Fundamentally, loneliness is our experience of the gap between the amount of social connection we would like to be experiencing and the amount we’re actually experiencing.
So if we’re alone and would like to be alone, we don’t tend to feel lonely. But if we’re alone and would like to be around other people, that can spark a sense of something being wrong, and at times this sense can be so powerful that we’re tipped into a state of depression, anxiety, and even ill physical health.
Some doctors and social commentators have noted what they consider to be a “loneliness epidemic,” possibly the result of traditional social spaces moving online, possibly the result of smartphones claiming a lot of the attention and energy we would otherwise aim at other human beings, and possibly the result of other societal shifts: changes in how we communicate, in how we engage with folks from different perceptual (and social) tribes, or in how we make, develop, and maintain friendships, for instance.
Whatever the cause, there are concomitant efforts to alleviate loneliness: some that target one or more of those seeming causes, while others are attempting to address the issue more directly by spanning that gap between “desired social connections at this moment” and “experienced social connections at this moment.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Brain Lenses to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.