I think the increase in depression is due more towards the increasing isolation in our (American) society, and not so much stress. I moved to a new city a few years ago, and between living alone, working remotely, the pandemic causing many things like tech meetups online, and people in the groups I have been involved with not appearing to reciprocate my interest in getting to know them, I've had a lot of times where life has felt pretty meaningless. This is despite a fair amount of internal energy, interest in learning things, etc. (personal growth / fulfillment). My conclusion is that relationships are a fundamental human need.

But we have designed ourselves into isolation. Half of marriages (built-in community) end, most people no longer go to church, there are not really civic organizations any more, etc. I can spend an entire, active Saturday without interacting with anyone: drive to the park in the morning and walk in the woods, go to the art museum (electronic tickets, so not even interaction purchasing a ticket), check books out from the library (self-checkout), buy groceries to cook dinner (self-checkout is usually faster), watch a movie on my home theater setup. That's even without mobile phones, or the numbing false sense of community of social networks.

So not only do we not have the normal human difficulty in actually caring about and loving another person, but we do not even have the social structure to find people to care about. As a result it's easy to live a life where you experience little of enjoying others and being enjoyed by others.

Yes that is the tendency, but it's still possible to fight it to some extent. Unless you're in a pretty rural area there should be local meetups you can attend. They might not be about exactly the subjects you're interested in, or be attended entirely by people you like, but if you give a couple a chance and keep showing up they might surprise you and you might get some friends out of it.

I still periodically hang out with about a dozen people I met via meetups like 9 years ago. Used to be a lot more, and some moved or drifted off (on both sides, I'm guilty of it as well), but that's still a decent number.

That's not including the group of game designers I befriended by hosting playtest nights, or the local writing group I still do things with every November for Nanowrimo, or a handful of people I met from a couple new meetups I started going to recently.

I've attended funerals, friendsgivings, baby showers, and the like for a few of them too, so we're not just casual friends (although a love of board games and geeky things does tie a lot of us together).

I can't imagine that many people in the rich countries in the modern era are among the most stressed humans in history, even despite the erosion of social support networks. Nearly everyone has adequate shelter, food, security, and access to virtually magical health care from the perspective of everyone before 70 years ago. Children consistently make it into adulthood and famine has been kept at bay for a century or more, interpersonal violence is at an all time low. If in the midst of this unparalleled prosperity and wonder we're just as stressed as a peasant farmer who just lost half their family to disease, war and famine then something is badly wrong with how we handle stress.

Here's another perspective... it isn't just about how we handle stress, it's about the causes of stress...

In her 90s, my grandmother said to me "Your generation has far more money than we had, but we were happier and had less stress." She grew up in a just slightly more than a subsistence level farm family, then with my grandfather achieved just enough farming success to send the next generation to college. She travelled away from home just a few times in life, but as she said - it was a generally low-stress life.

Modern life on the other hand often starts the day with an utterly toxic commute. When we eat, it's often while working at our desk. Our housing costs are far above what was historically considered a safe % of income. We take almost no vacation and when we do, we take our laptop and phone with us. Even if we have health insurance, it is often very challenging to actually get preventative care.

I could go on and on, but my point is - modern life is stressful in completely different ways than the stressed encountered by the historical "peasant farmer." His stress involved things he might be able to do something about, like storing up grain for winter or reinforcing his dwelling. Our modern stress is far more obtuse and difficult to control, like the Fed raising rates or Congress introducing a rider on a bill that wipes out a tax credit that was the only thing keeping us profitable.

In earlier times when the stress was caused by being chased by predators we at least had a run to deal with all of the adrenaline.

> Modern life on the other hand often starts the day with an utterly toxic commute.

Yet another reason to bicycle (and to have good bike infrastructure!)

Stress is subjective. It doesn't have to align with objective measures. Evolution has selected for stress to work to favor survival in a certain environment, but we're no longer in that environment. If we needed support networks in the past, then we should expect to be unhappy without them, regardless of how important they are to survival in the present.

I don't think it's necessarily just true that there is something wrong with how we handle stress. We also subject ourselves to different types of stress.

A peasant farmer was dramatically more likely to experience violence in a given year. But (from studies I've seen) they probably spent fewer hours in a week working and more with family and friends than a modern-day office worker.

It seems quite possible that the chronic, low-level stress of much modern life

- requires different methods of prevention and healing

- does more damage over the long term if untreated

> If in the midst of this unparalleled prosperity and wonder we're just as stressed as a peasant farmer who just lost half their family to disease, war and famine then something is badly wrong with how we handle stress.

I wonder why your phrasing feels like blame-the-victim?

The people I know under stress in modern society often lack clear options for alternatives or need a completely radical change in their situation.

Or alternatively perhaps we don't actually have prosperity?

Framing things in terms of a victim blaming mindset is a frame that leads to preventable stress because it takes the locus of control away from someone which is a major cause of stress. Focusing on things you can control, like your attitude and perspective, and learning ways to maximize the impact of those things is much, much better for people. I've had a set of life circumstances that are pretty bad objectively over the last couple years and I've been less stressed than nearly any other point in my life because I've been really focusing on gratitude and resilience. I really hope that others can see the same sort of improvements with a similar sort of mindset shift.

I'm guessing your original comment meant to imply that we all have agency to deal with stress: sorry if I misread that.

I also tend to find the idea that we can "control our attitude and perspective" is sometimes used to blame others or self-guilt ourselves for outcomes that are truly outside ones own rational control. The extreme example of this is the belief in manifestation: we can pay for courses to learn how to remove "blocks" so somehow the cancer is ones own fault for not thinking right.

I agree with you that we need to take responsibility for what we can change. I believe we can learn new mindsets or Jiu-Jitsu our minds into grooves that work better. I also think that doing that is extremely difficult and that also that there is much that remains beyond our control (internally or externally). Also the territory of self-help has many traps and deceptions - a hard road to find.

Maybe the amount of stress we feel is narrowly bounded and has little or nothing to do with how bad things are externally.

Stress seems best for the primordial hunt and battles of my ancestors who needed a powerful drive to see through an ideally short term situation with more response than they might have otherwise been able to muster, I have always found it living hand in hand with adrenaline.

Stoicism seems to also provide plenty examples of people finding stress and emotion to be first reactions muddying the waters of perception necessary for loftier goals and work than simple hunter gatherers.

Stress long term is unusual for the body and a major disadvantage imo.

And stoicism seeing some quantifiable research into aiding in depression leads me to believe the individual in the current cultural hegemony of western culture is simply a victim, a child never truly raised.

"Work, play - at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen." - Brave New World

You're right, there's a certain point beyond which stress is just wear.

Both cost time, which is finite and precious. Stress reduces the amount of time you have available - if all of your time not working is spent destressing, you're not much fun to be around, and that impact your ability to make and retain friends

This is why most friends are made in high school and college.

The difference is very stark. I probably made 1-2 good friends in the _10 years_ after college, compared to 30+ friends in the 10 years prior to that. Luckily, I managed to keep most friends from before starting work.

Full time work is an absolute black hole of time and relationships.

People who don't have good networks _before_ they start full time work are absolutely boned and I don't think there's an easy solution.

> Both cost time, which is finite and precious

As social animals who will eventually face the loss of every friend we've ever made, cultivating both a good network of friends and a kind of internal resilience is probably the best way one could choose to invest their time.

There are many very questionable ways to invest this finite/precious time, and most of us don't think twice about how much of it we squander (e.g. spending time online). There is a small category of things to focus on that is almost universally worth the effort: sleep, diet, exercise, social connection. Focusing on these things also tends to help establish that inner strength.

Find a hobby that you de-stress with others with so even though you're not fun at the beginning of the class/session, by the end of it you've screamed your frustration out and are pleasant to be around. Make friends at the end of this de-stressing event.

Something really thrown into stark relief by becoming a parent is that “doing both” is often a lie. We only have time for so many things.