Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Yes, more and more super-suburban living, combined with increasingly restrictive teen driving regulations, curfews, and fear-based media stories about abductions have ratcheted down the ability of teens to hang out together. So when technology came along to enable improved interpersonal contact, it was embraced far more rapidly than it would have been if teen freedom were as high as it was in the 70s.

The graphs they show don't perfectly correlate to the trends in hanging out in person. While smartphones have definitely contributed to changes in the culture (for everyone, not just teens), it's false to pretend that they are entirely responsible for changes in loneliness. It just as well may correlate to being bombarded by reactionary hatred from adults over things teens have grown up thinking about more openly, like more open ideas about gender and sexuality. Or perhaps from finding themselves in a culture of fear about mass shootings while again faced with an adult political establishment who does nothing about it. Or maybe just facing the reality that the grown-ups are making things worse, day by day, and that they're going to have to clean this all up after us.

Smartphones have nothing to do with that.

* suburbs [check]

* "hatred" [check]

* gun owners [check]

Looks like this is an open-and-shut case. The problem is Republicans / red staters / etc.

> that they are entirely responsible for changes in loneliness.

loneliness? The amount and richness of communication like the number of participants, number of parallel communications, number of the topics and the range of opinions, etc. is most probably much higher when using smartphones then when it is subject to the limitations of physical presence. Our species brain development is basically history of social communication, and the smartphones transcending those limits of physical presence is the next step for the brain development of our species. Granted the adjustment period may have its quirks, like absence of non-verbal parts of communication - face emotions, gestures, etc. - that our brain evolved to expect and not receives anymore and thus doesn't get the associated dopamine - may feel like loneliness.

It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.”

I’m amused by this notion that “it may feel like loneliness but it’s actually the richness of our new modes of communication you are feeling! Just get used to it!”

>It’s hazardous and frankly inhuman to boil down human interaction into metrics like “number of participants.”

the tech today allows to for example easily and frequently Skype with your family, like parents, sibling, nephews residing on the other continent. A humongous improvement compare to previous modes of expensive international phone, especially when many of those participants didn't have a phone back then. What is inhuman here?

It also allowed for communication like we have here on HN. Before, it would be limited to just watercooler chat with colleagues at work with very limited exposure and exploration of genuine opposite/conflicting opinions, whereis we can have a bleeding-trolling-edge blast online.

Just because you can communicate with someone doesn’t mean you don’t feel lonely.

This is the most concise statement of the problem with communication technology I’ve ever read.

An in person hug with a close friend or family member is worth a lot. Phone calls have been around for a long time and still miss out on such things. Cellphones provide some benifit, but often reduce the quality of face to face interactions by distracting one or more participants.

It just occurred to me that virtual interaction is like a vitamin pill. There should be a right amount of human interaction, at right timings, in a right way. But today it's happening too often and/or too much, and the type of interactions is limited. Just like vitamins, it's easy to overdose. The best way to take nutrition/interaction is through natural ways because it gives you other kinds of nutrition and there's less risk of overdose, etc.

I don't think vitamins are a good example here. It's really tough to overdose on OTC vitamins. But most people derive no health benefit from vitamin supplements.

As for human interaction, the "right" amount is different for everyone.

> There should be a right amount of human interaction, at right timings, in a right way. But today it's happening too often and/or too much, and the type of interactions is limited. Just like vitamins, it's easy to overdose.

This is true of most things.

> "... may feel like loneliness."

Isn't the feeling the whole point?

It's a bit strange to claim that, even though some people might feel lonely, they aren't /actually/. Lonely is a word that refers to an emotion -- not a word that refers to the circumstances that tend to bring about that emotion.

I'll grant you that if we had a perfect account of what those circumstances were, the two might be identical (for a physicalist, anyway). But that some people "may feel lonely" even now is a proof by counterexample that your account is not it.

I feel that GP has confused loneliness with being alone, when they are two very different concepts.

It's absolutely possible to be alone and not feel lonely, possibly because one is an introvert or because they gain social fulfilment from online interaction.

On the other hand it's also absolutely possible to be surrounded with people, and even have rich social interaction with them, and still feel lonely. This could be simply due to interacting with the wrong people, but can also be symptomatic of mental health issues such as depressive or anxiety disorders.

Humans need to interact physically (not necessarily with touch, but with proximity) with other humans. We are social animals.

Communication and interaction in social relationships is not just about information exchange. Non-verbal interaction (touch, gestures, physical closeness) are just as essential, if not more essential than verbal/text interaction for the majority of people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com