If you sit in a waiting room, on public transit, or any other public space, you will almost certainly see this familiar scene: Everyone is fixated on a screen.
It’s no secret that social isolation, withdrawal, and loneliness have become serious problems since the pandemic. But these struggles have been growing for decades, and our technology bears considerable blame.
At face value, many digital technologies are designed to help people socialize. As someone who moved several states away for school, I’ve benefited from being able to call my family and stay in touch with friends. Some technology has proven benefits in keeping older populations, for example, connected to their families and friends despite geographical or health barriers.
Yet, it’s clear that online platforms are replacing and interrupting personal interactions, proliferating shallow and meaningless relationships, and creating an unhealthy comparison culture and fear of missing out (FOMO). Paradoxically, digital connection is often creating overall disconnection.
There is a race to the bottom fighting for our attention, and currently the multi-billion dollar industries are beating out our neighbors next door. But tech companies cannot hold all the blame for keeping people perpetually online.
Those are simply the incentives companies face, which is why calls for regulation to protect the public are increasing. Proposed regulations include age-restrictions for certain content and platforms, greater parental control online, platform design rules, mandatory transparency and warning labels, requirements to mitigate known harms to users, and others.
Social isolation and loneliness have become a massive problem for today’s world. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a grave advisory report on the issue, which observed this about loneliness:
“[Loneliness] is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity. And the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.”
And the problem has become much worse in recent decades. One study analyzed where Americans spent their time each month from 2003 to 2020. It found that average time spent alone increased by 24 hours per month. Time spent socializing with friends declined by 20 hours per month over the same period, and people reported having fewer close friends on average. We have an undeniable, basic human need for meaningful interaction with other people. Now we’re beginning to understand what happens when that need is unmet.
Technology use is among the most frequently cited reasons for social disconnection today. Social media use is especially associated with higher levels of loneliness. Other online activities like video games, TV, video services, and chatbots are also part of the problem. Automation at stores and restaurants, remote work, and delivery services ‒ despite the convenience ‒ lowers person-to-person interactions on a daily basis, making people feel more isolated. Tech even alienates individuals within families and religious groups, which should be bastions of community and meaning.
Addiction to devices is destroying so much of our communities. About half of teenagers report being online almost constantly, which is roughly double what it was a decade ago. A majority of teenagers say they use social media over 4 hours a day, and older groups are not far behind on average. Kids are also accessing and getting glued to digital devices at younger ages. Platforms and algorithms are expertly designed to keep users on them as long as possible.
Yet it’s almost wrong to call us “users” of online platforms. Everyone who uses these platforms becomes the product,with their attention sold to advertisers and anyone else looking for personalized data. Our attention is commodified, depleted, and sold on the cheap online while the valuable outlets, like meaningful relationships, suffer. Beyond technology transforming our experience and abilities, it’s also transforming us in less obvious ways.
For example, Nicholas Carr argues in his book published a decade and a half ago, “The Shallows,” that using the internet substantially decreases our attention spans and deep thinking capacity. Research has since strengthened these conclusions.
This inhibits our ability to interact meaningfully in person and keeps us returning to online sites for quick and easy dopamine hits. It creates a vicious cycle where time online lowers people’s ‒ especially kids’ ‒ social skills, pushing them into spending more time online rather than face-to-face. Low focus also tends to hinder academic performance, increasing shame and the likelihood of sticking to oneself. This again creates a vicious cycle.
Virtually everything worth doing, including relationships, requires some focus and work to achieve, but that focus itself is being systematically undermined.
Our brains are being reprogrammed to avoid difficulty and to idle in comfort. Although some giving or sacrifice is inherently required in healthy relationships, digital tech can promote selfishness and consumption, preventing us from giving our time and effort to others. It’s difficult enough for adults to overcome the forces driving screen addiction, and even more so for children whose brains are physically not developed enough to resist the addictive devices.
Our communities, the people around us that we care about, ought to shape who we are. Increasingly, though, technology is taking that place insofar as we cannot function “properly” without it. Many online activities isolate us, being more conducive to contemporary goals like efficiency, consistency, proceduralism, individualism, and so on. But community is an end unto itself. John Donne famously said “no man is an island,” yet modernity is testing the truth of that claim.
The solution is not to cease using digital devices or modern technology altogether. That cure might be worse than the disease. But we need not passively accept all the drawbacks of technology merely because it has some benefits. We must use technological advancements responsibly, keeping in mind the social consequences, intended or not. This requires a culture with more intentionality for recognizing tech’s risks, maintaining social interaction, using technology in moderation, and protecting the vulnerable with regulation when appropriate.
