At the center of humanity, the most natural and basic aspect of all human life, except for cardinal activities such as eating and sleeping, is the relationship. Various studies and articles, research, and generations of personal experience tell us that human interaction isn't only something that we as humans enjoy, it's something that we need. Socialization between humans has been around for as long as our race has existed, and as time, humanity, and civilization have progressed so have the ways that we communicate.
Somewhere between 1990, around the time the World Wide Web became publicly accessible, and 2000, there was a change in the world as we knew it. Written letters that had already become less utilized due to the popularization of the telephone became even less popular with the introduction of email. Cell phones began to progress from brick-sized mobile blocks with antennas, to something that could actually fit in your pocket and connect you with virtually anyone, at any time. The video game industry began to flourish and online gameplay was eventually introduced, allowing old and new friends alike to hold conversations and play their favorite games together; and the internet went from being a somewhat useful tool, with a slow dial-up connection, to something some consider an everyday necessity, a right almost.
Now, with a couple decades of internet experience under it's belt, society not only navigates and influences the internet, but the internet influences us. We are more connected, to more people, than ever before at any point in human history, yet there are still reports of people being just as lonely, if not more, than ever. With the realization that our relationships are directly contributory to our mental health, one also must ask, how have these digital relationships molded, and affected us so far?
Sherry Turkle, a doctor of sociology and personality psychology attempted to answer some of these questions with a speech entitled, “Connected, but alone”, given at the TED conference in 2012. In short, TED, standing for Technology, education, and design, is a set of global conferences owned by a private non-profit organization that originated in Silicon Valley, California, named the “Sapling Foundation”. Within the speech she spoke about her experience, with over a decade of studying human emotions through digital media, and the interactions between humans and robots meant to emulate feelings of empathy. While “Digital Relationships” were what I wanted to research, and in turn, speak about through this paper. Sherry Turkle's speech is what took it from something I was interested in, to something that held emotional value. Being a denizen of this digital era, the concept she presented wasn't only relatable to my personal life, it was axiom. So, with this text, I seek to respond to Sherry Turkle's speech, but much more importantly, I seek to explore the realities, negative and positive, of this digital world we live in.
The phenomenon of digital relationships that I've chosen to explore is what I've begun to call, the Connection-Isolation effect. According to Socialbakers.com, a site that monitors Facebook statistics by region and date; by the end of 2005, just one year after launch, the site already had 5.5 million users, with 85 percent of college students in the U.S. already having an account (Marichal, 18). By 2009, the site's membership number had reached 350 million, and in 2010 alone, almost 250 million new members signed up.
By the end of 2012 the site had reached just over one billion users, and the average Facebook user had 245 friends (Washingtonpost.com, Facebook). With this amount of connectivity you would think levels of how lonely we are would be decreasing, but a study done by Duke University shows that in 19 years, from 1985 to 2004, the number of people who claim they have no one to speak to about personal important matters tripled, rising from 8.3 to 25 percent. As I said earlier, this increase in perceived sense of being alone has been attributed to several factors. One factor was an idea of “social media envy” (The Drs). The notion that when someone is feeling depressed or alone and logs onto a social media site they will see their friends posts of happiness. Pictures of people going out with groups of friends or on vacation, posts about accomplishments and joys of life. The result of this would be the person that was initially unhappy would become even more so when seeing how much happier the people they're connected to were.
The idea was based upon the belief that most people only post their happy moments, and positive aspects of life, onto the internet; being able to control what details they wanted to share. This idea falls short though, because it has been proven that this is not true with all Facebook users. A study done by Facebook.com itself, revealed that there was a correlation between discretion within posts and age. The older the user was, the more likely they were to only post the positive things; younger users were more likely to share “swear words, anger, and socially unacceptable emotions” through their public posts (Marichal, 66).
Another argument that has been posed is the quality of our relationships. Dr. John T. Cacioppo, a Chicago University neuroscientist, compares the connection-isolation effect to freshman in college for the first time (Thedailybeast.com, Lonely Planet 3rd Paragraph). While they are constantly surrounded by a large amount of people, college freshman often report alarmingly extensive feelings of loneliness during their first semester. I personally can agree with this belief. The idea is that even when connected to a large amount of people, if these aren't deep, meaningful connections, they actually increase the feeling of being alone.
In addition to this, our constant connectivity may also cause other problems with the relationships with the people around us. Dr. Michael J. Bugeja argues that when we are around friends or acquaintances, yet texting other people, it sends the message that there is someone else who is more important that we'd rather be spending our time with (Thedailybeast.com, Lonely Planet 7th Paragraph). During her speech, Sherry Turkle also highlighted the problem of parents using their cell phones constantly, for business and pleasure, and their young children suffering due to never having their full attention. Then even went on to present a photograph of her daughter with two friends, all sitting in different parts of the room texting other people.
One final sentiment that I discovered, the one I am most inclined to agree with; is that while it does seem to be true that this increase in connectivity has caused us to be more lonely, perhaps it isn't the origin of the problem. As put by someone else who was responding to a study about the increase in isolation through a Youtube comment. This, “alone in the crowd” feeling isn't something new. He spoke about life throughout the 80's and 90's, how there were always people that felt lonely, whether alone or in a group. So a new belief is brought to the light, that not only the Youtube commenter and I share, but various online sources, as well as Sherry Turkle have considered, if not fully accepted.
Perhaps, being lonely is simply human nature, as Turkle put it in her speech. Yes we are a lonely species but we're also afraid of attachment to an extent. We need separation. The internet, our cell phones, video-games, much like overworking or long runs, which have been around long before the internet, are just tools that we may use to further solidify our separation. Mediums to which we can escape into when we need to hide from the awkwardness of face-to-face human interaction. When we're too bored to sit through a business conference, one example used in Turkle's speech was when she witnessed someone texting during a funeral. It's not that he was texting because he didn't care about the d**h, it was because he needed to escape from reality, even if just by a miniscule amount. So perhaps, rather than abolishing social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, perhaps we just need to be more conscious in the way we use them. Escapism is not foreign to humanity by any means, yet neither is the common truth that too much of it will leave you out of touch with the world, and quite possibly worse off than you were to begin with.
Conclusively, I'd like to pose a question that expands upon the one I began with. Early on I asked, “With the realization that our relationships are directly contributory to our mental health, one also must ask, how have these digital relationships molded, and affected us so far?” While this is what I was exploring and responding to, with the knowledge I've gained through this an*lysis I'm left with a question regarding our next generation of human life. Knowing how important our relationships are to our health, and how much our technology has affected us so far. How will it affect the generation born into a world where constant connectivity and a vast wealth of knowledge at the tip of a search engine is unknown?
I believe there doesn't have to be much negative effect at all. While we already know that our vast connection through social media may cause extensive loneliness, we also know ways to prevent this. We know that conscious and regulated use of our devices can help us strengthen and develop the relationships we have face-to-face. We know that “digital relationships” can't replace the ones that we forge in the real world. With that said, there's no need to be so “Connected, but alone”. We can communicate and share with the ones that are far away while still cherishing and loving the people who are around us physically. Loneliness is a part of human nature, yet so is happiness, and the internet is just another tool that we've created over time, albeit one that changed the way we live our lives.
When writing was invented not everyone supported it, and it is known that it changed us. Our memories weren't as strong, we became more dependant upon something, yet we lived on. Maybe this is something similar to that, and at the end of the day, we will live on.