The Art of Manliness - No, There Isn’t a Loneliness Epidemic (And That May Be an Even Bigger Problem)

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.140 face-to-face socializing in america has declined by more than 20 percent nationwide

00:00:15.780 among some groups like young adults and unmarried men the drop is closer to 40 percent but strangely

00:00:21.880 this hasn't led to the loneliness epidemic that you hear so much about instead we're seeing a

00:00:26.860 new phenomenon rising aloneness without rising loneliness today on the show derrick thompson

00:00:33.000 will help us understand this puzzling disconnect and its profound implications derrick is a staff

00:00:37.700 writer at the atlantic who recently wrote a piece entitled the anti-social century in the first half

00:00:42.620 of our conversation derrick unpacks the cultural shifts and technological developments and no it's

00:00:47.280 not just the smartphone that have created what he calls the convenience curse we then get into why

00:00:52.280 even self-described introverts are often happier when forced to socialize the concerning trend of

00:00:56.620 young men settling further and further into isolating sedentary leisure and practical ways

00:01:01.180 we can strengthen our atrophied social muscles to become better happier people after the show's

00:01:05.940 over check out our show notes at awim.is alone all right derrick thompson welcome to the show

00:01:25.660 great to be here thank you so much so you recently wrote a piece for the atlantic called the anti-social

00:01:31.280 century which traces how much less time americans are spending socializing than they used to what are

00:01:39.000 some of the numbers on this front like what's been the general decline in in-person socialization

00:01:43.060 the basic story is that american socializing declined in the second half of the 20th century

00:01:48.760 and then in the early 21st century it pretty much fell off a cliff overall face-to-face socializing

00:01:54.400 is declined by more than 20 percent nationwide among some groups like black men and teenagers

00:02:01.340 decline as more like 40 percent so almost half of the face-to-face socializing that people had is gone

00:02:08.520 now in just 20 years like that's a remarkable remake of human experience and then some of the

00:02:15.380 individual statistics are really jarring like you know the fact that couples now by i think a margin of

00:02:22.140 four to one spend more time watching television together than talking to each other women who 1.00

00:02:28.820 own cats this one got me in trouble with some people but um i'll say it here women who own cats 0.99

00:02:34.140 now uh spend more time caring for their pets than they do speaking to another person in a face-to-face

00:02:42.160 situation so we've really seen just a total transformation of how americans spend time with

00:02:48.660 each other yeah you talked about how it's particularly pronounced amongst young adults

00:02:51.620 there's a line from the article the share of boys and girls who say they meet up with friends almost

00:02:56.700 daily outside school hours has declined by nearly 50 percent since the early 1990s it's pretty nuts

00:03:03.540 i don't know what else to say it's incredibly depressing it's wild and it's one reason why when i found

00:03:10.240 these statistics i was like i need to do something big on this you know i write essays for the

00:03:14.820 atlantic i have a podcast plain english those outlets you know those 1000 word essays or 40

00:03:20.980 minute podcasts those let me get a little bit into a subject like this but i really was getting the

00:03:26.580 sense that the decline in face-to-face socializing and its flip side which is the rise of mere aloneness

00:03:32.720 of absolute solitude was becoming one of the most important social facts in america and i think the

00:03:38.620 implications of this decline in socializing that you've pointed to are just truly immense

00:03:43.280 yeah and you know besides some of the numbers we just mentioned you talk about some of the things

00:03:46.980 that robert puttman talked about in his book bowling alone the rate of people being involved

00:03:51.140 the community community organizations declined the frequency of people entertaining at home like

00:03:55.920 hosting friends for parties games dinners that's all been declining as well and that have been

00:04:00.460 declining for a while that that's the stuff that have been declining since the 1960s so you know

00:04:06.240 brief history of bowling alone for those who haven't read it or maybe have just heard of it or like

00:04:11.400 have heard of it so many times they feel like they've read it here's the upshot between the early

00:04:16.060 1900s the 1960s practically every measure of socializing was going up people were spending more

00:04:22.500 time together they were more likely to join associations and clubs and then somewhere around

00:04:28.300 the 1960s 1970s the tide turned and america became much more individualistic our cars allowed us to

00:04:35.860 drive away from each other homes got more comfortable entertainment got more awesome so it became more

00:04:41.700 fun just to stay at home and sit on the couch and watch tv or play video games or look at your phone

00:04:46.620 and then finally in the 21st century if the automobile privatized our lives and the television privatized our

00:04:53.960 leisure the smartphone privatized our attention it meant that we could be in huge crowds of people and be

00:04:59.420 essentially alone on our phone getting involved in some psychodrama millions of miles away in phone land

00:05:05.360 and so that's the story that putnam sort of sets up and what i tried to do is to extend it into the

00:05:11.380 21st century you know when he published his book in 2000 there were a lot of people who said i'm not

00:05:17.500 entirely sure that you're right about this bob i i think maybe you're wrong and we might see a great

00:05:23.240 surge of socializing in the world remade by the internet and in fact everything just got worse from one

00:05:29.060 perspective and so that's that's really where this piece picks up how did the pandemic accelerate

00:05:33.840 this trend so this this has been going on for you say 50 maybe 40 years this trend of people not

00:05:39.800 getting out and socializing as much how did the pandemic accelerate this well the pandemic accelerated

00:05:44.860 it because if you're locked down you certainly aren't spending a lot of time with other people

00:05:48.960 outside of your home so clearly we know that the pandemic increased time spent at home and decreased

00:05:54.940 time spent with other people but what's interesting to me is what happens if you compare say the years

00:06:00.660 2021 which is when people were coming out of lockdown what if you compare 2021 and 2023 well it turns out

00:06:08.420 that alone time actually increased so even in the post-pandemic era we were spending more time

00:06:14.720 alone and if you look at time spent at home you know the work from home revolution is sort of its own

00:06:21.180 secular thing there's some people being called back to the office there's some people still working

00:06:25.100 at home but the princeton sociologist patrick sharkey who looked at time spent at home concluded

00:06:31.040 that in 2022 the the average american was spending about 99 minutes more every single day at home and

00:06:39.200 that wasn't just about working from home it was about eating more at home praying more at home

00:06:43.640 entertaining more at home socializing more at home we really did become more of a phone bound

00:06:49.980 and home bound nation even around the acute crisis of the pandemic yeah see i think something that the

00:06:56.260 pandemic did is it kind of built an infrastructure like the infrastructure is already there to do this

00:07:00.580 stuff but it kind of forced us to do it like oh this is actually an option i can instead of going to a

00:07:05.580 restaurant i can just do doordash instead of going to the movie theater i can just stream a movie to

00:07:10.560 my home i mean i've noticed that in my own life well yeah and all that's great i i want to be very

00:07:15.500 clear that stuff is awesome like sometimes you're just exhausted and you're like i could cook dinner

00:07:22.120 or i could go out but damn i really just want to order you know a burrito to the house and watch 0.50

00:07:28.680 whatever on netflix right like catch up on severance watch white lotus like we've all been there okay i am 0.93

00:07:35.240 not trying to tell people in any way that these conveniences are somehow evil i'm trying to get them

00:07:41.780 to recognize the cost of progress the cost of convenience i think with television or smartphones

00:07:50.060 we're becoming more familiar with the fact that yet television is incredibly entertaining smartphones

00:07:54.720 are ludicrously entertaining but maybe smartphones are causing a bit of anxiety maybe watching too much

00:08:00.460 television means being a bit of a recluse and pulling yourself out of the physical world and in

00:08:05.180 fact i'll just pause here to say one of my favorite statistics from this piece is that uh between the

00:08:11.240 1960s and 1990s the average american added about 300 additional hours of leisure time per year and you'd

00:08:19.440 think like what what would you do what would you listener of this podcast do with an extra 300 hours

00:08:25.840 of leisure time next year well it turned out that people spent almost all that extra leisure time

00:08:30.460 watching television so we really really love watching television that's for sure

00:08:34.600 what i'm trying to get us to recognize is not television's bad smartphone's bad ordering food

00:08:40.440 to eat at home is bad no these are conveniences but convenience can have a cost and the cost of

00:08:48.140 what i call the convenience curse is that leaning too much into these behaviors and devices and

00:08:54.340 technologies often means pulling ourselves out of the physical world yeah i think that what you just

00:09:00.200 said about the increase of leisure time i think a lot of people think oh if i had more time

00:09:03.900 i would hang out more i would do creative hobbies i'd become an artist i'd write a novel but it seems

00:09:08.900 like what we typically do is we just plow whatever time opens up into the path of least resistance

00:09:13.820 activities which is mainly screens which is interesting yeah screens are incredibly entertaining

00:09:18.300 i mean they're amazingly entertaining and they're also super easy i mean i i don't remember every single

00:09:23.360 thing that you just listed but you talked about you know hanging out with friends becoming an artist

00:09:27.260 writing a novel writing a novel is freaking hard okay becoming an artist means sucking for a while

00:09:34.860 before you become an artist that you're not embarrassed of being learning a new language right

00:09:39.480 i'm thinking of things that you know people might say if you ask them what would you do with 300 extra

00:09:43.060 hours of leisure i think most people might imagine that they would do hard things but we're exhausted

00:09:49.580 and simple creatures to a certain extent and we prefer many times to do easy things and there's

00:09:55.540 practically nothing easier than folding yourself into a comfortable couch and turning on a streaming

00:10:01.020 service that's very easy and that's why i think we've been essentially donating our time and our

00:10:07.140 dopamine to screens rather than to physical world activities okay so the television increased the amount

00:10:13.980 of time we spent alone in the second half of the 20th century the smartphones in the you know early

00:10:18.980 part of the 21st century you also talk about the role that cars played in this what what role has the

00:10:23.500 car played in us not socializing as much the car is another great example of a really wonderful

00:10:29.300 technology that has costs one cost i guess you could say is you know pollution unless you're driving

00:10:33.500 like a plug-in electric but one social cost of cars is that they allow us to be away from other

00:10:40.680 people and the vast majority of time that an american spends in a car is not carpooling it's alone the

00:10:47.440 vast majority of time that americans spend in cars is alone which means that if americans overall they're

00:10:53.420 increasing their car use they're probably increasing their time spent alone as well and what happened in

00:10:58.740 the 1950s and 1960s is that we built these you know ribbons of asphalt leading from cities into suburbs

00:11:04.340 and people could buy bigger houses that's cool but that also meant lots more time spent in the car

00:11:09.120 it meant longer commutes and it meant houses that were a little bit further away from other people

00:11:13.940 and so when you put all that together i think you have the beginning of this revolution that putnam

00:11:18.400 was talking about where this nation of clubs and associations and people coming together became a

00:11:24.700 nation of you know not front porches but backyards people pulling back into their own spaces their private

00:11:31.300 spaces and associating the american dream associating a sense of of wealth of having made it as maximizing

00:11:38.760 control over private spaces and i think that sort of kicks off this revolution that i'm talking about

00:11:45.180 yeah it's even as you mentioned earlier it's influenced how our homes are designed today and

00:11:50.100 it's created what you call this idea of a remote life where we're trying to do everything in our home

00:11:54.920 homes if you're out in the suburbs some of these homes have like those giant cinema rooms in the bonus

00:11:59.840 room upstairs a lot of homes these days have garage gyms so they don't have to go i have a garage gym i

00:12:05.140 haven't been to a public gym in almost a decade and even like bedrooms are being designed like how can

00:12:11.300 we maximize people being by themselves and what's interesting if you look at the 70s in the 60s 70s

00:12:17.380 like homes were designed for socializing i remember 70s there's that trend of like conversation pits

00:12:21.500 you know yeah that doesn't happen anymore sunk in living rooms that's my wife's favorite piece of 1.00

00:12:26.480 of home decor yeah whenever we're on zillow and she uh she sees a sunken living room yeah her heart

00:12:32.240 goes a flutter for sure i everything you said is is very true and you know when it comes to

00:12:37.300 architecture two of the more interesting conversations that i had were with clifton

00:12:41.140 harness who's the co-founder of test fit which is a company that makes software to design layouts for

00:12:46.320 new housing developments and he told me you know the cardinal rule of contemporary apartment design

00:12:51.420 is that every room has to be built to accommodate maximal screen time so whereas in previous conversations

00:12:58.220 about how do we build a beautiful space it was like you know how do we let the light in you know

00:13:02.680 high ceilings how do we make it a perfect space for light and now the question is how do we give the

00:13:07.840 most comfort to the most people and the answer is make sure that there is an obvious space to put the

00:13:13.680 flat screen television and a couch and bobby fion who's a real estate developer that i also spoke to

00:13:18.880 offered up an amazing quote he said for the most part apartments are built for netflix and chill

00:13:25.280 this is something that architects and developers are thinking about they have our preferences in

00:13:31.320 mind they wouldn't be able to make money if they didn't they are designing not for our stated

00:13:36.280 preference of oh if i had an extra 300 hours of leisure i would learn a new language with 10 new

00:13:42.540 friends and we'd all become picasso no you make money by watching what people do by watching the

00:13:48.540 revealed preference and the revealed preference of americans is we want to spend as much time

00:13:53.240 at home as we can and i would just say here but before passing back to you is that like when it

00:13:59.220 comes to things like you know home gyms i work at home all the time i work out at home all the time

00:14:04.920 i definitely don't want to give people the impression that i'm trying to stigmatize a bit

00:14:10.740 of solitude or stigmatize activities done at home what i want to do is to show people the receipt

00:14:17.740 of the choices that we're making you can make a series of totally understandable choices and then

00:14:23.780 lift up and recognize that your socializing time is declining year after year after year right that

00:14:29.340 is the awareness that i want us to have it's more about awareness than it is about stigmatizing

00:14:35.060 okay so the amount of time people are spending by themselves has been increasing you'd think

00:14:40.320 since alone time is increasing loneliness has increased is that the case is there as we often hear in

00:14:46.540 the media a loneliness crisis going on no i don't think there is i think the loneliness crisis is

00:14:52.260 overblown and that might seem like a very confusing record scratch moment for people if they're like

00:14:58.100 this guy talking about the surge of aloneness doesn't think there's a loneliness crisis well here's

00:15:03.820 the data shows the data shows that for young people loneliness is up a little bit but for people

00:15:09.700 overall there's really not a lot of evidence that loneliness is increasing what we have instead

00:15:15.340 is rising aloneness without rising loneliness now one interpretation of those two statistics is that

00:15:21.740 there's no problem people are absolutely thrilled being alone that's why they're not lonely but turns

00:15:28.200 out when you use the same american time use survey to ask people if they're happier around other people

00:15:32.680 or alone people tend to be much happier around other people so here's what i think is happening i think

00:15:38.220 loneliness in small doses is actually good i think that loneliness is a biological cue to tell us to

00:15:45.800 get off the couch and get out into the real world and to see people and be around people and touch and

00:15:51.140 high five and hug i think that what's happening instead is that people are spending an enormous amount of

00:15:58.180 time on their phones and they're dumping their dopamine onto their phones they're scrolling on tiktok

00:16:04.140 they're scrolling on x they're scrolling on instagram they're basically getting all of this dopamine

00:16:10.420 flushed into their brains looking at their phones also probably a bit of cortisol if you're on x or if

00:16:15.580 you're just made anxious by whatever you're seeing on instagram or these other platforms you've got all

00:16:20.460 of this anxiety and all this dopamine that's being flushed into our brains and then we put our phone

00:16:25.660 away and how do we feel at the end of this leisure time we feel exhausted we feel like we're absolutely

00:16:32.000 spent ironically this leisure time has made us feel less inclined to want to have the drive to go out

00:16:39.700 and be around other people and even risk the hazard of i'll drive there but there won't be parking i'll

00:16:44.940 get on the subway but it'll be delayed so i think that people aren't feeling the historical biological

00:16:53.280 impulse to be around other people and it's registering in surveys as are not feeling as lonely as we should

00:17:01.100 be and that's why aloneness keeps rising year after year after year i think we are quietly making

00:17:07.240 ourselves miserable because we're not feeling the healthy pinch of loneliness okay so let me just

00:17:14.300 recap that so you're saying because we're on our phones all the time we're kind of getting like this

00:17:17.920 pseudo socializing going on on our phones when we actually want to spend time in real life with

00:17:24.120 people we're like ah the signal's not there because we're like well i already got my fill like i've

00:17:27.460 already been around people i think it's it might be that for some people i mean there's so many

00:17:31.740 different people in the world and so i can't speak for all of them um but there's two different things

00:17:35.280 that could be happening here and i want to make sure that that i'm precise about distinguishing

00:17:38.720 between them so one thing that you're describing is that lots of people think that time spent on the

00:17:43.440 phone is a sort of substitute for time spent with people i think that's wrong for a variety of reasons

00:17:49.260 i think it's much harder to build intimacy by catching up over text than spending time with someone

00:17:54.660 over a table i also think that people have a much stronger relationship with other humans in a

00:18:03.380 physical world presence than they do on their phones so i i i think there's a problem of replacing

00:18:08.420 sociality hanging out with people in the real world with parasociality which is spending our time with

00:18:14.380 people on the internet and imagining their inner weather and their inner lives so i absolutely agree

00:18:18.940 to a certain extent with the the picture that you just painted the time spent on phone is a poor

00:18:23.840 substitute for time spent with other people in the physical world but something else is happening

00:18:28.260 that i think is biochemical with dopamine cycles there's something called uh phasic dopamine which

00:18:35.440 is the dopamine hit the amount of dopamine that we get when we experience something that elicits a

00:18:40.020 bunch of dopamine and there's tonic dopamine which is our underlying baseline levels of dopamine

00:18:44.480 and i think one thing that's happening is that people are spending so much time on their phones

00:18:48.560 that their phasic dopamine is going nuts and it's leaving them with lower levels of tonic dopamine

00:18:53.860 which means their baseline level of dopamine is depleted when they put down their phone

00:18:58.120 and that means when a friend reaches out to you at say 7 p.m on a wednesday when you've spent you know

00:19:03.580 the last hour and a half just you know scrolling through tiktok and that friend says hey do you want

00:19:08.500 to hang out you say ah i don't know man i'm kind of beat i you know work was really a lot and also

00:19:15.300 like i'm really stressed about whatever thing is happening in the world and it's just too much

00:19:19.000 of a misadventure for me to get out of the house i'm gonna pass i'm sorry dude and we see this to

00:19:24.040 a certain extent there's a there's a section of the article where i describe this tiktok trend that

00:19:29.720 my wife introduced me to where you have uh young people who are socializing less than any young

00:19:37.180 generation that we have on record celebrating when their friends cancel plans it's called cancellation

00:19:43.100 among some folks that makes no sense if you think about young people being lonely it does make

00:19:48.760 sense if you consider my biochemical explanation that young people are spending so much time with

00:19:53.280 their phones that when a friend cancels plans they're happy because they're dopaminergically 0.52

00:20:00.040 exhausted by their phone experience so i think in by summary two things are happening not only are our

00:20:08.260 phones a poor substitute for real socialization but also our phones are absorbing the dopamine that

00:20:17.220 we should be giving to the friends in our life okay so we're spending more time alone but we're not

00:20:22.760 necessarily lonely because of it and that's because while loneliness usually manifests as a signal that

00:20:31.060 drives us to be be with other people we're not feeling that drive anymore because we've donated the

00:20:36.880 thing that gives that drive our dopamine to our devices and you point out in the article that

00:20:42.180 even though studies show that alone time increases unhappiness in the long term you say this in the

00:20:48.460 article nonetheless many people keep choosing to spend free time alone in their home away from other

00:20:53.920 people perhaps one might think they're making the right choice after all they must know themselves best

00:21:00.160 but a consistent finding of modern psychology is that people often don't know what they want or what

00:21:05.520 will make them happy yeah there's an idea uh the the harvard psychologist dan gilbert i believe called

00:21:12.280 it miss wanting and it's this idea that people aren't very good at understanding what they'll want

00:21:19.060 and in a way it's a bit of an extension of the principle that predictions are hard especially about

00:21:24.100 the future right predictions are hard especially about the future especially about us it's hard to

00:21:29.920 predict exactly what's going to make us happy so you know sometimes you know you buy a piece of

00:21:34.820 furniture that you're obsessed with or a coat that you're obsessed with and three months later you

00:21:39.220 never really think about it it doesn't really offer any additional unit of happiness to any

00:21:44.660 particular day this happens all the time it's what gilbert calls miswanting well i think people might

00:21:50.820 miswant aloneness as well i think they might miswant introversion and how would you prove this well

00:21:58.100 there's a university of chicago psychologist named nick epley who did a really interesting study where he

00:22:03.680 asked commuter train passengers to make a prediction how would they feel if asked to spend

00:22:08.880 that train ride in chicago talking to a stranger versus being alone and the vast majority of

00:22:14.600 participants predicted that the quiet solitude would make for a much better commute than being forced

00:22:19.140 to talk to a stranger but then epley's team creates this experiment and he has some people

00:22:24.140 keep to themselves and other people are instructed to talk to a stranger and those people are told the

00:22:29.680 longer conversation the better and then afterward you have both groups fill out a questionnaire

00:22:33.620 how do you feel in this moment not a prediction of the future how do you feel right now and despite

00:22:39.260 this broad assumption that the best commute is the most silent commute it was the people instructed

00:22:46.000 randomly instructed to talk to strangers who reported feeling significantly more positive than those who

00:22:51.760 kept themselves so this is a really really fascinating and possibly fundamental paradox at the core of human

00:22:59.240 human life as epley told me we are social animals we are made better by being social but we are afraid

00:23:08.280 of sociality in various ways we're afraid of not being light we're afraid of boredom we're afraid of the

00:23:15.960 awkwardness of an initial conversation with someone who we don't know well or maybe the initial awkwardness

00:23:21.720 of a conversation with someone we used to know well or even do know well there's all sorts of social

00:23:27.560 anxieties that can accrete around the social animal but fundamentally it does seem like in

00:23:34.600 a variety of research settings if you force most people to be social even those that consider

00:23:41.240 themselves introverts they will tell you immediately after the experience that they're happier than the

00:23:47.000 people who were not forced to be social so yes to your point i do think that we misunderstand

00:23:52.600 something very core to human nature i like it to and making the analogy of like social life to physical

00:23:59.960 fitness like you cannot exercise and not eat well and on a day-to-day basis you'll you'll feel okay

00:24:08.120 you'll feel fine but then eventually you reach a point where you realize oh man i'm i'm overweight

00:24:15.320 i'm really out of shape my cholesterol is high i've just got really poor health and it's the same

00:24:21.800 thing with socializing if you're not socializing very much i mean you feel okay on a day-to-day basis

00:24:29.480 but then you realize oh man something's wrong something's wrong here like not only have your actual

00:24:36.360 social skills atrophied right you get rusty in how you interact with people but you feel like something

00:24:41.800 is wrong internally yeah i mean i would love to hang out in this metaphor here this this and this

00:24:49.400 equation of of physical fitness and social fitness because i think it's a really fruitful connection you

00:24:55.880 know how is social fitness similar to physical fitness well at the highest level modern life isn't built for

00:25:05.400 it so why do we exercise why do you have a gym in your garage well the answer is that you're not

00:25:12.760 a hunter-gatherer you're not getting your exercise from the essentials of life from day-to-day living

00:25:18.520 you probably spend a lot of time sitting you know maybe you're sitting right now you probably spend a

00:25:22.040 lot of time just not walking that much by being in your house and so we had to in the modern world

00:25:27.640 invent this bizarre thing called a gym where we go and work out which is not something our ancestors

00:25:35.160 did they lived they didn't you know lift weights just to get ripped there's a way in which modern

00:25:39.800 life has made it harder to be physically fit unless you make physical fitness a priority and in the same

00:25:46.440 way i think modern life has made social fitness more difficult unless you make it a priority it's all

00:25:52.440 too easy to just work from home in certain jobs work from home order into home cook for yourself at home

00:25:59.720 entertain yourself at home you know watch the infinitude of stuff that's on you know amazon

00:26:05.080 prime and netflix and max watch a bunch of stuff on tiktok on your phone infinitely divert yourself

00:26:11.400 without ever leaving the four corners of your house it's very very easy and it's especially

00:26:15.960 easy right now looking out in north carolina it's been snowing for the last 24 hours i don't i don't

00:26:20.440 want to go out so this is easy but i i would love to think about ways that we can equate physical

00:26:27.080 fitness and social fitness the same way that we purposely divert from our lives to go to the gym and

00:26:31.800 work out how can we purposely divert from the convenience curse to be more socially fit as well

00:26:38.280 we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:26:43.080 and now back to the show you all talk about the idea of introversion i think because we live in a

00:26:48.200 very therapeutic culture we like to psychoanalyze ourselves and people like well i'm an introvert and

00:26:53.320 so i don't need to socialize as much because that doesn't give me any energy it drains me is that the

00:26:58.760 case can introverts get away without socializing as much i think introversion probably exists i

00:27:04.840 definitely don't think it exists in a binary this is not like males and females this is like a normal

00:27:11.240 gaussian distribution right this is like height there's the vast majority of people who call

00:27:16.920 themselves introverts are like sort of kind of introverts you know if you really put truth

00:27:21.320 theorem into them then they would be introverts in some circumstances and not introverts in others

00:27:26.760 they might feel a little bit shy at a party where they didn't know anybody but if you put them in

00:27:31.560 front of their best friends they would open wide up and i would add according to nick epley the

00:27:36.440 university of chicago psychologist if you nudge them just a bit to be more social at a party what you

00:27:44.680 would have is someone who has a slightly better experience than the wallflower who just sits in the

00:27:50.360 corner of the party and looks at their phone yeah that's the evidence i'm sure some people are listening

00:27:55.400 thinking you know what i hate parties when i go or when my friends make me go when my wife makes me go

00:28:01.080 i just i'm fine standing in the corner and just reading espn i don't know your life right like maybe

00:28:06.760 that works out for you but it does seem like for many people introversion is a bit of a delusion yes it

00:28:15.400 can be nice to recharge yes of course a bit of solitude can be a blessing but people tend to be made

00:28:21.880 happier in other people yeah i think people typically i've done this too like they use

00:28:26.200 introversion as an excuse to not socialize it's like well you know that's just my personality

00:28:29.800 it's like well actually if you did it you'd feel good you'd actually enjoy it yeah my colleague olga

00:28:34.840 kazan has a great book out called me but better which is about the science of personality and

00:28:39.080 personality change and the tldr i read it it's wonderful is that personality change is not only

00:28:45.320 possible it's like kind of easy if you commit yourself to it like personalities are a little

00:28:50.840 bit fixed by genetics and environment but not that much people can absolutely change their personalities

00:28:58.520 and people's personalities change all the time in different circumstances right someone listening

00:29:03.800 might know a friend who was really closed off and shy in high school and then just you know found

00:29:09.880 their community in college and suddenly became like a totally more confident person or maybe they knew

00:29:14.520 like some nerd in college who like went off and made a bunch of money in their 20s and 30s and now

00:29:20.040 are very different in many ways personality change happens all the time and a part of it is the

00:29:25.800 recognition that our personalities i think are are much more elastic than we think and sometimes to your

00:29:31.720 point we define ourselves in in very narrow boxes in order to justify our behavior if we don't

00:29:37.960 want to hang out with people oh i'm an introvert that's my concrete unchanging behavior if we're a little

00:29:43.160 bit mean to someone oh i'm just i'm just a little bit neurotic that's just who i am right if we're

00:29:47.720 too much of a hard ass oh you know i'm just a conscientious person i can't help it no you probably 0.80

00:29:51.960 can help it personality is incredibly incredibly liquid and it does seem like if people use that 0.98

00:29:58.280 liquid nature of their personality to become a little bit more social overall it makes them happier

00:30:03.720 okay so in the book you talk about how men are spending more alone time than women and you talk about

00:30:09.800 this uh trend in which young men on the internet are becoming secular monks what's a secular monk

00:30:17.080 what's going on here so yeah secular monk is not my term uh it's a term that i love from andrew taggart

00:30:23.480 who wrote an essay in the religious journal first things in 2020 and he was describing this group of

00:30:29.800 men who he said seemed to be foregoing marriage and fatherhood with gusto rather than focus their 30s and

00:30:36.440 40s on you know getting married and having kids they were committed to their bodies and their bank

00:30:42.120 accounts and their meditation practice and their coal plunge and he called them secular monks because

00:30:47.240 he said it's interesting that they are on the one hand you know really committed to this idea of like

00:30:52.760 monitored self-control right they want to master like the monkey within right master the demon within

00:30:59.400 and at the same time they aren't particularly religious what they believe in isn't god but you

00:31:04.280 know coal plunges or you know intermittent fasting or meditation boot camps and what i thought was

00:31:10.040 interesting about it is again not that i think coal plunges are bad or meditation is bad but rather that

00:31:15.400 taken to an extreme you can see how this kind of behavior is very lonesome and when i read the essay i

00:31:25.800 really felt this shock of recognition because in the previous months i've been thinking a lot about

00:31:30.120 this sort of tiktok instagram trend that i'd seen where it was basically like men showing off the

00:31:35.480 perfect morning routine and these videos were like all always of a piece it was always like a good

00:31:42.120 looking guy wakes up alone with his eye mask and in a beautifully lit room any journals and he cold

00:31:50.200 plunges and maybe he saunas and he meditates and he works out and all these things happen

00:31:55.720 he eats something ludicrously healthy you know farmed from some you know algae farm in nepal or

00:32:01.800 whatever and all these things happen alone we see him wake up and meditate and journal all alone

00:32:08.200 there's no people in these dioramas of a life perfectly lived and i just thought that was really

00:32:13.240 interesting because if you look at the data the group with the largest increases in alone time

00:32:19.720 are young men and particular young men without a college education and i was just very interested

00:32:27.640 in the possibility that we were building a vision of masculinity that was a bit like a like caveman

00:32:36.120 masculinity it was a set of behaviors that an individual could do alone in a cave in siberia

00:32:44.200 you can wake up you can meditate you can journal you can work out you can do push-ups you can do

00:32:48.840 incline you can do all of that alone in the cave in siberia but you can't be a friend you can't be a

00:32:54.840 dad you can't be a son you can't be a mentor or a mentee all of these relational aspects of masculinity

00:33:04.440 are wiped away in the caveman masculinity depicted in these videos and i've done a bunch of episodes for

00:33:11.480 my podcast plain english about how i think the ultimate expression of 21st masculinity needs to

00:33:17.720 be a more relational masculinity it's not about being strong for yourself it's about being strong

00:33:23.160 for other people and yeah that can mean you know bench pressing your body weight times 2.5 but

00:33:29.720 ultimately the expression of masculinity should be for other people because life is about other people

00:33:35.560 i mean like you know i i don't think that we want to represent the ultimate expression of happiness

00:33:42.760 and strength in the 2020s as being a ripped person who journals perfectly masters the interior weather

00:33:51.480 of their psychology and basically doesn't use it to help anyone other than himself that seems like a

00:33:58.120 really impoverished version of masculinity it's yeah i mean i think if you go back into history even like

00:34:02.680 a couple hundred years ago that was the ideal of masculinity like to be a man was like to be useful

00:34:07.080 to your family to your wider community it's about giving back giving more than you take but yeah it's

00:34:12.840 something about our culture the hyper individualized culture we've gotten away from that and i've seen

00:34:17.720 those videos you mentioned they give off very patrick bateman vibes whenever i watch them i'm like this

00:34:22.840 is weird and i think it's interesting what's ironic about this whole like you know some of these guys

00:34:26.280 call themselves secular monks or they're going into monk mode is that monks yeah they do have there's you

00:34:32.520 know solitude plays i'm talking about real monks solitude is a spiritual practice but most monks live

00:34:37.960 in communities because yes they're looking for that friction and accountability that other people can

00:34:43.160 provide to help them live a disciplined and holy life so yeah if you really want to go into monk mode

00:34:48.840 like you need to be with a bunch of other guys or people who are helping you yeah you need to be in

00:34:54.120 a community if you want to be a real monk yeah totally and then you also talk about how even with

00:34:58.920 these men are spending time alone with self-improvement there still is a lot of depression

00:35:03.320 anxiety despair and something you talk about is men i think all people need this but i think men in

00:35:10.280 particular young men they want to feel needed they want to feel like a group needs them and because

00:35:17.160 they're spending so much time alone and not within a group or community they're not getting that

00:35:21.560 yeah i think neededness is incredibly important and this is uh what richard reeves who's the president of

00:35:26.920 the american institute for boys and men told me he says this is what men need they want to feel

00:35:31.080 essential to their families to their community to their office to their work he said the quote that

00:35:36.600 i that i loved in the piece is quote i think at some level we all need to feel like we're a jigsaw

00:35:42.280 piece that's going to fit into a jigsaw somewhere and it can come from you know this neededness can

00:35:47.080 come from all kinds of directions you know friends children partners colleagues religious congregations

00:35:53.560 but it is again about moving away from this sort of caveman sense of what a man is for and toward

00:35:59.000 a more relational sense of how can i use the strength that i'm building to help other people

00:36:03.720 continuing on young men for every secular monk out there using his alone time to work on his body and

00:36:09.000 productivity there are many more guys out there using their free time alone to engage in sedentary

00:36:15.080 leisure uh what is sedentary leisure yeah so the sociologist liana sayer who is at the university of

00:36:22.040 maryland shared analysis with me about how leisure time in the 21st century has changed for men and

00:36:27.400 women and the most important most interesting thing is that she divides leisure between engaged which is 0.95

00:36:34.760 stuff like socializing or going to a concert or playing a sport and sedentary leisure and sedentary

00:36:39.800 just means like sitting down watching tv playing video games and the largest increase the largest

00:36:45.800 increase the most dramatic thing she found is that single men without kids who have the most leisure time

00:36:51.400 are overwhelmingly likely to spend their leisure time by themselves in solo sedentary leisure so

00:37:00.040 playing video games watching tv looking at your phone and again that's just kind of sad i mean i just

00:37:06.440 think that i don't know these guys so it's it's i don't want to be this you know writer who hops on

00:37:12.760 the horn and just tells people how to live their lives i don't know them i don't know what makes

00:37:16.600 them tick but it really does seem from the best evidence that we have like a life spent alone is

00:37:21.800 a bit of a life wasted we really are made into happier more meaningful people through relationships

00:37:28.120 with other with others and if you know young guys without kids are going to spend most of their time

00:37:33.000 watching tv alone that really does seem like a wasted decade yeah and i imagine there's consequences of

00:37:37.400 that psychosocial physical consequences if you're sitting around doing nothing playing video games you're

00:37:43.560 going to have health consequences obviously psychology you're probably going to be depressed

00:37:48.280 and yeah i mean like all the things we talk about deaths of despair drug use etc all of that serious

00:37:53.240 stuff and this is this is serious but it's also you know a little bit has a little bit levity to it

00:37:58.040 you're also not going to get laid if you spend all of your time at home playing video games and

00:38:01.800 watching tv you do in fact have to go out into the physical world to meet other people at some point

00:38:08.360 and you know i'm very interested separate from this article in the decline of coupling that we're

00:38:13.800 seeing throughout the world it's not just that teens have fewer friends or that teens as you said

00:38:19.160 at the top of the show have reduced their face-to-face socializing with friends by 50 percent people in

00:38:24.200 their 20s are dating less people in their 30s are getting married less and then people in their 40s

00:38:28.840 consequently are having fewer kids something something really big is happening here in terms of the

00:38:33.720 pulling away of people not just the pulling away of sexes but the pulling away of people and i i do 0.92

00:38:39.160 wonder to your point whether the behavior of today's young men who are maxing out on solo sedentary

00:38:46.280 time is going to create all sorts of problems for these guys in their 30s and 40s and it could it'll

00:38:52.280 probably have consequences on a society level eventually yeah yeah right yeah i agree i think it

00:38:59.080 could i mean i don't i can't say exactly what those those consequences will be but you know we

00:39:03.080 talked briefly about the political consequences here and it does seem like from research by michael

00:39:07.640 bang peterson who's a danish political scientist uh people who spend more time alone and who have

00:39:13.960 more social isolation are more likely to look to politics as a place of entertainment and he calls

00:39:22.200 these voters um need for chaos voters because what they want most from politics isn't any particular

00:39:28.920 outcome for any particular group what they want is the feeling of chaotic entertainment so that's

00:39:34.040 just one flavor i think of how we could absolutely see some of the changes happening today have real

00:39:42.040 repercussions in the future you say that while some of our social ties are getting weaker some are

00:39:47.080 getting stronger which bonds are getting stronger and which ones are getting weaker yeah so this is

00:39:53.080 probably the part of the essay that was quoted most often back to me uh mark dunkleman who is

00:39:59.640 a researcher at brown university has a great book that just came out called why nothing works i talked

00:40:04.280 to him a couple months ago and he said you know the irony here is that the internet has actually made

00:40:09.240 some of our relationships much stronger i am texting this is mark talking i'm texting my wife

00:40:14.840 all day long um when my daughter buys a butterfingers i know the moment she's bought that

00:40:19.320 butterfingers from cvs because of the credit card data that i have in my phone so in many ways our

00:40:24.680 most intimate relationships are tighter than they used to be and then you think of that as the inner

00:40:28.920 ring of socializing and there's an outer ring of socializing that's sort of like the tribe not the

00:40:33.800 family but the tribe the people in the world who share your affinities and interests so you know

00:40:38.280 maybe if you have favorite sports team and basketball or football it's everyone in the country who's

00:40:43.240 a fan of that team and you're probably following people across the country maybe even across the world

00:40:47.960 who are fans of that particular team certainly if you're you know a fan of english premier league

00:40:53.000 so that's sort of the outer ring of tribe there's a middle ring though of village it's not the people

00:40:58.920 related to or best friends and it's not the people we just like find online and form groups with

00:41:04.120 it's the people who live around us all right it's the village it's our it's our neighbors it's the

00:41:08.520 people we we know when we walk around the street and it's there that our relationships have really

00:41:12.680 atrophied we really know our labor our neighbors uh worse than we used to and one good question is

00:41:18.280 like okay who cares you know what if you just like have friends who aren't your neighbors totally fair

00:41:22.760 question i would say that if the inner circle of family teaches us love and the outer circle of

00:41:29.560 tribe teaches us loyalty the middle ring of village teaches us tolerance it is naturally tolerating to be

00:41:37.160 around people you're not related to who you disagree with a little bit because you're not already best

00:41:42.760 friends and i think that we are losing touch with that village layer and i think it is showing up in 0.96

00:41:48.680 a variety of ways in our politics and in sort of the the social fabric yeah we had mark dunkelman on

00:41:54.360 the podcast a long time it was like nine years ago is episode 176 so yeah he wrote that book the

00:41:59.880 vanishing neighbor where he introduces those three rings and i ever since i read that book i think about

00:42:04.520 that all the time that sort of concept about the three rings and i think he's right like that

00:42:09.160 middle ring of village has gotten weaker and you see it in you know just declines in people participating

00:42:15.480 in pta volunteering for organizations and even when you do get in those sorts of things people don't know

00:42:21.720 how to interact like they just yell at each other like you said they haven't practiced the virtue of

00:42:26.360 tolerance yeah and you can see this play out like on next door the app have you used next door before

00:42:32.920 i have and i stopped very quickly because i realized what a cesspool it was well yeah because

00:42:36.760 i think it's a perfect example of how we no longer have the skills to handle like how to live in a

00:42:42.840 village so if you know if you have a problem used to be if it was like 1985 and you had a problem with

00:42:47.880 your neighbor say your neighbor was blowing leaves into your yard well you'd you'd have to go over to

00:42:51.640 your neighbor and calmly say you know i understand you're trying to clean your your yard out but you

00:42:55.720 know can you not blow in my yard people don't do that anymore what they do now is they'll just post it 1.00

00:43:00.600 up on next door and just put the person on blast like look at this idiot he's just so inconsiderate 0.99

00:43:06.360 and then people are chiming in yeah what a dummy and the middle ring is gone i have a question about 1.00

00:43:12.440 next door the people who are commenting what a dummy are they all direct neighbors or are they in

00:43:17.960 some like like where where are they it's like in your sort of an area so when you sign up for next

00:43:22.440 door you can sign up to only get updates within a certain geographic radius so like maybe the

00:43:27.000 neighborhoods around you i see so and so yeah it becomes very polarized some people will just be 0.99

00:43:32.520 like yeah like the guy blowing leaves is dumb you're like oh you're a dumb you shouldn't care 0.99

00:43:35.960 and it's just like oh my gosh and what's interesting about that is you're taking like the village you're 0.99

00:43:40.200 turning it into the tribe right you're essentially taking the relations that would theoretically be

00:43:45.000 neighborly but you're turning them into a social network which creates in groups and out groups um

00:43:51.320 which is not what you want in any pleasant neighborhood yeah it's been a while since i did a full

00:43:56.120 ethnography of next door but um sounds no good it is no good at all i get on there every now and then

00:44:01.960 when i have to sell something yeah i'll get on there and then i'll just kind of check in what's

00:44:05.240 going on like oh no i don't want to go to that feed anymore so yeah the the middle ring we've that

00:44:10.520 the skills of socializing of dealing with people we're not really close with don't have a lot in

00:44:15.720 common with those are atrophying and there's some consequences that you're just neighborhood life

00:44:20.600 isn't as pleasant isn't as productive it has consequences for civic life in your town your city

00:44:26.440 and also you know you can even say our national level with our politics what can be done as

00:44:30.760 individuals to restore a richer social life because it seems like we have all these external factors that

00:44:36.520 are kind of nudging us towards spending more time alone so what can we do to restore a richer social

00:44:43.000 life in our lives yeah fortunately this is easy you know you don't need any medical invention to spend

00:44:49.560 time with other people you don't need any kind of invention at all you just need to choose you need to make

00:44:55.640 different choices you choose to spend the next 15 minutes not looking at your phone but texting a

00:45:01.160 friend to meet up and then you choose to spend the next 15 minutes not looking at your phone but

00:45:05.240 texting another friend to meet up and then you spend the next 15 minutes not looking at your phone but

00:45:10.520 rather thinking about how can i create a new habit in my life that puts me around other people rather

00:45:16.600 than puts me on my couch at 7 30 pm every single night it's really easy on the one hand unfortunately

00:45:24.280 it's not so easily done because a lot of these issues are collective action problems and i totally

00:45:29.400 recognize that so if you're a couple and you want to have dinner parties with your couple friends

00:45:35.720 well it's much easier to do that if there's already a habit of dinner parties if there's not

00:45:40.600 a habit of dinner parties then you're going to have a hard time getting people to come over you're

00:45:44.760 going to feel a little bit more embarrassed about you know making the ask and maybe being turned

00:45:48.920 down because people aren't in the habit of going over to each other's houses on thursday nights or

00:45:53.800 friday nights and i get that it's collective action problem but i also think that it's important to

00:45:59.400 give people this sense of agency like the the topics that i'm writing about here are are huge we're

00:46:05.160 talking about national politics and you know things that exist the level of nationwide and planet-wide

00:46:11.400 technologies the automobile and the television set and the smartphone these are big big things and it's

00:46:17.160 ridiculous to ask people to be absolutely amish and just reject all technology but the truth is the 0.64

00:46:24.040 amish have a very interesting way of thinking about technology that i learned when i was reporting for 0.87

00:46:28.520 this piece they don't just reject all technology that's modern they reject technology that isn't in

00:46:34.120 keeping with their values so they look at a technology and then evaluate it and then choose to accept or

00:46:41.960 reject it depending on whether their virtues are amplified by the use of that technology and it's

00:46:48.120 very interesting i think that the amish probably go way too far i am not interested in becoming 1.00

00:46:52.600 amish anytime in the near future but it is very interesting to think about a sort of a mystic approach

00:46:58.360 to one's own life which is to say what if rather than embrace every technology that made our life a

00:47:05.000 little more convenient we instead were really explicit about the values that we had maybe even

00:47:10.840 we wrote them down and said the most important things in my life are my family my child spending

00:47:15.880 time with friends work that's meaningful to me you know a fitness routine that keeps me healthy as long

00:47:21.560 as possible what if you wrote down your values and then only embraced the technology that furthered

00:47:28.040 those values rather than took away from them that might be a way for people who are not amish to

00:47:35.640 inject their lives with just enough amishness that they reorient their living around a set of values 0.97

00:47:43.240 rather than a set of dopamine giving devices hey i love that idea that you can change the social

00:47:49.480 texture of your life in just 15 minute blocks so instead of using 15 minutes just to surf instagram

00:47:54.760 mindlessly use that 15 minutes to connect with a friend or make plans to get together and i i really

00:48:01.080 like the idea of just being intentional and going back to that you know the fitness analogy we need

00:48:05.400 to get out of this habit of thinking that i'm only going to hang out or socialize when i feel like it

00:48:10.200 before you know you socialize yeah we've all been there yeah yeah just make it like working out

00:48:15.240 it's like well it's it's six o'clock i don't feel like working out but this is my workout time so i'm

00:48:20.920 gonna go work out anyway and it's the same thing with socializing it's like well there's a party

00:48:25.480 tonight i don't feel like going out tonight but my social muscles need exercising so i'm gonna go

00:48:31.160 anyway this is why i love this analogy of physical fitness to social fitness because what you said i

00:48:36.280 think is really slyly subversive like it's common among people who work out to say you need to commit

00:48:43.880 to the habit because there's going to be days you don't want to do it and you should do it anyway

00:48:48.440 right so the sense that that essentially working out is a little bit like a vegetable you should

00:48:53.560 eat it even when you don't want to i don't think we think of socializing like a vegetable i think

00:48:58.120 we think of socializing like a fruit something that like tastes delicious and if you don't want

00:49:03.080 to have a blueberry that day no one cares no one's gonna scream at you for not having a strawberry

00:49:07.560 on a wednesday but what if we thought of socializing as more like a vegetable more like

00:49:12.520 something that was good for us more like something we should commit to even when we didn't feel like it

00:49:17.080 i think it's a very clever way of subtly recasting this activity that we think of as being sort of

00:49:23.320 frivolous and extraneous as being actually like fundamentally core to a healthy life well lived

00:49:30.600 so we talked about some individual things we can do you mentioned that this is also a collective

00:49:34.360 action problem are there any communal rituals or maybe some new things some things we can implement

00:49:41.080 into our culture to help this along or have you seen anything in the in your research where

00:49:45.480 there are groups communities towns who are cultivating more in-person socializing yeah there's

00:49:52.120 definitely new trends that i'm following you know independent bookstores are booming i think they've

00:49:56.360 had more than 50 growth since 2009 and a lot of them are basically like miniature theaters they've got

00:50:02.680 you know author talks every night and so that's sort of a a new ritual that that's that's starting

00:50:08.920 here where i live near chapel hill north carolina there's a ton of board game cafes and i know the

00:50:14.040 board game cafes are sort of flowering across the country and this is sort of an interesting inversion

00:50:19.640 of the typical trend of american entertainment typically it's like movie theaters where you used to have to

00:50:27.160 drive to the movie theater and now you can just stay home and do the activity with board games

00:50:32.040 they're invented to stay at home and do the activity but these new board game cafes mean you

00:50:36.760 actually drive to a third place in order to play board games to other people i think that's really

00:50:40.840 interesting and it gets people out of their house and and around other people but you know i'm most

00:50:44.920 interested in really really humble rituals i'm interested in rituals uh that are essentially the

00:50:50.120 equivalent of friday night sabbath where you know in the jewish tradition you say a prayer you break the

00:50:57.000 bread you pour some wine you have a meal and that sounds just about fantastic to me and i hope that

00:51:03.000 you know we i think really lovely to have a renaissance in dinner parties you know this is

00:51:07.800 a trend that we actually have data on it the number of dinner parties in america or at least the number

00:51:12.920 of dinner parties people say they go to has been collapsing not just for the last 20 years but really for

00:51:18.360 the last 60 years i mean the cocktail party is practically extinct compared to where it was the

00:51:23.800 1950s 1960s i think it'd be absolutely beautiful to bring that stuff back and that's simple you don't

00:51:29.880 need another building you don't need any other infrastructure all you need is an email and a

00:51:35.320 person willing to send it well derek this has been a great conversation where can people go to

00:51:39.480 learn more about you and your work well there's three places they can find me i'm a staff writer for

00:51:43.640 the atlantic i host a podcast plain english with derek thompson with the ringer podcast network

00:51:49.080 and march 18th i have a book coming out called abundance co-written with ezra klein about the

00:51:55.880 future of american progress and if you like some of what you've heard today i think you'd love the book

00:52:01.800 fantastic well derek thompson thanks for time it's been a pleasure thank you my guest name is derek

00:52:06.200 thompson he recently wrote a piece for the atlantic called the antisocial century you can find

00:52:09.800 that at the atlantic check out our show notes at awim.is alone we find links to resources we

00:52:14.440 delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to

00:52:26.200 check out our website at artofmanage.com we find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles

00:52:30.600 that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done

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The Art of Manliness - March 11, 2025

No, There Isn’t a Loneliness Epidemic (And That May Be an Even Bigger Problem)

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