Schaefer Shares

As someone that believes that social media is isolating us more and more every year, I found this article very interesting. We have gotten so used to turning to our computers for conversation, rather than calling or seeing others face to face. As the article said, we are living in isolation, although most cannot go without having a phone in hand for more than a few hours. This need for connectivity is ultimately driving us toward loneliness. We have more and more socialization, but yet we have less of a society. Are we really connected with others if it’s digitally and not physically?

As we wait for contact, rather, some form of virtual contact, we wait and wait, “transfixed by the glare of a screen, hungering for response.” This anticipation is what drives people crazy. As humans, we need to socialize and to find acceptance. But when our crush doesn’t respond, or we don’t get the likes that we were hoping for, we are driven further and further from that interaction, because we just want to be accepted, and we can’t always find that. “We should recognize that it is not just isolation that is rising sharply. It’s loneliness, too. And loneliness makes us miserable.”

I believe that now, more than ever before, social media and new communication technologies give people a false sense of acceptance. People don’t know how to make themselves happy anymore. They think that because they move somewhere new, or start a different job that they will automatically become happy, but that’s not true. “According to a major study by a leading scholar of the subject, roughly 20 percent of Americans—about 60 million people—are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.” Loneliness has become an epidemic, and until “real life” can be distinguished from the one that people create online, this problem won’t change.