“Loneliness is the endemic disease of our time.”
My husband broke out this sentence last weekend, and of course, my response was, “Where’s my laptop? I need to write that down.”
There’s a lot to unpack in that sentence: at its most basic, the state of being lonely and all it entails, the idea of loneliness as a disease (and a widespread systemic one at that), and whether loneliness is more prevalent now than it has been in the past.
And once I add in the context of the conversation, which was about social media, there’s even more to think about. How does social media (Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, forums, online dating, etc.) affect loneliness? Does it make us feel more connected and satisfied on the whole, or does it, by diluting our pool of friends and sometimes encouraging quantity over quality and surface over depth, make us feel even more lonely?
I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all answer. Even if I examine my own personal experience, I’ve had both positive and negative reactions to social media.
The Bad:
1. Hearing about a party that all your friends went to, to which you were not invited, is not so fun. On the plus side, this means that when the party comes up later in in-person conversation (which it inevitably will), at least you’re not blindsided and can respond with the appropriate blasé remark.
2. Reading the never-ending stream of advice and opinions about writing and the publishing industry can be draining and kill my own inspiration and ability to work. I imagine this is true in other fields as well.
3. Time sink. Enough said.
4. Having a lot of Facebook friends is not the same as having friends who form my support network, with whom I have a private and personal relationship. And yet, sometimes Facebook distracts from the need to maintain those deeper relationships.
5. Friends’ internet time is not equal, so I will end up with more interaction with those friends who check their social networks frequently, as opposed to those friends with whom I have the closest in-person connections.
6. Social media makes me feel like I know what’s going on for people, and it makes people feel like they know what’s going on for me. Which is great, until I start to think about all the things I never say because they are too private for public consumption.
The Good:
1. One of the reasons I love blogging so much is because it allows me to use social media in a very content-heavy way, helping me balance the whole breadth vs. depth issue. Plus it gives me the chance to be a conversation-starter or to respond in depth to interesting conversations begun by others.
2. I am able to keep myself very informed and up-to-date on any of my interests or career concerns.
3. Social media makes it easier to reach out and create or find a community of like-minded individuals.
4. I can stay in at least nominal touch with a lot more people than I could have even ten years ago. Contacting someone out of the blue is also a lot less weird than it used to be.
5. Getting multiple birthday wishes (and having an easier time remembering and acknowledging others’ birthdays) makes me happy. Yes, I love birthdays.
6. Sometimes social media is great entertainment, pure and simple. And I love the way it lets people share content.
On the whole, social media makes me feel more connected, as long as I remember that it’s not a substitute for in-person time (or e-mail for those of my friends who aren’t local). What has your experience been with different forms of social media? Does it make you feel more or less isolated?
On Thursday, I’ll be exploring the idea of how loneliness fits into modern American society, and why it might be on the rise.
UPDATE: An interesting recent article on how Facebook helps people overcome shyness. It ends with the insight that some users become more lonely because of Facebook.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue lately. I’ve never felt more connected with my friends and peers thanks to social media. The writing life can definitely be a lonely one sometimes, but staying connected, getting support, and even swapping bad jokes over Twitter of Facebook can be the little push that keeps you going.
The flip side is sometimes other people can seem more successful and happy because that’s what most people post about. I guess we just have to remember we’re all much more complex than our status updates would suggest 🙂
Thanks for another great post.
Yes, exactly! Social media is a start to staying connected but not a full illustration of a person. Sometimes there’s also a lot of negativity to contend with in the status updates, but whether it’s too much negative or too much positive, I do think using social media in a healthy way requires me to stay centered in myself. When I don’t, that’s when I get unhappy.
Social media works well for me. I’m not the type to feel extremely lonely or bored, ever, but I do communicate a lot more effectively through writing. I’m enough of an introvert that talking about important issues face-to-face is sometimes difficult, and causes my mind to shut down. Discussing them over facebook, e-mail, or whatever else is often better, at least for me.
I’ve also made friends via social media, not just maintained friendships that already existed. Yes I’ve even made friends through gaming sites.
On the whole, I would say that social media has made me more social, and strengthened my relationships. I started really socializing online when I was 12 though, so it’s just a part of my development.
Really interesting blog post – thanks!!
I’ve also made friends through social media, and also cemented one-off meetings into friendships, which is very cool! And I was another early starter – I began when I was 13 so it does seem very natural to me.
That being said, I do get something different and important from face-to-face one-on-one interactions. But part of that is time spent: the 30 seconds of a tweet vs. an hour or two of hanging out time.
I’ll echo everything Andy just said.
In fact, he covered it so well, I don’t really have anything to add. Hooray for dodging the time sink!
I think you’re better at dodging than I am. 🙂
And yes, Andy did cover it remarkably well, didn’t he?
😀
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Social media is a wonderful thing; my stream of consciousness elaboration on why is hardly needed to justify that.
Social media can also be so subtly and powerfully dangerous, in the mask it gradually and forcefully puts on many of us. The rush of connectedness, of togetherness, of instant and gratifying large-scale communication – can make one feel a sort of modern high that once, I imagine, could only be felt with genuine connectedness. With relationships that are nurtured, maintained, and carry with them a sort of realness that reminds us of what it is to be human.
Far beyond the mask of all of this instant and gratifying large-scale communication, us humans lie waiting, withering, and weeping.
It really is a double-edged sword, isn’t it? It’s hard to find (and maintain) the right balance.
Have you/anyone seen or read Sherry Turkle’s new book “Together Alone – Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”? Great intro, then I skipped to Part 2 and how social media is changing us and our expectations regarding relationships… (especially youth, of course 😉 Part 1 is about Robots, which may be where things are headed including love and relationships (!?!). But then, back in the day, Socrates was pretty worried about conversations being ~written down~. Pretty interesting read. Ms. T is a prof at MIT.
That sounds like a fascinating book!
And yes, it seems big change always provokes big worry. 🙂
Cool reading everyone’s thoughts. I embraced social media whole-heartedly at first. I gradually have grown more skeptical though as I see less people around me wanting to connect in in-person, creative ways. As was alluded to in the post, when we have an urge and it’s satiated in a way not historically typical to the human experience then we most likely will get historically atypical results. In this case, I think the urge to connect with others may for many of us get satiated though social media just enough to not connect in more important, meaningful and satisfying ways.
Personally, I’m fasting from Facebook for six weeks. Half way through I don’t miss it at all (though I was extremely active previous to the fast). There has been a handful of times it’d been handy, but then I remember all the time I waste and how 9 out of 10 times I log off feeling “blah.” It’s that 1 out of 10 that has kept me going, but now that I am seeing that I feel just as connected off of it without the side effects, I’m seriously considering staying off of FB. If it wasn’t so addicting, it’d be a fun once-in-a-great-while hobby to do to connect with old friends.
The addiction/perceived-dependency and corrolation with lonliness factors seem to be connected to a lot of different technological developments of the last century (cars, phones, suburban development, T.V., even the air-conditioner!). It seems a deeper, more comprehensive philosophy is needed to guide us. That and divine grace. We may be trading ancient problems for modern ones.
I’ve had to take mini-breaks from social media as well in order to get my head back on straight. I’d say that where it has been a particular blessing is keeping in touch with non-local friends, the ranks of whom continue to grow.
Tech really is changing things. I read an article a few weeks ago about telephones–how less people use phones for actual calls and prefer email & social media. One of the etiquette experts (it might have been Miss Manners?) was quoted as saying the telephone has always been rude because it implies the receiver of the call should have to drop everything to talk to the caller. Hence the movement away from phone calls.
I find this subject endlessly fascinating!
I suppose it’s ironic to post here, as I’m availing myself of the kinds of remote internet-communication I usually can’t stand. But, overall, this new technology has left me feeling more isolated. There seems to be no such thing as a private, personal, in-depth conversation via facebook, something that could actually be done via email. I prefer face-to-face interaction, barring that, then at least hearing a voice over the phone, then a letter, or at least an email. Time and again, the ubiquity of cellphones and texting and facebook has created a sense of isolation – if not downright rudeness – when people ignore your presence right in front of them to interact with someone not even present via a machine. And the messages are so truncated as well. People tend to speak more in blips, than paragraphs. How connected can it really be?
However, it was pointed out that intellectuals etc. of each age thought their age was the worst. So maybe, in a sense, none of this is new. Kafka was pretty damn alienated in his day and by industrial society, far before the dawn of cell phones, texting, twitter, and facebook. Perhaps the only conclusion, if there is one, is that loneliness and isolation goes more hand in hand with cities and urbanization, far less so in small communities. But, thanks to the advent of cell phones, I do think it makes it possible to feel more alone anywhere. Maybe, if there were only three people in a room, they might say “hi” to each other. Now, with one on a cell, one with a bluetooth, and the third plugged into an ipod, they probably wouldn’t acknowledge the others’ existence.
I hear you. I personally place a very high value on deeper relationships, and it’s difficult (maybe even impossible?) to maintain those through social media alone. I prefer face-to-face or a longer written communique (although I am fine with email). I’m not even a very big fan of IM.
Watching people’s behaviors with their cell phones is very interesting. It’s amazing to me how it’s not considered rude to mess around with a smartphone while hanging out with people. I recently got my own smartphone partly in self defense, but it still feels strange. Happily at least my husband is very reasonable about using his phone. We went to Disneyland recently and I had a “no phone while in line” rule–I think I only broke it once. So it is possible to buck the trend, but of course impossible to control other people’s behavior.
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[…] of loneliness in modern society with the use of social media, and although I have explored the idea before, I have become less convinced. Isn’t it convenient that we can blame technology, that behemoth […]