social media making us unsocial essay

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How Social Media is Making Us Less Social

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Updated: 4 December, 2023

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• Bartlett, J., Reffin, J., Rumball, N., & Williamson, S. (2014). Anti-social media. Demos, 2014, 1-51. (https://apo.org.au/node/37598)
• Power, D. J., & Phillips-Wren, G. (2011). Impact of social media and Web 2.0 on decision-making. Journal of decision systems, 20(3), 249-261. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3166/jds.20.249-261)
• Nair, M. (2011). Understanding and measuring the value of social media. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 22(3), 45-51. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jcaf.20674)
• De Choudhury, M., Gamon, M., Counts, S., & Horvitz, E. (2013). Predicting depression via social media. In Proceedings of the international AAAI conference on web and social media (Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 128-137). (https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/14432)
• Wright, D. K., & Hinson, M. D. (2008). How blogs and social media are changing public relations and the way it is practiced. Public relations journal, 2(2), 1-21. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228845581_How_Blogs_and_Social_Media_are_Changing_Public_Relations_and_the_Way_it_is_Practiced)

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Social Media is Making us Unsocial

October 5, 2020.

A Ted Talk by Kristin Gallucci, a Marketer, specialized in LinkedIn Advertising, shared an experience of a social media conference she attended. She shared how she was trying to interact with people, influencers present there, but was continually being ignored. She also mentioned that people over there chose to connect via social media rather than personally. They were choosing social media over a relationship.

The very first recognizable social media came in 1997 and was called ‘Six Degrees.’ But the real explosion in social media took place once blogging started. And since then, after two decades, we have come a long way. According to Statista data of 2019, an average human today is spending around 144 minutes on social media daily, and this is increasing by two minutes everyday [1]. It turns out to be 5.5 years of an average person’s lifetime being spent on social media. I had my first social media account on Orkut way back in 2010. And today, I am so much involved that I had to take a harsh step; millennials call this by a fancy word, ‘Social Media Detox.’

Social media has made the world a better place for us. But it has also been killing our relationships. Those long discussions in hostel rooms, cousins laughing after seeing old photo albums, and those random conversations in trains; it seems like all this is fading away. Social Media has replaced our experiences as well. While dining out, we let our food get cold to click those perfect images and share them online. Social media today has made us dependent on how people perceive us. We are in dire need of them to like us. But what about the ones who already like us. To them, we are just giving out reasons to dislike us.

According to a study in the USA, between 2009 and 2017, the depression rate increased by 60% among kids from age 14 to 17 [3]. It was also found that for every 10% rise in negative experiences on social media, there can be seen a 13% rise in loneliness. Another survey shows that 37% of teens, between 12 to17, have been bullied online, and more than half of the LGBTQ community faces online harassment. 23% of students are involved directly or indirectly in cyberbullying activities. [2]

Henceforth, I would now like to introduce a phenomenon that exists just because of social media, ‘Slacktivism.’ Slacktivism is the practice of supporting political or social causes utilizing Social Media and is characterized by lesser efforts and commitment. Social causes are what we as humans fight for to make this world a better place. And these causes have been a driving factor in the growth of humans as a race. We are somewhere losing our driving forces behind the face of social media.

In the end, I would like to say that it is not the technology that is to be blamed for making us unsocial, but us humans. We always strive to move forward, and we will make technology to move forward as well. But we can’t be blaming everything on it, because it is us who has created technology and we need it. The human race has come so far, just because of one point of differentiation, our ability to socialize. And if we are giving that away like this, do we even deserve to be this species?

About the Author

Aniket Singh is pursuing his MBA from IIM Udaipur and has an inclination towards Marketing. He is a Mechanical Engineer by profession and hails form the sports city of India, Meerut. Coming from an Armed Forces background, he has had the opportunity to stay and experience the cultural diversity of the country. He is a rubix cube enthusiast and a fan of the series “How I Met Your Mother.” You can connect with him on LinkedIn

• https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/
• https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-cyber-bullying#fnref1
• https://time.com/5550803/depression-suicide-rates-youth/
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October 1, 2016

Social Technologies Are Making Us Less Social

For the first time in the history of our species, we are never alone and never bored. Have we lost something fundamental about being human?

By Mark Fischetti

Martin O'Neill

Chances are that you have a smartphone, Twitter and Instagram accounts, and a Facebook page and that you have found yourself ignoring a friend or family member who is in the same room as you because you are totally engrossed in your social technology. That technology means never having to feel alone or bored. Yet ironically, it can make us less attentive to the people closest to us and even make it hard for us to simply be with ourselves. Many of us are afraid to make this admission. “We're still in a romance with these technologies,” says Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We're like young lovers who are afraid that talking about it will spoil it.” Turkle has interviewed, at length, hundreds of individuals of all ages about their interactions with smartphones, tablets, social media, avatars and robots. Unlike previous disruptive innovations such as the printing press or television, the latest “always on, always on you” technology, she says, threatens to undermine some basic human strengths that we need to thrive. In the conversation that follows, which has been edited for space, Turkle explains her concerns, as well as her cautious optimism that the youngest among us could actually resolve the challenges.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:

What concerns you most about our constant interaction with our social technologies? TURKLE: One primary change I see is that people have a tremendous lack of tolerance for being alone. I do some of my fieldwork at stop signs, at checkout lines at supermarkets. Give people even a second, and they're doing something with their phone. Every bit of research says people's capacity to be alone is disappearing. What can happen is that you lose that moment to have a daydream or to cast an eye inward. Instead you look to the outside.

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Is that an issue for individuals of all ages? Yes, but children especially need solitude. Solitude is the precondition for having a conversation with yourself. This capacity to be with yourself and discover yourself is the bedrock of development. But now, from the youngest age—even two, or three, or four—children are given technology that removes solitude by giving them something externally distracting. That makes it harder, ironically, to form true relationships.

Maybe people just don't want to be bored. People talk about never needing to have a lull. As soon as it occurs, they look at the phone; they get anxious. They haven't learned to have conversations or relationships, which involve lulls.

Are we valuing relationships less, then? People start to view other people in part as objects. Imagine two people on a date. “Hey, I have an idea. Instead of our just looking at each other face-to-face, why don't we each wear Google Glass, so if things get a little dull, I can just catch up on my e-mail? And you won't know.” This disrupts the family, too. When Boring Auntie starts to talk at the family dinner table, her little niece pulls out her phone and goes on Facebook. All of a sudden her world is populated with snowball fights and ballerinas. And dinner is destroyed. Dinner used to be the utopian ideal of the American family having a canonical three-generation gathering.

What about people who take their phones to bed? They're asleep, so why would they feel alone? I have interviewed enough middle school and high school kids: “So tell me, do you answer your texts in the middle of the night?” “Oh, yeah.” I call it “I share, therefore I am,” as a style of being.

If you're sharing in the middle of the night and responsive to people in the middle of the night, you're in a different zone. And all these people feel responsible to respond. The expectation is constant access. Everyone is ready to call in the advice and the consent of their peers. I did a case study of a young woman who has 2,000 followers on Instagram. She'll ask about a problem at 9:00 at night, and at 2:00 in the morning she's getting responses, and she's awake to get those responses. This is 2:00 in the morning for a lot of kids.

Where does this lead for someone who lives that way? If you don't call a halt to it, I think you don't fully develop a sense of an autonomous self. You're not able to be in personal relationships, business relationships, because you don't feel fully competent to handle major things on your own. You run into trouble if you're putting everything up, ultimately, for a vote.

You're crowdsourcing your life. You're crowdsourcing major decisions. I hope it's likely, however, that a person reaches a point where they're on a job—they're not twentysomething, they're thirtysomething—and this starts to become less comfortable, and they develop emotional skills that they really haven't worked on.

What about our interactions with automated personalities and robots? When we started looking at this in the 1970s, people took the position that even if simulated thinking might be thinking, simulated feeling was not feeling. Simulated love was never love. But that's gone away. People tell me that if Siri [the iPhone voice] could fool them a little better, they'd be happy to talk to Siri.

Isn't that like the movie Her? Absolutely. The current position seems to be that if there's a robot that could fool me into thinking that it understands me, I'm good to have it as a companion. This is a significant evolution in what we ask for in our interactions, even on intimate matters. I see it in kids. I see it in grown-ups. The new robots are designed to make you feel as though you're understood. Yet nobody is pretending that any of them understands anything.

What line does that cross—that there's no empathy? There's no authentic exchange. You're saying empathy is not important to the feeling of being understood. And yet I interviewed a woman who said to me that she's okay with a robot boyfriend. She wants one of these sophisticated Japanese robots. I looked at her and said, “You know that it doesn't understand you.” She said, “Look, I just want civility in the house. I just want something that will make me feel not alone.”

People are also good with a robot that could stand in as a companion for an older person. But I take a moral position here because older people deserve to tell the story of their life to someone who understands what a life is. They've lost spouses; they've lost children. We're suggesting they tell the story of their life to something that has no idea what a life is or what a loss is.

It's crucial to understand that this changing interaction is not just a story about technology. It's a story about how we are evolving when we're faced with something passive. I hope we're going to look closer at people's willingness to project humanity onto a robot and to accept a facade of empathy as the real thing because I think that such interactions are a dead end. We want more from technology and less from each other? Really?

Do avatars and virtual reality present the same issues? In these cases, we are moving from life to the mix of your real life and your virtual life. One young man put it very succinctly: “Real life is just one window, and it's not necessarily my best one.” People forgot about virtual reality for a while, but the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook raised it again—Mark Zuckerberg's fantasy that you will meet up with your friends in a virtual world where everybody looks like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, you live in a beautiful home, and you present only what you want to present. We're evolving toward thinking of that as a utopian image.

But skeptics say your avatar is not different from the real you. Well, we do perform all the time. I'm trying to do my best Sherry Turkle right now. But it's a little different from me hanging out in my pajamas. What's different with an avatar or on Facebook is that you get to edit. A woman posts a photo of herself and then works on the color and background and lighting. Why? Because she wants it a certain way. We've never before been able to have it the way we wanted it. And now we can. People love that.

I asked an 18-year-old man, “What's wrong with conversation?” He said, “It takes place in real time. You can't control what you're going to say.” It was profound. That's also why a lot of people like to do their dealings on e-mail—it's not just the time shifting; it's that you basically can get it right.

One reason for the rise of humans is that functioning in groups gives each member a better chance to succeed. Will the move toward living online undermine those benefits? Oh, this is the question before us. Are we undermining, or are we enhancing our competitive advantage? A lot of my colleagues would say we're enhancing it. The Internet is giving us new ways of getting together, forming alliances. But I think we are at a point of inflection. While we were infatuated with the virtual, we dropped the ball on where we actually live. We need to balance how compelling the virtual is with the realities that we live in our bodies and on this planet. It is so easy for us to look the other way. Are we going to get out there and make our real communities what they should be?

Your critics say there's nothing to worry about because this “new technology” situation is not really new. We went through this with television—you know, TV is there to watch your kids so you don't have to. First of all, television can be a group exercise. I grew up in a family that sat around a TV and watched it together, fought about what was on the TV together, commented on it together. But when everybody watches their own show in their own room, so to speak, that stops. Technology that is always on and always on you—that is a quantum leap. I agree that there have been quantum leaps before: the book. The difference with “always on,” however, is that I really don't have a choice.

You mean, you could turn off the TV and still function. I cannot live my professional life or my personal life without my phone or my e-mail. My students can't even obtain their syllabus without it. We don't have an opt-out option from a world with this technology. The question is, How are we going to live a more meaningful life with something that is always on and always on you? And wait until it's in your ear, in your jacket, in your glasses.

So how do we resolve that? It's going to develop as some sort of common practice. I think companies will get involved, realizing that it actually isn't good for people to be constantly connected. Our etiquette will get involved; today if I get a message and don't get back to people in 24 hours, they're worried about me, or they're mad that I haven't replied. Why? I think we will change our expectation of having constant access.

Any suggestions for how we can get started? One argument I make is that there should be sacred spaces: the family dinner table, the car. Make these the places for conversation because conversation is the antidote to a lot of the issues I'm describing. If you're talking to your kids, if you're talking to your family, if you're talking to a community, these negative effects don't arise as much.

And we should be talking more about the technologies? My message is not antitechnology. It's pro conversation and pro the human spirit. It's really about calling into questions our dominant culture of more, better, faster. We need to assert what we need for our own thinking, for our own development, and for our relationships with our children, with our communities, with our intimate partners. As for the robots, I'm hoping that people will realize that what we're really disappointed in is ourselves. It's so upsetting to me. We're basically saying that we're not offering one another the conversation and the companionship. That, really, is the justification for talking to a robot that you know doesn't understand a word you're saying. We are letting each other down. It's not about the robots. It's about us.

So who is going to stop this train we are on? The most optimistic thing I see is the young people who have grown up with this technology but aren't smitten by it, who are willing to say, “Hold on a second.” They see the ways in which it's undermined life at school and life with their parents. This is where I'm guardedly hopeful.

I have so many examples of children who will be talking with their parents; something will come up, and the parent will go online to search, and the kid will say, “Daddy, stop Googling. I just want to talk to you.” When I go to the city park, I see kids go to the top of the jungle gym and call out, “Mommy, Mommy!” and they're being ignored. They object to being ignored when they're five, eight or nine. But when I interview these kids when they're 13, 14 or 15, they become reflective. They say, “I'm not going to bring up my children the way I'm being brought up.” They're going to have rules, like no phones at dinner.

I also see evidence that dealing with some of this technology is feeling to them like work—the whole notion that you have to constantly keep up your Facebook profile. So I think there's every possibility that the children will lead us. They see the costs. They think, “I don't have to give up this technology, but maybe I could be a little smarter about it.”

Mark Fischetti has been a senior editor at Scientific American for 17 years and has covered sustainability issues, including climate, weather, environment, energy, food, water, biodiversity, population, and more. He assigns and edits feature articles, commentaries and news by journalists and scientists and also writes in those formats. He edits History, the magazine's department looking at science advances throughout time. He was founding managing editor of two spinoff magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0 . His 2001 freelance article for the magazine, " Drowning New Orleans ," predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. His video What Happens to Your Body after You Die? , has more than 12 million views on YouTube. Fischetti has written freelance articles for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Technology Review, Fast Company, and many others. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti is a former managing editor of IEEE Spectrum Magazine and of Family Business Magazine . He has a physics degree and has twice served as the Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union's Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism, which celebrates a career of outstanding reporting on the Earth and space sciences. He has appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many news radio stations. Follow Fischetti on X (formerly Twitter) @markfischetti

Social Media is Making Us Unsocial

• Family & Parenting
• Health & Wellness

How Social Media Makes Us Unsocial: Allison Graham (Transcript)

• June 11, 2020 7:47 am September 25, 2023 4:21 am
• by Pangambam S

Here is the transcript and summary of Social Media historian Allison Graham’s talk:  How Social Media Makes Us Unsocial at TEDxSMU conference. In this talk, she shares the funny and revealing insights of a life lived online and how social media is used to connect and disconnect us.

Best quote from this talk: 

“I think we would all live life better if we had hands to hold rather than keys to click.”

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT: 

Allison Graham – Social Media historian

Hi! Thank you very much.

I’d like to start out by asking everyone to power down their devices during my talk. And for those of you that don’t know the power buttons, it’s either on the top or on the side of your phone.

I’d also like to thank the guys from state.com for permission to use this video.

[Video clip]

“I want to post about how great this coffee is, but I can’t think of a funny way to say it.”

“This post is like a page long. How do I shorten this?”

“Just take out all the vowels.” [Still be the other page]

“Seriously!”

“Hey guys, you on Twitter? Follow me.”

“Sometimes I want to move to another country where I won’t have to deal with this stuff.”

(in foreign language) “SHHH.. I am working on a Tweet!” “Does this seem too much like I’m bragging?”

Pages: First | 1 | ... | Next → | Last | View Full Transcript

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The Era of Antisocial Social Media

• Sara Wilson

Young people’s behaviors are changing. How will businesses adapt?

When you look at who is — and more importantly, who is not — driving the growth and popularity of social platforms, a key demographic appears to be somewhat in retreat: young people. They’re craving privacy, safety, and a respite from the throngs of people on social platforms (throngs that now usually include their parents), and gravitating toward more intimate destinations. The author has dubbed these “digital campfires.” She outlines three kinds of campfires, including the characteristics of each, as well as how brands are successfully reaching these audiences.

Social platforms are still reporting robust growth — yes, even Facebook — despite a growing chorus of opposition. Social conversation continues to shape everything from culture to the media cycle to our most intimate relationships . And we now spend more time than ever on our phones , with endless scrolling through our social feeds being a chief reason why.

• Sara Wilson   helps brands, publishers and high-profile individuals find, engage and grow devoted audiences across digital channels. As the founder of SW Projects , she has advised clients including Nike, Bumble, the New York Times, National Geographic, Sony Pictures Television, Bustle, Overheard, and others. Prior to SW Projects, Sara oversaw lifestyle partnerships at Facebook & Instagram. Sara is also the creator of The Digital Campfire Download, where she interviews the entrepreneurs behind the fastest-growing online communities today. You can follow her on Twitter @ wilsonspeaks  or on LinkedIn @ saraewilson .

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The Antisocial Effects of Social Media

To the Editor:

As a parent, educator and psychologist, I found “ The Flight From Conversation ,” by Sherry Turkle (Sunday Review, April 22), particularly relevant. Social media enable us to communicate but replace face-to-face time with others and impede having real connections.

Ms. Turkle points out that in lacking conversations, we also have fewer opportunities to self-reflect. Children develop in the context of a relationship. Emotions drive behavior and are central in all relationships.

These emotional connections give us feedback toward a heightened self and social awareness, promoting thinking, reflecting and an understanding of what is going on within and between us. These are essential skills all lacking in social media communication.

For our children truly to become successful personally, socially and academically, we all need to start connecting emotionally. We need to stop looking at our smartphones and smarten up by looking within ourselves and among one another!

DONNA HOUSMAN Weston, Mass., April 23, 2012

The writer is the founder and executive director of Beginnings School, a private school for children 3 months to 6 years.

In noting the atrophy of conversational skills wrought by texting, e-mailing, tweeting and so on, Sherry Turkle echoes J. B. Priestley’s uncannily prescient observation, deduced long before the advent of these near pre-emptive modes of human interaction: “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”

RICHARD BOYCE San Francisco, April 23, 2012

Sherry Turkle accurately describes the world of online connections. The irony is that those who want to engage in real face-to-face conversations are too often forced to endure intrusive cellphone monologues in restaurants, theaters, commuter trains, airline cabins ...

LARRY SCHLACK Kalamazoo, Mich., April 23, 2012

When I was in high school in the late 1960s, my father told my sisters and me to do three things before we got married. Spend time with the boyfriend and his family. Go away for a weekend with him. Play a competitive game with him.

Now, 40 years later, we need to tell our children simply, “Spend a weekend with someone you love without any devices on before making any big life decisions.”

BETH ROSEN New York, April 22, 2012

The writer is a certified social worker and psychotherapist.

No one needs to go online to flee from conversation. My husband gets home delivery of The New York Times.

MURIEL SCHLEIDER Brooklyn, April 22, 2012

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Is Social Media Making Us Less Social?

Globally, about 4.7 billion people—more than half the world’s population—use social media. And experts expect the number of social media users to continue rising for years. Apps such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter have changed the way we interact with each other. But there’s a lot of disagreement about what the overall effect is. Is all that time spent in front of computers and on our phones healthy? Two professors who study the social impact of the internet face off about whether social media is isolating us and making us interact less with the real world.

Social media allows us to be always connected, but in the process, we lose our appetite for spontaneous conversation. Online, you’re less vulnerable. You create a profile that lets you appear as you wish to be, and it’s easier to compose your thoughts and leave the thread if things become uncomfortable. After a while, you’re willing to sacrifice real conversation for mere connection.

From the beginning of social media, early users established the kinds of selves that would be on display. If you were a woman, on social media you would be thinner and more attractive than anything you could aspire to in physical reality. Your conversation could be thought out in advance. People came to love their avatars and their posts. But everything you do online subtly depletes your confidence in real life. Comparing your avatar with your physical self makes you feel worse about yourself. The net result: Social media makes you feel socially vulnerable and gives you the feeling that only screen conversations are safe.

Research indicates that social media usage makes real connections harder.

In 2009, the Stanford media psychologist Clifford Nass began to explore the relationship between online life and the emotional lives of teenage girls. The girls who considered themselves “highly connected” online were not as empathetic as those who spent less time online. The “highly connected” girls also felt less accepted by peers and didn’t have the same positive emotions from interacting with friends as those who used social media less frequently. In sum, online life was associated with a loss of empathy and a diminished capacity for self-reflection. A decade later, this study had a dramatic bookend: In Finland, a three-year study of nearly 2,000 teens linked the degree of internet use to depression, loneliness, school failure, and inability to connect with others.

On social media, we compare ourselves to the curated self-presentations of others and always come up short. Social media makes experiencing real-world emotional life very hard. And that means it’s ultimately making us less social.

—SHERRY TURKLE

Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

If being social means engaging with more people for more time, then social media is obviously making us more social, not less.

With social media, we can interact with people in globally public spaces, and that means we are social with many more people than ever before. Sometimes that will be on a discussion thread, and sometimes it will be by answering a question a stranger has posed or posting a video that might lift up the mood of someone you’ve never met.

But aren’t these relationships shallow? Maybe, but it would be more accurate to use terms from sociology: Strong ties are the rich, long-term bonds you have with family and your closest friends. Weak ties are more like the students in your classes with whom you don’t spend a lot of time. But don’t underestimate the importance of weak ties! Just imagine what it would be like if the only people you felt any connection with were the handful of the most important people in your life. Your social life would be terribly diminished.

Social media vastly increases the number of people we can know, help, and learn from.

People need weak ties, and social media has made it absurdly easy to form them. Those ties can give you a sense of being part of a loosely connected network of people with whom you have shared a moment or an interest in common. Having lots of weak ties can lead to the discovery of new interests. And they can evolve into deep friendships.

Furthermore, having lots of weak ties that include lots of different sorts of people lets us recognize that we all share a world that matters to each of us but matters differently to each of us.

Despite its many benefits, social media sometimes enables and can even encourage us to behave badly with one another. We all need to be working on changing social media to prevent this, as well as becoming more aware of the effects of our words online.

Social media has undoubtedly increased the different ways in which we can be social and the number of people we can know, help, and learn from. And that is the essence of being social.

—DAVID WEINBERGER

Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Univ.

PERCENTAGE of American adults who use at least one social media app.

SOURCE: Pew Research Center, 2021

PERCENTAGE  of 13- to 17-year-olds in the U.S. who use TikTok, more than any other social media app.

SOURCE: Pew Researc h Center

159.75 million

NUMBER of Instagram users in the U.S. as of January 2022.

SOURCE: Statista

Is social media making us less social?

Is Social Media Making Us Less Social?

Written by Steve Rose

Identity, purpose, and belonging, 15 comments(s).

On the go? Listen to the audio version of the article here:

In an age where we are becoming more connected through social media every day, it sometimes feels like we are also becoming less social.

Why go through all of the inconvenience of meeting up in person when you can simply catch up online?

Within the last decade, technology has profoundly shifted the nature of human communication.

Some say we are “hyper-social,” always connected and communicating with multiple people at the same time.  Others would say we have become “anti-social,” glued to our devices, and lacking interpersonal skills.  So which is it?

Is social media making us less social?

Social Media is making us less social when used to compare oneself to others, contributing to higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of well-being among frequent users. It can be social when used to connect with others.

Let’s take a look at the research.

Also, if you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, you can check out my  resource page  for suggestions on how to find help.

Social Media Contributes to Social Isolation

The first study looking at this phenomenon was published in 1998, around the time when many people were starting to use the internet.

The researchers followed 169 people during the first two years of their internet use to determine if this new technology made them more social or less social, finding:

“…greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants’ communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness.”

This was seen as quite the paradox, given that the individuals were using the internet extensively as a communication technology.

A 2004 study comparing internet use to face-to-face interaction found a similar conclusion, stating:

…the Internet can decrease social well-being, even though it is often used as a communication tool.

Has anything changed since then?

Ten years later, a 2014 study  on college students suffering from internet addiction found:

Results show that excessive and unhealthy Internet use would increase feelings of loneliness over time…[.] This study also found that online social contacts with friends and family were not an effective alternative for offline social interactions in reducing feelings of loneliness.

In her recent book,  iGen , Jean Twenge writes about the generation born after 1994, finding high rates of mental health issues and isolation:

“A stunning 31% more 8th and 10th graders felt lonely in 2015 than in 2011, along with 22% more 12th graders”…[.] All in all, iGen’ers are increasingly disconnected from human relationships.

She argues the increasing level of screen-time and decreasing degree of in-person interaction leaves igen lacking social skills:

“In the next decade we may see more young people who know just the right emoji for a situation—but not the right facial expression.”

A 2016 study comments on this generational phenomenon, stating:

It is surprising then that, in spite of this enhanced interconnectivity, young adults may be lonelier than other age groups, and that the current generation may be the loneliest ever.

The correlation between internet use and isolation is fairly established in the literature. But let’s not paint the whole internet with the same brush.

A 2014 study  highlights the psychological costs and benefits derived from social media use, stating:

…online tools create a paradox for social connectedness. On one hand, they elevate the ease in which individuals may form and create online groups and communities, but on the other, they can create a source of alienation and ostracism.

It turns out the answer may be a bit more complicated.

Let’s take a look at the specific factors that make the difference.

Social Media Can Be Social (If used to connect)

A 2016 study with the apt subtitle, “Why an Instagram picture may be worth more than a thousand Twitter words,” finds that image-based social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat may be able to decrease loneliness because of the higher levels of intimacy they provide.

Another 2016 study , specifically looking at Instagram use, found that it isn’t the platform that matters. It is the way the platform is used that matters.

The researchers studied Instagram use among 208 undergraduate students, finding there was one thing that made all the difference: “the social comparison orientation.”

What is social comparison orientation?

It’s when you compare yourself to others on social media. For example, you may find yourself passively scanning through an endless feed of finely curated photos, wishing you had a different body, a different job, a different  life !

It’s the sense that everyone has it better than you, and that you’re missing out on all of the best events, vacations, and products.

Students who rated high on social comparison orientation were more likely to widely broadcast their posts in an attempt to gain status. Students who rated low were more likely to use the platform to connect with others meaningfully.

A 2008 study on internet use among older adults supports this distinction, finding:

…greater use of the Internet as a communication tool was associated with a lower level of social loneliness. In contrast, greater use of the Internet to find new people was associated with a higher level of emotional loneliness.

Using the internet as a communication tool can decrease loneliness.

Experimental evidence in a 2004 study , highlights this by measuring a person’s level of loneliness throughout multiple intervals as they engage in an online chat. They concluded:

Internet use was found to decrease loneliness and depression significantly, while perceived social support and self-esteem increased significantly.

Although chatting online can decrease loneliness, what about using social media platforms to post status updates?

A 2012 study  conducted an experiment to determine if posting a Facebook status increases or decreases loneliness. Yes, this is an actual experiment.

The researchers told one group of participants to increase their number of status updates for one week. They didn’t give any instructions to a second control group. Results revealed:

(1) that the experimentally induced increase in status updating activity reduced loneliness, (2) that the decrease in loneliness was due to participants feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis, and (3) that the effect of posting on loneliness was independent of direct social feedback (i.e., responses) by friends.  

These results may seem to contradict the previous finding that social media broadcasting is correlated with increased loneliness, but there is a crucial difference: the social comparison orientation.

In this experiment, the researchers did not differentiate between users who had high or low levels of social comparison. The users in the group being told to update their status more frequently were not told to scan their news feeds more often, nor was their social media use manipulated to alter their level of social comparison.

So what is the key lesson here?

Using social media in a way that connects us with others can make us less lonely and more social.

Unfortunately, as social media use increases, we are becoming lonelier.

This trend suggests we may not be using social media in the most social ways, comparing ourselves to others. In addition, we may be sacrificing in-person interaction for the convenience of social media interaction. Both of these factors increase the likelihood of experiencing social isolation.

If you are interested in reading more on the psychology of social media, you can check out my comprehensive post on the topic here: Why We Are Addicted To Social Media: The Psychology of Likes .

In that article, I go deep into the research on what keeps our brains hooked on social media likes and how you can use social media in a healthier way.

Fascinated by ideas? Check out my podcast:

Struggling with an addiction.

If you’re struggling with an addiction, it can be difficult to stop. Gaining short-term relief, at a long-term cost, you may start to wonder if it’s even worth it anymore. If you’re looking to make some changes, feel free to reach out. I offer individual addiction counselling to clients in the US and Canada. If you’re interested in learning more, you can send me a message here .

Other Mental Health Resources

If you are struggling with other mental health issues or are  looking for a specialist near you, use the Psychology Today therapist directory  here to find a practitioner who specializes in your area of concern.

If you require a lower-cost option, you can check out BetterHelp.com . It is one of the most flexible forms of online counseling.  Their main benefit is lower costs, high accessibility through their mobile app, and the ability to switch counselors quickly and easily, until you find the right fit.

*As an affiliate partner with Better Help, I receive a referral fee if you purchase products or services through the links provided.

As always, it is important to be critical when seeking help, since the quality of counselors are not consistent. If you are not feeling supported, it may be helpful to seek out another practitioner. I wrote an article on things to consider here .

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15 Comments

that’s just it, people often mistake being connected on a more personal level with the total number of “Friends” they have on FB or MySpace or whatever OTHER forms of social networking, and they often neglect to realize, that face-to-face interaction is what makes these connections between people more intimate…

Exactly. Social media can supplement your social life if used to connect, but can’t be a substitute for it. Thanks for the comment! Great to connect with you again. It has been a while since I’ve posted.

Yeah but now, modern day people tend to use social media as their only FORM of connection, it’s like if you don’t exist on FB or other forms of social netowrking sites, you practctically, don’t exist at all!

With the trend toward increasing loneliness, it would for sure suggest social media is replacing in-person interaction.

one of the damning statistics on the recent programme Pllanet Children was 97% of primary school children were taken to school by an adult. They spend less time outside than those in prison. Our kids are getting fatter. They live in a bubble and social media swells that bubble and the vision of themselves becomes increasingly distorted. My grandkid loves phones because mum and dad always have their noses in their phones. The grandkid isn’t content with a kid-on phone. She wants the real one, and she’s just over a year old. We create our own hell, but our kids jump in with both feet. Why shouldn’t they? Mum and dad do it and it’s vastly entertaining. Social media swallows time. Why am I adding to it here? God knows.

Thanks for sharing this fact and your personal experience! I think you might be interested in this book on the subject of bubble wrapped children: Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)

Thanks for raising this issue, Steve. I’ve tried, without success, to arrange a lunch-meet with a dear friend–just half-hour away by bus–who has fallen victim to FB’s false promise of connection. Since I’ve long escaped from FB-addiction, I no longer know how she’s doing.

Glad to see you’ve been able to gain a sense of control! I hope your friend is well and wish her all the best.

In a restaurant, I went to a couple both staring deeply and silently at their phones and said, “That’s true love.” They laughed.

lol! Nice one!

Not up on the research, but it is fascinating. Might we be getting the correlation confused? Could it be that people who are more lonely are more likely to spend time on social media in search of connection? Is this controlled in the research?

From the research I’ve seen so far, it seems that social anxiety is the confounding variable between loneliness and increased social media use. Also, Jean Twange looks at this question in her book igen and finds that the research supports the hypothesis that social media use leads to increased loneliness. A couple of experiments I cited here use a control and don’t support that hypothesis, but they are fairly limited because they only look at narrow forms of social media use like status updates or chatting with an anonymous person.

Correctly said.

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Social Media is Making Us Less Social

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