Orthogonal to being physically outside and interacting with people, is the issue of social networks and their effect on mental health. I’d argue that reddit and other anonymous social networks (ahem hn) which allow users to register under any nick and without a forced email or phone verification, are much healthier for people’s mental health. There is a large gulf between semi anonymous and “real-name-enforced” social media.

I only started reading Hacker News when I got a job and left the house and had the combined feelings of "oh geez commuting sure is boring", "I need to stay up to date with technology", and "Reddit users, mods, and admins only know how to feign knowledge and sure make me want to shoot myself"

I'm not using HN as some sort of substitute for social interaction. I'm not on HN all day engineering every post to garner maximal attention and approval like the people who abuse FB the hardest are. I AM getting that constant stream of novelty that is typical of social media. However tech IS constant novelty so that's unavoidable regardless.