[graeme]

Wikipedia mentions the 80/50 problem. At some point the Hikkomori will be 50, and their parents, their sole means of support, will be 80. The Hikkomori are not capable of supporting themselves and will run into trouble.

I also expect there are health effects to lifelong withdrawal from all social contact and from not leaving one’s room. We’re not meant to totally avoid touch and eye contact and movement.

[justbored123]

Sure, but some people suffer lots of abuse in life just by the way they look or their ethnicity, sexuality, etc (black people, Jewish, LGBT, etc. in bad places like the middle east come to mind). Imagine been Jewish or very obviously gay and effeminate in Saudi Arabia.

Some time it's better to be alone that to be abused. I saw a documentary about this -Hikkomori- and that was one of the guy's point. He took a lot of sht from people first at school, then at work and on the street too because of how he looked, and he got tired of having to put up with random shtty people insulting him every single day for years. It wore him down over the years and at home he only had a mother that didn't seem to be supportive at all until he gave up. You can see it in YouTube, is one of the first results. It's sad that he could not make it work by moving around until he found decent people, but some times you just have bad luck.

[sneak]

> We’re not meant to totally avoid touch and eye contact and movement.

Meant by whom? Perhaps you aren't, but to make that claim for others is to fundamentally deny them their agency, as if they are mentally incompetent. I don't think these people are, for the most part, mentally incompetent.

[graeme]

Solitary confinement is widely considered to be torture, and what studied of Hikkomori exist suggest they have more suicidal thoughts and psychiatric disorders than the average.

The former suggests need for social contact is in our genes. There is a reason monks had monasteries for their life of withdrawal: they still had others around.

There are rare exceptions, the eremetic monks, but overall Hikkomori do not seem content. They are perhaps more comfortable than they felt out in the world, but I strongly suspect they are in a local maximum and could live much more satisfying lives.

[pm90]

I believe there’s research in the social sciences that show that social contact and connections have a very positive impact on people’s health.

Of course, such studies measure the average so each individual’s situation may be different. But it’s also not clear to me why it would be different for such large of a group.

[vsareto]

I've always wondered if you were a recluse but had an excellent diet/fitness routine that the social contact benefits for health would not matter anymore. It's actually the best possible scenario for getting extremely fit because you don't have a job or social obligations.

[durnygbur]

Yeah you have all the time to sleep well, prepare food and eat healthy, hydrate, stretch and excercise, work on any stimulating however trivial personal projects. What you leave behind is the stress coming from a job, miserable dates and rejections, and any stress related health problems which later on one is desperately tring to resolve with doctors and medical procedures.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "I've always wondered if you were a recluse but had an excellent diet/fitness routine that the social contact benefits for health would not matter anymore."

Solitary confinement in prisons is known to be detrimental to mental health so that seems most likely to be false.

[luckylion]

That's not something the inmates choose though, they're being forced to be in solitary confinement.

Studies might not be ideal here. How many hermits participate in social studies run at universities?