Ask Lemmy

Increase taxes on places that sell take home alcohol and decrease tax on alcohol sold from licenced venues.

It should be cheap to go out.

Spend less time online, do less digital activities.

I do more IRL, in-person, activities. Any kind of activity most of us somehow forget we used to do well before Internet and digital was a thing can still be done without the Internet and without a computer of any kind.

In-persons is intimidating but it also helps keep away the armies of online trolls and haters that online thrive to hurt other people. Provided one behaves like a decent human being, it's very rare people IRL will hate on anyone for goofing up or for not agreeing with them. It's ok.

I also do as much as I can the analog way, without anything digital. It helps. Be it to write or sketch, or do stuff with my hands. Heck, even me using a paper agenda instead my phone will regularly trigger surprised/interested questions from people that otherwise would probably never have talked with me to begin with ;)

Lets cap the population of cities to 10 000 and make everyone live in a small town.

Keep people in adjacent cages on a big rectangle of concrete next to a swamp so they get all the social time they need. Kid Rock plays to keep up morale every Friday night.

Make friends in meat space. Have activities you do with other people regularly

Talk to old people. They have time to listen. Delete all social media.

Get rid of smartphones entirely.

I think the big challenge now is to create a method of online dating that isn't a miserable experience for most of its users, but if I had a creative solution for that, I'd be rich.

Other than that, AI friends. That's the future.

• Sport and art
• low cost and free places to do sport and art
• linked together by public transit and clean, safe places to walk, run or cycle (or scoot or skate or whatever)
• a shorter working week, so people have time to do the above
• a higher minimum wage, so people can afford the (ideally low, if necessary) costs involved

So, e.g., lots of parks with publicly accessible five-a-side football pitches, ping-pong tables, basketball courts, skateparks whatever - that's your sport. The parks also have bandstands or outdoor theatres, where there's space for that.

Public libraries with rooms people can hire (or use for free) for book clubs, sewing circles, art classes - that's your art.

Good thing about the above is that all these ideas already exist in lots of forms, you just pick whatever works best for your current situation.

As any other problems, it's an issue with political will

• Have minimum delivery fee to force people to visit physical store over "online shopping" and promote farmer marker and city-centre (village-centre) shopping so people interact with each other

• End-up US style suburbanization, these nice house in a quiet area are great to sleep-in but means you're away from every social activity, and when you're too young/too old to drive it turns into house arrest

• Increase subsidises for non profit-club, especially for the one having under 25 and above 65 members If you go playing scrabble, theatre or practice Karate you stop being lonely

• Carpooling parking and lanes to push worker to interact with people living nearby

Easy, stop considering any kind of digital communication as social interaction, it might seem like it but it is not.

We call it social media, social networks, communities, groups but rarely think about the individuals within them, it's I saw on Facebook or according to Reddit. We tend to think about the entire platform as a single entity, we barely notice the names of the users.

Messaging apps. How often do we ask to someone how's going? And to how many people? We might spend the whole day in the group chat of our actual friends and still not know if they are fine or not.

Live with friends.

Mandatory copulation every 14 hours.

Go to open mic or karaoke nights. Hype everybody up. Talk to people after their performance.

Start a hobby and find a local group to do your hobby with other people. Sometimes if you’re really into the hobby the group will find you. E.g. you’re at the park doing your hobby and see other people doing your hobby. You talk to them and they know a group of people doing it too.

Assuming your job doesn’t involve much face to face interaction, volunteer somewhere in person and talk to the people you’re working with and the people you’re serving.

Set up a booth at a high foot traffic area with a sign that says, “Free jokes.” Or “Free Magic.” Memorize some decent jokes or magic tricks and do them. Talk to people. Ask if they want you to perform at their house for their friends. Become the token magician friend.

For me, working in human services does the trick. Over the summer I take a vacation to heal body/mind, and swap to spending more time on MMOs, a Mud, and making sure I go “out” somewhere at least once a day. Even just to the library.

Go to the bar, drink, tip well. At least the bartenders will want to socialize when they can, even if only for their own self interests (tips). Also, other patrons might be in the same boat, and you can commiserate over drinks!

Turn off internet access, or throttle it to the minimal usable speed.

Try and find where my invisible friend went then hang out with them again.

Plenty of good real solutions in the comments here. My creative solution is to add a feature to everyone's phone that automatically will FaceTime them with someone also on their phone in the area. You can't turn it off, you can only add people to your default list. No guarantee they're who you connect to though.

Is the epidemic one of loneliness or one of improper socialization, a background fear of people and purposelessness? Sadly, idk how to make people change their minds and hearts besides just talking to them and hoping something sticks.

Abolish digital slavery and publicly code and fund the public commons with no scraping or exploitation whatsoever. Restore the rights of autonomy and self determinism required for a citizen in a democracy and people will return to the culture that existed before google won its privateer piracy charter to digitally enslave everyone in exchange for free email and search results because the US was too backwards to fund the fundamental public commons required for real democracy and was itching for slavery again at the first opportunity of going unnoticed.

Why u need creative? If u actually wanna fix it all u need is a shared social activity with a regular attendance of everyone. And would u look at that we just reinvented religion and church.