Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

In the article “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely”, Stephen Marche analyzes the impact of technology, especially social media on current society. One of his main arguments is that social media sites, namely Facebook, make people become disconnected from other people while consistently being connected on Facebook or social media. Marche develops his argument by using many different statistical facts. In addition, new research reports that we have never been lonelier before and this loneliness is making us physically and mentally sick.

He starts his article with a story about Yvette Vickers – an actress who died from being lonely. Yvette wasn’t found nearly a year after her death even though she was in contact with many people via social media. Marche makes this story his first point that the advent of newer and faster ways of communication makes us distance from each other, ultimately creating that isolation and making us lonelier. According to the author “… the more we become connected, the lonelier we are. We promised a global village instead we inhabited the drab cul -de- sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information.”

March begins to answer his title question by pointing out how Facebook has become a more popular and addictive aspect of our lives. Facebook has replaced people with face-to-face socializing through instant communication. March accepts the fact that loneness is a hard thing to measure but he carries on to use the statistic report of an AARP survey. This survey found that “ 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely, as opposed to 20 percent of similar group decade ago”. Based on a study 20 percent of Americans nearly 60 million people are unhappy due to loneliness. He uses this survey to help prove his point that social media gives us the ability to replace real human interaction with instant communication and leads to loneliness. Therefore real human interaction is an important tool for combating loneliness.

Due to the decline in human interaction and increase in loneness, the author proposes that this reason for the increase in the health issues both mental and physical. Marche supports this with some more statistics regarding a significant increase in medical personnel and social workers. Marche discards any other factors contributing to this increase other than the fact that human interaction is declining.

Another point he makes is that maybe we, as American prefer to be lonely. Ever since journeyed to this land, cowboys explored the great west, and astronauts traveled infinite depths of space, seems that Americans have always been willing to “pay the price “ (p104) of loneliness in exchange for pride, self-respect, exploration, or whatever it may be. Perhaps, being alone is part of American culture.  

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