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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   1955 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 10, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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What strategies do Mottizens follow for a good social life?

Much has been written about the so-called “loneliness epidemic”.

Pew documents the decline in the number of close friends:

There’s an age divide in the number of close friends people have. About half of adults 65 and older (49%) say they have five or more close friends, compared with 40% of those 50 to 64, 34% of those 30 to 49 and 32% of those younger than 30. In turn, adults under 50 are more likely than their older counterparts to say they have between one and four close friends.

Similarly, Fast Company reports the decline of social clubs:

In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert Putman makes the case that in addition to all of the social changes in America, technology played a big role in encouraging people to leave clubs. Television and the internet, for instance, encouraged people to spend their leisure time on their own, rather than with other people. Social media allows people to feel like they are in a kind of community, but they don’t actually have deep relationships with them.

I chose that excerpt because I think it’s closest to the root cause. People back then had to choose between socialization and boredom. Now we have very good solo entertainment. Many would agree that something important has been lost in the exchange.

I’ve tried to fight this trend in my own life, with limited success. Even if you personally resist, your friends still need to choose to hang out with you, over, say, bingeing the latest TV show. As the decline of social clubs demonstrates, we social-seeking individuals now have fewer options.

One potential option is to embrace technology and socialize on the internet. I spend so much time on Twitter because I like talking to people.

What do you guys think?

I’ve often thought that a part of the issue is that there are so few cheap/free entertainment options. If you don’t want to just hang out and watch tv at a friends place, or play a tabletop game, you’re generally going to have to spend $30 a person to go out on the cheap.

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