How Video Games Strengthen Men's Friendships and Fight Loneliness
Loneliness Is Fatal. Video Games Can Keep Men Alive.
Guys say their gaming friendships are as "real" as any IRL bonds.
By Sean O'Neal
Oct 30, 2019
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MEN ARE LONELY, or so we’ve heard. Not from our friends—that would require actually sharing our feelings, which we’re not great at—but from an endless cascade of think pieces and scientific studies sounding the alarm on the growing crisis of male loneliness. Reluctant to engage with other men on anything that could make us seem vulnerable or too needy, we’ve been forcing the women in our lives to shovel our shyt, becoming “emotional gold diggers” in the process. The most cloistered among us have retreated into a sort of petulant nihilism, finding strength in toxic web forums filled with self-righteous anger and Jordan Peterson quotes, a modern-day Fight Club where the first rule is never shutting up about it. Having more friends won't magically fix these problems—the real solution is therapy, folks—but we could all stand to get better at making and keeping friends, because social isolation is deadly. In 2014, former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy went so far as to declare loneliness a public health epidemic, saying it poses a greater threat than smoking or obesity. Men, who shed friendships more easily (and die earlier anyway), are most at risk. Without any meaningful connections, they say, our only companion as we breathe our last will be the flickering light of our laptop, open to the latest trend report highlighting the links between loneliness and a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, strokes, or suicide (death, death, and more death).
The heightened tenor of this anxiety may be new, but the problem’s not—and neither is the solution. According to a landmark UCLA study conducted in 1982, women’s friendships tend to be based around “emotional sharing and talking,” while men connect through “activities and doing things together.” If you want to keep your friends (and you don’t want to die), the experts agree, you have to make actual plans and keep them. Grabbing beers, shooting hoops, tipping cows; whatever loose framework is necessary to force another man to hang out with you, just long enough that some genuine bonding accidentally slips through the margins.
Of course, like making friends or tipping cows, this is a lot easier said than done, especially as we get older. In our school years and in those shiftless early 20s before we start really pulling our lives together, friends are just there, splayed across the futon and waiting to be herded toward your next hangout with little more than a grunt of assent. But once careers and marriages and kids start getting in the way, grabbing drinks requires a complex process of coordinating schedules and risk assessment, measuring the estimated quality of fun against any potential negative effect it might have on the rest of our overbooked days, which sucks the joy right out of it. It’s little wonder so many of us choose to put away the actuarial tables and just stay home.
But what if you could get the shared experiences and idle chitchat that are so necessary to nurturing these connections, without having to worry about hangovers, or babysitters, or even putting on pants? This is the idyll offered by multiplayer and “co-op” video games, which more and more people have been turning to of late. Some 25 percent of all adults either played or watched an online game in 2018, according to a Washington Post-University of Massachusetts Lowell poll, and somewhat surprisingly, half the respondents reported that “friendship” was one of their main reasons for logging in, whether it was finding new relationships or checking in with real-life friends they don’t see as often as they’d like. It’s a growing phenomenon that questions the stereotype of the gamer as isolated, even socially maladjusted. And it’s an increasingly common means for men to make the all-important act of doing something with their buddies, even when time, commitments, and geography get in the way.
.
Matthew, 35, is a quintessential example of this. He was forced to leave his college friends behind when he decamped for law school, and since gaming was already a part of their routine, it seemed like a natural way to keep in touch—first through co-op titles like Resident Evil 5 and then, as their displaced group swelled, rounds of Dungeons & Dragons. These days, it’s just one friend in particular he keeps up with through gaming, but it’s also more regular than ever before, with the two making time nearly every weekend to spend a couple hours playing together. Matthew estimates at least 25 percent of those sessions are spent just checking in—talking about their jobs, about Matthew’s new dog, about his friend’s break-up with a long-term girlfriend. They still see manage to each other maybe once or twice a year, he says, and often they’ll chat through more traditional messaging platforms. But it’s really the gaming that’s kept them close, their idle banter during the loading screens allowing them to stay abreast of each other on a near-constant basis.
“I think we’d still be friends, but I don’t know if I’d be thinking about it in the same way,” Matthew tells me. “Because this way, we’re always talking. There are some friends I was very close with but don’t see very often, and when I do see them, I feel like the entire time we have to catch up on everything that’s happened in their lives. And I don’t feel that way with him.”
Even at the relatively young age of 27, Lucas had also lost track of some of his friends, many of them he’d known since elementary school. Gaming likewise gave him the pretext he needed to reach out to those guys he’d once spent nearly every afternoon with, huddled around a Nintendo 64, but hadn’t heard from since. He looked up their old usernames on his Playstation, and through games like Rocket Leagues and Fortnite, he managed to rekindle many of those old friendships via biweekly sessions, learning about the surprising turns their lives had taken. He tells me that gaming reduced some of the inherent awkwardness of having those kinds of conversations over the phone.
“I’m a pretty open guy, and I think some of my friends aren’t,” Lucas says. “So after losing touch, it took a while for some of them to open up. But now I think we can be pretty honest with each other. Having the game to play sort of breaks the ice.
.
Brian, 53, has a similar story. His trio of friends met in the same astrophysics department back in the ’90s, spending their downtime massacring aliens in the first-person shooter Marathon over the school’s local-area network. After graduation, as everyone dispersed to different states, they kept it up by playing Halo through Xbox Live, meeting every single Monday night for nearly a decade and a half now. Although one of those friends has more or less fallen off (“He’s waiting for the new Halo,” Brian explains), Brian and Greg still spend a few hours online together every week, using voice chat to gossip about old friends and colleagues, commiserate about their jobs, and even fill each other in on major life events.
“It’s how I found out he was getting married again,” Brian says. “He told me he wouldn’t be able to play for the next few weeks because he was going on his honeymoon. I knew he was dating someone, but I didn’t know it had gotten to that point. And I guess I told him the same thing. I didn’t send out invitations or anything. I just said, ‘Oh, I’m getting married next week.’”
Loneliness Is Fatal. Video Games Can Keep Men Alive.
Guys say their gaming friendships are as "real" as any IRL bonds.
By Sean O'Neal
Oct 30, 2019
.
MEN ARE LONELY, or so we’ve heard. Not from our friends—that would require actually sharing our feelings, which we’re not great at—but from an endless cascade of think pieces and scientific studies sounding the alarm on the growing crisis of male loneliness. Reluctant to engage with other men on anything that could make us seem vulnerable or too needy, we’ve been forcing the women in our lives to shovel our shyt, becoming “emotional gold diggers” in the process. The most cloistered among us have retreated into a sort of petulant nihilism, finding strength in toxic web forums filled with self-righteous anger and Jordan Peterson quotes, a modern-day Fight Club where the first rule is never shutting up about it. Having more friends won't magically fix these problems—the real solution is therapy, folks—but we could all stand to get better at making and keeping friends, because social isolation is deadly. In 2014, former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy went so far as to declare loneliness a public health epidemic, saying it poses a greater threat than smoking or obesity. Men, who shed friendships more easily (and die earlier anyway), are most at risk. Without any meaningful connections, they say, our only companion as we breathe our last will be the flickering light of our laptop, open to the latest trend report highlighting the links between loneliness and a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, strokes, or suicide (death, death, and more death).
The heightened tenor of this anxiety may be new, but the problem’s not—and neither is the solution. According to a landmark UCLA study conducted in 1982, women’s friendships tend to be based around “emotional sharing and talking,” while men connect through “activities and doing things together.” If you want to keep your friends (and you don’t want to die), the experts agree, you have to make actual plans and keep them. Grabbing beers, shooting hoops, tipping cows; whatever loose framework is necessary to force another man to hang out with you, just long enough that some genuine bonding accidentally slips through the margins.
Of course, like making friends or tipping cows, this is a lot easier said than done, especially as we get older. In our school years and in those shiftless early 20s before we start really pulling our lives together, friends are just there, splayed across the futon and waiting to be herded toward your next hangout with little more than a grunt of assent. But once careers and marriages and kids start getting in the way, grabbing drinks requires a complex process of coordinating schedules and risk assessment, measuring the estimated quality of fun against any potential negative effect it might have on the rest of our overbooked days, which sucks the joy right out of it. It’s little wonder so many of us choose to put away the actuarial tables and just stay home.
But what if you could get the shared experiences and idle chitchat that are so necessary to nurturing these connections, without having to worry about hangovers, or babysitters, or even putting on pants? This is the idyll offered by multiplayer and “co-op” video games, which more and more people have been turning to of late. Some 25 percent of all adults either played or watched an online game in 2018, according to a Washington Post-University of Massachusetts Lowell poll, and somewhat surprisingly, half the respondents reported that “friendship” was one of their main reasons for logging in, whether it was finding new relationships or checking in with real-life friends they don’t see as often as they’d like. It’s a growing phenomenon that questions the stereotype of the gamer as isolated, even socially maladjusted. And it’s an increasingly common means for men to make the all-important act of doing something with their buddies, even when time, commitments, and geography get in the way.
.
Matthew, 35, is a quintessential example of this. He was forced to leave his college friends behind when he decamped for law school, and since gaming was already a part of their routine, it seemed like a natural way to keep in touch—first through co-op titles like Resident Evil 5 and then, as their displaced group swelled, rounds of Dungeons & Dragons. These days, it’s just one friend in particular he keeps up with through gaming, but it’s also more regular than ever before, with the two making time nearly every weekend to spend a couple hours playing together. Matthew estimates at least 25 percent of those sessions are spent just checking in—talking about their jobs, about Matthew’s new dog, about his friend’s break-up with a long-term girlfriend. They still see manage to each other maybe once or twice a year, he says, and often they’ll chat through more traditional messaging platforms. But it’s really the gaming that’s kept them close, their idle banter during the loading screens allowing them to stay abreast of each other on a near-constant basis.
“I think we’d still be friends, but I don’t know if I’d be thinking about it in the same way,” Matthew tells me. “Because this way, we’re always talking. There are some friends I was very close with but don’t see very often, and when I do see them, I feel like the entire time we have to catch up on everything that’s happened in their lives. And I don’t feel that way with him.”
Even at the relatively young age of 27, Lucas had also lost track of some of his friends, many of them he’d known since elementary school. Gaming likewise gave him the pretext he needed to reach out to those guys he’d once spent nearly every afternoon with, huddled around a Nintendo 64, but hadn’t heard from since. He looked up their old usernames on his Playstation, and through games like Rocket Leagues and Fortnite, he managed to rekindle many of those old friendships via biweekly sessions, learning about the surprising turns their lives had taken. He tells me that gaming reduced some of the inherent awkwardness of having those kinds of conversations over the phone.
“I’m a pretty open guy, and I think some of my friends aren’t,” Lucas says. “So after losing touch, it took a while for some of them to open up. But now I think we can be pretty honest with each other. Having the game to play sort of breaks the ice.
.
Brian, 53, has a similar story. His trio of friends met in the same astrophysics department back in the ’90s, spending their downtime massacring aliens in the first-person shooter Marathon over the school’s local-area network. After graduation, as everyone dispersed to different states, they kept it up by playing Halo through Xbox Live, meeting every single Monday night for nearly a decade and a half now. Although one of those friends has more or less fallen off (“He’s waiting for the new Halo,” Brian explains), Brian and Greg still spend a few hours online together every week, using voice chat to gossip about old friends and colleagues, commiserate about their jobs, and even fill each other in on major life events.
“It’s how I found out he was getting married again,” Brian says. “He told me he wouldn’t be able to play for the next few weeks because he was going on his honeymoon. I knew he was dating someone, but I didn’t know it had gotten to that point. And I guess I told him the same thing. I didn’t send out invitations or anything. I just said, ‘Oh, I’m getting married next week.’”