Is Technology Making Us Lonely?

Technology is supposed to make us more connected. We can stay in touch with our friends all the time on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, and, of course, by texting. But are our smartphones actually getting in the way of real socializing? Could technology be making us more alone?

As social media reshapes how we connect, we have to rethink what we need to feel fulfilled in our relationships, and realize that no amount of tweets, texts or Facebook status updates can provide it.  While social networking is a great tool, there’s a profound difference between an online social network and a real one.  Despite the fact there will always be someone, somewhere awake to “like” our latest status update – however witty or banal it may be – when it comes to friends, quantity doesn’t equal quality.

Recent studies have found that despite being more connected than ever, more people feel more alone than ever. Surprisingly, those who report feeling most alone, are those you’d expect it from least: young people under 35 who are the most prolific social networkers of all.    Another recent study found that 48% of respondents only had one confidant compared to a similar study 25 years ago when people said they had about three people they could confide in. So as we have built expansive social networks online, the depth of our networks offline has decreased.  So it seems that because technology makes it easier to stay in touch while keeping distance, more and more people find themselves feeling distant and never touching. Or at least not enough to avoid us feeling increasingly alone.

Social media allows us to control what we share.   It appeals to our vulnerability and vanity. We can pick and choose which photos we share and craftily edit our words to ensure we convey the image we want others to see. Yet it also provides the illusion of friendship that, in real life, may be shallow, superficial and unable to stand the demands, and pressures genuine friendships entail.

Digital communication can never replace in person, face-to-face, contact in building relationships – personal and professional. As a study by Harvard Business Review found, team performance went up 50% when teams socialized more and limited email for more operational only issues.  But whether loneliness leads people to the Internet, or the internet to loneliness, it seems that many of us turn to the internet to avoid simply being with ourselves. As Sherri Turkle author of Alone Together wrote, until we learn how to be okay with solitude, we are not going to be able to connect deeply with others. Social networking provides a means of escaping confronting aspects of ourselves and our lives we wish were different, better, more glamorous and less mundane. It’s an all too convenient tool for avoiding sometimes harsh realities and playing pretend (to ourselves and others) with our life.   Online websites promise avatars that will allow us to love our bodies, love our lives, and find the true romance we dream of. But at what cost to the real life (marriage, body, friendships) we have to face when we close our computer down?  Even the most brilliant and mesmerizing avatars cannot compensate for what is missing in real life.

Don’t get me wrong; online technology is not some “necessary evil.” Far from it. It’s a magnificent tool for staying in touch with people across miles, time zones and years. We’ve all witnessed it’s power in rallying people behind noble causes (think KONY 2012), overthrow governments (as we saw in the Arab Spring last year), enable people in isolated corners of the globe to plug into resources and information they could never otherwise access (think North Korea), and provide opportunity to conduct business more efficiently than ever before.  But like all tools, we have to learn how to use it well, and not let it use us. We cannot become dependent on it to do things it simply cannot do – like fulfill our deep innate need for intimacy, genuine connection and real friendship. All needs which can only be fulfilled through sometimes-uncomfortable conversations, in which we share openly what is happening to us and engage authentically with what is going on for others.

As we rely on technology to communicate more efficiently in an increasingly global world, we mustn’t lose tough with the physical community around us or forget that human element within any relationship can never be replaced by technology. The more we rely on technology in our lives the more mindful we must be to turn it off and spend time with people, without our gadgets beeping at us to return texts that really, aren’t worth our time to reply to. While it might be stating the obvious, if you want to connect with people more, you need to be in converse with people more – openly, authentically and with a vulnerability that may sometimes make you uncomfortable.