> 1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't quite what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative term - "less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that might skew longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to (almost every day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably being ostracized to boot.

As I understand it, „loneliness” in the article is understood as the feeling of loneliness, not a measure of how sociable you are. You can be lonely while continually being around people which you have relationships with which look warm on the surface, but don’t give you much of a satisfaction. I think it is the case with a lot of people suffering from depression.

I agree with everything you say, and don't see it as contradicting anything I've said. [I ain't saying I couldn't have been clearer.]

Note that our feelings are influenced greatly by social comparisons. For example, those whose immediate neighbors are all poorer than they feel much happier than those who are richer but the poorest in their immediate neighborhood. As Buddha said, expectations tend to rule feelings.

Modern society, both for dating and friendships, sets up false expectations ("The Illusion of Choice"), that often leave us without partners. Some combination of finding a crowd you like better, and lowering your expectations has to suffice: or nothing will.

Then it seems I misunderstood you in the first place. I agree with you.

This is just speculation-- but to jump on your point, I suspect one of the reasons the rate of depression and loneliness is highest in males is because male friendships are often more guarded (less warm or emotionally close).

Could it have more to do with near past, namely 1950 nuclear familly ideal? Middle class women were housewifes - which can be very lonely if you don't put effort into keeping relationships. People have to make effort to meet you and if you alienate them, they simply cease to make effort.

Meanwhile men went to work where people have no choice but to communicate with you. You don't have to put effort into relationship, you are guaranteed not to be really lonely. In fact, too much relationship can be detrimental as you all compete for position and salary etc. Being a bit of jerk can pay of and you don't have to care whether people like you - if they don't it is up to them to deal with it. Plus there was influence of past war on expectations on males (be like veterans are).

That leads to two different kind of socializations for boys and girls - where boy socialization leads to loneliness in long term, when you are too old to pick up new habits.

True, nuclear families are a huge change. The ease of transportation created them as much as anything, I think.

I'm not disagreeing - and am speculating as well - but this lack of intimacy might not matter if we males were cooperating in groups a lot (other than by emessage), say on a hunt; but we just don't do that anymore. I think my grandfather's male friendships were shallow-but-substantive meaning not intimate and squishy, but based on hard cooperative tasks, often physical such as "branding parties" on farms. Even as a kid these seemed to me to be all-shop-talk relationships, often. But they did find them satisfying, they knew they could rely on these guys in a pinch. Whereas I'm not at all sure that the guys I share my squishy feelings with would be there for me in a pinch.

So we need a westworld for male bonding!

Are you sure that majority of grandparents generation in United States lived in close knit rural villages where having two friends surely means you are ostracized?

Grandparents generation lived through world war, end of great migration of blacks, were adult through civil rights fights and had TV. American men went over the sea and even Easter European existing close knit village were destroyed by fighting, hunger, repressions, just to be later disrupt by communism.

Nope. Which is why I haven't said that. But even in cities, people did move less then, and did rely on their neighbors more, due to poverty if nothing else.

As it happens, one set of my grandparents lived on a farm with no neighbors within something like four miles; the other, in a few small farming villages with maybe 32 people.

My grandparents on both sides lived in shack-house farms, far from any villages or towns or whatnot. This was after the family moved to Canada. They had large families (6+ kids), which was also common, and I suspect it was hard to be lonely surrounded closely by so many brothers and sisters and daughters and sons.