“Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”

the digital age.
Marche describes the rapid growth of Facebook.
Marche states

that the rise of social media has produced anxieties about its effects.

“We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors and yet we have never been more accessible.”

True or false? “Facebook is interfering with our real friendships, distancing us from each other, making us lonelier.”

diagnose.
Various studies show the rise of loneliness.
E.g., AARP survey
Physicians and

nurses speak of an epidemic of loneliness.

The innovation of loneliness

Isolation or loneliness?
Loneliness is not caused by external conditions; it is a psychological state.

35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely. (+20 percent 10 years ago)

less meaningful social interaction.
He says we are less likely to

have confidants.

A growing class of professional carers (psychologists, therapists, social worker, etc.) are taking the place of confidants.

suggest a link between Internet usage and increased loneliness.
Key question:

Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people more attracted to the Internet?

Internet paradox: increased opportunity to connect yet a lack of human contact

but “significantly higher levels of family loneliness.”
Facebook encourages more social

interaction with users at the expense of family interaction.

Facebook attracts people with unhappy family relations.

or

that non-personalized use of Facebook correlates with feelings of disconnectedness.
-scanning

your friends’ status updates
-updating your wall

“When I scroll through page after page of my friends’ descriptions of how accidentally eloquent their kids are, and how their husbands are endearingly bumbling, and how they’re all about to eat a home-cooked meal prepared with fresh local organic produce bought at the farmers’ market…I do grow slightly more miserable.”

creates loneliness.
There may be a correlation, but correlation does not

mean causation.
Facebook is a tool – its effects will depend on the user.
Facebook is not making us more lonely – we are!

and social interactions.
Technology makes increasingly superficial connections.
Facebook has fostered the

projection of happiness (i.e., pretending to be happy).

use and narcissism.
Narcissism is currently on the rise.
Narcissism and loneliness

are linked in that they are marked with a retreat from “the messy reality of other people.”

“It could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual’s need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behaviour.”

allows us to isolate ourselves, but that by mixing our

appetite for isolation with our vanity, it threatens to alter the very nature of solitude. The new isolation is not of the kind that Americans once idealized, the lonesomeness of the proudly nonconformist, independent-minded, solitary stoic, or that of the astronaut who blasts into new worlds…Solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are.”

Connected but alone?

on a simple yet complex questions.
Though the author admits to

having a bias, his article provides an honest answer to the central question.
The article identifies interesting correlations.

inquiries:
Is Facebook linked to a narcissism epidemic?
What are the effects

of constant self-presentation?
Is Facebook leading to a decrease in face-to-face interaction?
Is Facebook changing the American ideal of the isolation and individualism?

data is limited.
The article convincingly shows that there is a

rise in the use of Facebook and in rates of loneliness; however, though there are some correlations between the two, research has not identified a cause-and-effect relation.
The last section of the essay suggests that the link between Facebook and narcissism is more substantive and relevant that the link between Facebook and loneliness.