The biggest irony of social media is that in pursuit of their goal to “connect the world” they made everyone more disconnected than ever.
It scares me thinking of the generations who have/will grow up with social media/devices/headsets etc from the get go. Those childhood years of just fucking around and not giving a shit are so critical.
I totally agree. Not having a childhood of adventure at the risk of being hurt or getting in trouble is crucial to a child. I see kids I am around now whose entire lives revolve around their phones and I'm super sad for them because I know they will have very few things to look back on and appreciate.
You can’t grow up starring at a screen. You become this numb entity.
I know some kids all under 18 and they all have the social skills of a vegetable. Saying that, there’s some vegetables you can have a laugh with and make goofy jokes with (seriously).
I actually take back my comment about vegetables. They’re infinitely better company than any of them.
I'm all too guilty of this. Putting social media down is so good for my mental health - I feel more present and feel lighter. I am making memories and truly living life. My favorite memories don't involve any electronics. I hope to be able to help foster some of that for my daughter despite how things are now.
Excellent excellent article and all very true. A huge stumbling block for this generation is the inability to be bored. I don’t think they know what to do in moments of silence and always turn to their phones. So much can happen when you are bored and let your mind wander. I don’t know how they ever think about anything because they never give it a rest with all the scrolling and videos on and notification, pings, etc. I’ve stopped using my phone and the computer on Sundays and it’s been a real revelation for this 53-year-old. I highly recommend it! start slowly cutting some of this crap out of your life, and I think the benefits will far outweigh whatever you might think you are missing.
I’m a Millennial—however, I see this across generations. I find it difficult to be bored—but I’m an only child. I’m used to entertaining myself in seconds. 🤣 Been doing this since 1989.
I agree with you about it being across generations. I’m a Gen Xer so I do have to say I think people my age and older have a distinct advantage because we do remember the before times. It’s murky, but I can still go back there and use it as a blueprint for how not to be so incredibly entranced by the screen.
You make a very good point that, I believe, applies across the generations. I'm a boomer (b. 1952) and find that many in my generation can't just sit and observe the world and let their mind mull things over but, rather, they turn on their phone and read whatever pops up on the screen. As someone who is a keen photographer, I spend time just watching the wildlife or admiring the view and letting my mind think through anything it cares to. I find that much more fulfilling that turning my phone on (except when I'm reading articles by Freya and/or Jon, of course!)
Deleting my Instagram and Snapchat accounts three years ago was the best decision I have made as a young adult. I’m an older Gen Z (1999), so I was a little later, maybe 14 or 15 before social media became as ubiquitous as it is for kids today. My friends and I can still remember the before times and had very normal childhoods. Mostly spent outdoors and when we did play Xbox or PlayStation it was with our friends. Nobody wanted to play unless one of our friends were online. One of our favorite activities was even gathering all of our Xboxes and TVs at a friend’s house who had a large playroom just so we could all play side by side. I don’t believe kids these days treat gaming or socializing like we did.
Even then, iPhones weren’t as prevalent until I was 16 or 17, and before then most of us were instagramming and snapping on iPads and iPod touches which most of our parents wouldn’t allow us to have at school, so social media time was limited. But when that technology was integrated more affordably into phone form, well what good parent would send their children out into the world without a line of communication? My age group missed the ubiquitousness of social media via the iPhone during our formative which I’m thankful for.
But back to deleting Instagram and Snapchat. I found that I was following and posting for people I didn’t particularly care about. If something big happened that I wanted to post about, the people who I cared about already knew before the post. And vice versa. I knew about the big things in those that I cared about before posting. Still, the older I get, I do understand the need of keeping up with old friends and acquaintances, but need that be done via social media? I think not.
The pressure to cling to social media is only going to increase on Gen Z as they get older. They will ask how will I keep up with who’s going to what college, who’s getting married, who’s having children, who’s getting engaged, who’s moving where, who’s gotten what job? I think my own testimony is that you keep up with these things naturally. Life has a funny way of doing that. You run into people all the time. People reach out on a whim. You talk about each other’s lives and the lives of others. How many conversations have you been the subject of over the past week between other people? Probably more than you’d think.
Being without social media is so refreshing from this aspect. When old friends come back to town, they usually reach out to me for drinks or dinner. The conversation is never dull. There’s just too much to catch up on. Since you have little idea of what’s been going on in their life, it’s so much easier to take a genuine interest in their life. Then they may also bring news of other mutual friends and acquaintances. You know that feeling when you see someone on Instagram, someone you were once close with but have drifted apart but are still fond of, you see that they’ve gotten into a certain school or are getting married or are having children? You’re like oh good for them, I’m so happy for them. Well, if you ditch social media, that news is still going to reach you, but you get to share those good feelings with the messenger. I find the experience so much more enjoyable, so much more human, to share with another.
I’ll leave you with a story from just last week (these sorts of things happen multiple times a week when you don’t have social media). I had a great friend in high school. He went the blue collar route and I went to college. We naturally drifted apart due to this and distance. A mutual friend of ours was back in town, and we were getting dinner. After we got done catching up, we were talking about old friends, and he told me our blue collar friend had gotten married. Great! And even better, he just had his first child. I was overjoyed. We called the old friend up on the spot to congratulate him. And we caught him at a good time too and spent another hour and a half catching up and reminiscing over the phone, the three of us. Would this have happened if I’d seen it on Instagram by myself with no one else to share the joy of that good news with? Probably not.
These may seem like little things, but the surprise at good news, and bad, the little unplanned coincidental happenings, the sharing and receiving of news with others via flesh and blood messengers (not a screen), and the toing and froing of life and taking it as it comes-- these are the things that make life worth living.
To other, younger, Gen Z out there, it takes a leap of faith. There’ll be balks and restarts and awkward situations, but deleting your socials will go a long way in ridding yourself of loneliness. You’ll often be alone, but you’ll rarely be lonely. You’ll find that you’ll be intimately engaged in life around you. You’ll care about the people and things around you. It really is like scales falling from the eyes and the heart. The irony is that you’ll find the little tangible world directly around you is so much bigger and more vibrant than the offerings of the universe served to you by your algorithm.
That last paragraph is what I needed to hear. I’ve been off Snapchat and Instagram for a while now, and have noticed my life change for the better. I have been trying to be more present and truly appreciate connections with the immediate people around me and it’s a way better use of my time than scrolling through stories. Haha, love your take on this, thank you for sharing. And that story about your high school friend!🤍
In summary, social media allows us to have the inside scoop on someone’s life while costing us nothing. No sacrifice except the time it takes to school. Of course the result is fake connection & the continued loneliness while longing for authentic human interaction.I love your story about you & your friend reconnecting with your old buddy. Sounds like a wonderful reunion.
I was born in 1952 so I was well into my 50s before social media became so popular and, when it did arrive, I was not remotely attracted to it though many of my generartion were (and still are). The ones who are are not amongst my friends because I'm not on social media and they are nowhere else.
Growing up I was shy but still had many acquaintances who I got along with alright but always only a few real friends - the ones I could turn to if I needed help; the ones who would be honest with me and tell me if I was acting like a fool; the ones who really cared about me and wanted to see me. They were the ones who came knocking at our door (we didn't even have house phones in those days) to ask if I'd got some time to spend with them.
Friends : Low in number; high in quality.
Just as you are recommending and I couldn't agree more with what you say.
How much of this loneliness that GenZ experience also affects their attitudes to romantic friendships which may lead to long-term attachments and marriage?
After all, the ultimate version of having a small number of really close, high quality friends is surely marriage, isn't it?
It's interesting how the "have friends" and "often lonely" groups overlap for girls, but not for boys: there are many girls that often feel lonely even though they usually have friends to spend time with, and there are also a lot of boys who don't feel lonely despite having no friends.
I can admire what Jon Haidt and others (and you?) are doing to try and wean people off social media. But there is a much bigger context here isn't there....and it's one to which there is no 'solution'. The big problem is that Western liberal individualism - marvellous and transformative as it has been since the dawn of the Enlightenment - has now finally pitched on a downward slope. Our social media atomisation was - in a sense - always written in the runes of liberal individualism right from the start. As I say, there is no political/sociological 'solution' to this. Le Deluge is approaching....and Apres? we'll just have to see. Good Luck nevertheless!
You raise a good point. It could also be a sign of "learned helplessness" another product implanted in our minds by Social Media for their convenience. Human history is filled with stories of small lucid group that turn things around. Quitting Social Media is necessary to stay lucid, one has to be ready to balance between interactions with bodiless beings (zero senses interactions) and more meaninglful and nourrisghing in person and with immediate environment - It's a much smaller dose of dopamine, attention, and approval but it is more aligned with the amount normally needed in the the adult stage of development.
I'm a pastor working on a teaching series on how to have friends. Because this is a crisis and people need to be taught this now. I'm using and quoting you a lot in that future series. Thank you for describing this problem so well.
I wonder whether the increased loneliness is also due to a decreased tolerance for aloneness. Interaction with friends is important - we can't wholly sustain ourselves - but since social media is so much about seeing and being seen, I wonder whether young people find it discomfiting to be alone without being looked at.
This resonated so much. I’m on the cusp of Millennial and Gen Z so I had a small amount of childhood relatively screen free, but have been on social media for about 10 years. I just quit a month ago and still struggle with loneliness (maybe because I notice it more now) but overall feel more free and happy
Social media or not, the loneliness epidemic is real. Even without using the popular social media apps, connection seems somehow harder. I once did a casual survey of my friends of all ages, and few were using those apps regularly. I mean, there was usually a daily check in on instagram that consisted of mostly downtime, unwinding after work, waiting in line, in between doing other things. It helps to pass time in between flights, waiting for class to start or on break at work. Sure, I have a friend or two who spends WAY too much time curating her life through her phone lens, but for each one of those friends I have 20 or 30 who are only loosely participating in social media apps as a time killer. What has gone away is very interesting, there was always a tendency of people, especially women, to talk and talk for hours and to be quite honest, most of it was gossip, negativity and complaining about this that or the other person in life or work., lots complaints about the boyfriend or date or husband and a few complaints about the lack thereof. There were lurid stories about cheating spouses or mistreatment. A lot of that is gone now, and I don’t miss it, not even a little bit. Coworkers would complain about the boss, about one another and more than once friendships were ruined, jobs were lost. Now it seems that instead of ruminating on our loved ones or friends perceived slights or disrespectful comments or bad behavior we now have an alternative, we can scroll away the time until we feel less agitated and sure that blue sky with a sunset photo looks appealing and could be calming in a way….. what is missing though, is opportunity to get physical and interact with the real world, instead of lying in the sun and working on a tan we are virtually shopping for a sundress to wear so we can lie in the sun and work on our tan. Instead of the book we would read, we read emails, exchange texts or research a new restaurant. There’s a middle ground here, and I think what is missing is family, more than anything. If you have siblings, parents, cousins and extended family, you had people. Now, you might have one parent, not two, you might have one sibling or none, two or three cousins at best. People are missing from our lives because of this shrinkage of family size, of parenting choices and the free no strings attached sex that was supposed to be so great ended up with women being used to gratify physical urges. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, seriously? It’s not easy being treated like an object. And the heartbreak of all of this is being played out by these missing connections. If you don’t have a sister, how are you to understand much about girls? If you do not have a brother how can you learn to act around boys? How can you relate to men if you don’t have a father in the home? If your mom is at work all the time, how do you learn how to be a mom?
Your writings always hit home Freya! I’m a 23 year old that doesn’t have any social media, and it can definitely feel isolating at some times. But honestly, my best friendships are those that I have been able to keep up with outside of social media. I have a small circle of really special relationships, and I have never felt so fulfilled. Sometimes I think I miss being on instagram, and this is such a good reminder of what I’m not missing out on :)
The problem has been that the phone and online discussion has been required for school projects and academia. My daughter is 22, and while at the AI being online at all hours was required that’s how the school projects were conducted, and invariably someone in her group would not start until midnight, so that meant the whole team would be online to 2 am. It created the badge of honor “we’re so tired because we had to work so late”, and pushed kids to conduct their social lives online as well.
My kids, 19 and 22, are outdoor enthusiasts, it has been the one thing that has spared them from isolation that social media fosters, because the get away from the dopamine mill. Nothing breaks your consternation over online drama than being confronted with a ski trail where you think you may end up takin a powder. Or working out in a high heat environment. This rebalances brain chemistry which the dopamine mills have damaged.
But you have to reduce the phone use. It’s hard to put the thing down as we’re conditioned to believe the information we are FED is a form of research as we “learn”. We’re not learning, we’re reacting. We’re being conditioned by the colors and the triggers. The phone is so one dimensional and we see only what others want to present to us. There’s no substitute for watching you and your friends take a spill while kayaking. Talk about a marvelous equalizer.
I'm Gen X and I never had a lot of friends. I had at most five really good friends growing up, but I do remember staying out until the sun went down. We did get out and explore more.
As I grew up, I lost those friends. My last friend died in 2000.
I know how Gen Z feels. The loneliness is real.
It wasn't right to lock them down for two years over a common cold.
Would you rather get 20 likes on your instagram story or have a lovely day out with one friend?
Stepping away from social media is giving up something that no one asked for in the first place--shallow connections that feel good for a moment, but give us nothing when we really need it.
I remember how Dungeons and Dragons was going to cause the fall of civilization. My mother witnessed how Elvis’ hips were gutting the moral character of the nation. Within 30 years we will be looking back with longing at how everyone was connected on social media and had loads of actual friends because whatever follows social media as we know it will change the fabric of society again.
Lonely isn’t a modern phenomena. Our society uses shunning as a weapon for social control-be of the wrong faith and find yourself outside, behave outside the expectations and wear a scarlet A or the Felon’s F. Like math and science and have no friends.
We are just getting better at recognizing the tremendous damage it does.
Indeed. Already several hundred years ago, scientists were warning about the “handheld devices,” calling for strict regulations. They were of course talking about books, produced by the malicious printing press. Reading was harmful to the mind and scholars worried it would socially isolate individuals.
Then it was radio, likened to a drug, and then TV, which was shortening the attention span. Both were accused of distracting children from reading, which of course by then was considered a wholesome activity.
And so the Sisyphean cycle of technology panics continues.
Except persuasive technology stepped in wrapped around a warm and cosy legal shield (section230) , digital illiterate users and a bunch of greedyless relational illiterate ready to take advantage of their new super power supported by "naive" elected officials with a habit to plast trust in people who show not to deserve it . I am afraid this is unprecedented in human history.
Jowan thank you for the point you raised. Let me be more precise, unprecedented in the history of democracies... Now, can you compare the radio in those days with the precision addictive mind altering machine that Zuckerberg and Friends created and used, against all age consumers from across the world (without their knowledge!) spreading caos, hyperindividualism, perversion, mental health epidemic, and turning millions across the globe into the worst version of themselves because that granted him/them maximum profit and power? Not sure. That a democracy supports this, tell us a lot about the US and EU democracies health.
I'm a baby boomer who has been a Facebook fan for a very long time, probably more than ten years. May 23 I deactivated my account. I need to learn how to get my photos out so I can delete it all together. At first, I felt like a smoker who habitually reached for a cigarette, only mine was my phone. But, as the days turned into weeks and now I can count by months, it's become easier. The FOMO has diminished. In fact, I'm better off not knowing what everyone else is doing. I finally prefer to stay out-of-the-loop. I still have Instagram, but it's become less appealing. Since, it's Independence Weekend, this would be a good time to declare independence from that too.
Facebook has a utility for exporting your entire history, including images. You start the process and get an email confirmation when it is done. At least that's how it was when canceled my account after Facebook became a platform for algorithmic subversion of democracy (Cambridge Analytica, etc.). The utility worked amazingly well. I can view my old Facebook activity as an offline website sort of thing.
The biggest irony of social media is that in pursuit of their goal to “connect the world” they made everyone more disconnected than ever.
It scares me thinking of the generations who have/will grow up with social media/devices/headsets etc from the get go. Those childhood years of just fucking around and not giving a shit are so critical.
I totally agree. Not having a childhood of adventure at the risk of being hurt or getting in trouble is crucial to a child. I see kids I am around now whose entire lives revolve around their phones and I'm super sad for them because I know they will have very few things to look back on and appreciate.
You can’t grow up starring at a screen. You become this numb entity.
I know some kids all under 18 and they all have the social skills of a vegetable. Saying that, there’s some vegetables you can have a laugh with and make goofy jokes with (seriously).
I actually take back my comment about vegetables. They’re infinitely better company than any of them.
My garden gives excellent companionship.
Absolutely! 100%
I'm all too guilty of this. Putting social media down is so good for my mental health - I feel more present and feel lighter. I am making memories and truly living life. My favorite memories don't involve any electronics. I hope to be able to help foster some of that for my daughter despite how things are now.
Excellent excellent article and all very true. A huge stumbling block for this generation is the inability to be bored. I don’t think they know what to do in moments of silence and always turn to their phones. So much can happen when you are bored and let your mind wander. I don’t know how they ever think about anything because they never give it a rest with all the scrolling and videos on and notification, pings, etc. I’ve stopped using my phone and the computer on Sundays and it’s been a real revelation for this 53-year-old. I highly recommend it! start slowly cutting some of this crap out of your life, and I think the benefits will far outweigh whatever you might think you are missing.
I’m a Millennial—however, I see this across generations. I find it difficult to be bored—but I’m an only child. I’m used to entertaining myself in seconds. 🤣 Been doing this since 1989.
I agree with you about it being across generations. I’m a Gen Xer so I do have to say I think people my age and older have a distinct advantage because we do remember the before times. It’s murky, but I can still go back there and use it as a blueprint for how not to be so incredibly entranced by the screen.
I can too—in the last six months I bought a lot of craft stuff to entertain myself while listening to podcasts.
You make a very good point that, I believe, applies across the generations. I'm a boomer (b. 1952) and find that many in my generation can't just sit and observe the world and let their mind mull things over but, rather, they turn on their phone and read whatever pops up on the screen. As someone who is a keen photographer, I spend time just watching the wildlife or admiring the view and letting my mind think through anything it cares to. I find that much more fulfilling that turning my phone on (except when I'm reading articles by Freya and/or Jon, of course!)
Deleting my Instagram and Snapchat accounts three years ago was the best decision I have made as a young adult. I’m an older Gen Z (1999), so I was a little later, maybe 14 or 15 before social media became as ubiquitous as it is for kids today. My friends and I can still remember the before times and had very normal childhoods. Mostly spent outdoors and when we did play Xbox or PlayStation it was with our friends. Nobody wanted to play unless one of our friends were online. One of our favorite activities was even gathering all of our Xboxes and TVs at a friend’s house who had a large playroom just so we could all play side by side. I don’t believe kids these days treat gaming or socializing like we did.
Even then, iPhones weren’t as prevalent until I was 16 or 17, and before then most of us were instagramming and snapping on iPads and iPod touches which most of our parents wouldn’t allow us to have at school, so social media time was limited. But when that technology was integrated more affordably into phone form, well what good parent would send their children out into the world without a line of communication? My age group missed the ubiquitousness of social media via the iPhone during our formative which I’m thankful for.
But back to deleting Instagram and Snapchat. I found that I was following and posting for people I didn’t particularly care about. If something big happened that I wanted to post about, the people who I cared about already knew before the post. And vice versa. I knew about the big things in those that I cared about before posting. Still, the older I get, I do understand the need of keeping up with old friends and acquaintances, but need that be done via social media? I think not.
The pressure to cling to social media is only going to increase on Gen Z as they get older. They will ask how will I keep up with who’s going to what college, who’s getting married, who’s having children, who’s getting engaged, who’s moving where, who’s gotten what job? I think my own testimony is that you keep up with these things naturally. Life has a funny way of doing that. You run into people all the time. People reach out on a whim. You talk about each other’s lives and the lives of others. How many conversations have you been the subject of over the past week between other people? Probably more than you’d think.
Being without social media is so refreshing from this aspect. When old friends come back to town, they usually reach out to me for drinks or dinner. The conversation is never dull. There’s just too much to catch up on. Since you have little idea of what’s been going on in their life, it’s so much easier to take a genuine interest in their life. Then they may also bring news of other mutual friends and acquaintances. You know that feeling when you see someone on Instagram, someone you were once close with but have drifted apart but are still fond of, you see that they’ve gotten into a certain school or are getting married or are having children? You’re like oh good for them, I’m so happy for them. Well, if you ditch social media, that news is still going to reach you, but you get to share those good feelings with the messenger. I find the experience so much more enjoyable, so much more human, to share with another.
I’ll leave you with a story from just last week (these sorts of things happen multiple times a week when you don’t have social media). I had a great friend in high school. He went the blue collar route and I went to college. We naturally drifted apart due to this and distance. A mutual friend of ours was back in town, and we were getting dinner. After we got done catching up, we were talking about old friends, and he told me our blue collar friend had gotten married. Great! And even better, he just had his first child. I was overjoyed. We called the old friend up on the spot to congratulate him. And we caught him at a good time too and spent another hour and a half catching up and reminiscing over the phone, the three of us. Would this have happened if I’d seen it on Instagram by myself with no one else to share the joy of that good news with? Probably not.
These may seem like little things, but the surprise at good news, and bad, the little unplanned coincidental happenings, the sharing and receiving of news with others via flesh and blood messengers (not a screen), and the toing and froing of life and taking it as it comes-- these are the things that make life worth living.
To other, younger, Gen Z out there, it takes a leap of faith. There’ll be balks and restarts and awkward situations, but deleting your socials will go a long way in ridding yourself of loneliness. You’ll often be alone, but you’ll rarely be lonely. You’ll find that you’ll be intimately engaged in life around you. You’ll care about the people and things around you. It really is like scales falling from the eyes and the heart. The irony is that you’ll find the little tangible world directly around you is so much bigger and more vibrant than the offerings of the universe served to you by your algorithm.
That last paragraph is what I needed to hear. I’ve been off Snapchat and Instagram for a while now, and have noticed my life change for the better. I have been trying to be more present and truly appreciate connections with the immediate people around me and it’s a way better use of my time than scrolling through stories. Haha, love your take on this, thank you for sharing. And that story about your high school friend!🤍
In summary, social media allows us to have the inside scoop on someone’s life while costing us nothing. No sacrifice except the time it takes to school. Of course the result is fake connection & the continued loneliness while longing for authentic human interaction.I love your story about you & your friend reconnecting with your old buddy. Sounds like a wonderful reunion.
Sound advice, as always, Freya.
I was born in 1952 so I was well into my 50s before social media became so popular and, when it did arrive, I was not remotely attracted to it though many of my generartion were (and still are). The ones who are are not amongst my friends because I'm not on social media and they are nowhere else.
Growing up I was shy but still had many acquaintances who I got along with alright but always only a few real friends - the ones I could turn to if I needed help; the ones who would be honest with me and tell me if I was acting like a fool; the ones who really cared about me and wanted to see me. They were the ones who came knocking at our door (we didn't even have house phones in those days) to ask if I'd got some time to spend with them.
Friends : Low in number; high in quality.
Just as you are recommending and I couldn't agree more with what you say.
One other thing that occurs to me ...
How much of this loneliness that GenZ experience also affects their attitudes to romantic friendships which may lead to long-term attachments and marriage?
After all, the ultimate version of having a small number of really close, high quality friends is surely marriage, isn't it?
It's interesting how the "have friends" and "often lonely" groups overlap for girls, but not for boys: there are many girls that often feel lonely even though they usually have friends to spend time with, and there are also a lot of boys who don't feel lonely despite having no friends.
I can admire what Jon Haidt and others (and you?) are doing to try and wean people off social media. But there is a much bigger context here isn't there....and it's one to which there is no 'solution'. The big problem is that Western liberal individualism - marvellous and transformative as it has been since the dawn of the Enlightenment - has now finally pitched on a downward slope. Our social media atomisation was - in a sense - always written in the runes of liberal individualism right from the start. As I say, there is no political/sociological 'solution' to this. Le Deluge is approaching....and Apres? we'll just have to see. Good Luck nevertheless!
You raise a good point. It could also be a sign of "learned helplessness" another product implanted in our minds by Social Media for their convenience. Human history is filled with stories of small lucid group that turn things around. Quitting Social Media is necessary to stay lucid, one has to be ready to balance between interactions with bodiless beings (zero senses interactions) and more meaninglful and nourrisghing in person and with immediate environment - It's a much smaller dose of dopamine, attention, and approval but it is more aligned with the amount normally needed in the the adult stage of development.
I'm a pastor working on a teaching series on how to have friends. Because this is a crisis and people need to be taught this now. I'm using and quoting you a lot in that future series. Thank you for describing this problem so well.
I wonder whether the increased loneliness is also due to a decreased tolerance for aloneness. Interaction with friends is important - we can't wholly sustain ourselves - but since social media is so much about seeing and being seen, I wonder whether young people find it discomfiting to be alone without being looked at.
This resonated so much. I’m on the cusp of Millennial and Gen Z so I had a small amount of childhood relatively screen free, but have been on social media for about 10 years. I just quit a month ago and still struggle with loneliness (maybe because I notice it more now) but overall feel more free and happy
Social media or not, the loneliness epidemic is real. Even without using the popular social media apps, connection seems somehow harder. I once did a casual survey of my friends of all ages, and few were using those apps regularly. I mean, there was usually a daily check in on instagram that consisted of mostly downtime, unwinding after work, waiting in line, in between doing other things. It helps to pass time in between flights, waiting for class to start or on break at work. Sure, I have a friend or two who spends WAY too much time curating her life through her phone lens, but for each one of those friends I have 20 or 30 who are only loosely participating in social media apps as a time killer. What has gone away is very interesting, there was always a tendency of people, especially women, to talk and talk for hours and to be quite honest, most of it was gossip, negativity and complaining about this that or the other person in life or work., lots complaints about the boyfriend or date or husband and a few complaints about the lack thereof. There were lurid stories about cheating spouses or mistreatment. A lot of that is gone now, and I don’t miss it, not even a little bit. Coworkers would complain about the boss, about one another and more than once friendships were ruined, jobs were lost. Now it seems that instead of ruminating on our loved ones or friends perceived slights or disrespectful comments or bad behavior we now have an alternative, we can scroll away the time until we feel less agitated and sure that blue sky with a sunset photo looks appealing and could be calming in a way….. what is missing though, is opportunity to get physical and interact with the real world, instead of lying in the sun and working on a tan we are virtually shopping for a sundress to wear so we can lie in the sun and work on our tan. Instead of the book we would read, we read emails, exchange texts or research a new restaurant. There’s a middle ground here, and I think what is missing is family, more than anything. If you have siblings, parents, cousins and extended family, you had people. Now, you might have one parent, not two, you might have one sibling or none, two or three cousins at best. People are missing from our lives because of this shrinkage of family size, of parenting choices and the free no strings attached sex that was supposed to be so great ended up with women being used to gratify physical urges. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, seriously? It’s not easy being treated like an object. And the heartbreak of all of this is being played out by these missing connections. If you don’t have a sister, how are you to understand much about girls? If you do not have a brother how can you learn to act around boys? How can you relate to men if you don’t have a father in the home? If your mom is at work all the time, how do you learn how to be a mom?
Your writings always hit home Freya! I’m a 23 year old that doesn’t have any social media, and it can definitely feel isolating at some times. But honestly, my best friendships are those that I have been able to keep up with outside of social media. I have a small circle of really special relationships, and I have never felt so fulfilled. Sometimes I think I miss being on instagram, and this is such a good reminder of what I’m not missing out on :)
The problem has been that the phone and online discussion has been required for school projects and academia. My daughter is 22, and while at the AI being online at all hours was required that’s how the school projects were conducted, and invariably someone in her group would not start until midnight, so that meant the whole team would be online to 2 am. It created the badge of honor “we’re so tired because we had to work so late”, and pushed kids to conduct their social lives online as well.
My kids, 19 and 22, are outdoor enthusiasts, it has been the one thing that has spared them from isolation that social media fosters, because the get away from the dopamine mill. Nothing breaks your consternation over online drama than being confronted with a ski trail where you think you may end up takin a powder. Or working out in a high heat environment. This rebalances brain chemistry which the dopamine mills have damaged.
But you have to reduce the phone use. It’s hard to put the thing down as we’re conditioned to believe the information we are FED is a form of research as we “learn”. We’re not learning, we’re reacting. We’re being conditioned by the colors and the triggers. The phone is so one dimensional and we see only what others want to present to us. There’s no substitute for watching you and your friends take a spill while kayaking. Talk about a marvelous equalizer.
I'm Gen X and I never had a lot of friends. I had at most five really good friends growing up, but I do remember staying out until the sun went down. We did get out and explore more.
As I grew up, I lost those friends. My last friend died in 2000.
I know how Gen Z feels. The loneliness is real.
It wasn't right to lock them down for two years over a common cold.
Would you rather get 20 likes on your instagram story or have a lovely day out with one friend?
Stepping away from social media is giving up something that no one asked for in the first place--shallow connections that feel good for a moment, but give us nothing when we really need it.
I remember how Dungeons and Dragons was going to cause the fall of civilization. My mother witnessed how Elvis’ hips were gutting the moral character of the nation. Within 30 years we will be looking back with longing at how everyone was connected on social media and had loads of actual friends because whatever follows social media as we know it will change the fabric of society again.
Lonely isn’t a modern phenomena. Our society uses shunning as a weapon for social control-be of the wrong faith and find yourself outside, behave outside the expectations and wear a scarlet A or the Felon’s F. Like math and science and have no friends.
We are just getting better at recognizing the tremendous damage it does.
Indeed. Already several hundred years ago, scientists were warning about the “handheld devices,” calling for strict regulations. They were of course talking about books, produced by the malicious printing press. Reading was harmful to the mind and scholars worried it would socially isolate individuals.
Then it was radio, likened to a drug, and then TV, which was shortening the attention span. Both were accused of distracting children from reading, which of course by then was considered a wholesome activity.
And so the Sisyphean cycle of technology panics continues.
Except persuasive technology stepped in wrapped around a warm and cosy legal shield (section230) , digital illiterate users and a bunch of greedyless relational illiterate ready to take advantage of their new super power supported by "naive" elected officials with a habit to plast trust in people who show not to deserve it . I am afraid this is unprecedented in human history.
Unprecedented in human history? You might want to revisit the role of radio under Hitler and Stalin.
Jowan thank you for the point you raised. Let me be more precise, unprecedented in the history of democracies... Now, can you compare the radio in those days with the precision addictive mind altering machine that Zuckerberg and Friends created and used, against all age consumers from across the world (without their knowledge!) spreading caos, hyperindividualism, perversion, mental health epidemic, and turning millions across the globe into the worst version of themselves because that granted him/them maximum profit and power? Not sure. That a democracy supports this, tell us a lot about the US and EU democracies health.
typo?
asmiov
asimov
I'm a baby boomer who has been a Facebook fan for a very long time, probably more than ten years. May 23 I deactivated my account. I need to learn how to get my photos out so I can delete it all together. At first, I felt like a smoker who habitually reached for a cigarette, only mine was my phone. But, as the days turned into weeks and now I can count by months, it's become easier. The FOMO has diminished. In fact, I'm better off not knowing what everyone else is doing. I finally prefer to stay out-of-the-loop. I still have Instagram, but it's become less appealing. Since, it's Independence Weekend, this would be a good time to declare independence from that too.
Facebook has a utility for exporting your entire history, including images. You start the process and get an email confirmation when it is done. At least that's how it was when canceled my account after Facebook became a platform for algorithmic subversion of democracy (Cambridge Analytica, etc.). The utility worked amazingly well. I can view my old Facebook activity as an offline website sort of thing.