We've Never Been More Connected. So Why Are We So Lonely?

[Beartracks]

...

No previous generation has had anything like this scale of instant, everyday communicative reach. Technically, the distance between people has never been easier to cross. And yet reach is not attachment. Availability is not intimacy. Contact is not belonging. A person can be reachable by everyone and held by no one. A message can cross the sea instantly and still fail to become a relationship. A feed can contain thousands of human signals and still leave the body alone in a room. A society can build extraordinary communication systems and still face an epidemic of loneliness.

That is the contradiction at the heart of modern life. People communicate constantly: texting, posting, replying, reacting, liking, sharing, streaming, commenting, subscribing, swiping, and broadcasting. The problem is that communication has become easier than connection, and connection has become easier to simulate than to secure. The modern world has multiplied the signals of social life while weakening many of the structures that once made social life durable.

Everyone may be reachable. That does not mean anyone has a secure connection.

A secure connection is not the same as a notification. It is the person who notices when you have gone quiet. It is the friend who knows the difference between being busy and disappearing. It is the neighbor who remembers that your car has not moved. It is the family member who does not need a crisis before calling. It is the room where absence registers because presence had a place.

...

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/weve-never-been-more-connected-so

[snot]

1. Too true.

Our communities have been atomized in many ways, including among others:

An economy that uproots employees at the drop of a hat;

A culture that valorizes appearances rather than genuine merit or connection;

Endless streams of distraction via ubiquitous screens;

Algorithms that deliberately bubble-ize us into market niches;

Social media platforms that comply with pressures to censor, demote, or demonetize info that conflicts with oligarchic or governmental agendas;

A politics that stokes unreasoning hatred based on political affiliation, "race," skin color, gender appearance, identification, and/or orientation, ethnicity, religion, generational age, etc. etc.;

And last but not least, keeping us all working too hard (both parents working 50 hrs./week instead of one parent working 40, among other things) to participate meaningfully in more than a small number of real relationships.

[Skittles]

2. the "connections" are all too often superficial bullshit

look at these ridiculous "influencers", for example - seriously, WTF