>>Most software engineers have a healthy circle of friends and social life.
Sorry, but I'm going to call [citation needed] on this. It's a rather extraordinary claim, and goes against both popular stereotypes and my personal experience.
This is confirmation bias. I don't think the stereotypes are as generally popular as you claim. My own observational bias is the countless "learn to code", "anyone can code" promotions targeted at youth that make no mention of social limitations.
Depression and anxiety are common in the general population. Social maladaptation is also common, though less so. It is unsurprisingly true that these traits are a bit overrepresented in the tech professions. But tech is not unique in this, the healthcare professions also overrepresent depression, for instance.
In either case, it is not even close to a majority.
People that tend to be in these minority groups though by very nature isolate themselves and tend to only see that minority. At worst, online these can lead to some very troublesome echo chambers.
There's nothing there that indicating mood disorders, waking hours, or screen time even are wildly outside the norm for the middle class working population.
Anyways, I don't care about this fact too much. I'm going to continue believing that the majority of software engineers have fairly typical social lives, and my own observations don't conflict with this.
I don't care much about this, because the point I was making was that categorizing oneself in buckets like "software engineer" to justify one's misery is counterproductive, and even if 95% of software engineers were miserable I still think it be worth working towards that 5% rather than worrying about stereotypes.
This crosses into name-calling and personal attack. Please steer clear of that on Hacker News; we're trying for something a bit better than internet default here.
As hamiltonc said, this sounds like an admission that you don't actually have any evidence. That's okay, but you should just say so, instead of personal attacks such as accusing me of "online forum logic argument wankery". This place is for engaging in discussion with others in good faith, which you have not demonstrated ("good faith" in this context means if you make a broad-sweeping claim, you need to provide evidence for it, at least when asked).
Your account seems to be new, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are indeed new here. Here's my "tip": please don't do what you just did. It degrades the quality of the debate and breeds resentment.
Sorry, but I'm going to call [citation needed] on this. It's a rather extraordinary claim, and goes against both popular stereotypes and my personal experience.