Fighting loneliness

We're more "connected" than ever, yet we're deeply and tragically alone.

Growing up, throughout my childhood, I always had a decent core group of friends. Some I had known since I was a tiny kindergartener, and others, I had become close to in high school. While, of course, the typical dramas and insecurities existed, I was lucky enough to say I never felt lonely.

I left all of my closest friends when I started at my university at 18. I knew a decent amount of people from my high school, but no one I felt particularly myself with. Walking towards my classes on that first day, I felt undeniably nervous and alone.

Incredibly, that feeling dissipated immediately. Entering that first class, made up of all Freshmen, the craziest thing happened. We all looked around the room, realizing we were all new, and just started to talk and get to know each other. It was immediate - “hey I’m ________, I’m from _________. What are you studying here?” Before the bell even rang, I had exchanged numbers with multiple new people, compared schedules, and made plans to meet up at the dining hall for lunch. I was giddy.

A similar process repeated in each of my new classes that week. I had never in my life made so many new friends so quickly. I caught up with my friends at other colleges on the phone later that week and told them about my experience. They told me that it had gone exactly the same way for them. Oh, to be 18 with the whole world in front of us.

This past August, my brother-in-law started at the same university that I had attended — nearly a decade and a half after my freshman year. I told him about my first week, and I asked him if it was the same for him.

He answered, “No. Not really. I haven’t made any new friends yet. Mostly, everyone sat in silence on their phones.”

Of course, the missing piece — the smartphone, social media. When I was 18, I still had my Nokia with its interchangeable case. If I wanted to hide behind my phone, the best I could do was texting with the QWRTY keypad or playing Snake. The Internet capability was a mind-numbingly slow process to download a new ringtone.

Hearing this from my brother-in-law made me so for him, for his generation. Some of the friends I met that week are still a part of my life, and even the ones who aren’t were a piece of the fabric of my college experience.

A loneliness epidemic

Turns out, it’s not just Gen X, it’s not just college students. From US news, “According to the American Psychiatric Association’s latest Healthy Minds Monthly Poll, about 30% of respondents ages 18 to 34 said they feel lonely every day or several times a week. APA CEO and Medical Director Dr. Saul Levin says, ‘...distracting yourself when you’re feeling lonely with social media might be a double-edged sword: While it can connect, it can also lead to feelings of missing out, and we need to make sure we remain conscious of its effects on our mood. In this tech-heavy world, we should not forget the value of in-person interaction.’”

It’s even worse for men. A survey conducted by the Survey Center on American Life found that “over the past three decades, the number of close friends Americans have plummeted, particularly for men. The percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by half since 1990, from 55 percent to 27 percent. The study also found the percentage of men without any close friends jumped fro 3 percent to 15 percent, a fivefold increase. Single men fare the worst. One in five American men who are unmarried and not in a romantic relationship report not have any close friends.”

It’s gotten so dire, the U.S. Surgeon General put out a report warning Americans that we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic. From the report:

“The lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual health and longevity. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively.37 More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

Social connection is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter. Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival. Now, even in modern times, we human beings are biologically wired for social connection. Our brains have adapted to expect proximity to others.51,52 Our distant ancestors relied on others to help them meet their basic needs. Living in isolation, or outside the group, means having to fulfill the many difficult demands of survival on one’s own. This requires far more effort and reduces one’s chances of survival.52 Despite current advancements that now allow us to live without engaging with others (e.g., food delivery, automation, remote entertainment), our biological need to connect remains.”

Read that again — our biological need to connect remains.

More connected than ever?

We cannot fill the hole of our loneliness with technology, with social media, with online forums and merely texting our friends. We are more “connected” than ever, yet we are deeply and tragically alone.

It’s an avalanche of problems. The more reliant we become on technology to interact with others, the less we exercise our social skills. From EAVI, “socializing in the digital sphere is associated with decreased social skills in real life. Non-verbal cues, such a body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice are often lost in the digital realm. Not trained to read them, young people find it increasingly difficult to efficiently communicate face-to-face.”

This article expands, “The immediate gratification provided by digital platforms can lead to decreased patience and reduced ability to engage in lengthy conversations or deep discussions, potentially impacting critical thinking and active listening skills.”

The recent pandemic only exacerbated the issue, socially isolating us and making us more reliant on (and complacent with) connection on the Internet. From the NYT, “social skills are like muscles that atrophy from lack of use. People separated from society — by circumstance or by choice — report feeling more social anxious, impulsive, awkward, and intolerant when they return to normal life.” The privation sends our brains into survival mode, which dampens our ability to recognize and appropriately respond to the subtleties and complexities inherent in social situations.”

We have become completely reliant on the Internet to cultivate relationships, yet those relationships are deeply shallow. They don’t fill our cup in the ways that in-person relationships do. They are not shared experiences. They are not belly laughs. They are not caring for a sick friend, cooking a meal together together, looking at someone else’s eyes and understanding that they get you.

Where do we go from here?

We must try harder. Get out of the house. Invite people over. Ask people to go on walks, to explore, to tag along on boring errands.

Do not try to salve your loneliness on the Internet. It’s never going to fulfill you in the way that a in-person relationships can. We have to push past the feeling of complacency in the way things are going. Reach out to friends that you haven’t seen in a long time. Even if they don’t respond enthusiastically or at all, try again. You never know what someone is going through and you could be providing them with the lifeline they need.

We have to make this a movement. It needs to be something we fight hard for. We cannot expect anyone or anything else to balm our loneliness.

Quite literally, the only way through this is together.