Shadowing Practice: Why is everyone so lonely right now? My theory... - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Thank you to AccuFlow for sponsoring a portion of today's video.
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Every year, it seems like we hear more and more about the loneliness epidemic in the US.
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As someone who moved back to Europe this past year, this is something that I've been reflecting on a lot, and today I'd like to share from my perspective five factors that I think are contributing to the loneliness epidemic, particularly for people based in the US, although not necessarily limited to it.
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Also, what I think a path for moving forward in a more connected way is.
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so so one thing that i am observing that i think must play a role in the loneliness epidemic is flaky behavior i know i'm not the only one who has noticed a huge rise in flakiness particularly among friends because i'm hearing more and more people also talk about it i genuinely believe people lost so many social skills during the pandemic.
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And so my resolution for 2025 is that if I organize a gathering, a meal, a night out or something, and you provide an excuse at the last minute about why you can't come, we're going to talk about that.
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We are going to talk about the effect that has on the relationship.
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It is not okay.
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And I don't understand what changed in the last few years where people start to think that this is okay.
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And look, I'm not talking about real reasons for people not showing up at the last minute.
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But what I'm saying is that the volume of last minute excuses for people not showing up has increased precipitously in a way that doesn't make any sense to how people actually live their lives.
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Not to say I should win an award, but I'm just saying if I put in the effort for something and you make an excuse, yeah it's going to have negative effect on the relationship and people remember that.
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And you know there's a lot of discussion out there about how people are lonely and people don't have community and like this is the exact reason.
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So some common complaints are people will make plans and then cancel last minute or worse yet, just not show up.
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I remember a few years ago, I had a friend who would just literally not show up, like wouldn't even let me know that she wasn't coming.
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Other times people will make plans then be extremely late.
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Like I'm not talking about 15 minutes.
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I can give anybody 15 minutes grace period, even if it happens every time.
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I'm talking more like 30 to 60 plus minutes late.
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People will often say, let's see each other soon, but then never follow through with plans because it just doesn't feel convenient to like leave the comfort of their home and people will often complain about how they don't have a big enough social circle they'll try to go out there and make friends but then they never end up really hanging out with those new people more than a couple times this flaky behavior not only is really disrespectful of other people's time but it also harms the person doing it because your social circle starts shrinking more and more and this seems to be a cultural phenomenon that i'm seeing particularly among young americans among older Americans haven't really observed this.
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Let me know if you think I'm wrong.
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And in Southern Europe, at least, it's not uncommon for people to be quite late to things, but people are much more social, like especially throughout the week, they will hang out with people after their work day multiple times a week.
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So what's going on here?
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What is going on with the cultural norms and values of young Americans specifically that's making them so flaky?
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This is where I think we need to talk about the second factor contributing to this loneliness epidemic, which is overly rigid boundaries and hyper-individualism.
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Young Americans are more aware than ever about the importance of healthy boundaries.
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A lot of them having gone to therapy and learning from online psychoeducators like myself, they understand that everyone needs to have limits on what they're willing to tolerate and what they're not.
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And they're more informed than ever on what it looks like when somebody is violating their boundaries.
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Unfortunately, even good things come with their own set of drawbacks.
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And in the case of boundaries, there are people out there who misuse the term, who misunderstand boundaries as something that must be rigid and impenetrable, like a brick wall rather than something flexible like plywood, who take the approach of I don't owe anyone anything, considering only their own needs without letting anyone else's needs even factor into their decision, and who seem to think that we all live in independent bubbles rather than the reality, which is that we're all interconnected, whether we like it or know it or not.
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Hyper individualism is running rampant among young Americans.
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And sure, that might sound great when you're putting yourself first by canceling last minute on your best friend's wedding because you just weren't feeling like going out that day.
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But the drawbacks quickly become very obvious once you actually need something from your village.
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Unfortunately, a lot of people are building up very high impenetrable walls around them, you know, making a little moat of water around them, pulling up the drawbridge, and only then do they realize that they're completely isolated and without resources when they need it most.
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Like, yeah, you're protected.
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No one's going to be able to pass through your castle, but they're not going to be able to pass through your castle if you need it either.
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Like, check out this TikTok that I thought was hilarious because honestly, it's so relatable.
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I think we all know somebody that does this.
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Carolina just posted her 2025 New Year's resolutions.
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And the first thing on her list is putting myself first.
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And I just got to say, you don't need to do that.
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Actually, I've known you for over 10 years now and you've been doing that.
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You're good.
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I remember this one time it was your friend's birthday dinner and you made them change the restaurant where they wanted to have their birthday dinner because you didn't like the menu.
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So maybe let's not put ourselves even more in front of others.
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Maybe like let's work on some self-awareness in the new year.
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That could be a good one.
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Then the third thing I'm noticing that I think is contributing to the loneliness epidemic is this sort of unwillingness to communicate directly with people.
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Something that I'm realizing now that I live in Europe again is that Americans tend to communicate much more indirectly than other cultures do.
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You know, like every time I visit my home country of Romania, I'm amazed that you can really trust Romanians to shoot you straight.
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Like if a Romanian person doesn't like you, they will make that clear.
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You know, a few months ago, I was like on a train, not in Romania.
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And I heard the people behind me speaking Romanian.
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And I was like, oh my God, they're Romanian.
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And I said, oh, you're Romanian.
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I am too.
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This woman looked at me dead in the eye and she said, good for you.
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A Romanian person will make it clear if they don't fucks with you.
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But if a Romanian person wants to do something nice, then you know you can really trust that they're being authentic, that it's sincere, and their good feel feels so much warmer because of it, it really lights you up inside.
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This was really important in the communist regime and a lot of Soviet bloc countries because there were a lot of people kind of reporting each other to the authorities on no basis, and so you needed to know that people were trustworthy, and the way to know that would be if they were very direct and very honest, even with things that you didn't want to hear.
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And also in like basically any Latin country, the communication is typically quite open and direct.
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People freely express anger, just like they freely express warmth.
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This pattern in Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Latin America, it's very different from how young people are operating in North America.
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I'm noticing a real reluctance among young Americans to directly communicate with each other when they have a conflict.
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Even for myself, there were a couple of occasions this past year when I confronted someone about the fact that they were acting weird, acting like they had a problem with me, and they straight up wouldn't even engage in a discussion about what was bothering them.
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Because in their words, what's the point of arguing?
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I was like, who's arguing?
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Since when is having an open, honest, respectful conversation arguing?
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How do you think you're going to have anyone at all left in your life if you run and hide at the first sign of conflict?
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And look, I'm ambivalent about this for a couple of reasons.
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One is that there are different cultural communication styles and none is more correct than the other.
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You know, there are cultures that are called high context that operate on a lot of like unspoken cues where like body language or tone or what's not being said is a cue to you about what they actually mean.
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Those cultures, they have advantages of their own.
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You know, cultures that communicate super directly can, for instance, be really dysregulating for people who have a history of relational trauma, for instance.
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And the second thing is that I don't think anyone needs to get involved in a conflict if they have reason to believe that the other person is going to harm them in the process.
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You know, if someone's proven themselves to be unsafe, you are putting yourself in danger by directly confronting them about a certain conflict.
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However, the conflict pattern that I'm seeing more and more in young Americans isn't even in line with this healthy, indirect, high-context form of communication where you communicate through subtle cues or you work through conflict by focusing on common ground, by being super soft in the way that you approach things.
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No, what I'm seeing is people refusing to work through conflict at all, instead running away from it or expressing their anger passive-aggressively, retaliating further on.
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And also, a lot of the people doing this are not doing it because they're actually in an unsafe relationship with the other person.
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The other person poses no harm to them.
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They just don't feel like communicating or working through the conflict.
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And I do think that this is behind a lot of the loneliness epidemic, that people just straight up refuse to communicate with each other once the relationship hits the smallest roadblock.
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They'd rather throw out the whole relationship and look for a new one than try to fix and repair the one that they do have.
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Like there are always going to be ruptures in relationships.
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You can't just go throwing out those relationships the first time you hit a rupture.
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Now the next factor that I'm going to go into is social media.
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But before I talk about the negative consequences of technology, I want to tell you about a much more productive way to use technology to your advantage.
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And that is where I'd like to thank the sponsor of today's video, AccuFlow.
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AccuFlow is the ultimate productivity tool for those of you busy bees that want to maximize productivity and minimize procrastination.
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It combines time blocking with all of your integrations into one easy to use platform.
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I mean, I know if I can use it, you guys can too.
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So let me just show you my schedule for the next few days and I'll explain how I use it.
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All right, so here we have what I did yesterday, and then here we have what I'm doing today and tomorrow.
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As you can tell, I am already behind on what I was supposed to do this morning because I woke up super late because I didn't get a good night of sleep.
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So when you're time blocking, you can either jot something down in here, or you can add a new task in here and then drag it into your schedule.
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So for example, yesterday I wasn't able to finalize finding a venue or sending the save the dates for my baby shower, so I'm going to just pop that in here.
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You also get to choose the color coding, so for me purple typically means work-related tasks, and then green means self-care, and something that really speeds up this process is you can easily just duplicate something and then just drag it into a different day, so that really speeds up for me planning the next week ahead based on what I did last week.
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Also, they have the integrations feature where you can link all of the apps that you use and so everything is just in one spot, which is super easy to use.
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You can also add labels or tags and now that there's an AI feature, it automatically does it for you, so making things even easier.
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It puts tasks into different projects.
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There's also a new statistics feature that really allows you to see how you're using your time.
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So for example, this is my recap for yesterday.
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You can also look at what you have on your plate for today.
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You can prioritize what is your top priority for that day and then it automatically gets highlighted at the forefront of your day.
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One-on-one productivity coaching is available and also you get an onboarding call when you sign up for AccuFlow.
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So really helpful tool for those of you that are trying to be more productive or have a lot on your plate.
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Check out the link in the description box and in the pinned comment if you want to give it try thank you so much to acuflo so factor number four that i think is contributing to the loneliness epidemic this one's not going to be a shocker social media i can't help but wonder if a lot of this inability to communicate that i'm referencing is directly caused by excessive social media usage and the thing is i think social media can be a real double-edged sword i think it can be incredibly valuable it helps small businesses reach their ideal customers it It creates job opportunities.
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It helps people feel connected with their loved ones.
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If those loved ones live far away, it helps people branch out socially.
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It gives people access to a multitude of resources at their very fingertips.
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But unfortunately, it also means that some people will use it as a substitute for socializing in real life.
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Instead of using it to enrich their life, they're using it to subtract from their life.
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A lot of people are not really making an effort to put themselves out there in real life because their brain can't distinguish between real and imagined relationships.
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So they figure if I'm having these virtual relationships, that's good enough.
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That's the same as going out there and interacting with people, which it's not.
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And then when they're not going out there and interacting with people, then they don't practice the communication strategies required in order to be in healthy relationships.
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You know, these relationship skills, they have to be contracted like a muscle.
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If you want to function in relationships, you need skills like active reflective listening, expressing dissent, perspective taking and empathizing with other people, effectively expressing your feelings.
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All of these are skills which are included in the connection course, by the way.
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If you're somebody that feels like you need a little extra help getting these social skills up, then I have over four hours worth of lessons in there.
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The point I'm making though is that social media is great for creating a sense of connectedness if you don't have access to real life relationships for whatever reason right now and for building real life relationships, but it's not so great for people who use it as a substitute for real life relationships.
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And the number five, the last thing that I think is really contributing to the loneliness epidemic, especially of late, is political polarization and people straight up refusing to engage with each other because of differences of opinion.
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And look, every time I say that this is really bad in the US, Europeans will tell me, well, it's also really bad in Europe.
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And like, yes, I see it too.
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It's getting worse in many places in Europe.
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But the political polarization in the US is truly unparalleled, in my opinion, because of social media algorithms and because of echo chambers.
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Unfortunately, many people these days truly believe that anyone who doesn't hold their exact worldview is toxic They're very driven by hate for the other side and they try to absorb whatever the in-group wants them to believe without ever stopping to ask Hold on.
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Is this what I truly believe are there things?
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Maybe I disagree on with my in-group and is that okay?
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If so, I've even had people in my own life get really up in arms when I express a belief that's like even just a tiny bit threatening to their worldview.
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You know, even something about like resilience, for instance.
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If I talk about how stress can actually be a good thing and that it forces us to be resilient, there are people in my life who get really upset with me and who not only want to convince me that I'm wrong and that what I said is offensive, but I can tell it's like genuinely becoming a rupture between us.
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And I thought it was really dangerous how in the wake of the US election, a lot of influencers and even mental health experts were advising a lot of their people to cut off family members who voted for a different party.
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So if you are going into a situation where you have family members, where you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you, like what you said, against your livelihood, and it's completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why.
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Look, I consider myself an independent when it comes to politics, but I too was very concerned about one of the U.S.
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political candidates.
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However, the moment we start to cut off our lines of communication with the other side, especially when the other side is a majority of the country, that's when things are sure to never get better.
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And that's honestly probably part of the reason why we're in this situation in the first place.
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There are even people out there who estrange themselves from best friends and siblings because they disagree on one aspect of politics.
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Just one.
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Some of them even have newborns, you know, newborns that have now never met some of their family members.
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They no longer attend family events.
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It's sad.
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It's really sad and it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it because at some point every single person in your life is going to have a different opinion than you.
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So what are you going to do then?
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You're just going to end up completely alone?
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It doesn't need to be this way.
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It's like people have forgotten how to mentalize, the idea that everyone has their own perspectives and beliefs.
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We expect everyone to think just like us and we assume that if somebody reaches what we consider an immoral conclusion, it must be that they're doing it for immoral reasons, when most of the time what I would consider to be good people reach bad conclusions because of what they consider to be good reasons.
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If you need help with this one, if you're kind of like, yeah, I'm really easily offended.
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I really struggle with like people disagreeing with me.
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I have a video on my book and hearth channel where I talk about how I became less easily offended that might be helpful for you.
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So I'll pop that up here.
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But in conclusion, I think there are five factors that are really contributing to the loneliness epidemic.
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Flaky behavior, overly rigid boundaries and hyper individualism, an unwillingness to communicate, social media being used as a substitute for real life interactions, and political polarization, leading to estrangement.
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So if we want to move forward from this climate, then we need to do the polar opposite of those things.
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We need to be reliable and dependable when we make a commitment to other people.
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We need to make sure our boundaries have just enough porosity and flexibility to allow feedback, to consider other people's needs as well.
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We need to communicate and work through conflict, even if it means doing so in our own, maybe more gentle, maybe more indirect route.
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the only wrong communication style is to not communicate at all.
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We also need to use social media to bolster real-life connection, not as a substitute for it.
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And we need to have more compassion for the other side and to get less easily offended.
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What do you think?
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Did I miss something that you think is contributing to the loneliness epidemic?
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If so, pop it down in the comments below.
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Hope you have a lovely rest of your week and I'll see you soon.
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Bye.

Why practice speaking with this video?

Practicing your English speaking skills with this video provides a unique opportunity to explore the social dynamics affecting relationships in today's world. The speaker addresses the loneliness epidemic in the US, using personal anecdotes and observations that not only engage viewers but also help expand their vocabulary. By shadowing this content, learners can enhance their conversational fluency and gain insight into contemporary cultural issues, allowing them to respond thoughtfully in discussions about social connectivity and emotional well-being. Utilizing videos like this as a resource in your journey to learn English with YouTube can lead to a deeper understanding of both language and social interactions.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

The speaker employs several key grammatical structures and expressions that are particularly useful for learners aiming to improve their English communication. Here are a few noteworthy examples:

  • “I genuinely believe…” - This phrase indicates sincerity and reinforces the speaker's authority on the topic. It’s a great way to express personal beliefs in discussions.
  • “Not to say I should win an award…” - This construction is useful for expressing humility while still asserting a point. It can help learners navigate complex social dialogues.
  • “It is not okay…” - This phrase emphasizes disapproval and can effectively convey one's feelings in conversations.
  • “People often complain…” - This expression introduces common grievances, allowing learners to discuss shared experiences or societal issues, which is beneficial for IELTS speaking practice.

Common Pronunciation Traps

As you listen to the speaker, pay close attention to some tricky pronunciation elements. Here are a few to focus on:

  • “Last minute” - The blending of these words can lead to slurring. Practice saying them distinctly to avoid misunderstandings.
  • “Flaky behavior” - The 'k' sound can sometimes be mispronounced. Emphasizing each syllable will enhance clarity.
  • “Hyper-individualism” - This term may be challenging due to its length and complexity. Break it down into smaller parts to master the pronunciation.

Improving your English pronunciation largely influences your effectiveness in conversation. Utilizing the techniques discussed in this video can help you become more confident when speaking. Additionally, practicing shadowing techniques could refine your ability to mimic natural speech patterns and improve your overall communication skills.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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