The future of loneliness

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/01/future-of-loneliness-internet-isolation

by Futurebot • 11 years ago

144 77 11 years ago

cheatsheet• 11 years ago

My own understanding of loneliness relied on a belief in solid, separate selves that he saw as hopelessly outmoded. In his worldview, everyone was perpetually slipping into each other, passing through ceaseless cycles of transformation; no longer separate, but interspersed.

Social groups, cultures, parents and children, friends. All of these concepts rely on the concept of a connection between solid selves, that allow for the passage of data/information from self to self. The resulting construction is called a culture, a social group, a relationship. It only exists because there exists other conceptual constructs that serve as comparative references.

Perhaps he was right. We aren’t as solid as we once thought. We are embodied but we are also networks, living on inside machines and in other people’s heads; memories and data streams. We are being watched and we do not have control.

People's memories and imaginations, these are subject to play and replay, and can result in both (il)logical and (ir)rational inference, independently or socially established. These have been philosophical questions long before they became digital.

PlotCitizen• 11 years ago

I was reminded this video I saw some time ago with a similar title… It's in my YouTube favorites and I'm pasting it here for your consideration: https://youtu.be/c6Bkr_udado

You can also have a look at the TED talk the description references. Cheers.

tokenadult• 11 years ago

I feel fundamentally different from this author about what the Internet is doing to my interpersonal relationships, but she makes some good points. I like Facebook very well because, duh, my friends are there. I have lived overseas back in the era when I couldn't possibly afford regular international telephone calls, and relying on aerograms (remember those?)[1] to communicate by postal mail meant a rather slow response time to anything I said to old friends back home.

After living overseas twice in my life (two separate three-year stays), I now live in the same metropolitan community where I grew up, as the author didn't when she had the experiences that shaped her opinion. ("My own peak use of social media arose during a period of painful isolation. It was the autumn of 2011, and I was living in New York, recently heartbroken and thousands of miles from my family and friends.") Some of the people I interact with online have known me since almost fifty (!) years ago, a few of them continually over all that while. Those friends who are still in this town I see in person once in a while, but I hear a lot more of their news in between face-meeting through online communication.

Because I've lived in more than one country, and some of my classmates and colleagues and one child have scattered hither and yon, there isn't anywhere on the planet where I can face-meet with all the people I like at the same time, but my second stay overseas (1998-2001) illustrated the power of the Internet to reduce feelings of loneliness and lack of connection while far away from most familiar friends, and helped me learn how to use online networks to enhance real-world friendships. These days, Facebook comes pretty close to being with all my friends all the time, and I like that. I come here on Hacker News, of course, pretty often, and here I can sometimes make a new kind of friend over shared interests.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogram

rayiner• 11 years ago

I am torn. On one hand, social media has absolutely brought me closer to my family. My family is scattered between Bangladesh, Australia, Canada, and Germany, while my wife's is in Oregon and Washington. Nobody is close to where we live in D.C. But they can all watch my daughter grow up on Facebook.

On the other hand, it's hard to have deep relationships over social media. Tweeting and like-ing are pretty superficial. I feel like the internet has regressed in a way. My late-night conversations over AIM were a lot more meaningful than any interaction I've had over Facebook. Yeah, there's FB Messenger, but it doesn't seem as pervasive or as convenient as AIM was back in the day.

dman• 11 years ago

For me part of what makes the interactions subpar now is that one or more parties is participating via mobile devices and input on mobile is borked. I am overly eager to be brief since typing on the mobile is so painful. This makes it difficult to have nuanced conversations.

IkmoIkmo• 11 years ago

Did the AIM convos happen when you were a teenager? My FB chat's aren't like my MSN days, but it's the difference between my teen years and my mid twenties (today), not a difference in tech. I still chat my ass off with good friends on FB, very similar to my MSN days.

Meanwhile I haven't put anything on my wall since 2012. I literally use FB messenger to just send my best friends any stories or pictures I want to share with them. The other 250... they're more like colleagues to me than part of an intimate circle. Which is why my wall is so empty.

How everyone else does it (posting general stuff on their wall) is beyond me, I feel like an alien. For example someone I hung out with in Korea just posted: "Colorado we about to be all up inside of u".

He's probably going to take a trip to Colorado. Why he wants to share that with his 1800 friends is beyond me. That's the type of stuff I'd send a few of my friends, it's just not relevant to anyone else. Didn't even spark a conversation or anything either. I'd feel like a giant asshole posting stuff like that every day. HN is a world of difference, it's literally the reason I'm on here.

Twitter is a mixed-bag for me. Thing is I don't follow friends or semi-friends on twitter. Mostly just industry/professional/journalists I want to stay up to date on. So it's usually a feed of highly relevant bits of information, so I quite like twitter. The other side of twitter (people who tweet with their friends) feels like teenage MSN chats, only less coherent, less conversational, more one-liner, and of course, permanent so I stay away from that.

I mean imagine you're in a bar or on a bus with your friends just talking about whatever, and you gave everyone in the bar or on the bus a little device with which they can read every single line of the conversation you're having. I'd be the weirdest thing in the world, extremely awkward, there'd be no privacy and it'd be completely irrelevant to the rest of the world. But somehow some people use twitter like that, posting public permanent random conversations that you'd normally (in the real world) expect to have privately, instead of using PMs or Private Group Chat.

That extends to things like 'liking'. If I like a new book, I want to share that with my brother who reads a lot. I really don't care for a guy I had class with last year to see that. Say you're in a store and you see a nice shirt, would anyone send a letter to 250 of his friends about that? But some people treat FB likes like that. It's really weird to me. Also one of those things I'll PM a few of my friends.

72deluxe• 11 years ago

Very true about the AIM messages - I had many great conversions on MSN back in the day.

A good memory.

vdnkh• 11 years ago

I never used AIM but I always use Steam chat for talking with friends every day. Since we're always on Steam it's easy to talk to someone. Sometimes long conversations, usually just small bits of banter

brc2• 11 years ago

I'd agree with you. The mistake often made is mistaking Facebook interactions with real social interactions.

Through social media I can keep in touch with friends from all over the world. Then, if they happen to be visiting or I'm nearby, catching up is easily arranged and not at all awkward because of the information flow in the meantime.

If someone is lacking in social interactions, perhaps social media might be the surface area where that appears, but it's not necessarily a cause or even aggravating factor. I think being alone in a city without any friends would be worse without a connection back to a social circle you do feel comfortable with. I feel like there is an unrealistic expectation placed on social media here.

cubano2• 11 years ago

In a world of selfies and shared profiles, how can someone whom has painful memories of seeing themselves in photos ever since childhood supposed to join the party?

How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check and discover unsavory things that really cannot be explained away?

I ask these question because I live them every day.

Self-esteem and confidence about your looks is the elephant-in-the-room here. I often feel Social is like welfare for the rich.

The people whom benefit the most are perhaps the same ones whom need it the least.

enraged_camel• 11 years ago

>How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check...

What? People do this?

cubano2• 11 years ago

Lol...you are obviously not over the age of 40.

brc2• 11 years ago

Of course people do. I'm sure there are apps that aggregate that type of at a for you in one easy search. Not just for dating, but for employment, renting and other things as well.

To the OP though - if you have a serious criminal record you're going to have to disclose that up front. That's the way it is these days, and as the majority of people don't have a criminal record at all, it's not going to change. You can hardly blame them, as past behaviour is an excellent guide to future behaviour.

obstinate6• 11 years ago

Is this much different than many other technological changes in history? Most benefit a large group of people, while having negative consequences for the smaller group.

I'm not sure what you mean about the photos thing, but there is obviously a benefiting party from the digital background checks. People can get a sense of folks they might date, and potentially avoid dangerous situations. It sucks that that hurts you (assuming your criminal record is not one that people ought to consider dangerous -- if it is, I'm really not sure what to say). But there is a huge group of people that benefit from the increased safety potentially offered by the ability to check up on potential dating partners.

Or, to put it succinctly, why does your interest in hiding your past outweigh the interest of others to know who they are dealing with?

xivzgrev• 11 years ago

I don't think it's trying to bury information. I think it's fear that people will jump to conclusion.

Say you do a background check on a promising candidate and they have a felony. You may automatically pass on them. Even if they don't, you're branded as a risk for ever.

Let's say you murdered someone and you e done your time. You're a risk. Maybe it was a crime of passion, but you're more liable to do again than someone who has never done it. So, pass.

While it makes sense from a cold, society level view, what is that person supposed to do if they really want to rehabilitate? Start an online ebay business I suppose...

meric2• 11 years ago

Most benefit a large group of people, negative consequences for a smaller group, and provide extreme benefits to a small tiny group.

In terms of Social - Look at youtube videos with millions of views, people spending more time than ever reading about celebrities every ten minutes instead of people around them. Before internet people look at celebrities once a day during their TV sessions, and even before that, only listen about them on radio.

And because people's attention is generally a zero-sum pie, without taking into account population growth, people who weren't good at attracting attention to begin with will lose out.

coldtea3• 11 years ago

Is this much different than many other technological changes in history? Most benefit a large group of people, while having negative consequences for the smaller group.

Not sure. Some seem to benefit small groups while having negative consequences for the larger groups.

grrowl• 11 years ago

Hopefully with greater connectedness, culture will change to be more accepting. We're making great strides knocking down more obvious forms of prejudice, my heart believes all forms will fall in time.

isaacremuant• 11 years ago

How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check and discover unsavory things that really cannot be explained away?

You could always meet them face to face and, if you're not comfortable with your past, you need to find a way to be so that you can sell that "the past is past" to those potential partners. Convince yourself in order to convince others.

webwright• 11 years ago

Sorry if this is a silly question-- but if that hangs over you like that, can you just (legally) change your name?

anigbrowl5• 11 years ago

In the US, you're required to share information about past felony convictions on job applications and so forth, plus there are companies that specialize in tabulating that sort of information. So trying to start over by concealing your past is treated as inherently suspicious.

venomsnake• 11 years ago

Depends on the record. While I suppose sexual assault will be dealbreaker, a burglary or drug dealing or fraud is not a big deal in the dating pool.

spacehome• 11 years ago

Burglary and fraud would be a big deals to me for anyone I'm considering for a long-term relationship.

ht_th• 11 years ago

Although I do agree that is has become harder to start anew without your past catching up with you, in my experience of growing up in a small community, if you did something bad or just had a bad name, people would learn about it two towns over when you would start dating someone there, or trying to get a job, or moving there. The "social network" might seem all revolutionary, but what has changed most is the scale of the network, both in nodes, geographical spread, and memory, not the social aspect as such.

However, where we could escape the confines of the small-town community by moving to the city or even further away, nowadays even moving to the other side of the world isn't going to help much any more unless you find someplace off the grid. It is something to worry about.

Maybe changing your name might work, though, as long as Internet search engines aren't smart enough to connect your new name to your old one that's plastered all over the Internet.

reddytowns• 11 years ago

I'm an outsider, too, but for different reasons. In my experience, you have to stop trying to fit in, and live for yourself. Forget about attracting a mate, or friends who cares about that stuff. They would be bad acquaintances anyway. After you can make yourself happy, you honestly won't care what others think of you.

A quote from Diogenes:

When some one said, "Most people laugh at you," his reply was, "And so very likely do the asses at them; but as they don't care for the asses, so neither do I care for them."

I found some people who felt like me by doing that, and we became better friends then I think most normal people ever do.

nickbauman• 11 years ago

"I used to think that the worst thing in life is to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." — Robin Williams

gorachel007• 11 years ago

Here's an interesting Forbes article about what happens when you unplug for a while; http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/02/06/feeling-...

It's more of an issue of technology making us interact in ways that are less human. Check out their link on the study about cell users being less likely to display prosocial behavior.

alexashka• 11 years ago

Before there was facebook and twitter, there were televisions. It boils down to entertainment and how readily available it is vs how readily available spaces to safely interact with real people are.

If you live in a house, who are you going to go hang out with? Your 2 neighbours? Everybody else takes time to get to. Or you can sit down on the couch and just watch some TV and be entertained without going anywhere. There's never any conflict with a television - hence it is so appealing. You have no real ups, but no real downs. People are largely very risk averse (would much rather not get 2 dollars than lose a dollar)

The solution to people interacting with each other again, is TV/Internet blackouts after 6pm at least half of the week.

When the city I lived in had an electric blackout for 3 days - people came out of their homes and actually talked to one another, it was great. Then everybody went right back to their televisions...

There's no money to be made from people learning to get along with one another and simply talking, playing cards, going for walks... So, not going to happen :) More make-up, clothes, tv-shows and making sure people medicate themselves with overpriced drugs. If people learned to get along via come outside and talk method, the current economy would undergo severe restructuring.

tomjen3• 11 years ago

Even if you aren't sitting with a cellphone or earphones in the bus, chances are the guy/girl next to you are.

kijin• 11 years ago

My own peak use of social media arose during a period of painful isolation . . . recently heartbroken and thousands of miles from my family and friends. In many ways, the internet made me feel safe.

I can relate to this. My peak use of social media was while I was attending university on the other side of the world.

But since a couple of years ago, almost everyone I care about is only a local call away from me. Over the last couple of years, I have drastically reduced my social media usage, and it wasn't because of the Snowden revelations. I just don't feel the need to ping someone on <insert your favorite social network here> when I can just call them up or, even better, meet them IRL.

Having lived for a decade in the second-largest country in the world, my sense of distance also seems to have become a little weird compared to those of others in my home country. Oh, Granny is only a five-hour drive away from me? Why even bother talking on the phone then? I'll just drive there and see her in person this weekend. The less electronics there is between us, the better.

Social media is a fallback option for when there aren't any low-tech alternatives. But if you have healthy legs, there is no need to use a wheelchair with NSA trackers attached to it.

borgia• 11 years ago

I utterly loathe online social networks / social networking. They've become a showcase for society's worst and little more.

Great for people who want to sell you something, or push a political ideology on you, or whore attention for themselves but totally devoid of any actual substance.

I've given them their fair shot. I keep a FB account to occasionally touch base with friends back home and that's it. Twitter is a joke and I wish it the worst. The rest aren't even worth mentioning.

KFW504• 11 years ago

"Loneliness centres on the act of being seen. When a person is lonely, they long to be witnessed, accepted, desired, at the same time as becoming intensely wary of exposure."

We are all walking the line of putting ourselves out there enough in a meaningful, authentic way to feel an organic connection while also combating a fear (that of course varies with the individual) of vulnerability.

The internet provides a little sugar high to create an artificial sweetness of connectivity but fails to (on its own) provide the nutrients needed for a healthy, complete life.

rambambam• 11 years ago

Well spoken. Just perfect.

lindsey-lohan• 11 years ago

I liked it too

pmalynin• 11 years ago

"All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by plane, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel ... Man puts the longest distances behind him in the shortest time. He puts greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range...

What is happening here when, as a result of the abolition of great distances, everything is equally far and equally near? What is this uniformity in which everything is neither far nor near--is, as it were, without distance?

Everything gets lumped together into uniform distancelessness [sic]. How? Is not this merging of everything into the distancelesss [sic] more unearthly that everything bursting apart?"

--Excerpts from The Thing, Martin Heidegger circa 1971

switch007• 11 years ago

toothbrush3• 11 years ago

So, slightly off-topic, but serious question: I don't use FB on principle (tracking, walled garden, evil in various ways), but I also don't know how to convince my "normal" friends to communicate in other ways... Does anyone have suggestions to avoid falling out of contact with faraway people? I emigrate every now and then, and I have yet to maintain connections after having left another city. It's rather frustrating, but is something as evil as FB or Skype or Google+ really the only way to approach this problem?

EDIT: I've re-activated my Diaspora account, but obviously no "normals" are to be found there ;) Perhaps I should start campaigning.

chippy• 11 years ago

seems like your options, given your preferences, and the realisation that you cannot force others to communicate via other ways, are the:

telephone and postal service.

toothbrush3• 11 years ago

Fair enough. I also use email (mostly in fact), full well knowing that even if I don't directly use Google mail, they still have everything... All in all a very unsatisfactory situation.

Kiro2• 11 years ago

Honestly, if you don't have any better reasons not to use Facebook I think you should just stick to it and keep a minimal profile. I'm pretty sure that as soon as something becomes mainstream enough to be used by "normals" you will classify it as evil and not use it out of principle.

toothbrush3• 11 years ago

I hear what you're saying, but my gripe is not at all it's "mainstreamness" -- it's that FB plays notoriously fast and loose with privacy as well as copyright: I'm not quite prepared to sign off copyright to everything I post (notably photography, for example). Plus, it's also got to do with a US-based company knowing precisely what my social graph looks like that makes me uneasy (although as I said Google mostly knows already, so ok).

if you don't have any better reasons

Finally, I am curious: don't you think freedom is a reasonable reason? If Diaspora were magically to become mainstream, I'm unlikely to classify it as evil in the same way I would with FB. (i.e. you can transfer away your data, spin up your own server, etc.)

EDIT: also, be the change you would like to see -- if I'm still on Facebook, my friends would have even less incentive to move away than currently, where at least I can convince most people to email me.

jokoon• 11 years ago

I wish the internet would be a place where you could organize the co-renting of large apartments to counteract this lonely society.

Also, facebook is not the place where you really can discover the people who live around you, by advertising your skills, interests and potential deals you could have with neighbors. One way to have enough privacy for this, would be to limit the distance or amount of people you can see near you.

I don't really see that much success in social networking app when dealing with localization...

hydrafog• 11 years ago

I can not remotely fathom the use of twitter or even facebook. I have accounts with both even wrote a facebook app but posted maybe a dozen things total and haven't touched either in years. It is utterly unimaginable to me to upload photos of myself at random or post random statements. I haven't a clue how this is keeping in touch.

Likewise the notion that one is in continuous contact with others is also totally alien. I own a couple generations of iphones and androids, wrote some apps for them but otherwise leave them in a drawer. They're there right now batteries dead.

I do not know what percentage of people also think this way, twitter seems to have low penetration but facebook enormous. One thing though is that such people are not posting on the web and so would be under represented.

donatj• 11 years ago

I've always had trouble making friends, I'm weird and kind of intense, while at the same time painfully friendly.

Back in the internets earlier days it felt like I could find friendly people everywhere. It became a safe haven for me, a place I could meet people who shared my interests. I found one of my better friends to this day through an online radio station.

Hell, even early Xbox live was friendly, I had lots of really good conversations with people while playing Gotham Racing.

It really feels like now though I can't even get a conversation started online anymore. Everyone with mics on black is in private parties, IRC rooms seem increasingly unfriendly. The attitude has changed.

I feel increasingly isolated, I feel much like I did before the internet.

ZenoArrow• 11 years ago

"This period coincided with what felt like a profound shift in internet mores. In the past few years, two things have happened: a dramatic rise in online hostility, and a growing awareness that the lovely sense of privacy engendered by communicating via a computer is a catastrophic illusion."

For the most part I enjoyed the article and found it thought-provoking, but I didn't agree with this. A dramatic rise in online hostility? Speaking personally, I haven't seen that.

In my experience, online hostility now is much like it has always been. I've never found it to be in short supply. My Internet use from the start has been closely linked to online discussion forums, and whilst some communities are friendlier than others, I've never known a time that disagreement online was a minor concern.

My favourite website is probably Reddit, which admittedly does house some of the most negative aspects of the human experience, but also some of the most positive aspects. For the most part, you get what you're looking for.

syoc• 11 years ago

I enjoyed this article until they started focusing on "selfies" and social media. Loneliness and human interaction over the internet is a very interesting subject but I feel like the author has only used facebook and instagram. There is no reason to limit this topic to communication platforms built upon exposing your own personal life and connection that with you communication. I think that communication over IRC, blogs, reddit, comments like this and chans are more "pure" in a way and more interesting.

The future of loneliness

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