“Why Millennials are Lonely”

This was, to me, a fascinating article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-gen-y-guide/201702/why-millennials-are-lonely

I found myself wondering whether the phenomenon is related — as either cause or effect or some combination of the two — to the rise of the religious “nones,” and to the increasing number of those (especially of the younger generation) who are disaffiliated from communities of worship and, indeed, from communities altogether.

I also found myself thinking of the ex-Mormon message boards that I’ve seen, where people who, by and large, have never actually met each other create ersatz “communities.”  Every Sunday, so far as I can tell, one of the atheistic apostate boards that I check in on features a thread in which participants boast of all the wonderful things they’re supposedly doing instead of attending “the so-called Church.”  One of the things that they’re clearly doing, however, is sitting alone at home, typing messages on their computers to virtual strangers who share their bitterness and alienation.  (Quite often, their comments involve contemptuous descriptions of the “Mor(m)ons” — not uncommonly their spouses, parents, and/or children — who’re away at church services.  Moreover, as far as I can see, there’s also a Friday thread about what everybody’s drinking that weekend.  I’ve wondered whether that discussion might be inadvertently rather revealing.)

Anyway, I’ll shortly be off, interacting with a community of people with whom — over, now, quite a few years — we’ve shared a great deal of fun, a fair amount of work, quite a bit of serious conversation and mutual service, and some sorrow.  I scarcely regret it.

I wish that he hadn’t tossed in the reference about passing a “pipe” around, but, otherwise, John Denver’s “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” — I confess a bit guiltily that I like several of his songs — capture something of my feeling about belonging to an actual community of real people, not merely one of embittered strangers on a message board: