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Tech and social media are making us feel lonelier than ever:
You've had a social day. Two hundred Facebook friends posted birthday messages, your video of Mr. Meow shredding the toilet paper stash got dozens of retweets, and all the compliments on your latest Instagram selfie have you strutting with an extra swagger. Still, you can't help but notice an ache that can only be described as loneliness.
That we feel this way even when hyperconnected might seem like a contradiction. But the facts are clear: Constant virtual connections can often amplify the feeling of loneliness.
"Internet-related technologies are great at giving us the perception of connectedness," says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who's written about the intersection of psychology and tech. The truth, he says, is the time and energy spent on social media's countless connections may be happening at the expense of more rooted, genuinely supportive and truly close relationships.
If virtual socializing cannot substitute for the real thing, will social media prove out to be nothing more than a fad of the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @10:42AM (20 children)
Are built upon people. Internet relationships are built upon views. This makes everything incredibly fake. Say the right thing, get a million new friends. Say the wrong thing and they're gone just as quickly.
The fact that people cannot express themselves, outside of a carefully but implicitly curated selection of views or values, with their "friends" emphasizes that those "friends" are nothing but empty caricatures of people in one's life.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @10:48AM
In some ways we've all become rock stars. Think of the countless stories of various public personalities (musicians, actors, etc) surrounded by hoards of adoring fans, a massive entourage and of course women women women - yet who claim the be endlessly lonely, even in times prior to the internet. It's the exact same phenomena. Those people weren't friends with them because of them as people, they were friends with them because they are attracted to their fame or wealth. And so the relationships become incredibly superficial. Should those guys fall from the spotlight, those "friendships" would vanish just as rapidly, and they knew it.
I found myself creating much better relationships in real life once I stopped trying to be friendly. I'm not an asshole, but I'm also certainly not a nice guy. I make fewer relationships but those I do tend to be vastly more "genuine."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @11:25AM (2 children)
Yes, this, but I would phrase it differently: real relationships are built on emotional kinship. The Internet allows for easy intellectual connections, but not emotional ones. That was true even before the emotional abuse of "social media" came along, and web 2.0 has made it painfully clear that 90% of the population doesn't have any intellectual weight to offer. That "loneliness" probably stems at least in part from the realization that one has nothing to offer, yet feels compelled to shout about it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 19 2020, @02:27PM (1 child)
Da fuck, you're wrong [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @06:07PM
What do you know about that video / video production? It almost looks like very good CGI/animation to me. The human movements don't look quite real, but I can't put my finger on why.
No emotional connection there for me (but I have plenty of emotional connection to other music and other videos of live musicians).
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Friday June 19 2020, @12:06PM (1 child)
Wow, I totally feel ya!!!1! You just made a friend for life!
I tried to add you as a Friend but evil, cruel SoylentNews told me Sorry, this is not an option [soylentnews.org]. : (
Their overly diligent validation is even polite enough to say the same message if you submit a friend request with uid 1 to the server.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 19 2020, @01:58PM
It seems to me that groping people can only be done effectively in real life. Online is a poor substitute, IMO.
TSA would agree.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @01:32PM (2 children)
I think it's more than that. I was using BBS's and similar chat services in the 1990s, before there were page views and likes and shares, and bandwidth was too low to share cat videos and baby pictures. I had a lot of fun discussions and made good friends. I kept in touch with some of them for years, even met them in person many times.
But the thing is, even without all the emphasis on views and even without the advertising and the financial incentive of the site owner to addict you to the site content, it still creates a feeling of loneliness and isolation. Sitting in a room with someone while they read a book and you watch MASH reruns is somehow better for your sense of social connection and for your emotional health than having a six hour typed discussion of Aristotle with someone on the other side of the planet.
And I'll be honest, it's been 25 years and I'm still an addict. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, or other traditional social media. I also deleted my Mastodon and Diaspora accounts. But I'm still on SoylentNews and Reddit, and it's the same core problem - you keep itching for more discussion, but it's never as fulfilling as in-person contact or video calls.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @04:27PM (1 child)
Dude, I am a Trade Wars pro. ;-)
I have to say I never felt the same way in the BBS era. I think a big part of it was the locality. It made everybody real, and I think that changes things a lot. For instance I was active on dozens of boards but would often bump into the same people and you got to know these people, a decent number in real life. When sites started offering this fancy "telnet" service I thought it would be the most incredible thing ever - being able to connect to boards with hundreds, even thousands of other players. But even then it almost immediately started to kind of suck. There was this sort of depersonalization and everything (and everybody) just started becoming noise. You had more or less the same shit as before, but you removed every human element from it.
When you look at things like Twitter today, how is that so different than just interacting with a not especially sophisticated bot? It's just lots of people randomly yelling at lots of other people, in retarded 140 character stutters (280 now?), with nobody listening beyond 'omg you are saying exactly what I already believe - +retweet +follow'. It's stupid. I blame consumerism. Once corporations realized the potential for the net they brought the retards. Things were already going downhill but then the retards brought the politics and politicians and it all turned to shit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @05:59PM
See, I already had the alienation and loneliness with the BBS's. I think Facebook and especially sites that lend themselves to brief, trolling interactions like Twitter and Youtube (comments) are worse, but even the 'good' stuff still causes more emotional harm on average than it relieves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday June 19 2020, @02:17PM (9 children)
Not entirely true. Internet relationships can also be build on the quality of the content that is viewed.
I'll give you an example that blew my mind today:
Sunblazer - Drunk (live session) [youtube.com]
How to Play Music With a "Drunk" Feel [youtube.com] - a dissection of the above.
In the total of 20-something minutes of the two clips, I didn't feel alone or depressed, just... mind-blown.
If you are saying that "well, that's an exception", I'll offer you heaps of exceptions which, albeit not that mind-blowing as experience, keep me in a "not alone or depressed" state. Here, some of them: EEVBlog [youtube.com], and Mathologer [youtube.com], and Standup Maths [youtube.com], and JSK-koubou [youtube.com], and Rex Krueger [youtube.com], and izzy swan [youtube.com], and Pask Makes [youtube.com].
Now, tell me honestly that's not how the Internet should be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Friday June 19 2020, @04:11PM (1 child)
Thanks for the YouTube links, Colo. Two that I like are Lex Fridman https://www.youtube.com/user/lexfridman [youtube.com] and ThisOldTony https://www.youtube.com/user/featony. [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 20 2020, @02:36AM
Thanks. ThisOldTony is among the many others that I didn't mention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @01:38AM (2 children)
Your first link goes to something labelled as Sungazer, whatever you meant.
Listened for one minute. Horrible shit. Worse than rap, which isn't even Music.
Why did you link to that? Some kind of joke? Mind Blown? By what, crappy performance of horrible noise? There is enough noise pollution in real life without people purposefully creating more.
Oh, wait. Was that a clever allegory about the 99.99999...% of the Internet that is horrible, pointless, aggravating, mind-numbing noise?
Oh, I get it.
Mind Blown.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 20 2020, @02:42AM
You may be one that like better 2/4 march tempos.
If still curious how they came with that and why is mind blowing (for some), watch the link that follows in my comment and this one [youtube.com]. Fair warning: prepare yourself for the horror of being exposed to sheet music [wikipedia.org].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday June 20 2020, @03:13AM
I would characterize it as an aharmonic syncopated study of variable timing. Far better than rap.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @01:58AM (3 children)
Right. you were engaged and receiving a variety of stimuli from the music and its discussion. Often a positive, enjoyable and sometimes even useful experience.
However, physical, interactive human interactions while similar, as they also provide a variety of stimuli, are far richer and more satisfying than passively viewing the actions and interactions of others.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday June 20 2020, @02:32AM (2 children)
As I enjoy making things, that watching is far from passive.
As I don't have friends in woodworking, interacting with the wood in an increasing skillful manner becomes more important that interacting with friends who observe social distancing (as do I, can't afford to get infected while caring for parents over 80yo).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @02:56AM (1 child)
You completely misunderstand me.
I'm not claiming that folks shouldn't be social distancing at this time. I rigorously practice it myself.
All I said was that, as a rule, interactive physical interaction provides a richer experience than virtual ones, especially passive ones (like the youtube videos you linked).
That folks are strongly discouraged from those physical interactions right now, doesn't mean the lack of same isn't negatively impacting (loneliness, depression, etc.) people. We are, after all, a social species.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 20 2020, @04:10AM
And I said that's a rather weak rule which depends on lots of factors, and my reactions to the youtube I linked are anything but passive.
I'd somewhat agree if you were contrasting with non-interactive experiences, but the term of passive brings a too high meaning of non-participation. E.g. I can not describe reading a book as passive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @06:09PM
No, not all of them. That's the same mistake the author of TFA makes. "Connectedness" is a subjective condition unless objectively tested. "Can often." "May." As in, "not always." If one does not feel connected before starting in social media, social media will do little to make one feel connected. In other words, duh!