Hey, thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. I sincerely appreciate both. Here's a condensed version that should clarify a bit.

1. Let's start with the fact that I didn't say loneliness was a myth. This debunks a very specific narrative in our culture.

2. There's this myth floating around in the æther that men under thirty are overwhelmingly lonely, lonelier than they've ever been before, and that we can tell this because Pew Research found that 63% of men under thirty are single, compared to 32% of women under thirty who are single. The myth blames various 21st-century technologies (porn, dating apps, social media, you name it) and says that it's worse than it's ever been for men under thirty.

2. This is a myth primarily because the exact same study that found that 63% of men under thirty are single found that 79% of single people are not looking for a committed relationship. So, this piece calls into question the validity of saying, "People under thirty are single, that must mean they're lonely."

Instead, we should just ask people if they are lonely, not guess they are because they're unmarried (in their twenties!). It's nonsensical to say that just because someone is unmarried in their twenties, that automatically means they're lonely.

3. It's also a myth that 21st-century technologies are the cause of people getting married at a later age, because the rise in marriage age (how old people are when they get married) began in the 1960s. So it can't be Tinder or Pornhub causing the rise in marriage rates. In 1900, life expectancy was about 40 years old. Today, it's close to 80 years old. The lifespan has doubled in the last century. Do we really expect people to be jumping into marriage at twenty years old anymore? We live in a totally different world than a century ago.

4. Regarding loneliness itself, I'm less concerned about people in their twenties not getting married—they're in college, building careers, having casual sex, and probably taking mind-altering substances—and I'm more worried about the fact that so many people under thirty report that they don't have a single close friend they can call in an emergency (19% for women, 21% for men). To me, that's far scarier than absurd assumptions many are making because fewer people in their thirties are getting married.

Regarding your last point, I'm sorry to hear that and regretful to report that I, too, have experienced friend suicides. In. fact, far beyond anything drugs or violence could ever do, suicide takes the cake as the number one cause of death among my childhood friends. That said, loneliness isn't always the cause of suicide and it's also a mistake to assume that it is. People deal with a large variety of issues and we should try our best to understand those issues broadly without assumptions, if at all possible.

Thanks again for reading and taking the time to comment.

Cheers,

Joe