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Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

Look to Japan for insights on the effects of an aging population on an advanced economy. While immigration acts as a buffer within the United States many trends we are currently experiencing can be seen in Japan as well.

With current societal trends, I suspect that human interaction and emotional labor will become quantified and decoupled from the health care sector. A large fraction of the population - from children, to teens, working adults and the elderly - need more face to face interaction. Volunteer organizations, social clubs and other forms of physical 'social infrastructure' (parks, libraries) need additional funding to help fill the gap in so many of our lives.

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While there's an issue, I kind of feel its a temporary gap as society changes.

A generation or two ago, family was everything. Today, less so. My grandparent's entire social circle was their family, children and grandchildren. My mother was half and half. My entire social circle is made out of people I met through speciality interests and made friends with (board games, videogames, engineering meetups, etc).

I'm honestly at capacity: I could not really afford to keep touch with any more people than I actually do. But unlike family, those people are "replaceable". Don't read this as "disposable". Rather, with family, if they move away or die, you can't (easily) get more. With friends though, you always can.

If you have extensive channels to tap for to meet more people and potential friends, you'll never be lonely against your will. The new generation is more and more that way, and there's a clash with the old one. Once the majority's like that though, it won't be an issue. The old people 30-40 years from now will be playing MMORPGs, board games and going to Pax together when they need to see friends. It's already happening.

This is a very self selecting group you are talking about, I assure you that most adults and even teens have zero interest in any of the activities you mention.

These are examples. If its not board games its going to be knitting. If its not knitting its going to be skydiving, and if its not that it will be something else. At the end of the day, to thrive in the current world on a social, cultural, and emotional level, you need to have SOMETHING getting you out of bed that isn't work/kids/eating/drinking.

If the only thing you live for is going out to the local bar's happy hours with the bros, yeah, you probably will have some social issues later down the road.

> need more face to face interaction.

One aspect of the problem is face to face interactions can be tedious and boring. E.g. if you have a particular interest, you can easily find a virtual community with people from all over the world, but you may not be able to find people close to you.

If that's the case then you may think you'll go to some local organized event for more face time with people, but if you are not interested in that activity then you'll just hang around bored.

That's why virtual connections are so rewarding, because you can easily find people with similar interests, and also you can be there whenever you feel like it, unlike in real life when you can't just leave the group for several hours, returning when you are in the mood, like you can do with an internet forum.

Presumably you could reverse that logic, and say that the problem with online communities is that they are too comfortable, and don't expose you to people aren't easy to get along with. Growth requires challenge...

Look to medieval society. Everyone was in some form of guild. Guilds determined how you dressed, who you socialized with, held ceremonies and parties. It wasn't just a trade union, it was a whole way of life.

Tocqueville wrote about something similar in Democracy in America (this is talking about American society around 1830).

He talks at length how he was struck by American's social connections. Everyone was in at least one social club. Organized for every purpose conceivable. Some were purely social, others were for some political advocacy. One huge difference between this and the medieval guilds is these associations weren't (near as I can tell) exclusive. People might belong to several.

It sounded a bit ... intense, but I do think we've lost something in the intervening centuries

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/805328.html

people still had sense of community then, because there were challenges that needed cooperation from everyone. In areas of the world where this still holds true, often there is still more care for each-other.

That, and 85% of people were peasants who didn't have access to guild society

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