Loneliness is becoming increasingly widespread in modern societies, esp in big cities. People are surrounded by millions of other humans but and individual may feel utterly alone and cut off, even when surrounded by throngs of other people.
Most people relate only to individuals they consider worthy of their time and attention.
They experience a loss of identifiable community in an anonymous crowd. It is unclear whether loneliness is a condition aggravated by high population density itself, or simply part of the human condition brought on by this social milieu. Certainly, loneliness occurs even in societies with much smaller populations, but the sheer number of random people that one comes into contact with daily in a city, even if only briefly, may raise barriers to actually interacting more deeply with them and increase the feeling of being cut off and alone. Quantity of contact does not translate into quality of contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness#cite_note-0 Loneliness appears to have become particularly prevalent in modern times. At the beginning of the last century families were typically larger and more stable, divorce was rarer and relatively few people lived alone. Today, the trend has reversed direction: over a quarter of the U.S. population lived alone in 1998. In 1995, 24 million Americans lived in single-person households;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness#cite_note-pfizer-1
A 2006 study in the American Sociological Review found that Americans on average had only two close friends to confide in, down from an average of three in 1985. The percentage of people who noted having no such confidant rose from 10 percent to almost 25 percent; and 19 additional percent said they had only a single confidant (often their spouse), raising the risk of serious loneliness in case the relationship ended.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness#cite_note-2
Online communities, one-night stands, ability to look after oneself and make enough money and the increasing numbers of divorce are making more and more people choosing to live alone.
Most people relate only to individuals they consider worthy of their time and attention.
They experience a loss of identifiable community in an anonymous crowd. It is unclear whether loneliness is a condition aggravated by high population density itself, or simply part of the human condition brought on by this social milieu. Certainly, loneliness occurs even in societies with much smaller populations, but the sheer number of random people that one comes into contact with daily in a city, even if only briefly, may raise barriers to actually interacting more deeply with them and increase the feeling of being cut off and alone. Quantity of contact does not translate into quality of contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness#cite_note-0 Loneliness appears to have become particularly prevalent in modern times. At the beginning of the last century families were typically larger and more stable, divorce was rarer and relatively few people lived alone. Today, the trend has reversed direction: over a quarter of the U.S. population lived alone in 1998. In 1995, 24 million Americans lived in single-person households;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness#cite_note-pfizer-1
A 2006 study in the American Sociological Review found that Americans on average had only two close friends to confide in, down from an average of three in 1985. The percentage of people who noted having no such confidant rose from 10 percent to almost 25 percent; and 19 additional percent said they had only a single confidant (often their spouse), raising the risk of serious loneliness in case the relationship ended.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness#cite_note-2
Online communities, one-night stands, ability to look after oneself and make enough money and the increasing numbers of divorce are making more and more people choosing to live alone.
a bf would be nice though.
