The Lonely Age

From a lengthy essay on our technological isolation, how our online era has resulted in creating conversational fast food.

It's important to distinguish between being alone and being lonely. In the new book Loneliness, University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo and his Massachusetts coauthor William Patrick argue the pangs of loneliness that we sometimes experience are the evolutionary equivalent of the shooting pain we feel after touching a hot stove. These pangs are ingrained reminders of how bad social disconnection is for our well-being. Cacioppo uses everything from brain imaging to blood-pressure analysis to demonstrate the serious drag on our health that loneliness can have.

At first pass, this line of thought would seem to contradict the argument Storr made in Solitude and pretty much everything I've written to this point. Yet that's not the case at all. It turns out that research shows people who feel lonely are no more likely to be physically alone. Cacioppo acknowledges that solitude can be very healthy, and he compares loneliness to a sort of thermostat, a state of mind that kicks in at different points for different people.

While we humans need social interaction, he's in agreement that we won't find it through Twittering and texting. Cacioppo points to research showing that electronic communication can increase social isolation and depression "when it replaces more tangible forms of human contact." Another team of psychologists termed this form of communication "social snacking." But, as he writes, a snack is not a meal.

So why do we feel so compelled to swap messages with people who aren't next to us and rack up hundreds of friends to keep electronic tabs on?

Perhaps because at heart, we, like other primates, are still social creatures at heart. Maybe we just need to learn how to stay away from the digital stove more often.