A recent research from the University of Pittsburgh, has warned that social media is making us feel lonely.<\/p>\n
Who knew that perusing 10, 20 or even 30 riotous Facebook pictures of a colleague\u2019s Saturday night house party \u2013 to which you definitely weren\u2019t invited \u2013 causes Sunday-long existential angst? Or that Instagram updates of neatly cropped, flatteringly filtered friendship squads leave most onlookers feeling relatively chumless?<\/p>\n
Who spotted that Twitter connects people, until a miniscule difference of opinion occurs, about Brexit or the NHS (always, always the bloody NHS) when they\u2019re pruned from one\u2019s ether? We all did. In fact, the modern phenomenon of \u201cdigital detoxes\u201d and \u201cgoing off-grid\u201d is largely a reaction to how sodding miserable it makes us to have everyone\u2019s synthetically staged happiness thrust in our faces.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, researchers at Pittsburgh studied 1,787 adults aged 19 to 32 over the use of 11 social media sites: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Plus, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Vine and LinkedIn.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll suspend disbelief for a moment that anyone on LinkedIn is ever allowed to be lonely. Its entire modus operandi is haranguing you to re-connect with distant acquaintances who dry-humped you after a regional sales prize-giving in 2003. Or that Pinterest users crave actual breathing social contact when we all know they prefer to sit alone, waiting for death, in a room that smells of guinea pig bedding, pinning endless photos of Audrey Hepburn to a virtual scrapbook.<\/p>\n
But regardless of these quibbles, researchers found that people who visited all of these 11 sites more than 58 times per week were three times more likely to experience loneliness than those who went online less than nine times per week.<\/p>\n
I wish \u201c58 visits per week\u201d felt like a lot, but being very honest, for large swathes of the British population, myself included, 58 scans through Twitter is merely \u201cme, this morning, discussing the Channel 5 show Cruising with Jane MacDonald.\u201d <\/em>A play around with Twitter combined with some Instagram snooping and my WhatsApp groups make for a rip-roaring day filled with thrills, intrigue and gossip, without actually moving anywhere further than the toilet and fridge. And that\u2019s only one manoeuvre less than being an Exceptional Risk Category A prisoner.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are inherently social creatures, but modern life tends to compartmentalise us instead of bringing us together,” says lead scientist Professor Brian Primack, from the University of Pittsburgh\u2019s School of Medicine. “While it may seem that social media presents opportunities to fill that social void, I think this study suggests that it may not be the solution people were hoping for.”<\/p>\n And this is perhaps one of our greatest modern dilemmas: how social media \u201cseems\u201d. It seems to keep us cerebrally busy. It helps us build a personal brand. It catapults us into the epicentre of everyday friendship dramas. It never ever lets us be truly alone.<\/p>\n In fact it seems to have made all the vital tenets of human existence simply much zingier. But as Morrissey once said, in a time of second class stamps and meeting through the NME small ads:\u00a0\u201cIf you\u2019re so very entertaining, why are you on your own tonight?\u201d It\u2019s a line with even more relevance today.<\/p>\n All of us who lived before social media, the great unifier, know the things we have lost. Pre\u00a0Facebook, that pernicious \u201cFOMO\u201d (Fear Of Missing Out) which now blights our weekends was minimum. It was there, yes, but not assaulting us to the point of depression.<\/p>\n All Mother\u2019s Day \u201clook at my kin\u201d attention\u00a0seeking was distinctly subdued too. No one\u2019s perfect Christmas was broadcast on Periscope. Pre-Reddit, pre-Instagram, finding someone to chat to about culture, music, politics involved finding clean clothes, taking a bus somewhere and dealing with a lot of people in a pub or church hall.<\/p>\n More impromptu pub\u00a0goings, pizza nights and pop-arounds happened. I saw more people I didn\u2019t care about, but I saw more human beings nevertheless. Crucially, I had more of a real sense how my friends were actually \u201cdoing\u201d. It\u2019s often struck me that social media is full of lonely, sad people doing a brilliant job of sounding OK and perfectly fine people hoovering up everyone\u2019s attention via faking being sad.<\/p>\n Of course, there is a huge element of \u201cI remember when all this was fields\u201d about any rumination on the internet. It will be for the younger generations to rise up and rebel against constant connectivity. The most enlightened types by 2050, I think, will be humans who can flip between constant media stimulation and digital detox without clinging and craving. I have little hope of this happening any time soon.<\/p>\n A constant cause of argument among the extended Dent family right now is the lip-syncing-based social network Music.ly. This connects children via the sharing of pouting, preening six-second clips, performed in the squeaky manner of one of Alvin\u2019s Chipmunks. Hearts are doled out in mutual admiration.<\/p>\n All childhood loneliness is banished, replaced by constant, never-ending attention and the quest for followers, even fame. It is, roughly speaking, the Japanese knotweed of kids\u2019 social media: invasive, harmful and a thorough nuisance. But as I say, I remember when all this was fields.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: Independent UK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A recent research from the University of Pittsburgh, has warned that social media is making us feel lonely. Who knew that perusing 10, 20 or even 30 riotous Facebook pictures of a colleague\u2019s Saturday night house party \u2013 to which you definitely weren\u2019t invited \u2013 causes Sunday-long existential angst? Or that Instagram updates of neatly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[4719,4720,191],"yoast_head":"\n