LIKES TO LONELINESS

 

Put your phone down. Think about the last time you spent about 20 minutes scrolling and came away from it feeling better. When I say better, I don’t mean numb or distracted I mean actually better. This can be a hard question to answer for a lot of people.

The aim of the blog is to explore this topic in depth and ultimately answer the question if social media is the reason for the growth in loneliness.

Right now, over 5 billion people use social media, Five BILLION. We are the most digitally connected generation in the whole of human history and yet loneliness has become one of the biggest public health issues of our time. In 2018, the UK government had to appoint an official minister of loneliness, this is the first time ever. I want you to think about that. That isn’t exactly something I would call common practice. In a world of digital connectivity, a government has had to appoint a minister for loneliness. This is proof that loneliness has become so widespread that it now requires a political response, not a charity or campaign but a government minister.

But why are we the loneliest generation?

Part of the answer is the fundamentals of social media. Sociologist Barry Wellman described something he called networked individualism; it’s the idea that in the digital world you are the centre of your own social universe (Rainie and Wellman 2012). Your feed is curated around you, the algorithm learns YOU. The whole thing is designed to feel personal but instead it ends up being personal in a way that isolates you not connecting you. You’re not a community you’re a sole viewer watching everyone else

 Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who’s spent decades upon decades studying the way we reach one another puts it blatantly in her book Alone Together(2011), we’ve started substituting the performance of connection for actual connection. We post, curate and broadcast. We craft the versions of ourselves and our digital identity and call it sharing. This results in a unique type of loneliness. Surrounded with an audience yet known by no one.

 And the research backs this up, A study by Hunt et al. (2018) split university students in two separate groups, one continued using social media as normal while the others were limited to 30mins a day. Within 3 weeks the group with the limit had lower levels of depression and loneliness. Three weeks, that’s all it took for mental clarity. In psychology terms 3 weeks is nothing this implies that the relationship between our brains and social media usage isn’t gradual but an immediate effect. The findings from this study are uncomfortable, maybe the platforms that were made to bring us together are pulling us apart.

Research consistently categorises social media user into two types of users, the active and the passive. (Burke, Kraut and Marlow, 2011). Being active means messaging people, commenting and actually engaging with content. Passive means scrolling endlessly just watching with no interaction. Passive scrolling if were being honest describes most of our time on social media especially on apps like TikTok. Passively users are the ones constantly linked to comparison anxiety and even self doubt. We’re not participating but merely watching. 

It is easy to make social media the problem here but that isn’t the case. Even though passive use is the problem, we keep doing it, mainly because the apps are made to work that way. Endless scrolling, autoplay these are accidents or a coincidence, they’re features to keep you on the app. They are features used to keep you scrolling, to make you feel like you’re missing out by not scrolling. This is product design in possibly the worst way as you don’t realise it’s happening.

 Anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that while online relationships can never match the depth of real face to face relationships, they are good for something else, they help keep weak ties alive (Dunbar, 2016). The weak ties are the distant friends, old classmates that you’d otherwise lose. Despite sounding disposable weak ties actually matter, Mark Gravette’s research back in 1973 showed that these weaker ties are more likely to bring new information and opportunities in your life. Social media keeps those alive in a way that previously wasn’t possible.

There are also communities, these online spaces built around shared spaces and identity where social media actually does what it’s meant to do, it connects. For people who are isolated offline whether because of geography identity or circumstances online community is a real thing. Not a substitute.

So the picture is much more confusing than the title would suggest, social media isn’t making us lonely but how we use it is. There is a stark difference between actively using social media compared to passively using it. Theres a difference to using your phone during a concert or an event compared to sending a voice note to a friend you haven’t seen in months due to them moving away. They both happen on the same device yet only one of them connects you.

 The question isn’t whether we should be using social media that ship sailed a long time ago. The question is whether the kind of connection it gives you the majority of the time is the one we actually need. And if you were honest with yourself the answer is probably more complicated that any follower account can suggest.

The apps aren’t the problem the habits are, and luckily it’s never too late to change a bad habit. Likes aren’t love and your followers aren’t your friends they’re your connections. The feeling you get after 20 minutes of scrolling? That isn’t nothing.

Links to our socials!

X(Formally know as twitter) - https://x.com/likestolonely?s=11

TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@likestoloneliness?_r=1&_t=ZN-96C7ymRCXeI

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/LikesToLoneliness

Linktree- https://linktr.ee/morganwilliams1606

Reference list

Burke, M., Kraut, R. and Marlow, C. (2011) Social Capital on Facebook: Differentiating Uses and Users. Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsProceedings, pp. 571–580.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2016) ‘Do online social media cut through the constraints that limit the size of offline social networks?’ Royal Society Open Science, 3(1) p. 150292.

Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C. and Young, J. (2018) ‘No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression.’ Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10) pp. 751–768.

Rainie, H. and Wellman, B. (2012) Networked: The new social operating system. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Turkle, S. (2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.

Turkle, S. (2015) Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. New York, New York: Penguin Books.

Tutić, A. and Wiese, H. (2015) ‘Reconstructing Granovetter’s network theory.’ Social Networks, 43 p. 136148.

Twenge, J. M. (2017) IGen : Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy--and completely unprepared for adulthood (and what this means for the rest of us). New York, Ny: Atria Paperback.