We are living through a pandemic of loneliness. What is it that makes current society so different from any other? Is it technology? Perhaps. Our lifestyle? Perhaps that, too.
Maybe some other factors synergize to create this overarching feeling of disconnectedness.
These are some of my thoughts.
- Corona showed us how lonely we really are. When we had to be locked up and were not allowed to be with others, it shed light on the fact that we sometimes feel that way even when we are allowed to be in close contact. We can distract ourselves by being surrounded by people, but we do not connect with them through meaningful conversation. When we are going about our daily activities and we are involved with people, we do not notice how much we are also not involved with people. When our attention was not diverted by our being together with people, we noticed how we are often not together with people, even if we are together with people.
- We have seen the word friend diluted and neutralized. It no longer means that much. Instead of “friends” being people we look forward to being with, the word came to mean the number of people we count on our social media channels. Even worse, it now means the people we need to put on a show for on social media. If there are no friends, it is hard to think of friendship. So we are lonely.
- We do not talk to each other. One of the advantages of technology is that it creates constant communication. One of the disadvantages of technology is that it creates constant communication. We increasingly feel we have “no time” because we are putting our attention on the immediate -and imagined – rewards of communicating constantly. It leaves us little time to do what we would otherwise do, including conversing with friends. If we do not have meaningful conversations with friends (that does not include voice notes), we are…lonely.
- We replaced oxytocin with dopamine. Research suggests that the hormone we produce when we are with close friends is oxytocin. It makes us feel calm and at peace. It also helps us bond with other people. When we feel bonded and complacent, we then secrete serotonin, the hormone that makes us feel happy. On the other hand, when we get an email, vibration, or sound on our phone, we feel a rush of dopamine, the feel-good hormone that is associated with rewards. It feels great, but that can quickly dissipate. The dopamine surge is something we crave, so we are drawn to messaging and social media to get our fix. But it replaces and displaces the beauty of human interaction and connecting, which creates both happiness and calm.
- We have lost the ability to rely on and trust other people. To be a friend, we need to trust someone else. That way we can be ourselves with them and we can rely on them to include our needs in their decisions and thought processes. Something in our society makes it harder for us to feel that we can trust others and rely on them to let us be ourselves. (Interestingly, research suggests that the bonding hormone oxytocin also functions to reduce social vigilance. We can only bond if we let our guard down. But something stops us from letting our guard down.)
- The size of the family is larger. Many religious families are larger than they have been in the past. That means that people focus more of their time and energy on their nuclear family than on others. Family time is both necessary and rewarding, but it does not provide the same peer group friendship experience as friends do. Yet, it is hard for many to sacrifice time from the family to connect with friends.
- We have an extended family. As our generations move further away from the Holocaust, we have developed a blessing that did not exist in the recent past – an extended family. As people have been able to establish families, the multigenerational tree has grown. That means that people can feel more of an obligation to their wider families, and are not as available for friendships. If you are aware of the tensions and competing needs, you might be able to carve out time for the nuclear family, extended family, and friends. Without forethought, all of them may suffer.
The more we know why we feel lonely and more friendless, the more we can try to make our own lifecycle changes to allow ourselves more connections and a richer, more meaningful life. Relationships are not only the spice of life, they sustain us and help us actualize ourselves. Can you relate to some of these reasons? Can you do something about it in your own life?
Rabbi Shmuel Maybruch's Blog 