It didn’t used to be. At least for me and i don’t recall constantly seeing posts on social media about how lonely and sad everyone was or how to make friends. Now every other magazine article is about how lonely everyone is, nobody gets together, and gen Z doesn’t socialize, drink, or have sex.
Why is there such an epidemic of loneliness and why are people content to be lonely rather than socialize?
Why is so hard to connect? Because people having nothing in common anymore? I used to connect with people over books, movies, hobbies, etc. But now it feels increasingly hard to do that. Most folks I meet don’t care about any of that, they just mostly complain about their lives to you or go on political rants about how unfair the world is.
My friends and my dates no longer seem to watch films, or do much of anything other than spend time on social media? I dont’ use social media so I’m pretty ignorant of it all.
The only mistake in your sentence is “anymore”. The world has always been too expensive for a large part of the population. Most people from the past generations (in North America) never left their home area because they could never afford to travel. Camping was a thing because that was the only vacation many could afford and it was to a campsite within a couple hours drive. People came over for a dinner of hot dogs & chips because no one could afford to host a fancy meal. The house wasn’t spotless because everyone was working during the day but the point was socializing not one-upping each other. Entire wardrobes (winter & summer) fit into half a standard 8’ closet. If one looks at the past through extreme rose coloured glasses they only see the successes and miss the majority’s reality which was often something much less. What to do? Find free stuff to do.
You’re right, people do have rose colored glasses, when it comes to the past.
I’ve added the ‘anymore’ statement because I think that we’ve fallen below a ‘critical mass’.
Bowling isn’t a good example because it isn’t popular anymore, but I’ll use it as an example anyway. If there aren’t a core group of people that can consistently pay to play, the bowling alley goes bankrupt. That hurts the people that, because of a financial constraints, may have gone only occasionally. Even if there are a handful of ultra-wealthy people in a community that can go whenever then want, there are too few of them to really sustain a bowling alley, as they won’t be going everyday.