> treat loneliness as a serious health problem that could even lead to early death
italics are mine. I've seen this written a lot of times, and I find it disappointing that we are focusing so much in reduced life expectancy. in my opinion, the real issue deserving the attention is the reduced life quality.
now adressing the topic of the article: I think we should reflect more deeply about spaces, and how modern society is losing them. nowadays, practically every exchange involves money, products, services. if a space doesn't make sense in an economic sense, it tends to disappear. the only big "free" space left seems to be the internet, so it's no surprise that people tries to find everything they feel they are missing there. but it's clearly not enough, not a good alternative. we have become really good at hacking everything, and now we can't trust anything. it's not just that we don't want the messiness... to me, it seems like it's becoming harder every time to find good places to get messy, unless you are really thinking explicitly about it and going somewhat out of the road. it's some kind of natural contradiction for humans: we don't want a messy world, because it hurts us, so we are trying to steer away from that, but at the same time we need it. how do we reconcile everything?