Personally, I have no idea what y'all are talking about.
I enjoy seeing other people, I went sailing with a group of friends yesterday, but I absolutely enjoy spending most of my time alone.
How anyone can be "lonely" with 8 billion other people on the planet is just incomprehensible to me. For me the whole place is just way too full of people. I really relish my time alone.
This has to be some "raised on the internet" kind of millennial phenomenon.
As a barely boomer, born at the end of the '50s, the US population has tripled since my childhood. I really miss the open spaces that weren't packed full of people.
loneliness is not about not wanting to be alone. it's about finding it difficult to connect to others even if you actually enjoy it. i am fairly introvert i guess and i can walk through a city with millions of people without connecting to anyone, which is mostly ok, but at the same time i also feel unable to connect to anyone just like that.
the last time i was alone in a city for a few days the only person i connected to was a friend of a friend who introduced us.
otherwise i usually look for specific activities like tech meetups, or other public social events
> Personally, I have no idea what y'all are talking about.
>
> I enjoy seeing other people, I went sailing with a group of friends yesterday, but I absolutely enjoy spending most of my time alone.
That's wonderful that you don't have this problem at all! And that none of your friends have ever been lonely either. I sure hope this lack of personal experience won't make it hard for you to emphathize with those who do suffer from loneliness.
> How anyone can be "lonely" with 8 billion other people on the planet is just incomprehensible to me. For me the whole place is just way too full of people. I really relish my time alone.
Uhoh. Let's start with the 8 billion people nonsense. How is that relevant? One is unlikely to meet the almost 3 billion Chinese and Indians in, say, Alaska. The fact that billions of people exist somewhere else is not helpful. Doubly so because with most of those billions there is no shared language, no shared culture or experience, and generally little else to build into a meaningful connection.
I would argue that we can reasonably exclude the earth population that you are unlikely to meet on a regular basis. This filters out about 8 billion, leaving us with "only" millions for those living in or near big cities, and hundreds to thousands for those who live in the middle of nowhere.
All of this is ignoring the fact that people manage to feel lonely even in a crowd or even at a party. Ultimately loneliness is not about being alone in the literal sense but about not having (enough) meaningful connections. Having no connections in a crowd of millions only emphasizes the loneliness, it does not solve it.
> This has to be some "raised on the internet" kind of millennial phenomenon.
Dismissing the existence of elderly loneliness and spitting on a younger generation all in one sentence. Jup, kids these days, they suck right? You could really try some more empathy with people going through hard times and not dismiss their lived experiences just because it hasn't happened to you (yet).
> As a barely boomer,
Ah, there it is.
> I really miss the open spaces that weren't packed full of people.
Sure, but the US still has many places where you can walk for hours without meeting someone. Or you could move to Alaska. If that seems like a hand-wavy bullshit argument, consider what your 8 billion people argument might feel like to someone who is lonely.
Maybe next time you go sailing ask your friends if they or someone they know have ever felt lonely, and try to stop yourself from arguing an dismissing their stories. You might learn something.
I would rebut that this isn't a lack of experience of being lonely, of course I've felt lonely at times.
This is on the contrary for the OP a lack of the experience of feeling OK with themselves. Along with a neurotic belief that they need someone else to make them OK.
Any mental illness resides only in a person's mind. Therefore the only solution is from within that person's mind.
In short, get over it and move on. Stop wallowing in your self serving misery... Unless you actually want to feel that way...
I enjoy seeing other people, I went sailing with a group of friends yesterday, but I absolutely enjoy spending most of my time alone.
How anyone can be "lonely" with 8 billion other people on the planet is just incomprehensible to me. For me the whole place is just way too full of people. I really relish my time alone.
This has to be some "raised on the internet" kind of millennial phenomenon.
As a barely boomer, born at the end of the '50s, the US population has tripled since my childhood. I really miss the open spaces that weren't packed full of people.