Does using social media make people lonelier?
When social media started over 20 years ago, no one imagined that it could take over our lives in the ways we interact, connect or even feel. We all believed that with social media, we would have tools to help us connect better. Yet, it seems like the more social media sites that come to life, and the more users there are, the more we are disconnected with ourselves and with those around us. While the invasion effects of social may vary from one user to the next, a shocking plot twist question has arisen: Does social media make people lonelier?
History of Social Media
The creation of Samuel Morse’s first telegraph, which he sent in 1844 between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, was a landmark event in communications. Over time, this led to the development of the Internet in the 1970s. During the 1990s, blogging, a forerunner of social media as we know it today, allowed people to log onto the internet and share their ideas, thoughts, and opinions. It seems like social media has always been a way for people to speak their minds.
The First Social Media Sites
The first social media sites were Six Degrees and Friendster. Though neither are still around, they each played pivotal roles in the early days of social media networking sites. Surprisingly, MySpace was the most popular and influential. However, when Facebook was founded in 2009, hell broke loose. It created an online space for young, middle-aged individuals, professionals, and fun folks, to co-exist. Facebook became a revolutionary social media site because it has been innovating in its updates over time. Other sites like Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter have also joined the kingdom. Social media is not just for fun. For many people, it is their news source, and for others, it is their way of earning an income.
Social Media Today
According to Statista, a statistic research pool, in 2018 Snapchat had over 186 million active users. They estimate that there are some 2.62 billion social media users around the world, with the expectation of growth up to 3 billion by 2021. Social media is being used by individuals, groups, and companies. Social media are tools for news, marketing, product sales, posting jobs, and activism. Social justice movements, like Black Lives Matter, gained huge momentum with the help of social media. It is fast, accessible and it reaches across age, language, race, and ethnic groups. Social media is powerful; the scary aspect of it is how much power does it have over its users? Does it affect users´mental states? Does it make users feel more connected or disconnected?
Lonely in the Realm Full of Others
While social media and its number of users are on the rise, a 2009 study from the Pew Research Center has concluded that ¨the average size of Americans’ core discussion networks has declined since 1985; the mean network size has dropped by about one-third or a loss of approximately one confidant.¨ This conclusion suggests a decline in real human connections. The same study concluded that ¨many internet technologies are used as much for local contact as they are for distant communication.¨
It is clear that social media is an influential place to be. It is a place where people are influenced and influence others. John Cacioppo, the Director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, writes in his book, titled Loneliness, “When we drew blood from our older adults and analyzed their white cells,” he continues to write and stated that, “we found that loneliness somehow penetrated the deepest recesses of the cell to alter the way genes were being expressed.” Which means that the effects of loneliness go beyond moods and the brain. Those health effects actually go deep into one´s body and affect his/her whole health. So if social media in it of self is making us feel lonely, why do we use it so much?
Forbes Magazine Contributor, Margie Warrell, discussed a study of the American Sociological Association; it concluded that the number of people saying that there is no one with whom they can discuss important matters nearly tripled over the last two decades. About 48% of respondents only had one confidant compared to a similar study 25 years ago, when people said they had about three people they could confide in. This conclusion substantiates the findings of the above-mentioned Pew data about the decline of the size in the networks of the average American. Indeed, if real life connections and interactions are declining over time, there is no equation needed to see why loneliness is on the rise.
All in all, thereś no study that has claimed that social media makes all users feel lonely. This means that while some users may find themselves lonely while using social media, it is possible that social media is just a reflection of their real lives. People need to understand that great connections, friendships, and relationships in real life are transferable on social media sites. Therefore, people should focus on strengthening real-life interactions and not those online.
It is possible that many people join social media sites to escape the realities of loneliness, and when they fail to escape those realities — which truly they cannot — they tend to blame social media. For instance, Meganś Facebook page is full of social interactions at galas, happy hours, and vacations. Her co-worker joined Facebook believing her page could look like that and her life will magically be touched with friendships and connections. This is the misleading point; life does not take place on a social platform. Everything happens in real life, and then folks share those moments on social media.
Social media does not make anyone feel lonelier. Anyone who feels lonely is just lonely with or without social media. Each and every social media user should know that the measure and the greatness of their lives are not in the pictures, posts, and or video of others. Watching Suzanne all the time, or looking at the pictures of an Instagram model that gets paid to travel does not mean your life as a college student is crappy. It is simply different and different is beautiful. The diversity in our lives, in the ways that we work, study, and essentially exist is beautiful.
From the day social media started to today, it is clear that it will continue to change and evolve. New entities will come into existence, and as people’s preferences change, old ones will die or merge into something else. There are no social media sites that will replace the warmth of a human hug, the sincerity in the eyes of oneś saying “I love you”, or the crackling sound of a friendś laughter. What we should live for are those real-life touches. They create boundless bonds, joyful experiences, and find their way into our memories, which at times we can pull and simply whisper, ¨ Those were the days”.
