‘Solitude has become a notable, and worrisome, trend of our times’

‘Our relationships with friends are as important as those with family’

Youyou Zhou at The Washington Post

Recent data “shows that people of all age groups are spending far less time with friends than they did 20 years ago,” says Youyou Zhou. We are “spending more time by ourselves, probably with our phones or in front of screens.” The “most sustainable way to increase our time with friends,” Zhou adds, is “not to create new or exciting adventures,” but rather to “integrate friends into ordinary activities, such as sharing meals, watching films at home and grocery shopping.”

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‘Sports breed civility’

Frederick J. Ryan Jr. and James Washington at the Los Angeles Times

“Football’s popularity, and its brutality, always takes heat for its role in the larger culture of violence,” say Frederick J. Ryan Jr. and James Washington. But while the “growing emphasis on curbing the game’s long-term health risks, especially its connections to brain injury,” is important, “too much is learned from football to cast it aside.” Sports “gather us together” and keep us from “turning further inward, deeper into the isolation and paranoia that fuel our present crisis.”

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