How technology created a recipe for loneliness, stoked by social media, text messaging, binge-watching

Technology and loneliness are interlinked, researchers have found, stoked by the ways we interact with social media, text messaging and binge-watching.

Over the summer, Laura Marciano, a researcher at Harvard University, interviewed 500 teenagers for a continuing study investigating the link between technology and loneliness. The results were striking.

For several weeks, the teenagers, who were recruited with the help of Instagram influencers, answered a questionnaire three times a day about their social interactions. Each time, more than 50 per cent said they had not spoken to anyone in the past hour, either in person or online.

To put it another way, even though the teenagers were on break from school and spending plenty of time on social media apps, most of them were not socialising at all.

Americans now spend more time alone, have fewer close friendships and feel more socially detached from their communities than they did 20 years ago. One in two adults reports experiencing loneliness, the physiological distress that people endure from social isolation. US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic late last year.

Ever since, scholars and psychologists have accelerated research into whether technology is contributing. The rise of smartphones and social networking apps has forever changed social norms around how we communicate. More personable interactions such as phone calls have been superseded by text messages. When people broadcast their lives on TikTok and Instagram, they may not be representing themselves in a genuine way.

“It’s hard to know who’s being real online, and it’s hard for people to be themselves online, and that is a recipe for loneliness,” Murthy said in an interview. He concluded that loneliness had become an epidemic after reviewing scientific studies and speaking with college students last year, he said.

I went down a rabbit hole for the past few months reading research papers and interviewing academics about tech and loneliness. (Many studies focused on how younger people used technology, but their conclusions were still relevant to older adults who used the same tech.)

The consensus among scholars was clear: Although there was little proof that tech directly made people lonely (plenty of socially connected, healthy people use lots of tech), there was a strong correlation between the two, meaning that those who reported feeling lonely might be using tech in unhealthy ways.

The correlation was rooted in three main behaviors:

1. On social media apps such as Instagram, many fell into the trap of comparing themselves with others and feeling that they were lagging behind their peers.
2. Text messaging, by far the most popular form of digital communication, could be creating a barrier to authentic connection.
3. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, some people who felt lonely also exhibited addictive personalities – in this case, to streaming videos – that kept them indoors.

Here’s what to know and what to do with your tech if you’re feeling lonely.

THE DANGERS OF MAKING COMPARISONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

One of the most comprehensive research efforts on tech and loneliness to date, led by Marciano and her colleagues, was a review that aggregated data from 30 studies published during the coronavirus pandemic exploring tech use and the mental health of adolescents. Most studies found that social media was linked to loneliness – specifically, when people made unfavourable comparisons of themselves with others online.

Online and offline, people naturally compare themselves with others, a behaviour that psychologists call social comparisons. Social comparisons can manifest online in many different ways. One way could be counting the number of likes, comments and reshares that your posts get compared with those of your friends. It could be comparing your body with the body of a beauty or fitness influencer. For parents, it could be monitoring your newborn’s development compared with that of other infants. When people feel they are behind others in life, it can be isolating.

Social comparisons aren’t always bad. In academic and work settings, for example, many past studies have shown that comparing yourself with other high performers can motivate you to do high-quality work. So the solution isn’t simply to stop comparing ourselves with others online, said Chia-chen Yang, a professor of educational psychology at Oklahoma State University.

Yang led a study in 2018 that surveyed nearly 220 college freshmen about what they liked and disliked when using apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The study concluded that the interactions that caused the most distress were comparisons of a judgmental nature evoking envy, in which people viewed others as being more popular, having more fun or looking prettier.

Social media stirred up more positive feelings among students browsing posts from people who shared useful information online. That could include a friend posting about getting a scholarship or a great deal on a used car, inspiring you to make similar decisions.

“I don’t have to see other people as enemies – I can see them as informants in my life,” Yang said. “That type of comparison is not detrimental.”

MAYBE WE TEXT TOO MUCH

Dozens of studies found that one-on-one digital communications, including messaging, phone calls and video calls, were associated with the most positive mental health effects, including decreased feelings of loneliness. But an overreliance on text messaging, which superseded phone calls as the most-used communication method on phones many years ago, could contribute to loneliness if people weren’t genuinely connecting with one another.

An overwhelming majority of teenagers primarily communicate through text messaging, and they have also reported feeling connected with others when they were on “the same vibe,” according to Marciano’s research. They also said some text interactions – like a friend’s taking a long time to respond to a message – stoked anxieties and feelings of loneliness.

In addition, very few teenagers – about 2 per cent – used video calls, Marciano said. Therein lies a potential problem. It’s difficult to imagine how people could sense vibes and authenticity through typed messages, which lack the context and social cues of face-to-face interactions.

“How can you feel on the same frequency with someone if you don’t communicate properly?” Marciano said.

BINGE-WATCHING ISN'T HELPING

During the pandemic, researchers also homed in on whether binge-watching, or streaming shows back to back for long blocks of time, was linked to loneliness. An academic review of multiple studies concluded that adults who binged programmes tended to experience depression, anxiety and, to some extent, loneliness.

Dr Marc Potenza, a Yale professor and addiction expert who worked on the review, said that although the binge-watching studies focused on streaming apps such as Netflix, it was important to note that other types of apps, including TikTok and Instagram’s Reels, encouraged a similar type of infinite viewing.

People with mental health problems may engage in binge-watching as a coping mechanism for stress and other negative emotions, Potenza said. There are also obvious consequences to physical health that can harm mental health: Being sedentary for too long, losing sleep and not going out to engage with others.

By Brian X Chen © The New York Times Company

The article originally appeared in The New York Times.