor listen to boring parts, it helps smooth over personal differences at least to me and activity inviation makes things less weird (I even considered it superior). But it failed me in some life situations and left me having really hard time to find socialization.

When I thought about it afterwards, maybe the mistake is to treat your socialization strategy as something inflexible "I do it that way" instead it is set of skills, habits and decisions that can be learned and tested.

Social isolation and loneliness is not the same. When you work with people you don't like much, you are lonely but not isolated.

Also interesting, 18- to 22-year-olds are the loneliest subgroup.

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