When I feel lonely, I’m not alone. Cigna recently surveyed 20,000 people and found that about half of the respondents reported that they often felt lonely or left out.
It turns out that loneliness has very little to do with the actual number of friends or social contacts we have. Rather, I feel lonely when I lack relationships that make me feel known and understood. At the extreme, in the Cigna survey I mentioned, 13 percent of respondents said there were zero people who knew them well.
If it’s not a lack of connections that leads to loneliness, but rather the feeling of not being known, then it’s easy to see why our increasing connectedness on social media may exacerbate the loneliness epidemic. It’s easy to understand the results of a recent survey examining the links between loneliness and social media use: The top 25 percent of social media users were twice as likely to report feeling lonely as those using it least.
Does the ad nauseam stream of ‘happy’ photos on social media cause viewers to feel lonely and left out, as many have suggested? Or do we flock to make Internet ‘friends’ because we are lonely and seek human connection, no matter how trivial or shallow?
No one really knows the answers to these questions about causality. Most likely both are true. They certainly reinforce each other.
Here’s what we know:
1. Loneliness is a growing epidemic, seemingly fueled at least in part by social media use.
2. Social media use is rampant and growing, seemingly fueled at least in part by users’ loneliness and search for connections.
So loneliness and social media use appear to be inextricably linked. Can we capitalize on the linkage to combat the horrific loneliness epidemic?
In the next few blog posts, I will explore ways that we might develop a meaningful online community that, instead of feeding the loneliness epidemic, might actually ward off feelings of loneliness by fostering deeper knowing of one another.
In my early life I often felt lonely. It was a horrific experience of deep emptiness and desperation. Seeing others experiencing happiness (or pretending to do so) simply suggested further that something was deeply wrong in my own life. If I were lonely today, seeing the barrage of happy posts on social media about how wonderful every other person’s life is might easily have a negative impact on my own sense of my well-being.
Alternatively being known as occurs in authentic relationships provides for me a rich sense of being alive. Can we create that sense of companionship online. I look forward to being part of the possibilities Marlena has in mind.
I’m so fortunate to be on this journey with you!
My best relationships are face to face relationships with family and friends that I see often or have a long history with. My Facebook interactions are fun to read, but certainly lack intimacy.
True for most of us, I think Jane. But given that we do share so many online interactions, is it possible to make them more real, more meaningful?