The loneliness epidemic grows

ByMartyn Bradbury

Loneliness spike

Nowhere in the world are young men as lonely in comparison to other people in their country as in the U.S., Axios’ Carly Mallenbaum writes from a new Gallup poll.

    • One in four U.S. men ages 15 to 34 said they felt lonely a lot of the previous day. That’s a higher proportion than young American women (18%).

We hate each other thanks to social media.

While we hate each other more than ever before, we are more lonely than we have ever been before.

We are lonely,  more depressed and sicker.

Teen loneliness machine

The tech ecosystem that surrounds today’s teens is fueling loneliness.

      • Why it matters: It’s a dangerous environment for a generation that’s already sad and stressed. And it’s more difficult than ever for their parents, teachers and coaches to understand and help them, Axios’ Erica Pandey writes.

📈 The big picture: Data shows that teens are spending less time hanging out with friends in person, and more time on their devices.

      • America’s 15- to 24-year-olds spend 35% less time socializing face-to-face than they did 20 years ago, The Atlantic reports.
      • Instead, American kids and teenagers spend nearly six hours a day looking at screens, according to the Digital Parenthood Initiative.

Our loneliness, our depression, our sickness are all fomenting the spin of social media hate algorithms which only further polarise our debate into All Tribe and No Village politics.

I think we are a clever ape who has evolved over 300 000 years. Because we have to compete against other sentient and self conscious clever apes and work with them as groups so our intelligence and ability to use tools could change our environment, we have had to bond and understand each other over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

When we meet in person, our bodies and brains and taking in millions of different details subconsciously and we are working each other out through facial cues, pheromones, gait, stance, smiles, eye contact, etc etc etc: we have taken those 300 000  years of evolution and replaced that  with flat screen interaction where we lose all that unseen evolutionary advantage and instead become brainwashed and trapped in rabbit holes of demented reality.

Flat screen interaction is warping our human capacity to tell what is true and what isn’t because we don’t have that sense of the person in front of us and all the million ways we asses each other in our evolved brain.

We have become an ocean of spite and resentment in an All Tribe No Village politics distorted by social media hate algorithms because 300 000 years of evolution can’t work in a flat screen interaction loneliness.

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11 Comments

  1. The family unit is being eroded as people have become more able to move around the country and the world .We become isolated in our new environment and those left behind are isolated in their existing environment .Yes we can communicate by digital means but it is not the same because it is easy to hide the fact that things are not as they seem on the surface .This is a new type of poverty .

  2. All 18 year old’s should serve a year (or better two) doing some kind of service that benefits society as a whole (military service / helping in child care centre’s / schools / hospitals etc) which greatly helps the wider community / ensures that these ‘young adults’ are engaged with other people and also appreciating that they are also an integral part of their community.
    Try being lonely then ..

    1. What makes you think they are not doing stuff like going to school ,uni and work .Because the focus is on the 1 or 2% that are causing trouble the other 98% get labeled as being lazy lay abouts .This is no different to the 60s and 70s that I can remember .

      1. I am suggesting this for all 18 year old’s etc for a year between school and uni or work.

    2. If as you suggest ,a young man works in ECE he is labeled as a pedophile ,if he talks to a young lady on the street or at a club or pub he is labeled as a stalker .No wonder they think it is safer to stay at home .

      1. Don’t negative the response of ideas answering to your concern. This negativity seems a Kiwi thing, suggest something and its put down completely – it will never work, because… Actually listing the problems and finding a way round them is what is needed in the 21st century. We are going downhill now and climate change, the diminution of human values and the rise of materialism will take us to the bottom. No good for us to be on the descending part of a bell curve. In modern times our base would be worse in most cases than that of earlier epochs.

    3. Your plan is a good one and would be a great opportunity for young people.
      I joined the Merchant Navy at 18 .I came from a small country town .Going to sea opened me up to a range of people I would never had contact with if I had stayed at home . Coloured people, homosexuals , drunks , criminals and people from many backgrounds plus visiting countries all round the World . I am sure it made me a better parent .

  3. And people take their loneliness with them… Back in the day if you were milling around waiting for your order at an F&C shop, complete strangers would strike up a conversation. Not anymore, now people are locked on to their hand held ‘dopamine dispenser’.

  4. Agreed – I recently noticed when I took my kids to swimming lessons on the bench seats across from me out of approx 20 adults and kids every single one was looking at a device of some sort.

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