I live in Barcelona, and during last year’s blackout I wandered through the city. As I passed by the Baix Guinardó gardens, I came across something that felt like a "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" brought to life: the park was full of families socialising the old way, children running everywhere, the whole place buzzing with chatter and energy.
Later that day, walking home through darkened streets, I noticed small groups, maybe a dozen people at a time, gathered around certain spots. For some reason, a few closed shops still seemed to have working free Wi-Fi (backup generators, maybe), and people clustered there, drawn in like mosquitoes to light. Their faces glowed in the dark, lit only by their screens, and they stood in near-total silence. It’s hard to describe the feeling, it was surreal. You had to be there.
I’m no Luddite, but I went to sleep that night wondering how on earth we get ourselves out of this.
Have you ever seen those videos filming London streets in the 1970s? They are absolutely packed with groups of two or three people, not going places, but just standing there, chatting, as if they have nowhere else to be. It is something most of us have never experienced in any form and the change has happened over long enough timescales that we are used to our streets of strangers just going about their lives, the external world just a physical inconvenience to traverse as quickly as possible, not the real world where one just exists.
My perspective is very simple: our homes are simply a lot more comfortable than they used to be.
We have better heating/air conditioning, endless television/video games/entertainment, large refrigerators, lower density, etc and so on.
Back then, home covered a narrower set of needs - so the default option was to spend time elsewhere, even if it was just to escape the noise/heat/smells/smoke of home for a minute.
I think a lot of it comes back to cars: many people traded longer commutes for suburban houses, which has advantages but comes at the cost of not having much to do without driving somewhere and less free time around other people. This is especially bad for parents when they don’t feel comfortable letting their kids walk / bike around the neighborhood since that means more time spent playing chauffeur.
London in the 70s (which GP was talking about) already had long commutes (large suburbs and lots of commuter towns) and most households had cars. Roads are much safer and public transport is good so kids can get around by themselves.
One big difference is that more women work: stay at home mums used to strengthen communities - doing voluntary work, organising things. Now that is mostly done by retired people so the pool is smaller and fewer households have someone directly involved. Another way to look at it is that the working hours for a similar household has increased greatly so the household as a whole has less time to contribute to the community.
Another factor is that people move around more. Again, very noticeable in London where a lot of people have moved out because of high house prices. People do not near people they grew up with.
I think an undersung and underquantified factor here is how much less time people have. For reasons psychological and socioeconomic, across class lines, it seems we all have a mental calendar and todo list in our heads now, a tyrant that will always point out that aimless chatter is not appropriate, lest we fall even further behind.
I have plenty of such scenes in my city still, but these people are usually either pensioners, or local unemployed drunks who have an entire day to fill. People with jobs don't hang outside, unless they're with their kids.
I always wondered how commoners (?) could afford to go to a pub every day to socialize, or if it was cheap, how the pubs could survive with a bunch of people who were just hanging out day after day.
In the past 3 years I got married and got a kid. Both mine and my wifes social situation went 180, and now we are one of those couples you saw in the park. The kids and kid problems become new shared interest, you meet bunch of people, with similar shared experience, and you end up connecting on other fronts as well. eg - I m in high rise, parking next to an interesting winter beater every day for 2 years, and now I know the guy because our wifes meet on the playground. Turns out he also likes 3d printers and CNCs and has many ideas :)
But even before this, through wife and her hobbies (dance, pottery etc) I had chance to meet many people and their partners and through them their friends etc. Then it becomes a choice whether you will get up and go see others or pick your screen.
Your story reminds me of working pre-pandemic, and going on an afternoon walk with a coworker. He was into pokemon go and he wanted to attend an event (raid?) before we walked. I followed him down the street where he stood at a certain deserted spot and waited. All of a sudden, people just started appearing, some from cars, some coming from between the bushes, some walking down the street.
the raid started, they all silently stared at their phones, and at some point they all looked up, looked around and walked away.
all mostly in complete silence.
who knew this was a precursor to more of the same, maybe throughout society.
This is an interesting post (and also a very well written one!). It touches on something that does slightly irk me about the wider friendship/loneliness conversation that it feels we've been having for a decades now.
Its the "we" in "how on earth we get ourselves out of this." The bluntness of the "we" conflates it into a bigger problem than it is. If you walk past many parks & gardens across cities you'll find that same picture of families socialising in the old way without a blackout, but also people glued to their phones too.
People who are intentional of having classic socialising are still doing it, people who choose not to either through their own intention or, i suspect and hope, in a very ambient non-intentional way are the ones who may need to get out of it. Yes there are more of the latter now than before but the former groups are still a huge part of society. And if they can do it even with the same distractions and phones and access to social media etc. why can't others?
Yup, I'm a Spaniard and had a similar feeling. I'm pretty sure that, if the government had proposed an intentional weekly blackout, there would have been a large majority in favor.
I'm currently trying to reduce internet usage by a simple rule: no feeds (try to avoid places where I could even see them).
It's extremely difficult.
YouTube receives you with a feed, every social network as well, even the online version of a newspaper is arguably a feed. It's usually not possible to use a service without having one in frequent sight. Even my weather app tries its best to offer a feed of weather related news, the photo gallery app shows one of memories....
Yes, managing relationships needs time, but there is another problem I see nowadays. When I was young (I'm in my sixties), it was normal to have friends who could be very different from you. They might have had qualities you didn't like at all, but you could still be very good friends. If I look my students (highschool and college level) now, they are extremely intolerant for differences compared to what I remember from my youth. One "I don't like it" problem is enough to dump any relationship. Why? I guess it's because of a lack of practice – you don't really need to interact with so many different people nowadays and interacting with people who are very different from you is just plain terrifying for many.
One thing I read on IG that one couple decided to do in NL was what they call "stoepen" ("stoep" is the Dutch word for sidewalk). They'd get some chairs to their front yard, which is connected to the sidewalk, and they'd greet people and start chatting with them. When vibes clicked they'd invite them to come sit with them, until people got in the habit of sometimes coming by and sitting with them.
So there's that. Obviously there are other ways, but thought it'd be fun to share.
Also research on self-disclosure might help. Long story short: be the first to reveal some details about yourself and progressively go deeper to the level that you want, it's kind of a tit for tat type of thing. There was one popular article about it so you could "fall in love" but IMO it's not love, it's simply building a deeper connection. Check it out [1].
I used to be really interested in topics like this, so if you want to know more about it or brainstorm, feel free to reach out. My email is in my profile.
I would strongly encourage everyone to choose two or three friends and say “hey - I want to chat with you, but it’s hard to schedule calls. I’m just going to try calling you sometime when I have a few minutes free. If you can talk, great! If you can’t, no sweat. Sound OK?”
I lowered the stakes for calling/answering/not answering, and I actually catch up with my friends more often.
I have thought alot about making friends and why it's so hard. I keep coming back to the same question.
In myself I find I can't seem to muster the motivation to spend enough time with someone that it would take to form a friendship. I want to have friends, but I don't care to know any of these people. I just don't like anyone that much. The question is, am I just inherently a cynical asshole? Or, has modern life done something to me that it has also done to everyone else?
- making new friends does take a massive amount of time, not just in finding friends but also in spending time with them until you can call them long-time friends
- so you need to invest time in hanging out with people! Even when you don’t know what to say to them or when it’s awkward or when you’re not sure if you like them much. We weren’t picky when we were kids making friends, we just hung out a lot with whoever wanted to hang out
- this also means make yourself available. Romantic partners, new jobs, as well as kids basically destroy your free time, but lots of it is self inflicted. Make sure you don’t seclude yourself and prioritize hanging out with people
- also, it’s a number game, you should meet a lot of people if you want to eventually have a strong group of friends
- one trick is to organize a house party or some gathering once a week, on the same day, and invite everyone you know, and ask them to invite more people as well
- make sure you also spend time doing nothing with friends. Like watching tv and sitting on the couch. That’s how you used to create friendships as a kid, you just “hang”, you didn’t “go to the restaurant and went home afterwards”
- making new friends does take a massive amount of time
I think the solution to this is to enjoy the journey. There's not a line that someone needs to cross before you can enjoy spending time with them. Just reach out and learn and enjoy people from the beginning.
I've just moved to a new town, and my social life is kicking.
Found a local computer club, crew of lads tinkering and using open source software. Really nice, smart bunch. I'm learning loads and appreciating their company.
OP found this lacking, because it's not working fast enough and he's not getting enough time with people.
I totally agree putting in time with old friends is always worth it (maybe not through surprise calls) but on a local level, I'd encourage patience.
Things take time, friendship isn't something you can just switch on. It takes years, and that's the point. It's a journey, not a destination.
I've never made a lasting connection with anyone I've met online. Not once. It's not that I didn't hang around on BBS's and IRC when I was younger, I did. And I did meet people from there IRL, but no friendships formed. The whole concept just seemed (and still seems) alien to me.
But I did have a point after the end of a 12 year relationship ended, around the time of the pandemic and lockdowns when I realised most of my old IRL friendships hadn't gone ... but those people had moved away, and we didn't talk as much any more.
I still have old friendships with high school friends, old girlfriends, old friends from bands I played in from years past. But about a year ago in a particularly lonely and tragic period I started a pub trivia group on an unnamed IRL meetup platform, which has grown to over 300 members in less than a year (guessing a lot of those are bot accounts).
About half a dozen core members that come to play trivia at the pub almost every week, and then another 10-20 that attend less regularly, rotating in and out.
It can be hard work to build yourself a new social group, but it can be done, and I now consider I have some good friends that come out of it and there are friendships forming between members of the group as well.
At 50 years of age, they're not the kind of friendships that I would count on to last forever, but they're there, people to chat with sometimes, people to catch up with for the odd drink or to go out dancing with. It can be done. And I'm much better off for it.
I read an outstanding quote in a Brad Thor novel that I think speaks volumes about how to make friends:
"Faith comes from trust, which comes from time, and experience"
With the Internet, and social media, it can feel like we have friends when we really don't. But what social media etc. has robbed from us is that before, we had to spend time with people, we had experience with them, and over time they led to trust, and friendship. That's how people made friends before. Now we don't put that much effort into friendships because we think we already have friends because we see them on Facebook.
I think there should be less "how to solve friendship" posts, which see our social interactions as "problems" to be solved, and more reflection about how this is a consequence of a market oriented, inequality driving system. If the problem is that friendships need time, we should demand less working time and more free time to establish friendships.
That is a low key point the author touched on but never really expanded upon.
>It could be that I had my second kid in 2024 or that 2024 marked 5 years of working remotely.
The kids vs. single divide is real, and I don't think it needs much more elaboration.
Working remotely definitely has its costs, though. There's lots of discussions these days about 3rd places, and remote work more or less removes your "second place". We don't just drop by people's houses unannounced anymore, so that leaves zero places for friendhips to naturally form post school. It's definitely one thing I miss most about an in-office job.
To coworking initiative is a nice way to get some "company", but I imagine most people will still ultimately be focusing on doing work. So it's not quite the 2nd nor 3rd place the author desires.
As for me, it's pretty straightforward: I'm underemployed and am spending any down time applying to jobs. Not much time to hang out. I'm busy trying to survive first.
The call to action at the bottom managed to actively give me anxiety. I don't know why I don't tend to call people very much. Anyways, back to making my flyer for community egg hunt. I'm practicing some of the suggestions in the article, let's celebrate small wins.
My wife and I are in Costa Rica for six weeks to see what it would be like to live here part of the year. We plan to do this at least once a year. This is my plan b to establish residency here if I ever need to do independent consulting instead of working for a consulting company.
Before we even got here we got on Ex pat Facebook groups and once we did get here, we went to a meet and greet and got connected to a few people that we arrange to meet for dinner outside of the official meetup.
The ex pat community is really cool and welcoming.
On a second note, I really don’t want any new “deep connections”. My closest friends I’ve known from between 15-35 years. I am always willing to meet and talk to people just to hang out
Make a friend. Keep talking to that friend. Put reminders, say good morning, or write it. Call them, ask how it's going.
Send them a 5 minute audio about something interesting in your day. Schedule a meet up, like you did as kids. "Lets hang out after ~~school~~ work today".
It's not as easy to make friends when you don't meet new people all the time, and it's hard to keep them when you're not forced to see them every day (because of school or something).
Make a friend or maybe two, and do this. It takes effort, but you'll be more fulfilled.
It's okay to just meet up, hang out, watch some YouTube together, play a game, go on a walk, or do legal drugs (coffee, beer, whatever)
Language can be a barrier, but not insurmountable.
Also that lockdown destroyed many social connections and it is up to each and every one of us to take the initiative instead of expecting it to happen to us.
I started a "mans group" - just a bunch of my local male friends in the neighborhood, doing 'man things' - actually there's no need to pitch it this way, we're just all men and so far thats how we describe ourselves, but it'll change the instant we get some diversity.
We take care of each other, meet every week to shoot the shit and do stuff. So far the group has caught pinball fever (we even have members of the group doing tournaments now), we have movie nights where some of us recommend strange and obscure movies for everyone to enjoy - this has been very successful in terms of lifting everyones spirits - and we have jam sessions, woodworking sessions, table tennis and other racquet-based game events, and so on.
It just snowballed organically. I was in a bar with a mate deliberating on whether there was anything else we could be doing except getting drunk in shady bars, and I noticed a pinball sticker. So we looked into that, caught the pinball fever, and things snowballed. Soon enough, there are 8 of us attending the regular pinball sessions in our city .. and in so doing, we've established some great bonds between us.
Its now at the point where if anyone of us needs something, we just ping the group chat and within minutes there is usually a show of helpful hands.
Wouldn't have happened if we hadn't discovered an activity that united us all, brought us together, and gave us the group context to add many other fun activities to the list.
We even have our own (cult-like) language and slang for things, its kinda funny to observe it evolve over the last 6 months .. and also to see new members adopt our strange language for things. Really amusing!
Here’s what I do:
Spend time at my local marker space. It’s easy to bond with people when you have such similar interests. It’s really amazing how exactly aligned I am with a set of the people there. Being in SF already biases people towards certain interests. But going beyond that to the inner circle of tech obsessed nerds, makers from all over the world that moved here with a purpose, gives me a form fitting community that probably only exists in a handful of locations on Earth.
Play social deduction/deception games. I have a free social club of 100+ people that meets at least once per week. We all practice lying to each other and reading each other. Yeah it’s only a couple hours per week but it’s highly focused on social muscles we often only exercise infrequently elsewhere.
No social media. Pretty much no long distance friendships (outside of stints where I play a lot of video games with someone). I genuinely do not give a damn what’s happening to people I haven’t seen in years even if I could know everything by looking at their feed. If I want to catch up I’ll make plans to have them visit me or I will visit them. There are people I do this for on a regular basis, but it’s a short list. I do not comprehend the appeal of social media. All of my social brain is exercised on face to face interactions.
I think the biggest factors here are living in a city (I was pretty isolated when I lived in the suburbs) and having enough free time.
When I was about 10 years old it dawned on me that "friendship" is a really unclear, mutual agreement, and if you consider someone your friend, they might not consider you theirs (or at the very least, not on the same level of "friendliness") and vice versa. What does it even mean to be or have a "friend"? It's such a silly thing, but it permanently changed the way I looked at social connections. I never had "friends" ever since and don't feel like I am missing out on anything.
Unfortunately many people now strongly dislike receiving unexpected phone calls. You may (i have) genuinely upset some people by calling them. Yes, I’m rolling my eyes too, but that’s how they feel
I'm surprised that this article that has so much of an AI smell gets such a positive reception.
I thought HN didn't go in for AI slop? I suspect that this kind of thing has people feeling more alienated than ever, what with even the articles online lacking any level of human connection.
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Later that day, walking home through darkened streets, I noticed small groups, maybe a dozen people at a time, gathered around certain spots. For some reason, a few closed shops still seemed to have working free Wi-Fi (backup generators, maybe), and people clustered there, drawn in like mosquitoes to light. Their faces glowed in the dark, lit only by their screens, and they stood in near-total silence. It’s hard to describe the feeling, it was surreal. You had to be there.
I’m no Luddite, but I went to sleep that night wondering how on earth we get ourselves out of this.
We have better heating/air conditioning, endless television/video games/entertainment, large refrigerators, lower density, etc and so on.
Back then, home covered a narrower set of needs - so the default option was to spend time elsewhere, even if it was just to escape the noise/heat/smells/smoke of home for a minute.
> our homes are simply a lot more comfortable than they used to be.
Yes. And public spaces are significantly less comfortable (and more expensive) than they used to be
One big difference is that more women work: stay at home mums used to strengthen communities - doing voluntary work, organising things. Now that is mostly done by retired people so the pool is smaller and fewer households have someone directly involved. Another way to look at it is that the working hours for a similar household has increased greatly so the household as a whole has less time to contribute to the community.
Another factor is that people move around more. Again, very noticeable in London where a lot of people have moved out because of high house prices. People do not near people they grew up with.
I always wondered how commoners (?) could afford to go to a pub every day to socialize, or if it was cheap, how the pubs could survive with a bunch of people who were just hanging out day after day.
But even before this, through wife and her hobbies (dance, pottery etc) I had chance to meet many people and their partners and through them their friends etc. Then it becomes a choice whether you will get up and go see others or pick your screen.
the raid started, they all silently stared at their phones, and at some point they all looked up, looked around and walked away.
all mostly in complete silence.
who knew this was a precursor to more of the same, maybe throughout society.
>but I went to sleep that night wondering how on earth we get ourselves out of this.
I'm sure HN will suggest another layer of technology will fix all of this.
Its the "we" in "how on earth we get ourselves out of this." The bluntness of the "we" conflates it into a bigger problem than it is. If you walk past many parks & gardens across cities you'll find that same picture of families socialising in the old way without a blackout, but also people glued to their phones too.
People who are intentional of having classic socialising are still doing it, people who choose not to either through their own intention or, i suspect and hope, in a very ambient non-intentional way are the ones who may need to get out of it. Yes there are more of the latter now than before but the former groups are still a huge part of society. And if they can do it even with the same distractions and phones and access to social media etc. why can't others?
I'm currently trying to reduce internet usage by a simple rule: no feeds (try to avoid places where I could even see them).
It's extremely difficult.
YouTube receives you with a feed, every social network as well, even the online version of a newspaper is arguably a feed. It's usually not possible to use a service without having one in frequent sight. Even my weather app tries its best to offer a feed of weather related news, the photo gallery app shows one of memories....
Barcelona has an extremely well oiled social scene.
So there's that. Obviously there are other ways, but thought it'd be fun to share.
Also research on self-disclosure might help. Long story short: be the first to reveal some details about yourself and progressively go deeper to the level that you want, it's kind of a tit for tat type of thing. There was one popular article about it so you could "fall in love" but IMO it's not love, it's simply building a deeper connection. Check it out [1].
I used to be really interested in topics like this, so if you want to know more about it or brainstorm, feel free to reach out. My email is in my profile.
[1] https://36questionsinlove.com/
I lowered the stakes for calling/answering/not answering, and I actually catch up with my friends more often.
In myself I find I can't seem to muster the motivation to spend enough time with someone that it would take to form a friendship. I want to have friends, but I don't care to know any of these people. I just don't like anyone that much. The question is, am I just inherently a cynical asshole? Or, has modern life done something to me that it has also done to everyone else?
- making new friends does take a massive amount of time, not just in finding friends but also in spending time with them until you can call them long-time friends
- so you need to invest time in hanging out with people! Even when you don’t know what to say to them or when it’s awkward or when you’re not sure if you like them much. We weren’t picky when we were kids making friends, we just hung out a lot with whoever wanted to hang out
- this also means make yourself available. Romantic partners, new jobs, as well as kids basically destroy your free time, but lots of it is self inflicted. Make sure you don’t seclude yourself and prioritize hanging out with people
- also, it’s a number game, you should meet a lot of people if you want to eventually have a strong group of friends
- one trick is to organize a house party or some gathering once a week, on the same day, and invite everyone you know, and ask them to invite more people as well
- make sure you also spend time doing nothing with friends. Like watching tv and sitting on the couch. That’s how you used to create friendships as a kid, you just “hang”, you didn’t “go to the restaurant and went home afterwards”
I think the solution to this is to enjoy the journey. There's not a line that someone needs to cross before you can enjoy spending time with them. Just reach out and learn and enjoy people from the beginning.
Found a local computer club, crew of lads tinkering and using open source software. Really nice, smart bunch. I'm learning loads and appreciating their company.
OP found this lacking, because it's not working fast enough and he's not getting enough time with people.
I totally agree putting in time with old friends is always worth it (maybe not through surprise calls) but on a local level, I'd encourage patience.
Things take time, friendship isn't something you can just switch on. It takes years, and that's the point. It's a journey, not a destination.
But I did have a point after the end of a 12 year relationship ended, around the time of the pandemic and lockdowns when I realised most of my old IRL friendships hadn't gone ... but those people had moved away, and we didn't talk as much any more.
I still have old friendships with high school friends, old girlfriends, old friends from bands I played in from years past. But about a year ago in a particularly lonely and tragic period I started a pub trivia group on an unnamed IRL meetup platform, which has grown to over 300 members in less than a year (guessing a lot of those are bot accounts).
About half a dozen core members that come to play trivia at the pub almost every week, and then another 10-20 that attend less regularly, rotating in and out. It can be hard work to build yourself a new social group, but it can be done, and I now consider I have some good friends that come out of it and there are friendships forming between members of the group as well.
At 50 years of age, they're not the kind of friendships that I would count on to last forever, but they're there, people to chat with sometimes, people to catch up with for the odd drink or to go out dancing with. It can be done. And I'm much better off for it.
People feel overworked, tired and out of money.
This general malaise spills on almost every type of social interaction, including friendships unfortunately.
"Faith comes from trust, which comes from time, and experience"
With the Internet, and social media, it can feel like we have friends when we really don't. But what social media etc. has robbed from us is that before, we had to spend time with people, we had experience with them, and over time they led to trust, and friendship. That's how people made friends before. Now we don't put that much effort into friendships because we think we already have friends because we see them on Facebook.
>It could be that I had my second kid in 2024 or that 2024 marked 5 years of working remotely.
The kids vs. single divide is real, and I don't think it needs much more elaboration.
Working remotely definitely has its costs, though. There's lots of discussions these days about 3rd places, and remote work more or less removes your "second place". We don't just drop by people's houses unannounced anymore, so that leaves zero places for friendhips to naturally form post school. It's definitely one thing I miss most about an in-office job.
To coworking initiative is a nice way to get some "company", but I imagine most people will still ultimately be focusing on doing work. So it's not quite the 2nd nor 3rd place the author desires.
As for me, it's pretty straightforward: I'm underemployed and am spending any down time applying to jobs. Not much time to hang out. I'm busy trying to survive first.
Before we even got here we got on Ex pat Facebook groups and once we did get here, we went to a meet and greet and got connected to a few people that we arrange to meet for dinner outside of the official meetup.
The ex pat community is really cool and welcoming.
On a second note, I really don’t want any new “deep connections”. My closest friends I’ve known from between 15-35 years. I am always willing to meet and talk to people just to hang out
Send them a 5 minute audio about something interesting in your day. Schedule a meet up, like you did as kids. "Lets hang out after ~~school~~ work today".
It's not as easy to make friends when you don't meet new people all the time, and it's hard to keep them when you're not forced to see them every day (because of school or something).
Make a friend or maybe two, and do this. It takes effort, but you'll be more fulfilled.
It's okay to just meet up, hang out, watch some YouTube together, play a game, go on a walk, or do legal drugs (coffee, beer, whatever)
Language can be a barrier, but not insurmountable.
Also that lockdown destroyed many social connections and it is up to each and every one of us to take the initiative instead of expecting it to happen to us.
We take care of each other, meet every week to shoot the shit and do stuff. So far the group has caught pinball fever (we even have members of the group doing tournaments now), we have movie nights where some of us recommend strange and obscure movies for everyone to enjoy - this has been very successful in terms of lifting everyones spirits - and we have jam sessions, woodworking sessions, table tennis and other racquet-based game events, and so on.
It just snowballed organically. I was in a bar with a mate deliberating on whether there was anything else we could be doing except getting drunk in shady bars, and I noticed a pinball sticker. So we looked into that, caught the pinball fever, and things snowballed. Soon enough, there are 8 of us attending the regular pinball sessions in our city .. and in so doing, we've established some great bonds between us.
Its now at the point where if anyone of us needs something, we just ping the group chat and within minutes there is usually a show of helpful hands.
Wouldn't have happened if we hadn't discovered an activity that united us all, brought us together, and gave us the group context to add many other fun activities to the list.
We even have our own (cult-like) language and slang for things, its kinda funny to observe it evolve over the last 6 months .. and also to see new members adopt our strange language for things. Really amusing!
Try it, its a great way to make friends.
I thought HN didn't go in for AI slop? I suspect that this kind of thing has people feeling more alienated than ever, what with even the articles online lacking any level of human connection.
You can either have deep friendships XOR children.
All of them are either still without children, or are by no means valuable friends anymore.
Sorry, but that's just how it is.