A year can’t go by now without some pundit, writer, or researcher weighing in on how the more technology infiltrates our lives, the lonelier we’ve become.
Stephen Marche, a novelist writing in the May 2012 Atlantic, weaves together a bunch of anecdotes to suggest that Facebook is making us lonelier.
Renowned MIT researcher Sherry Turkle, who bases her conclusions on an endless stream of in-vitro interviews with teens and young adults, suggested over the weekend in the New York Times that technology is certainly making us more connected… but those connections are more shallow and less rich that traditional face-to-face connections.
These are interesting observations, but are they offering us a false dichotomy? Or suggesting a causal relationship where none has yet been established?
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Hmmmm..I agree that this is a complicated topic. As an inveterate Facebook user and e-mailer, and as someone who isn’t always very good at making new F2F connections with people, I have found that Facebook has actually helped my social life by letting me know about events that my friends are attending, even if I don’t connect with those people very much offline. Then I go to the event and have face-to-face connections with them. I’ve noticed also that in the times when I’m lonely or am feeling liking isolating myself, Facebook helps me feel connected even when I don’t have the wherewithal or the will to go out and connect deeply with people F2F. If I put a message out there saying “I really need some love right now”, I’m guaranteed to get several people reaching out to me, even if don’t really feel like reaching out to others. If it weren’t for technology at these times, I probably wouldn’t reach out to anyone. More people are aware of some of the things I’m experiencing, and thus can offer support (and vice versa). I’ve had Facebook IM conversations with people I’ve never even met when I’ve indicated that I’m struggling (and vice versa) and these connections seem as deep to me as ones I have with F2F friends ( I mean it’s basically the same as talking to someone on the phone). I certainly don’t mistake most of my Facebook “friends” for “real” friends, though I do have one more thing in common with Facebook friends if I want to connect more with them on a F2F level. I don’t think you can make any sweeping generalizations about technology and how it effects social connection. How we connect depends on who we were already, before we started interacting with the technology. Personally, I feel like all this “OMG (!), Facebook is ruining our society” stuff is just people trying to get attention. Most of the time they don’t seem to be that familiar with how this technology actually works, socially. I usually just roll my eyes and wonder whether people said the same thing when the telephone became commonplace.
Great article which brings attention to a real problem with today’s children and youth…
As a child psychiatrist, we are seeing an apparent increases in children and youth with problems with anxiety, depression and suicide. One scary statistic — compared to the 1950′s and 1960′s, the suicide rate in Canada has increased 3-4X.
Why is this happening?
Strong attachments (i.e. connections and relationships) between children and nurturing adult caregivers (i.e. PARENTS) has been shown by numerous students to be the single most important resiliency factor for a person’s mental health.
So why are we seeing so many children and youth who are vulnerable?
The problem with today’s ‘Generation Me’ is that (through no fault of their own), they have more weak connections than ever with their parents, who are more and more busy working than ever. And they are spending more time than ever in front of computer screens, technology, or connecting with friends.
The problem however, is that peers can never meet your emotional/attachment/relationship needs as well as only parents can. Peers, through no fault of their own, are going through their own issues, are still developing, and can only meet so much of a child’s needs.
Technology plays a role with all of this, because it appears that the MISUSE of technology is weakening 1) children’s relationships with parents, and 2) children’s relationships with peers…
We need to understand more about the technology and learn SAFE WAYS how to use it. As the ‘hammer’ mentioned in the article, there are both safe and unsafe ways to use a hammer…
Michael from Ottawa
facebook, has made me all that much more aware of not having grown up with real friends. i don’t have close family either. it has shown itself to be a magnifying lense, for my sense of desolation. as a man, this is awkward,because it fits the bill for patterns of behavior for people, who at times go bonkers in society. so, it’s not something i can talk about, lest people think i’m crazy, and by extention potentially violent. i rarely know any of the people that the system suggests,i may know. that just pours salt on the wound. i think the internet in general, can very much magnify what is already a dominant component of ones life. i really wonder, how many introverted lonely people, feel any less so, because of the internet or facebook.
Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with your friends, to keep up with their activities and whereabouts. Interacting with others on there is fun also. For some, people can go all day posting and talking about stuff. And there are some people that post one sentence and everyone gets annoyed by it. A whole wide variety of people with different observations will read and scrutinize every word, letter and number in that sentence and will find a way to make you a problem for society. Such as one subject will be viewed in another way, meaning he or she read this but I thought of something else. For example: I had pizza for lunch. Someone else will read it as relating it to an explicit activity. Rumors like that will always get started.
So its not really a problem with facebook. I think its some peoples level of maturity, their position in life, things they have or dont have, etc.
But getting back to the topic of your article, does facebook make you lonelier? To me it doesnt, but if youre in situations as the above, socializing can be expensive in the cost of your reputation.