If the downsides are depression and misery, all the upsides are irrelevant.
> I calculated that, on average, I was spending 22 hours or more each week on social activities.
This is the premise the article builds upon, and IMO it's already a bit too much. I've done both: go out every night and don't go out for a noticeable enough period. Both are bad, both are draining. Even if going out means stepping outside your comfort zone, you should do it.
> 5 - You'll save a ton of money on drinks, restaurants, and travel.
Not all of these are equivalent in value and not all are that expensive. The expenses are usually negligible compared to other stuff mortgages, leases etc (depending on tastes, but usually holds for tech people).
> Who said that just because you don't have a social life you must be miserable or depressed?
Well it depends on how one defines social life. But historically a lone human is a dead human. Depression does have an evolutionary advantage in that you are less likely to approach potentially violent strangers. The lowered energy levels make you sleep longer and reduces your visibility. The misery is probably just a motivating force so that you seek out your tribe.
People in solitary confinement go crazy, quite literally. Humans need contact with other humans - that however does not mean wild parties every evening.
Happy loners tend to have few friends/colleagues/family they talk with. That is not nearly the same as no social life at all.
Regularly going out more than once or twice a week sounds absolutely exhausting, and more likely to make me feel depressed and miserable than staying in every night for prolonged periods.
22 hours of social activity a week sounds absolutely insane. I think the last time I was anywhere close to that was in the dorms in college, where "social activity" was as simple as "pop next door for a bit".
I wonder how "social activity" is defined in this context. For example, I regularly spend my evenings in the local hackerspace. My primary goal is to write some code or configure something on my servers, or just to read some HN or play Minecraft. That's all stuff that I could do at home, but the hackerspace gives the chance of having the occasional chat when someone brings up an interesting topic (and the possibility of an expert sitting next to me when I run into some weird problem).
Do the hours spent at the space count as social interaction, or only those few minutes when I have a chat?
I wonder if that's half the problem, we make socialising so expensive in terms of organising, travel and scheduling that it becomes a drain. Popping next door doesn't have much cost.
On the flip side of things, going into a relationship specifically to try to solve your depression, misery, or loneliness can lead to unhealthy relationships.
"How does having social life prevents you from doing what you want and when you want?"
Let's say you want to go to see one movie, but all your friends want to see a different one. Or maybe you don't feel like seeing a movie at all, but your friends are going.
Or there's a party on Friday, but you don't feel like going out. Or maybe you just want to stay home and read a book.
There are countless other situations where you might want to do one thing, but social obligations, situations or friends are pulling you to do something else.
How is that preventing you from doing what you want to do more than not socializing does?
You're simply being forced to choose between two things you want, because you can't do both. That happens even when you're alone -- or at least, I haven't figured out the correct method of writing in my (paper) journal and taking a shower at the same time. Or taking bong hits while swimming. Or napping while playing video games. Or....
This doesn't sound like you're being prevented from doing what you want, when you want -- you just can't do two things you want at the same time. But this isn't unique to socializing.
(It also sounds like failing to take responsibility for your choices so you don't have to deal with being forced to choose between them and can blame Them for forcing the decision.)
You don’t always have to do whatever your friends want to. Having social life does not mean spending 100% of time satisfying your friend’s desires, most people have social life because it’s what they want, and in periods when they don’t want it - they can stay home and do what they want, while if you don’t have a social life at all - you can’t do that, because most probably you don’t have friends to begin with.
That's the whole point: these sacrifices are downsides to having a social life, and by not having one you don't have to make these sacrifices, so that's an upside to not having a social life.
Even going to weddings of people I do know is sheer torture to me. I hate weddings.
I also feel like a fish out of water at parties, and very rarely enjoy them. Usually they're just depressing and leave me wondering why I'm spending time with these people.
If "what you want" isn't a social activity, or "when you want" conflicts with when your friends are available, then having a social life gets in the way of other things you'd like to do.
Because the time is limited, and because two actors in a relationship have opposite desires, goals, obligations, etc. (where to eat, what movie to see, what party to attend.
Huh? I am all in favor of people having kids and know it is necessary for society... But are you saying you can't pass on other stuff to the next generation? An example of this is teachers, i.e. a teacher who had no kids but who did nothing but did a great job of teaching kids, teaching and inspriring, but didn't socialize with anyone (except with parents during conferences or to the extent necessary with other teachers & administrators)... would you say they "failed at life"?
Life is the characteristic that distinguishes organisms from inorganic substances and dead objects. (WP)
Anyone who made it through the childhood and has no plan to die soon succeeded at life. You probably mistaking it with reproduction, which is often required as ability, not as demand.
It is also pretty rough to label fertile ones as losers.
>>"failure" and "success" are notions relative to goal achievement, and biology doesn't have goals - it's a mechanistic process.
Of course biology has goals. Every living organism's goal is to propagate its genes to the next generation. For details on this, read The Selfish Gene.
I haven't read The Selfish Gene, but from what I've heard it tells the exact opposite: That every gene's goal is to propagate, for which task it merely employs the living organism.
Talking about "goals" and "desires" can sometimes be a usefully simplified way to think about biology, but it's not really accurate. A bacterium doesn't "want" to reproduce anymore than a rock "wants" to roll downhill. Only quite complex animals can be truly said to have goals.
Humans are not exactly rare around these parts, and we have many modes of transmission other than genetic. You may fail at biological propagation, but we've got more freedom than the amoebas to define success. :)
Your fallacy is assuming that the desire for kids is passed on to children. If that were so, people without the desire to have kids would have died out thousands of years ago. Reality disagrees with that conclusion.
... and consume less, because their baseline for consumption is typically shared multi-generational living and relative poverty in a developing country.
The theory of evolution implies that the desire for kids must be passed on to children. The modern environment just means that genes that formerly led to positive results in the environment we evolved in, in the modern environment accidentally make people vulnerable to antinatalism. If the modern environment persists, those genes will die out.
2 - You can do what you want, when you want.
3 - You don't have to worry about pleasing people, or not offending them.
4 - You don't have to attend any boring social functions.
5 - You'll save a ton of money on drinks, restaurants, and travel.
6 - You could learn a lot more, if that's what you choose to do with all your extra free time.
There are downsides too, of course, but this thread is about the upsides.