“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” – Kurt Vonnegut
Imagine the following scenario: You are sitting in a restaurant with your best friend. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen each other and you have been looking forward to reconnecting. Instead of doing exactly that, you are both on Facebook, liking and sharing posts that have nothing to do with what’s happening between you right then and there. When you leave dinner, you realize that you still miss your friend, but you’re not sure why. Furthermore, it dawns on you that recently, you’ve been feeling a bit disconnected from all of your friends, and it makes you terribly sad.
“All the lonely people, where do they all come from?” – The Beatles[tweet this]
There’s a reason you’d feel that way, and it’s way more common than you can imagine. Turns out, our use of the world’s most popularsocial networkmay have something to do with it. Although Facebook is an invaluable tool for connecting with each other, the way most of us tend to interact with it makes us prone to feelings ofdepression, envy, anxiety, and – you guessed it – loneliness. What makes this particularly unpleasant is that numerous studies have found that persisting loneliness negatively impacts our physical and mental health. And to top all of that off, it’s also been shown to decrease ouroverall mortality. Clearly that’s not great.
Check it out below.
Considering that the number of people reporting feeling lonely doubled in the last 30 years, it’s hard not to see a correlation between loneliness and the rise of social networks. Notably, the density of these reports is escalating in recent years. The problem with controlling how others see us is that we rarely get to be seen as we really are, unfiltered.To be or not to beourselves, is one the bigger paradoxes of our time. And if we somehow manage to let go of our need to control our public image, we may be able to combat our increasing loneliness.
“Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.” – Dalai Lama
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