Check out this excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Some eye-popping statistics and quotes from the article include:
- In 1950 less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person. By 2010, nearly 27 percent had just one person.
- A 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely as opposed to 20 percent a decade earlier.
- Roughly 20 percent of Americans — about 60 million people — are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.
- “Across the Western world, physicians and nurses have begun to speak openly about an epidemic of loneliness.”
The rise in loneliness has led to an explosion in the number of paid confidants. A 2010 Hoover Institute paper stated in 1950 the U.S. had a combined 33,000 paid confidants including clinical psychologists, social workers and therapists. By 2010 that number reached an estimated 1,091,00 paid confidants which includes new categories such as mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and life coaches.
Clearly, Facebook and other assorted addictions to media are not the only contributors to the epidemic of loneliness. The geographic spread of families, increased time spent working/commuting to work, and the decline of relationships in the workplace are also responsible. Regarding relationships in the workplace, the push for productivity has contributed to a rise of cultures that label people who take time to build relationships as slackers. Today, having lunch alone in your office is the norm. Unfortunately, productivity and innovation take a toll when workers burn out from a lack of human connection. They learn to play “face time” games that make it look like they’re working, when in reality they’re not. Creating Connection Cultures in organizations to achieve “relationship excellence” is wise. We most recently made the case for Connection Cultures in an article entitled,”The Science of Engagement,” that appeared in the Spring edition of Training Industry Quarterly.
In addition to the The Atlantic article on Facebook making us lonely, here are two other readings I recommend.