alt Hacker NewsLoneliness epidemic started 30+ years ago. There were books written in the 90s about it(bowling alone). Nothing modern can be blamed on it. If anything, social media is helping the crisis; not causing.
The 'fixes' has been established for just as long. My nearby 'community centre' was built in 1987. Has this been successful at all? Not in the least bit.
The reality of what is causing this hasnt changed. Without fixing this key problem, the crisis obviously has continued for 30+ years. I'm not nostradamus here. However, from many previous conversations it's crazy how absolutely nobody is ready to talk about the cause. They'd rather just call it a paradox or feign ignorance for why this is happening. Honestly it's rather conspiratorial creating when you think about it.
Out of curiousity I asked what gemini 3 pro thinks.
1. Revival of third places.
As if that hasnt been tried for 30+ years... fail.
2. replacing 'socializing' with "service"
The idea is that cleaning a park will somehow make you less lonely is laughable at best.
3. Bridging the generational gap.
Elderly teach the young skills? while youth teach digital literacy. My community centre literally has this. F mark.
4. Urban design and walkability.
We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
5. digital hygiene
social media is a sedative? crazy.
I love gemini, but man they are getting it so wrong. All of this will likely just caused the crisis to be worse in my opinion.
To me, has this been done unintentionally through the typical 'road to hell is paved with good intentions' or has this been intentionally done and maintained? The refusal to acknowledge the cause seems to push toward intentional. Guess we just live with the loneliness epidemic.
Replies
>4. Urban design and walkability.
>We need to spend trillions of dollars to completely redesign and rebuild cities? lol what.
That doesn't mean the point is wrong.
The US bet on the wrong urban planning ideas, and now it is facing the consequences. This is not unique to the US; other places have fallen into the same trap.
What is the cause in your view, then?
This feels overly cynical and reductive. A problem existing for 30 years doesn’t mean modern forces haven’t made it worse or changed its shape. Bowling Alone didn’t argue “nothing can help,” it showed that social participation declined as work hours grew, commutes lengthened, communities hollowed out, and institutions lost funding.
Those trends didn’t stop in the 90s, they accelerated! I lived through it myself. Social media isn’t the sole cause, but it clearly displaces time, lowers the incentive to show up in person, and offers connection without obligation.
Saying “community centers existed in 1987” misses the point... they stopped working when participation stopped being the default and became optional, inconvenient, and socially risky. People feel worn out and get "good enough" at home... so they choose the poor substitute. This also mirrors american food consumption habits.
This doesn’t require a conspiracy. It’s an emergent outcome of optimizing society for efficiency, mobility, and consumption instead of continuity and belonging. Service, third places, walkability, and intergenerational spaces aren’t magic fixes... and loneliness isn’t solved by “hanging out,” it’s solved by repeated, role-based, low-friction interaction where people are needed. We all but know how to fix this problem, there are piles of research behind it.
The real failure isn’t that these ideas were tried, it’s that we stripped away the economic and cultural structures that made them functional at all, then declared them ineffective. Pretending that nothing structural can help just guarantees the problem.
LLMs are always going to output the median answer you would find on the web. That's why they are almost always mediocre in their response.