The article says 25% of Americans haven’t discussed any important matters with someone close to them in the last 6 months. Twenty five percent! That’s a huge number, much larger than the number of people in tech.

I almost never discuss anything important with people outside of extremely close and likeminded friends because of the current political climate. I worry about being ostracized/alienated by them for not believing in the same things as them, so it's not at all worth the risk to actually discuss anything meaningful with them if the outcome might be permanently destroying our relationship.

Right, at school, you could say some awful stuff, and someone would tell you "that's awful because <x>", and you'd usually change your mind. Now, even established science is "controversial", and differing opinions aren't exciting, they're somehow personal attacks. What i mean is, opinions seem to have become an important part of their self to people, maybe through social media. I don't mean somebody thinking they're being argumentative/clever/fun when they're just being rude. Some people are socially inept, but that's a too easy cop-out to use in all of these cases, and does nothing to help those people, or show more socially apt people that it's occasionally ok to open up your guard.

Of course, you can't just launch into such topics with new acquaintances, but to a degree the climate makes it hard to go from acquaintance to friend because everything is small talk. At least that's my feeling, which is why a night of drinking seems to be involved at some point when I make new friends.

They still might be over represented among HN readers. Also, being over represented on HN does not necessary imply being over represented in tech.

If 25% of HN readers upvote an article about loneliness, it'll go to the top of front the page.

Maybe it has something to do with the role technology plays in this issue.

I don't know. We can blame technology. Or we can actually go out and join something.

Maybe serve at a local food bank. Worst case, you're still lonely but some hungry people get fed.

Incidentally, how are you going to find a good food bank to help out at? I bet it looks like "technology": search engines, smart phone apps, web pages, email, digital calendars, navigation instructions, and signup forms.

Of course this is great advice for an individual. It's always possible to effect change at the margins. But this sort of advice at a population-level feels meaningless. It's entirely fair to search for root causes to large-scale dysfunction. Otherwise the trend will just grow worse

I like to point out that the English language has a beautiful way to describe it by having two distinct words ("anyone", "everyone") instead of just one, unlike my native German ("jeder"):

If something somebody proposes in response to a population-wide problem works for anyone it should also be tested if it works for everyone. A lot of "how to get ahead and gain wealth" suggestions come to mind too that fail the second test.

Or maybe the way technological or even knowledge work in general is structured runs counter to human biology and chemistry in more than one way, or in compounding ways, more than most other professions where social elements are part of the inevitable toolset?

Screen time, including social media, is not human interaction time. Hacker news is about the extent of my social media.

That or the sort of person who tends to work in tech.

Every two weeks it hits front page and usually comes from nyt!