The hikikomori in Asia: A life within four walls

I'm sorry for what you've been through and I hope your health gets better. However I believe you've phrased the following a bit poorly, although I'm sure unintentionally:

    some degree of social isolation is just practical and realistic.

Unfortunately this leads to connotations that encourage people completely out of touch with the ordinary person's lifestyle (billionaires, CEOs etc.) make outrageous claims and dictating how they should navigate life with minimum wage and no insurance e.g. that CEO who said skip breakfast to save money, or HN's favorites that we should just shut up and be content with modern tech automating our creative abilities instead of assisting us with menial tasks.

Instead if you had written social isolation is inevitable without controlled financial and health stability, you'd be 100% spot on.

Human, social isolation and practical/realistic just don't fit together.

There are emotional and mental support groups, churches, community events, and all manner of things you can do for free that may help break your isolation. It takes effort to do this. I know you are struggling, but ultimately no one will help you but yourself, which is a hard pill to swallow.

I live in Iowa, and I had a roommate who just stopped going to work one day.

I learned after talking to her that she had done this before. In talking to her, it seemed to me a mix of anxiety and depression with a focus on agoraphobia.

Her family from several hundred miles came to retrieve her when they contacted me. She asked to move back in later, but I declined. I saw her start a new career some years afterwards.

I don't know if the "laying flat/tang ping" movement in China, or the issues of the people in the article, are completely separate from this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

Those people have completely taken over the west. You suffer alone in hopeless isolation if you are not like them. It isn't that you somehow didn't succeed - the majority simply prefers to be alone. Only the fact that the majority is "individualist" like this makes it much less obvious.

"Money" has also generally been the issue for me. Not simply the money to get to and enjoy activities. The money to meet (sometimes unrealistic) expectations of physical presentation (including clothing, grooming, the time and energy and diet required to work out) and therefore feel comfortable among people who will judge you for it - including, crucially and as a black man, authorities. The money to keep up with friends who might want to do things you didn't necessarily budget for. The money to feel comfortable with all of this while managing other necessary expenses (including, for some, supporting family).

When I had a job, I definitely didn't have the money for all of this, particularly while living in a hoity-toity resort town (and particularly when it became much more hoity and toity and white during the summer). Making rent was much easier (read: possible) when I just went home every day.

I have some other thoughts, particularly about how the modern job market makes it more difficult for young people to build durable relationships at work (which, as much as legal might abhor it, is indeed one of the avenues through which many young people make friends). Might edit/reply later with those. Suffice it to say, when layoffs disrupt the already imperiled process, you end up with a lot of people entering their late 20s/early 30s with social lives that are exceedingly fragile, if they're even extant.

America has this too. It's homelessness. The drug abuse and mental illness makes it worse though. Unlike the comparably docile hikikomori, drug and alcohol use leads to erratic and aggressive behavior and makes accommodations and treatment impossible, hence homelessness.

I know where you're coming from. Chronic ill health can be a really isolated life. I get out once per fortnight to the supermarket, once per month to the pharmacy, once per 6 months to my GP. Other than that I get away from home maybe once every 2 or 3 months.

I've had people say they'd go mad living my life. Well when your body works against you you just have to suck it up and deal with it.

As for friends, I have very few because I'm angry all the time. Being alone helps not face charges.

I was briefly jobless in a country with a fantastic social security net.

Easily the most stressful and financially unstable moment in my life.

It was only two months, but I genuinely thought I'd never recover my social standing, or confidence ever again

The evidence that it has a lot to do with social media is very strong. See Jonathan Haidt’s work on the effects of personal phones and social media on young people’s mental health.

> Unless you are able to stay within an extremely narrow range of behaviours (in terms of not being weird, basically speaking expected thinks in expected tone of voice and body language), nobody wants to associate with you.

I'll agree on the lack of on-ramps but this is a pretty limiting view. There's all kinds of people, many who will share some of whatever you think your weirdness is. If you only want to associate with a certain slice of society, it is not so weird that only certain slices of society want to associate with you.

Social capital follows the same progression as regular capital. If you already have a lot of friends and acquaintances, it's easy to make more. You either get invited to things, or you can organise something and know people will come.

Loneliness is a big problem among recent immigrants. They all struggle to make friends at first, because they have no social capital to build upon. It's hard to break into established circles without being introduced by a member, and few people will show up to a stranger's party unless it's vetted by friends.

There is such a thing as being socially destitute, and the recovery can be quite difficult, especially when you have other things going on in your life.

It isn't that you're failing, they are the hikikomoris, who want to be alone, and the very fact that somebody tries to socialoze with them annoys them. It's just the norm in the west, so that it's you who stands out, and suffers alone.

I would say it's not just behaviors but isolation causes stress on the body that increases more irrational behaviors and fears.

So that can be crippling when trying to get back to a health state that can handle relationships again. On-ramps to help destress the environment would be helpful too. It's a challenge because we haven't really built many areas where people are welcome to just be, even with 3rd spaces that doesn't those people that are now rewired in their stress state. Some types of maybe community service (clean up, plantings, painting etc) or festivals events might be more helpful here as they can sometimes be lower stress, no required interactions etc. It's a tough thing especially as people have different reasons to isolate though poverty is likely one of the most major ones.

Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche. The question is, if there is just a obvious pain, why there is such a shortage of solutions. I think it could be because of the stigma associated with this issue or because people affect by it lack genuine interest in solutions as people are usually happy to pay for all kinds of self-improvements.

People just have no historical reference.

Think times are tough now? Try the great depression.

Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war.

People living paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by? Media glorifying the rich and famous? Nothing new.

I don't understand at all. Because you (in my opinion, erroneously) believe that you need to work some X% harder than the last generation to accomplish the same thing you're just not going to try?

What about pretty much every generation prior to the last, who had to toil in hard labor most days, who often didn't have indoor plumbing, who often didn't even have electricity, who went off to war, did they have any easier time being "successful" than you? Did they just give up and not try? Do you honestly believe you're worse off in 2024 than they were? That you're working harder than they were?

I'm not even going to touch the climate dread stuff as climate change is a topic that can not be impartially discussed anymore.

> I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get you anything close to what previous generations had.

I hear this a lot. It’s also untrue. If you are open to anecdata, it’s trivial to prove this is untrue.

What people constantly miss and fail to consider is what they are working hard at. Hard work is a requirement for success and class mobility, but it is not sufficient. You must also work hard at the right things.

The truest thing I have learned about life is that you need to do three things to be successful:

1. Identify places where you can add value /for people who can compensate you/.

2. Learn how to articulate the value you add.

3. Ensure you get compensation for that value added.

If you do these three things, your hard work will pay off, maybe in a big way.

My pet theory is that social media isn't the problem, the always-on surveillance created by smartphones is.

When I was in university, we had nude parties. I'm pretty sure nobody would risk that nowadays. That cherry-picking you mentioned goes both for highs and lows. In this day and age, you always need to plan for your worst moment to end up in someone's picture. The ubiquity of cameras has made everyday living more risky in the sense that you're constantly at risk of losing social standing over insignificant mistakes.

Pumping M1 and M2 at a continuously compounding 7% CAGR is making Thomas Jefferson's prediction come true.

The on-ramps for fulfilling activity (not even necessarily jobs) are disappearing. If you want to learn something new, you're not looking at a nominal fee at a local community college; maybe the suggestion is to watch (flawed, unfinished) tutorials on YouTube, or to buy a creative influencer's course pack. Maybe that gets you basic skills, maybe you waste your time. But let's assume you picked up [skill]. Someone's probably not going to hire you for it. Do you try to make something by yourself? Here's the list of other skills you should probably pick up in order to compete (yes, you're competing) with the wunderkids who can produce [project], and also the associated devlog and Patreon and streaming schedule. Or, maybe you try to join an existing project that needs your [skill]. That's going to be a decent amount of time lurking the Discord, trying to keep up with a group of people who might not even like you because you're the weird new guy. If the goal is prosocial socialization outside of the house, this might be counterproductive.

Did I mention that the increasing focus on "problem-solving," driven by the tech Cult of Productivity, seems to have predisposed people to the kind of skepticism and pessimism that makes finding problems to solve easier?

Or, you could just... not.

>Have problem

>Don't care.

>Don't have problem anymore.

Can relate.

I think also in men there's the expectation of being a provider as your only role in life, and the fork in the road is either this (reclusion) or unfortunately suicide (apparently work and financial pressures are 2/3rds of reasons for men's suicides).

I've had friends go like that, it's not nice. But the saddest thing is that it happens and the n we all just kind of...move on somehow?

I think even if we lived in a green paradise, there would be those who would measure themselves to others and still find themselves "short" to their more vocally successful peers

I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor

I'm pretty sure the declining birth rate (or "fertility") is among the consequences of the change you are describing. The difference with past misery is the lack of stories to cover it up, or to give hope that this is temporary and it will get better.

I haven't read the book, but I think "concrete zoos," for humans, is more metaphorical than literal. Humans find comfort in much wider ranges of environment. If it were available, I'm sure many would find spaceships to be comforting environments.

IMO, the problem is that we're at this stage of social development, where capitalism, and the antiquated culture of jobs, management and deadline, is actively incentivized to limit human potential and creativity. Why? Because that's where competition comes from.

Kind of same, except add a wife and a kid under way. There's plenty of us. Most people absolutely do not regularly "go out" if they work and have a family. We maintain the bare minimum social interaction because we have to but we'd happily skip it in a heartbeat.

Yeah. I'm similar too. I guess I was almost a hikikomori at one point. I was basically nocturnal and really afraid of social situations. But I was kinda forced into society by having to get a job and stuff; my parents weren't going to look after me.

I haven't been single for very long at all over the past 15 years, but I have very little social interaction. In the past I would force myself to go out to avoid being single and lonely. But every single time I've been in a relationship I shy away from this. I used to think I should force myself to do it, like how some people force themselves to exercise, but now I think why should I force myself to do something I don't want to do for my whole life? It's clear at this point it's part of my nature and won't change. Who am I trying to impress? I just want to be alone most of the time. It's as simple as that. I work from home 5 days a week and I've never been happier.

It's not that I hate every second of socialising but it's just not how I want to spend my life. I often tell people it's like going into a sauna. Yeah, you'll go in and enjoy it, but the most important thing is getting out. Nobody wants to spend their whole life in a sauna.

> Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it

Doubt.

The biggest reason for me not to attend social events is that 99% of people are useless from my perspective and it's extremely rare for me to come across someone I actually enjoy spending time with.

I couldn't agree more. I think many of the people who choose to isolate just have more self-awareness and more defining bad experiences that makes them avoid too many social interactions that are not strictly necessary or truly beneficial in an obvious way. In fact, I believe that the nicer and more honest you are in our modern world the worse it is for you.

At heart I'm a rather social person, I like talking to people and doing stuff with them. Yet, all my life I have been abused both verbally and physically, I got stuff stolen many times (often I was actually trying to help) and I get manipulated/used all the time without getting much in return. All of this comes from being too different (not weird in a bad way, just different in the way I speak/handle myself) and abusive narcissists parents (one in particular) that destroyed my emotional self, teaching me to avoid all conflit at all cost and not stand-up for myself even though I would be capable.

All this is made worse in our bullshit job world, where every business pretend that they are a family and require you to give a lot of your life (like for example forcing you to eat with coworkers even though it should be a break for yourself) while still not giving any kind of security (you can be fired/discarded regardless of the quality of your work) or a real sense of being part of a larger cohesive group that stick together. Because at the end of the day, even inside a small business, it's all competition, lies, exploitation, anything is OK to get ahead regardless of consequences on individuals, they are expandable.

That being said, drugs make everything worse in the long term, they are a relief/distraction but if you don't manage to kill yourself with them, they will cause more problems on top of the already existing ones. In a way, you could say that the users of hardcore drugs are somewhat ahead of the curve, because if they manage to OD it is sort of a salvation without having to deal with all the implications of suicide...

Wait, what's wrong with Hatsune Miku? It has relatively broad appeal; performed at Coachella.

It may not be accurate to paint large amounts of time spent MMOs and the like as a net negative, though. Speaking personally as someone who grew up in a tiny town where there’s nothing for young people to do, WoW and the small nerdy circle of friends that came with it almost certainly kept me out of serious trouble in my teenage years and I think ultimately helped steer my trajectory in such a way that allowed for a more successful adulthood, even if it was a distraction from shorter term development.

Of course this is something that will vary greatly between individuals, though. For some the depths of obsession are much more deep and destructive.

Lots of visual novels/anime are about shut-ins tremulously venturing out into the world and eventually making friends, usually after a lot of anxiety and misunderstanding. I think they'd probably have an encouraging effect. I remember one where a woman confesses her condition to the person in the next apartment, and is advised to start small by visiting the convenience store. She manages it, and is incredibly proud of herself. Soon she is making lists of convenience stores, and has visited every convenience store in a five-mile radius! And now her problem is to diversify, but, you know, it's a start.

Hey now, Vocaloid tuning takes effort and creativity!

Considering the strong inability of modern women to show interest in the average man, I find your comment offensive. The thing is, these people wouldn't get girlfriends either way and now you're just here to bully them. Some people simply aren't cut out for having a girlfriend or having children. Forcing them into doing that just to satisfy what a literal "random" person on HN said is absurdly cruel. You don't care about their lives so just shut up.

Those 1000s of hours are what got me my job, skill and self confidence. It's people like you who hate it when others are self confident.

Note: Miku is a vocaloid, basically a voice bank licensed to producers who generate and tune a pre-existing voice with their own lyrics/music. Some of the music produced by these artists are actually amazing and it gets even better when a human singer covers the songs. (See supercell+Ado 恋は戦争) Yes I know about the Idol part and I couldn’t care less.

It’s the people like you that generalize a whole culture that ruin it.

Yikes dude, stereotype much? Anime actually got me out of my "hikikomori" phase by encouraging me to study and get a gf. You can laugh but it's true :).

Shame of educational pressure might be causing this, as mentioned in the article. But why do we as society place kids under so much stress? Let kids be kids and learn by exploring.

Frankly I think it's more sensible than putting up with an unjust system in a rat race that goes nowhere, although eventually one has to get into the work game to survive.

It's a bit like refloating a sunken ship.

Yeah, it's much easier for me to leave the house when it's a situation in which I don't need to care about the potential of other people's opinions. Running quick errands, walking the dog, etc.

For some reason taking out the recycling is a heavier lift for me mentally due to the risk of chaos with the bins, potential for bags breaking, bins being full, etc. even though there is less social interaction than grocery shopping.

Honestly, my dog is my savior. I take her to the park every evening. This gets me out into the evening sun, walking, and around like-minded people. The fact that I can interact with a group of people without scheduling an "event" is great. We just show up. For me it's mostly the other dogs (puppy therapy), but it's nice to exchange a few words and talk to someone about their day while the dogs run around.

The two mile walk to the lake is also key. I find a morning stretch and kettle bell routine, and an evening walk keeps me mentally and physically in tune. And it's practically free, unlike modern healthcare.

Not to mention that "getting the job" is often far more difficult and/or stressful than doing the job or showing up to work or being seen by others on your commute. No one wants to admit how much talent is wasted due to the job application & interview processes.

Damn that last sentence is depressing. What keeps you going?

I think a lot of black sheep personalities feel like this, pretty safe and smug in calling all the patterns we see in others that make them not right for us. And we know too much of ourselves will try their patience too, which makes us resent their love as a thin weak thing.

>lots of reasons but I'm the constant

Sad face. I don’t know if admitting this helps or hurts, but a long while ago when I kept seeing your username on so many of my favorite comments i thought about emailing you to flirt, but the more I kept reading thru to look for hints (to confirm that ur straight, not married, etc ) the more I psyched myself out… In sober assessment, I likely wouldn’t meet your standards of, like… spiritual vigor, agency, having ones adult shit together, strength of character in a flailing sham society, etc. You already seemed too complete an image on your own. It creates admiration for sure, but in a way that challenges me to get to your level rather than come closer…

Resonating with someone’s deep judgements of the world also means I can’t fall short or claim ignorance later, there’s less room to play. “I agree with everything this guy finds virtuous yet i lack these qualities even after all this time… sigh, better just go work on becoming my best self…“

Catch22, if I already was my ideal self would I still be attracted to philosophical types on hn? (I kinda hate this place ngl)

Not sure if any of us with these dispositions really want another human up close or if that ‘trying’ is just part of the aesthetic if I’m honest with myself.

Anyway, if u want to talk to a misanthropic fangirl, my username is LimeOregano on Telegram, and when you’re in the woods and very lonely, you can feel free to send me ponderous voice notes without overthinking this polite distance that you’re obliged to maintain with real friends. We can ghost each other if the long tail of negative interaction proves too much!

(Afterall, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of getting your hopes up 100 times lol)

Regardless, i hope youre flattered to know that some strangers like you based on the quality of your thoughts alone

I know people like this. They go on vacation to basically watch tv and/or go online with different scenery.

Schadenfreude?

I think the bigger enabler is the internet with its endless source of media

Modern wealth is potentially a double-edged sword.

There's enough of it that "hikikomori" is a viable strategy to stay alive.

Yet, "modern wealth" is also the reason many things previous generations took for granted such as housing are effectively unreachable for many people nowadays, plus inflation/cost of living.

This makes "hikikomori" the rational strategy for some people. Enough money to scrape by and live online, but not enough to actually climb out of the hole.

In Australia there is a pretty good welfare system, but they will basically give you a job to work while you keep applying for a real one. Usually it’s something like sorting clothes in a charity store. I imagine it helps to keep people engaged in society somewhat.

But this all is so evidently untrue!

Stock of accumulated capital is growing healthily which means savings rate is healthy too, even if most of savings is just reinvestment of profits from previous ones.

Consumption of almost everything is growing in real terms too in almost all countries.

GDP keeps growing just about everywhere save for a few most unlucky places like UK.

Even inequality is falling for the first time in decades so the poor people actually see most improvement (especially in the US).

That 'hopelessness' is what people call 'vibecession'. People just taught themselves - probably by going through too much doomscrolling - that things are bad. But they aren't. We are probably living through best times in our lifetime - especially the common folk, poor and working class (some highly educated, high income occupations might be on shaky ground). MAYBE, just maybe, upper middle class is a bit fucked indeed, but this is a small group numerically and hikikomori do not come from there.

I'm glad i'm not on social media but whenever i'm trying to read so-called 'news', i also get depressed for a bit. People are trying to present absolutely everything in the most negative sense possible probably because otherwise it's not clickbait-y enough...

> People are facing crippling student debt (depending on your country), one bad medical incident away from being homeless.

Both of these are U.S.

something like universal basic work?

into it.

> I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression". The life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better than a life of not working at all.

The Hikkikomoris in Japan are all sustained by their parents. There's actually a growing concern there about the first generation of Hikkikomoris who are getting into their 50s already and their parents are starting to die, leaving them with no life skills and no source of income.

opt-in communism is not the name I'd go with, but that's a lot more palatable than universal basic income.

basic job guarantee? there's absolutely no shortage of work to be done, it's just a distribution problem, just like with food and money.

As a man who spent a decade living as what is described as a hikikomori, no, you're not. I think you are massively underestimate just how much socialization you have, and underestimating just how many other issues come along with living that lifestyle. I would likely need many hours to properly illustrate them all.

Can’t stand small talk either. I get it, it’s required at the beginning of meeting people, but don’t stay too long in that mode otherwise it gets boring.

Your site looks beautiful, kudos to the design team.

Population density is absolutely the driver of all of this. It increases competition, decreases personal space, and limits access to nature.

Humans are social animals, but we aren't ants. We're not supposed to live in concrete jungles. As others have said, hikikomoris are one extreme of a continuum of negative outcomes caused by modern life. A low birthrate is another, which is correlated with urban living (there are other factors but this trend is unmistakable).

I believe this is a natural outcome of very high population density, a negative feedback mechanism. When life becomes unbearable because of too many people, we withdraw and don't reproduce.

"Universe 25 Mouse Experiment" by J. Calhoun shows this too.

https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU

Key sentences (1:30): "Young ones found themselves born in a world with far more mice than meaningful social roles. Males faced a lot of competitors to defend their territory against. Many found that so stressful they gave up. Normal discourse within the community broke down and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds."

Very nicely illustrated.

It's hard to change another person's mind.

It's strange. We know that instincts, hormones, and other aspects of our biology have a tremendous influence on our thoughts and behaviors, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to use that to problem-solve. There's evolutionary psychology, but given the fraction of human problems traceable to maladaption to the modern world, one would think "evolutionary anthropo-sociology" would a foundational pillar of science. Like, why doesn't "humans didn't evolve to sleep in a room by themselves at the age of four" carry as much weight as "don't let your kids eat lead paint chips"?

This presentation is surely intended to convey a sense of spatiality related to the idea of "A shrinking life". I enjoyed the graphics and photos, and I definitely got a feeling of constriction and isolation that added depth to my reading experience—YMMV.

(The HN guidelines discourage complaints about these sorts of "tangential annoyances", by the way: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)