How Social Media Complicates Loneliness

God made us embodied for a reason. Physical proximity and presence are part of God’s design for human wholeness. We are the most digitally connected people ever and the loneliest. Jennie Allen tells the story of an African village where the women of the village had washed clothes together in the river for generations. Technology and home washers came to the village. The women stayed home. Researchers in the village discovered a sharp in-crease in loneliness among the women. The technological blessing was a quality-of-life curse.

Social media is here to stay. It offers many benefits. Yet are we happier with our disembodied relationships? So many studies say the same thing: social media is depressive, addictive, and slowly drains us click by click. This is not a book on the proper use of social media. Yet putting our relational lives in order requires a healthy relationship with our smartphones and digital media. If not, Tony Reinke summarizes the danger:

Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions and thereby splinter our perception of our place in time. Our phones push us to evade the limits of embodiment and thereby cause us to treat one another harshly. Our phones feed our craving for immediate approval and promise to hedge against our fear of missing out. Our phones undermine key literary skills and, because of our lack of discipline, make it increasingly difficult for us to identify ultimate meaning. Our phones offer us a buffet of produced media and tempt us to indulge in visual vices. Our phones overtake and distort our identity and tempt us toward unhealthy isolation and loneliness.

To be the kind of person who can provide loving human companionship, we need a healthy relationship with our technology.

Getting serious about our loneliness requires us to add what helps and limit what doesn’t. If you decided to spend the time needed to read to this point in the book, I’m assuming you’re ready to redeem your loneliness. Are you sick enough of it to make the necessary changes? Start with seeking in-person contexts for life-giving relationships. A healthy local church is a great place to start. Pray and ask God to guide you. Wouldn’t God delight in such a prayer from one of His children?