Social Networking And Loneliness

As social networking on mobile devices and other technologies continues to further advance and help keep us better connected, it is in many ways forcing us to grow further apart. As we continue to grow our online social persona we fail to truly connect with friends and family on a personal scale away from technology. We use sites like Facebook and twitter to communicate with friends while also alienating ourselves from them. We watch and view our friends’ lives while never truly knowing who they are and they do the same with us. As Turkle put it “We can’t get enough of each other, if we can have each other at a distance, in amounts that we can control (2011).” That’s why Social networking sites are in general a contributor to the loneliness …show more content…
It is naturally part of the human psyche to feel distant or lonely when we are by ourselves. And the use of social networking does not remedy this natural feeling, as it only suppresses it and causes it to grow. While I peruse Facebook and Twitter reading my friends’ posts and viewing their pictures I may feel connected to them at that moment, but when I stop looking at it and I turn away from those sites the lack of physical connection with these friends causes those feelings of loneliness to multiply. That’s why many young adults are continuing to spend more and more time on social networking sites. Social media offers an illusion of friendship without the actual demands of friendship. Morahan-Martin and Schumacher agree that Lonely and depressed individuals turn out to have higher preference for online interaction, since they perceive that online communication might be the ‘‘Prozac of social communication,” relatively less risky and easier than face-to-face communication because of its greater anonymity’ …show more content…
Yet according to studies by Burke, Marlow, and Lento having fewer friends and more meaningful interactions are far better (2010). The more friends you have the more spread out your interactions become and the less fulfilling they are, leading to social loneliness and depression. Another study by Kim, LaRose and Peng suggest that the more online interaction we have reading through post the less likely we are be fulfilled by them. While together it would suggest that due to the larger quantities of “friends” we have, the less personal the post and interactions become, the more we have to sift through of our social networking feeds to find those meaningful interactions, and the less fulfilling they inevitably