Look at All the Lonely People. What's happening?

[ginasevern]

I manage a hospitality venue in a large city and since Covid (and to some extent before) demand for singles events has gone ballistic. When I say singles events, I mean gatherings for single people to mix, mingle and be in human company rather than specifically for dating.

I know there's always been business/hobby networking events and for as long as I can remember there have been events for divorced or widowed people but the clientele I'm talking about are young (usually between 25 to maybe 40 tops), intelligent and with good jobs.

Most of the people I talk to at these events are looking for a partner and are quite lonely. During my years working in offices most of the women/men were with someone by the time they were in their mid to late twenties and loneliness was (mostly) a problem for the elderly. Even if they weren't with someone, they had very active social lives with their friend groups. There was also a lot of works socialising, even if it was just a couple of hours in the pub after work or a game of softball.

What's changed. What's gone wrong in society?

I think society has undergone a massive shift in a relatively short time.

I met my partner through work. That does not seem to happen much now. People are scared to show interest in case they are castigated for harassment etc. The average office these days has been depersonalised- you show up, head down, plug in, roll on home time. Sterile.

Add in commutes. If you work in a city centre, you might have a schlepp home. I live in outskirts London. When younger I socialised in central London, tipsily got the train home, walked from station to home, no problem. No way would I do that today. My area is a normal suburb but has seen a high increase in violent crime, and it is the same for a lot of places.

Covid happened. A lot of working from home goes on. If you were minded to socialise with work colleagues, the spontaneous nature of that has now gone.

Phones/screens. People seem to prefer online interactions to real life. Even if physically present there is often one eye or full attention on the phone.

Depending on where you live, the UK can be unfriendly. If I randomly spoke to someone in my area, they immediately view me with suspicion. Speak to someone in another part of the country, a nice interaction ensues.

I think people are beginning to see what is lost. Yesterday I read of a cafe, think it is in Amsterdam, where people sit in there for company. They play board games, knit, just curl up and read a book, interact.

Boardgame cafes exist here too. I endorse this sort of space where entering is consent to social interaction. Don't want to talk, don't go there. Want to talk, go there.

I don't consent to chat when I'm commuting.

I really hated commuting and I think a lot of people use escapism to cope with it. To be fair before phones I imagine people also did this with books and walkmans.

Honestly that seems fair enough to me. While I can understand if the older person wanted to chat, hairdresser might have been on her feet chatting for 9 hours in work all day and is equally entitled to chill out and not have to interact for the length of her bus journey. I doubt she would have minded if client had said hello but fair enough if she didn't want to spend the bus journey making awkward conversation with someone she doesn't know well.

Yes people more busy now. Our wends are kids sports and elderly grandparents. Find people vague now coffees or meetups and never get back to you either. Its flaky.

I think social media has given the illusion of contact and friendship without real friendship.... but I think we might see a reaction against that now that social media has stopped being 'social' and is just a load of content pushed at you rather than showing your what your friends are up to.

Covid has probably disrupted things a lot for the generation that were supposed to spread their wings socially in 20-22. They might have missed out of the adjustment period when you go from seeing all your mates all the time to working and actually maybe only seeing some friends a few times a year, which happens to everyone but some people think this means something is terribly wrong and other people accept it.

There is some degree of social selfishness going on I think [old person moment approaching] with people sometimes seeming to forget socialising is reciprocal - that cancelling on another person because you're 'a bit tired' or not in the mood affects that other person who is now left at a loose end. I sometimes think the 'self care', 'oooh I'm an introvert' thing is a bit overplayed by some people who just don't want to do anything they don't feel exactly like doing. Don't get me wrong, there are some people who genuinely have limited social batteries but others are just being a tad selfish, and that makes it hard to continue friendships.

It’s funny about approachability isn’t it. I’m someone that people always talk to, one of my sisters is the same. We are not exceptionally lovely looking or kind or anything I can think of. People just feel at ease with us.

@AzureBlue99 It’s still really friendly where I live, if you walk up the canal of a morning and don’t say hello you are viewed as unfriendly. I had a great chat recently to a fisherman and then a Mum with a very new baby stopped and joined in.

I volunteer on a helpline. We've always had calls from lonely people, but mostly from lonely elderly people. I've noticed a big increase in calls from lonely younger people in the last 4 years or so. Yet another knock-on from covid and lockdown.

But at the same time as noticing an increase in lonely people, I've also noticed that many people are just all-round busier. I have a group of 4 friends who I've known for about 20 years. We're trying to arrange a meet-up. So far, we're up to the end of April without finding a mutually convenient date. I mean I think that's just crazy - we all live within about 2 miles of each other! We used to meet up at least once a month but our lives have changed I guess.

I'm like that. My mam was too. I get allsorts of people telling me their deepest darkest secrets. I do love people though. And am pretty non judgmental. Unless you're really stuck up or arrogant. Can't abide that.

As a teen I was going out to clubs and gigs all the time, but in hindsight I know I was very lucky to have a great friendship group which exists to this day. I would venture one major obstacle for young people these days is the perception that anything less than 'perfect' is not worth pursuing, and with no frame of reference to test relationships (most of the places I went as a teen no longer exist) how can young people be expected to form meaningful relationships

I'be noticed this too OP, it was already happening before Covid but the lockdown accelerated what had been slowly happening already. I work almost completely remotely now, most of my friends are overworked and too stressed in their downtime to feel like being particularly social - partly due to the massive cost of living compared to wages in our age group but also because digital technology scratches the itch of being social to some extent (although i don't think it replaces actual real time together, in fact it leads to people drifting apart over time). A lot of them are also leaving in search of cheaper rents in other towns or they're leaving the country completely for better jobs. We're all doing these things for good reasons but the results, when you look at the big picture, are pretty bleak. I'm not sure what can be done to try and put the genie back in the jar. It's really sad.

Maybe it's worse now OP, I'm not sure.

As an older single woman, I've given up on OLD, meetup groups etc because of the prevalence of married/weird/looking for casual sex types.

I think the issues in general are covid, porn, wfh, stress, lack of community, closure of village pubs, high cost of socialising.

I was thinking this the other day while remembering a thread about people taking classes just for fun, did these things used to be better? By that I mean groups, volunteering, classes, pubs and that sort of stuff.

My experiences have been poor but people surely aren't recommending these things to mess with me.

Yep, before mobile phones and headphones, the "code" for leave me alone, was reading a newspaper or a book on a train, bus or even sat on a bench. Then came walkmans etc and now it's the smart phone.

I do think we, as society, has lost that kind of nuance. There were all kinds of societal "clues" as to who wanted to chat, who wanted to be "picked up" in a pub/club, etc., and who didn't, but now all that's been lost.

There were certainly a lot more options re evening classes, i.e. all kinds of "adult education" from A levels right down to flower arranging, with massage, car mechanics, art, etc in between. Literally something for everyone. And the thing was they got a wide range of people going to them, from people wanting something social to people wanting to retrain for a new career, so you'd meet a wide range of people, all ages, so you could "choose your tribe".

I think we've morphed into segregation. The few career changing courses are now taken mostly by youngsters and the clubs/societies/something to do ones are mostly taken by OAPS (that's what I've seen anyway), so quite polarised and not the same broad range of people anymore.

Not helped with a lot of things being done online rather in person, even clubs & societies who now often do "guest talks" online instead of in the church hall or hotel function room as they always used to! I was looking at the U3A website a while ago and quite surprised to see how little "in person" activities we had locally - most things were online and the only thing of interest "in person" was their local rambling club!

For autistic women, that "nuance" and "clues" was just another way for us to be endangered at worst and considered rude at best. I'm not mourning it.

Context for "endangered" assertion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9087551/