Why Are We All So Lonely?
On social media, capitalism, community, and the importance of meeting your friends and shaking your hoop
When I read recently that Ireland’s young people have one of the highest rates of loneliness in all of Europe, I was upset, but not surprised. As a “Zillenial” born in 1995, I feel like I’ve lived through 3 distinct and changing eras, all punctuated by the internet and how it functions in everyday life:
My childhood, which was largely dominated by meeting an assortment of neighbours, family, and friends every day, with very little technology aside from the odd Saturday morning cartoon marathon on TV.
My teenage years, where the internet existed, but on a computer accessible only for an hour or so per day. My social life included nights out, days hanging around town, and attending gigs in local venues. It was in real life. Online social spaces didn’t exist all that much.
My adult life, where the internet is no longer a “place”, it’s everything. It’s where I do the majority of my working, learning, socialising, relaxing, and entertaining. In-person hang-outs do still exist, of course, but they are mostly pre-planned. These in-person meets include friends (both in and outside the home), work colleagues (in an office), and family members. Sometimes, I meet my neighbours for walks and quick catch-ups.
Not to get too “old person shouting at a cloud” about it all, but our addiction to, and reliance on, technology has been to the detriment of communities. I’ll say that with my full chest.
While I’m aware this is a blanket statement, it feels like, in Ireland, we’ve turned from an extremely community-focused society to one that’s awkward, lonely, anxious, and isolated.
Here are my thoughts.
The Curse of Individualism & Self-Obsession
Despite being advertised as spaces to connect with friends old and new, at its very core, social media exists to allow individuals to curate the ideal version of themselves. Unlike real life, where people perceive you as a living, breathing, speaking, acting person, on social media, you only choose to show exactly what you want people to see. Everyone knows that. But what does that mean?
It means that on social media, you’re constantly amplifying the best parts of yourself. You’re not showing (for the most part) the genuine humanity that helps others regard you with empathy, like your natural smile or laugh or body language or voice. This lack of human-ness is bad news for people who don’t come across as instantly likable through a screen.
Despite having different audiences and ways of working, socials are essentially a podium for people to display their perceived best version of their lives. Naturally, this turns into a silent competition; whose existence is more ideal? The cottage-core tradwife? The young, hot, NYC corporate girl? The “clean girl” who drinks green smoothies and goes to the gym every day? The “rat girl” who sleeps in late, watches too much TV, and is, generally, a bit of a mess? (but an authentic and relatable mess!) So many subcultures, so little time. (whether or not they even are subcultures is questioned in Jenny Claffey’s incredible substack, featured below).
The constant slew of vlogs, photo dumps, highlights, and stories depicting carefully curated lives, and our obsession with watching them, has created a society that prioritises individualism over everything else. We are obsessed with self-obsession. We desperately want to know what these creators do every day, if only to compare how our little lives match up.
We want our online peers, friends, and influencers to show us what we should be doing, because in a world where community is stretched so thin that it barely exists, looking at someone who we aspire to be online is the only thing that makes us feel like our lives matter. Like there’s something to keep working toward.
And that’s where the major issues begin.
Why do I feel guilty about not going to the gym after seeing an influencer post their workout routine? Why do I feel like unhealthy slobs after flicking through a “what I eat in a day” photo-dump? Why do I yearn for more money, more freedom, more holiday, more everything after spending time on my phone?
We’ve let carefully curated photographs and videos of people (who we don’t know in real life) dictate how we feel.
Why?
Because we’re relying on the internet to give us the same feelings of comfort, acceptance, and worth that community once gave to people.
It’s logical to understand that we should take all this content with a grain of salt.
But it’s so well curated that it’s impossible to do that.
The Self-Help Epidemic
Perhaps it’s just the areas of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram that I lurk on, but it feels like there is something dark and inherently wrong about how self-help and self-care are being promoted to us. At its core, true self-help is about empowering people to find ways of coping with the world, trauma, or difficult emotions, in healthy and productive ways.
Online self-help is focused almost entirely on individualism. It’s become a trend.
In the past few months, while navigating the pits of grief and loss for the first time, I’ve been researching self-care to help bring some more structure, happiness, and stability to my life. TikTok, YouTube and Podcasts have recommended:
Making a Vision Board
Journalling
Yoga
Setting Boundaries
Having an “Everything” Shower
Affirmations
Doing a Face & Hair Mask
Reading Self-Help Books
Listening to Self-Help Podcasts
Going on a Walk
While these are all practices that I occasionally do, and really do believe contribute to positive mental health, notice how individualistic they are. Yoga, journalling, and listening to podcasts aren’t going to help a person who feels lonely, are they? And these were given as recommendations to someone experiencing the worst iteration of loneliness- death.
Lucky, I can see this. And, while I’ve been doing some of the above, the things that have genuinely helped me cope in this weird, difficult stage of life have been community-based and focused on human connection. Things like:
Joining a Dance Class
Making Plans to See (and do things with) Friends
Visiting My Family Regularly
Having Regular Date Nights With My Partner
Starting In-Person Therapy
All of these things involve real-life interaction with people. As far as I remember, aside from maybe “making plans to see friends”, nothing communal is ever mentioned when you research self-care and ways of positively impacting your mental health on most social media platforms.
Since the dawn of social media, ironically, the importance of relationships has been dwindling.
Online, People pride themselves on being introverted, boasting about the fact that they can “bed rot” for days without seeing anyone. Gym bros in tight vests shout into screens, encouraging viewers to stop engaging with anyone who doesn’t prioritise the exact same things that they do- like eating healthily, waking early, and working hard. Self-care and self-betterment have become a “me over anyone else” game, where your dedication to improvement could leave you friend-less, but isn’t that better than being perceived as a lazy or unproductive person? God forbid you become a lazy or unproductive person.
Are you a loner or are you lonely?
As I write this, I don’t want to seem like I’m bashing introverts or people who don’t have many friends. I understand that people can be limited by circumstance, and also fully appreciate that many people live happy and fulfilled lives without a large social circle. What I’m trying to highlight is how social media often glamorises the “lone wolf” as someone who has elevated their life and only needs themselves.
I genuinely think that this is a dangerous and almost dystopian-capitalist message to promote.
The romanticization of loneliness is particularly evident when looking at TikTok “cores,” ie: certain aesthetics and ways of being that are promoted as idealistic. As far as I’ve seen, none focus on community, friendship, or building/maintaining meaningful relationships.
They take the form of the:
Corporate badass who has no time for friends or a relationship because she’s too busy making money and career moves. She arrives early to the office and stays late.
Trad wife whose entire life revolves around her home, her children, and her partner, leaving little to no time for an external career, hobbies or friendships
The spiritual girlie who spends her time meditating, journaling, and practising yoga. She’s too enlightened to associate with anyone who doesn’t serve her higher purpose and sets strict boundaries over who she allows into her life.
The homebody, who is completely at peace staying inside, playing video games, and watching TV and movies alone.
The self-care queen, whose life revolves around exercise, cooking healthy meals, complicated skin and hair routines, early mornings, and early nights.
It’s okay to have alone time, and it’s certainly okay to set boundaries with friends and family. What’s dangerous is when alone time is all that you have. So many content creators share jokes to the tune of “The awkward moment when you protect your peace so much that you have no one left!” Is that not incredibly sad?
Is a lot of money, a deep understanding of spirituality, a toned body, or a pristinely clean house worth sacrificing real-life, tangible relationships over? Giving up personal connections in pursuit of very “online” goals like the above feels wrong.
It’s scary that these idealised, individualistic lives are what’s being promoted online. It’s a hyper-capitalist hellscape, wrapped up in a bright, glitzy, catchy-music covered bow. (More on this nearer the end of this article)
Relationships Don’t Have to “Serve You”
On the topic of lifestyle influencers, another trend I’m seeing too often is influencers, self-help gurus, and podcasters discussing the importance of relationships that “serve” you. According to most of them, if the relationships in your life aren’t constantly enhancing your life, it’s okay to cut them off entirely.
Um… whatthefuck?
It’s important to surround yourself with people who are genuinely kind, caring, good people. I genuinely believe that. I don’t waste time of bullshit. But… it’s not your friends’ or families’ job to serve you. People are multidimensional and prone to change. People go through hard times and difficult circumstances, and in reality; sometimes “your people” can’t be there for you to “serve” you at every whim.
It’s okay to have some friends that you only meet to have fun with, and others who you open up to more for emotional support. It’s also okay if a friend or family member doesn’t have capacity to drop everything for you all the time.
Rather than cutting off someone after they’ve ignored a text, haven’t been in touch for a few days, or have done something without you, why not:
Confront them and ask if everything’s okay-with them and the relationship
Assess their current situation, and think about whether they might have larger priorities at the moment
Think about the relationship as a whole; is it generally healthy, or generally unhealthy? Does this person have a habit of doing shitty things or is it a once-off?
Ask yourself whether the thing you’re stressing about in the relationship is really that deep
Go touch some grass
I once got a fantastic piece of advice from a therapist, who told me to conduct private “relationship check-ins” every 6 months(ish) with the people I’m close to and/or spend the most time with. This practice made me think about the big relationships in my life (friends, partners, family), and assess whether these relationships were healthy, functional, and reciprocal. Rather than asking whether relationships were “serving” me, doing an internal check-in allowed me to navigate whether there was a communication breakdown, a need to thank friends/family/partner for supporting me, or just a moment to reflect and be grateful for the good relationships in my life.
Regular check-ins put relationships into perspective and make you appreciate the good people around you more. They also give you the headspace and clarity to distance yourself from people who are affecting you negatively-in a non-toxic or impulsive manner.
It’s not about how people are “serving” you. It should never be about how people are “serving” you.
Why have we been conditioned to isolate ourselves?
I’ve been thinking about this article for a while now, and my underlying thesis is this;
We’ve been conditioned to isolate ourselves and de-prioritize human connection because social media has done a fantastic job of simulating it for us.
I could scroll for hours on Tiktok. I love scrolling for hours on TikTok! Why? Because I somehow feel involved and engaged as I watch people who look like me or talk like me or have the same humor as me on my phone. I like listening to them talking about funny experiences, I like watching them document their days, and I like learning about things I’m interested in. I feel good as I scroll.
It’s only when I come offline and realise I’ve been sitting there, doing nothing, blasting blue light into my eyes, that the dopamine drops and the loneliness hits.
Too many of us are fulfilling our need for connection with people we don’t know, who only exist to us on the other side of a mobile phone screen. This is at the core of why we’re feeling so disconnected. When it’s easy to simulate connection by doing something as quick as pulling up an app, why would you try to plan things with friends? Why would you leave the house in the cold and spend money on a hang-out? Why would you attempt to develop and nurture new relationships, and force yourself to exist through the awkwardness of trying to find things in common? Why would you comfort people when they’re down, or have to remain talking to someone who has a different viewpoint than you?*
*I say all this with a healthy dose of sarcasm
We live in a late-capitalist hellscape
It would be unfair and inaccurate to write this blog and not address the overarching conditions that are causing all this disconnection and isolation and loneliness- we are living in a wildly late-capitalist society that promotes consumption, individualism, and money over everything.
And we’ve been living in it for so long, that it’s almost impossible to step back from it- to ask whether there is more to life than consumerism and wealth and self-progression.
The sad thing is, that late-stage capitalism is so deeply ingrained in everything that we do that unless you’re seriously privileged in terms of money or freedom or success (all created by the system), you must consume, work, and collect wealth for your time here on earth.
Because what’s the alternative? Poverty- financial poverty, resource poverty, educational poverty, time poverty. And when living in any kind of poverty, it’s very hard to live a comfortable, fulfilled, stable, and safe life.
Because of this, things that don’t revolve around consumption; like spending time with family and friends, doing charity work, growing and tending fruit and vegetables, and connecting with your community, are more difficult. Society does not bend to allow people to carve out time or space for things like these.
We work such long hours that socialising in between work days is exhausting
Our addiction to technological relationships has dampened our real-life communication skills and has made connecting with strangers more difficult
There is a fundamental lack of third spaces in towns and cities across the Western world (spaces for people to go, where they are not expected to spend money)
There is a lack of financial & governmental support for endeavors that are not profit-focused, like the establishment of community initiatives, putting people off starting them
In Ireland, the housing crisis sees people living in crowded house shares or accommodation in sub-par condition. This stops people from inviting others to their homes, fragmenting relationships, forcing socialisation to exist in places where money must be spent and impacting mental health negatively.
Reclaiming The Right To “Just Exist” is Revolutionary
While it can be scary to live in this age, and disheartening, especially if you’re actively looking for human connection, there are ways to find it again. While I’m by no means an expert, here’s what I’ve been doing to untether myself from my phone, detach a little from hustle culture, and immerse myself in real life more:
This article has taken me ages to finish, simply because I can’t think of some “ties it all together” bullshit to end with. These are just my thoughts. And there’s no answers. But it’s good to gather your thoughts and try to understand them and give yourself some grace and realise that, if you’re lonely, it’s not your fault. Have empathy for yourself. Try to make it better. Step by step. It’s okay.
-Avril xox