this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
3 points (100.0% liked)

politics

18918 readers
3776 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
  2. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  3. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  4. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
  5. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  6. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News

• World News

• Business News

• Political Discussion

• Ask Politics

• Military News

• Global Politics

• Moderate Politics

• Progressive Politics

• UK Politics

• Canadian Politics

• Australian Politics

• New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
outrageousmatter@lemmy.world
aidan@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world
HLMenckenFan@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
3
Chris Murphy, CT: "Today I’m introducing a groundbreaking bill - the National Strategy for Social Connection Act." (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by T0rrent01@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world
6 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Today I’m introducing a groundbreaking bill - the National Strategy for Social Connection Act.

It creates a federal office to combat the growing epidemic of American loneliness, develops anti-loneliness strategies, and fosters best practices to promote social connection.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1681350024200962053

all 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Just as long as being an introvert isn't made illegal.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is a good thing, but I have a free suggestion: it's the cars, stupid.

The US has been building it's spaces in a cars-first fashion for over seventy years now. Many Americans don't even know what it's like to live in a world where walking and biking is the norm. In the rest of the world, in urban and suburban areas, community third spaces are easily (and by easy, I mean convenient and safe) accessible by bike or foot. In the US, there's almost nothing that's a safe, enjoyable walk from my home, and that's a pretty typical suburban experience by design. If I want to go do something or be somewhere where other people are, I practically have to drive. I hate driving, so I try to avoid it if I can. That usually just translates into not going out. I think that's how it is for a lot of people; being outside in the US' built environments just kinda sucks.

On the other hand, I've had a few exchange students from Europe and Japan, and consistently the biggest culture shock for them is how car dependent (and isolated) we are. The kids really feel the difference because they can't drive, and they go from being able to use bikes and mass transit to go places and hang out to being fully dependent on being driven around to go anywhere. As for Third spaces serve the important role of being the space set aside just for socializing. I'm sure everyone has seen/heard the grievances between the genders of how women can't work/shop/exist without being approached romantically, and men begging the question of when they can approach women, then. I am confident this is largely a US phenomenon, because we have pitifully few third spaces, where romantic approaches generally tend to be more acceptable. You want to fix loneliness? Start by making our cities not suck for humans, and start adding more third spaces like parks and stuff.

[–] RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not arguing for car dependency, and it is component to the loneliness epidemic, but it's not the sole cause. More than 1 in 10 Europeans are lonely, so car dependency can't be the only factor.

This widespread loneliness has really only hit its stride in earnest in the last decade or so. And what hit the scene about 10 years ago? Social media, ironically. The thing that is ostensibly designed to connect us has pushed us apart.

We can't have an honest conversation about this without identifying who it affects the most: young men. As a crude metric, /r/ForeverAlone has literally an order of magnitude more users than /r/ForeverAloneWomen. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the latter subreddit literally banned male users because the female users were getting asked out on dates ... literally this meme.

Which brings me to dating apps. They have insanely lopsided demographics that make half of all men who use them persona non grata. They have a greater matching inequality than the economic inequality of Venezuela. This is not a comfortable conversation to have, but ignoring it won't help solve the problem.

Speaking of the economy, that sure isn't helping either. What limited opportunities for real-world social interaction still exist are becoming less and less accessible when more and more people have to spend more of their time earning piss-all income just to scrape by.

The loneliness epidemic is a coalescence of these, and other factors, that have been accumulating over decades of consolidating organic social opportunities into overorganized spaces with inherent and high barriers to entry.

[–] MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Many Americans don’t even know what it’s like to live in a world where walking and biking is the norm

Been there, done that, and it fucking sucks. I'll take having to drive any day over it.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess? I've lived in places where US style zoning didn't exist and you had little shops in the neighborhoods. It was so nice to be able to just pop down the block and buy some milk or bread or whatever basic thing you needed from the little neighborhood store. Driving sucks, though. You're free to do a lot more while you're walking or biking than driving, not to mention that it brings you into contact with a lot more folks. Basically the only thing you can do while driving is drive and listen to some podcasts, I guess, and the only people who want to talk to you while you're driving want to say things like "nice turn signal, asshole!", Or "Sir, did you realize you were doing 70 in a school zone?"

[–] MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago

I mean yeah, no shit, if I shared your distaste for driving, I'd probably agree with you.