Basically what the title says, two questions:

  1. Do you feel lonely or socially isolated?
  2. If you are, what are you trying to change that?

According to the WHO it’s an epidemic,

I’ve been emigrating to different countries about every 15 years and had to rebuild a network of friends from scratch every time. The younger I was the easier it was obviously. But that is a lot of work and you need to invest time and energy which I sometimes don’t have so much, especially now with a small child which needs a lot of attention.

We meet up as a family with other families about once a month and it’s really great, but while my wife keeps in contact with the other mothers in between online, somehow we dads don’t even have a group chat where we would do that and perhaps propose to meet up, it’s always the women who propose it.

It’s kind of weird that its like that and I should change it.

While the WHO doesn’t call it outright an epidemic, it seems they think it’s such a big problem that they created a specific commission to foster social connection: https://www.who.int/news/item/15-11-2023-who-launches-commission-to-foster-social-connection

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    2·
    6 days ago

    Actually yes, I’ve been feeling like that. I heard about https://timeleft.com/ (dinner with strangers) and thought it was such a cool concept. You sign up on the site, answer lots of questions about your personality, and then they have an algorithm that matches you with other people for a dinner somewhere where you live.

    I went to one of those and ended up with 5 people, and still are in touch with 4 of them. Playing pool with them in a week. :)

    There are many, many people feeling like we do. Just go meet them! I bet you will like it, and if not, it’s just a dinner. Nobody knows your full name so you can easily disappear and never meet those people again if needed.