Social Media and Loneliness
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-14/social-media-and-loneliness
Online social media platforms have made Americans more connected with each other than ever: more than 40 percent of Americans now have a Facebook account. But new research shows that increasing digital engagement hasn’t changed the fact that Americans are lonelier than ever: a recent survey found that 35 percent of adults over forty-five are chronically lonely, compared to just 20 percent ten years ago. And one-quarter of Americans say they have no best friend to confide in. What increasing digital connections mean for the epidemic of loneliness.
Guests
Stephen Marche
author and columnist, The Atlantic and Esquire magazines
Sherry Turkle
professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other" (2011)
Zeynep Tufekci
assistant professor, University of North Carolina; fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Program Highlights
While social media platforms such as Facebook and Google+ have grown, new research suggests Americans are lonelier than ever. A recent survey found that 35 percent of adults are chronically lonely, while 25 percent said they don’t have a best friend. Our panel discussed what a rise in social networking connections means for offline friendships.
‘A Tribe Of One’
Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described Americans as living “alone together.” “That is where we're together because we're always connected, but we're alone because we're kind of in a tribe of one,” Turkle said. She said it has become commonplace to see texting at funerals and emailing during faculty meetings. This leads people to identify less with their community because people unapologetically say their highest value is controlling where they put their attention.
Ambiguous Data
Turkle said the data is ambiguous about the relationship between social media and loneliness. She said some people use Facebook to make online friendships that transition to offline friendships. Meanwhile, others use it for validation. “That isn't nurturing, that isn't satisfying, and there's a lot of pressures when you put yourself on Facebook to present yourself as the self you want to be, as the ideal self, not particularly as who you are, but rather as who you want to be.” Her research shows that people experience FOMO, or fear of missing out, which causes them to live “a life of performance for that larger group.”
Social Media Decreases Loneliness
Many sociologists would say it’s an exaggeration to equate a rise in loneliness to an epidemic, said Zeynep Tufecki, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He said social media isn’t the only factor driving isolation, pointing at traffic and longer work hours. Instead, Tufecki sees social media as the antidote to television, which isolates us, saying people who are active on social media are less lonely than people who don’t use the tools. “I'm looking at national survey after national survey that shows that people who are active on social media actually have more face-to-face interaction as well.” Tufecki said the data show that, on Facebook, people interact intensely with a handful of close friends and interact weekly with a broader network, which reflects our pre-Facebook behavior. Stephen Marche, a columnist at The Atlantic, added, “It's people who already have strong social abilities and strong social networks who tend to flourish on Facebook.”
You can read the full transcript here.
Comments
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Unfortunately as a mother of young adults, I am concerned about facebook usage. My 18 yr old daughter has become friends with a complete stranger, via a friend, that she later dated and thought she knew due to facebook and was not at all the same person. Also have had them experience needing to accept all friend requests and never really think about how or even if they know them at all. They have had requests appear to be legitamate people and in the end, they are somebody completely different.
I think this is a very interesting discussion. I agree with the gentleman that says that it all depends what you put into the social media experience. It's also important to be realistic about what social media can do. Personally, I use several social media platforms (including Facebook) for a variety of purposes from staying connected to distant acquaintances to connecting with a broader professional concern. As a public librarian, I would also like to comment to the speaker that made a general statement about the exclusion of certain groups from social media. We see these "excluded" groups everyday in the library gaining access.
Hillman and Ventura put it well,
"I party therefore I am"
CONVIVO ERGO SUM
So, let's party (anywhere we can)!
"My job is my wife, loneliness is my mistress, despair is my sex body, and angst is the chick I met online, who turned out to be a guy."
Homer Simpson a TV cartoon character
First, I'm a proponent of solitude; solitude is healthy and expected. After all, if one can't live with oneself, how can one achieve successful interaction with others? Second, while Facebook, Twitter, dating websites and other social networking sites do provide a means of connection or even reconnection, something, somehow, seems lost in translation and I believe that "something" is the level of intimacy that one can only experience via face-to-face contact. True connection (or bonding) entails a certain modicum of risk. It seems to me that Facebook and the rest, have stripped us of this.
Frankly, risk is half the fun of getting to know someone else.
I am a 50 year-old female without children and a small extended family. While I am very socially connected and have meaningful friendships, I worry about loneliness twenty years from now. My siblings and I take care of our father who is in a religious-lay nursing home - owned and operated by an order Catholic sisters. Among the siblings, we promised that Dad would not go without seeing one of us each day. Sadly, so many other residents never have a family member or friend at their side.
Lately, I've been thinking about communal living for myself and other women in my same demographic. I see how happy the elderly Catholic sisters are; they have a beautiful community of friends and support. Something inside holds me back from putting the question out to my friends. We are all so independent; maybe I fear that we would not get along!?
I'm not interested in going to an "assisted living" facility when I'm older as I feel I would lose connection to a larger set of friends. Assisted living facilities are great and offer many social opportunities; I'm not sure how they will adapt over time to accommodate the expectations and social pace of my generation. Would there be the temptation to build a social community within the walls of the assisted living community and lose connections to friends in my larger community?
I've even thought about a boarding house or a combination of a Bed and Breakfast/Community Living to combine a small business around a core of permanent residents/friends.
I really don't know what will take shape, but know that at the age of 70 or 80, I don't want to be without a community of close, real (not on-line) friends. And of course, any community living arrangement will have to have a few younger members who can drive the rest of us around!
I am thirty years old and have been using Facebook for years. I live far from my family, and Facebook tends to be our medium of communication.
On the other hand, I consider the excessive use of Facebook an unhealthy habit. It's easy to spend too much time surfing the profiles of other people.
FOMO is what we call FOMS Disease (Fear Of Missing Something) and it's an introvert/extrovert argument.
As an introvert, I rarely feel at a loss for personal involvement in other people's lives.
Come on people, we are a social creature, and sitting in front of a computer reading about other peoples lives doesn't cut it. Get off your duff and talk to people. If you find it difficult, oh well do it anyway. When was it exactly that we as a nation decided that if something is in the least bit difficult that no one should have to do it? QUIT WHINNING start living and get your hands dirty, your knees scuffed up and out of your comfort zone. No wonder our society is going down hill, with people like this maning the switch we deserve to fold.
I would consider myself more lonely than most people. I crave the meat of conversation and human relations. I want to understand others, and be understood. I think that this is accomplished in a more intimate setting, where myself and another can both listen and speak to each other from the heart. Contact on a social media site is too broad. The issues or feelings I would like to discuss, don't apply to all my contacts at the same level. Something that has meaning to me, will not be meaningful to everyone of my face book friends.
You may have a family with five siblings. Would you speak to each of them, using the same words and emotions?
That is what face book is like, walking into the family dining room, stating everything on your mind, without regard for whether the listeners are brothers, sisters, old, children, rich, poor, ill, or healthy.
The author and the psychologist want very much to say that social media is a negative influence. They pretend they don't, but it's obvious they want to "blame" social media for something. The other panelist (with the name neither I nor Diane can pronounce) keeps pointing back to what social media users say about themselves. I'd say that if a person says "I am not lonely" then I have no choice to accept that as a fact. The author and the psychologist are essentially saying "No, you ARE lonely because I can't imagine not being lonely if I used Facebook as much as my kids do."
Listened to the show today.
Facebook is responsible for what we do? Aren't we responsible for what we do.
I have a facebook account and other social media accounts.
They are ways of communication.
It is concerning that many are searching online for what is missing in their life's for what ever reason.
We need a way to connect in the off line world, which for some for many reasons is just not comfortable and we need to work to take the time to talk to each other and not at each other.
Social media is contributing to a series of problem affecting our interactions. I doubt anyone can say social media is the cause of anything. I argue that it is just one part to a larger problem.
It's three-fold: The population is out of control. Our need as a people (not a species) for more information at higher rates is expanding exponentially. We're feeding our need as a species for intimate human contact with tiny bursts of noncommittal virtual contact.
Nothing is making anyone lonely.
Either you're socialized as a person who is capable of generating close relationships or you're not. These are learned behaviors, so you can learn a better way if you choose.
But consider now that socialization is now not just the sum of your peer and family interactions; they also include interactions with the world via social media. Look at Net speak. It's a deterioration of the language that worries me. Why was this shorthand designed? So that we could "communicate" faster. Again, our need for speed is harming the effectiveness of our communication.
The people who "flourish" on social media are naturally social. It's not the other way around: Because you do well online, you will do well in person (untrue). A lot of people, myself in included at one point, use virtual contact to avoid actual contact.
I don't know how to fix this problem. But people want to be in. We want to be seen; we want the validation and approval of others even if we are not aware of it.
What I'm trying is do is become more social in person.
P.S.
For the transcript:
"MARCHE
11:10:31
Yeah. She was -- well, yeah. She was mummified. That's the (word?) , yeah."
Stephen used the French phrase "mot juste," which means "the right word/expression." I looked it up because I was curious about what it meant.
Add or don't add at your convenience.
Thanks to the Diane Rehm Show for this episode. It's been on my mind for a while, and I also got a cool new phrase out of it, too.
I believe automobiles are the reason we are so isolated, in addition to many many other problems they cause in our society (obesity, war, pollution, economic hardship, police problems) Support magnetic levitation rail!
I bet if we went back in time, we'd see this kind of paranoia about any new communication technology. What will it mean when someone can send news so fast through a telegraph? Will we miss out on human interaction if we have a telephone in the house?
It's also completely ridiculous to say that social networking somehow makes us more competitive or compare ourselves more to each other. Comparing ourselves to others is something we have always done, it's part of human nature, I am sure.
Facebook started my freshman year of college. If anything, I see social networking as an aid and a tool for interaction, not a replacement. It is what you make of it. I know people who have met friends online (real actual human being friends!). There are social websites like Meetup.com that are meant to provide social events for people with similar interest. Facebook helps me organize parties and get together so I can stay active with friends, or get in touch with far away friends when I'm visit a different part of the country.
I would really love to see, at least once, on show such as this one, dealing with (let's face it) a technology topic closely linked to the millennial generation, at least one panelist who is under 35. Someone who maybe was in college at a time when facebook was exclusive to college students. Instead, all I see is middle-aged "experts" making judgments about what it means to be involved in social networking, particularly what it means for a much younger group of people they do not really associate with. Older people have always had anxiety about new technology they have to adapt. It is a new colorful thread in the fabric of the human experience. Not good, not bad, it just is a new part of what it means to be human and interact with other humans.