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Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

Do we have any statistics from other countries?

The numbers given in the article suggest about 1% of the Japanese population are hikikomori, that seems, at first glance, quite common.

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In the West many of those with the hikikomori traits are medicated under anxiety and depression. Japan does not have the same mental health processes we have here.

I wonder which way is better for the people living with a predisposition to reclusive behavior. Is medication to allow these people to integrate with the rest of society better or worse for their well-being than having them live alone?

I like to imagine people who take medication for social anxieties do so because they managed to get themselves to a doctor and ask for such, then willingly continue to take the medication of their own volition.

Howber, now that I’ve wtitten that it occurs to me there may be expectations in a culture that are difficult to see from within.

They don't live alone and are unable to live alone. Someone must bring them food, cook for them and otherwise pay bills. Also, they do not report high hapiness.

I'd imagine it would be correlated almost 1:1 with unemployment statistics, which are very well documented.

Interesting, I would have assumed no correlation with unemployment statistics.

Almost by definition, you can't be hikikomori if you're employed. So there's at least that.

True, although I would have thought they fell outside the definition of unemployed as well as they aren’t seeking work.

The most common unemployment statistics only include people actively seeking employment. Since you'd 1) be actually willing to work and 2) have to interact with strangers to go on job interviews, it that wouldn't be considered a hikkomori.

Unemployed almost never includes retired people and 36.2% of those surveyed cited retirement as a trigger for social withdraw.

There are European countries with 5%, 10%, 15% unemployment numbers. It'd be insane if they had that percentage of completely recluse population. And they obviously don't.

He said 1:1 correlated, not 1:1 equal. I.e. if for the sake of argument one in five unemployed are shut-ins but nearly no employed people are, then you have a good starting point to estimate populations.

Unemployment of the youth in Spain is at >33% now.

it must have been, but with the internet remote activities have diversified enough to allow to have what would qualify as part time job without leaving the room/house.

For instance blogging, affiliate ads, game streaming, youtube ads, etc.

This might not a big part of the pie, but it’s not 0 either.

In the article they state that people that are hikikomori don't have a job. I would assume that if you are a content creator with income that stays at home all day you would be left out of the study.

I think as a large scale societal issue, we are about to see a lot more gatekeeping where modern, microtransaction, power-law distribution of revenue income streams don't really mean anything financially, but will disqualify participants from help and assistance to "save program money". If you amazon turk'd once for $2 total, you have a "job" so no help with medical care for you, etc.

Its likely the way the market will "fight" modern gig economy business models is by weaponizing socialized support systems. If you ever uber and make $5 or get $50 from admob annual income for a youtube channel, you're "a rich self employed small businessperson" with substantial legal and taxation reporting requirements and an official "job" so no college student loans for you, no food stamps, etc. Fight the business model by drying up the supply. If the only people doing mturk, uber, or recording youtube content are either dirt poor or independently wealthy, that will eliminate that segment of the marketplace via lack of supply. The income from gig economy isn't enough to live, so survival will dictate abandonment of the gig economy. The legacy marketplace players have a large financial motivation to implement something like this. I don't think taxi drivers or legacy TV network execs will oppose shenanigans that wipe out the gig economy.

The japanese article has a definition of how they labelled people.

https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASM3R4DZQM3RULZU005.html

It’s still pretty vague, my rough translation: “people who didn’t participate in social activities, like school or work for more than 6 months”.

Also it’s stressed that this time they didn’t automatically remove at home spouses, and they were flagged as hikikomori if they had almost no interaction outside of their family.

I wouldn’t surprised if blogging or content creating on the net would be excluded from “social participation” or not seen as communication in general.

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