Loneliness, Social Media, and Their Effect on Society By Andrew Knight

All perceptions are filtered through the mind. One’s mental health shapes the way one views the world, and if one’s mental health is poor one won’t be able to see the beauty in the world in which one lives. One’s view can become distorted through an overall dark outlook, and it can render one unable to see the good in the world, the value of connection, and the beauty of life. When people lose faith in the world, when people aren’t able to see the current good in the world, people aren’t able to see the good that they can bring to the world. 

One can’t be a part of a good society without feeling as if their society can be good. With this, I introduce the significance of mental health. By improving one’s mental health, one improves their ability to see the good, both current and potential, and one will be able to bring that potential good to the world, thereby becoming a vessel through which the world is improved. The only way to improve a society is to improve its members' ability to see society as something that has the potential to be better. New social institutions, most prominently social media, have lent themselves to decreasing the connectedness of today's population, increasing the individuals feeling of loneliness. This loneliness has dug its roots into society in recent years and has continued to deteriorate the mental state of the population. The vicious cycle of social media, loneliness, and the resulting poor mental health, is the biggest albatross around the neck of society in today's age. 

Most people get the bulk of their stimulation from their phones. From 2005 to 2021, social media use has skyrocketed, from just 5% in 2005 to 73% in 2021 (Social Media Fact Sheet). People would rather chat on the phone than see their friends face to face. Rather than checking up on someone they haven’t seen for a while, they stalk their Facebook. Institutions like social media make the exchange of personal information impersonal. A good portion of the younger generation will sit on their ass and scroll through their phone before they will spend quality time with someone they love. A phone is a good tool for people to see farther than their eyes are capable of, but it shouldn’t replace what would otherwise be in your view. What was first created as something that was supposed to bring people together has been allowed to become what’s been pushing the population apart. 

Since its release to the public in 1993 (Ring), the internet has revolutionized human interaction, but in more recent years, it’s acted as a barrier to face-to-face communication. This was especially aggravated in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic caused everyone to isolate themselves. Since then, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has released an 81-page paper on the subject of social isolation. In addition to the obvious effect it has on mental health, he discovered a carryover to physical health, identifying a 29% increase in the risk of heart disease, a 32% increase in the risk of stroke, and a 50% increase in the risk of heart attack, as a consequence of insufficient social connection (Murthy 24-26).

In the same period as the rise of the internet, time spent alone has increased, and time spent socializing with friends has decreased drastically. For example, from 2003-2020, the average time spent with friends has dropped by 20 hours per month, from 30 hours in 2003 to just 10 hours in 2020, a third of what it was at the beginning of the new millennium. 

Communication has evolved to where you do not have to be physically with someone to feel their presence. Even with this, statistics indicate that this hasn’t done anything to preserve friendships. Since 1990, the number of Americans lacking more than three close friends nearly doubled. This number was used by the surgeon general as one of the main metrics for loneliness in his paper. The significance of it stems from Dr. Murthy’s statistic which indicates that people with more than three close are unlikely to feel lonely. 90% of those who don’t suffer loneliness have north of three close friends, so it’s a call to alarm that the portion of the population with that social backing has dropped so drastically in recent times. In 1990 the percentage of American adults with three or fewer close friends was 27 percent, now the figure sits at 49 percent (Murthy 13).

As mentioned before, this shift occurred in the same period as the rise of social media, but we can’t equate correlation to causation without hypothesizing the connection. The use of social media has been strongly associated with the incidence of social appearance anxiety disorder. This is a disorder that causes people to become hyper-fixated on their appearance. As Papapanou describes it, “Social appearance anxiety… is a type of anxiety defined as the fear of being negatively evaluated or rejected by others because of one’s physical appearance.” This disorder can make someone hesitant to leave their house, talk to people, and form the connections that make one feel human. The study cited a positive correlation between the level of social appearance anxiety disorder, and the scores of loneliness, and found that the occurrence of loneliness was predicted by the social appearance anxiety score (Papapanou).

With pictures of models, and ideal figures plastering the front pages of every social media site, people are bound to make the comparison between themselves and these often unnatural, and often physically unattainable beauty standards. As physical features are often the first thing one will notice when interacting with others, people value this highly when evaluating themselves. When people evaluate themselves primarily by physical appearance, and they get their baseline comparison of their appearance through the internet, because, as mentioned before, people often look at their phone before looking at their surroundings, they are met with pictures of bodies that are unattainable to most people. 

This kind of comparison is called an “upward comparison.” An upward comparison is when you perceive someone else as having a higher value than you. Social comparison is inevitable, as that is how humans evolved to identify their place in a hierarchy. People make these comparisons with whatever they see, and if what they see comes from social media, and what's on social media is doctored images of models who look good for a living, they are bound to be making primarily upward comparisons. Upward comparisons have been shown to increase both symptoms of depression and social appearance anxiety which, as discussed before, has been correlated with the incidence of loneliness(Çelik 346).

Another mechanism through which the rise of social media has increased the incidence of loneliness is the skyrocketed frequency of what's called a parasocial relation. A parasocial relationship is defined as a one-sided relationship where a spectator forms a relationship with a performer. The spectator will feel a relationship with the performer, while the performer lacks such a relationship with the spectator. The spectator is just a drop of water in a sea of fans to the performer, while the spectator feels an attachment to the performer(Horton 1). The concept of the parasocial relationship has been around since the fifties, with the rise of mass media, specifically television, but the phenomenon is much more widespread today, with new performers popping up every day, and people having the ability to see thousands of faces within hours, without even leaving their home. A more recent article accurately described the phenomenon in today's society, saying, “Parasocial relationships arise when individuals are repeatedly exposed to a media persona, and the individuals develop a sense of intimacy, perceived friendship, and identification with the celebrity" (Martinie). The article goes on to describe that while at the surface this seems unhealthy, it actually can be seen as one of the positive effects of today's media. Martinie explains that forming these relationships with celebrities can create a feeling of connection, and belonging in people who wouldn’t otherwise feel such things. It can help form an identity when one otherwise lacks the social ability to do so. While this may be a fair benefit to the social climate we currently live in, it’s worth mentioning that these relationships do not go both ways. When one develops a connection with someone, an important part of that is mutual care. This aspect is completely absent in parasocial relationships. Even if the spectator feels as though the performer might have any care for them whatsoever, this is an illusion that can easily be shattered, and when it is, the spectator will feel even more alone. Expanding on this, the feeling of belonging is an important factor that drives people to make connections, when one lacks such a feeling they are driven to go out and find it. With this drive being diminished by a false sense of belonging in a relationship with a performer, who doesn’t even know they exist, one won’t feel the drive to go out and make the two-way relationships that they could count on for a natural sense of belonging. When people replace face-to-face interactions with parasocial relationships online, they devalue the relationships that make them feel whole. 

The devaluation of face-to-face connection facilitated by social media aggravates the distorted view of the world that's plaguing today's society. The cycle of loneliness, social media usage, and social appearance anxiety, causes a reinforcement of the aforementioned loneliness that’s detrimental to our society. The lens in which individuals view themselves determines the lens in which individuals view the world. This applies to both how they view the world's current state and the potential it holds to become better. By reconnecting the individuals that make up society, you improve individuals view of themselves, thereby improving their view of the world. 

Works Cited

“Social Media Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 7 Apr. 2021, www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.

Ring, Julian. “30 Years Ago, One Decision Altered the Course of Our Connected World.” NPR, NPR, 30 Apr. 2023, www.npr.org/2023/04/30/1172276538/world-wide-web-internet-anniversary. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.

Murthy, Vivek. “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” US Department of Health and Human Services, 2023. 

Papapanou, Triada Konstantina., et al. "Strong Correlations between Social Appearance Anxiety, use of Social Media, and Feelings of Loneliness in Adolescents and Young Adults." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 20, no. 5, 2023, pp. 4296. ProQuest,10.3390/ijerph20054296.

Çelik, Esranur, and Özlem Tolan. “The relationship between social appearance anxiety, automatic thoughts and depression-anxiety-stress in emerging adulthood.” International Journal of Progressive Education, vol. 17, no. 5, 2021, pp. 345–363, 10.29329/ijpe.2021.375.22. 

Horton, Donald, and R. Richard Wohl. “Mass communication and para-social interaction.” Psychiatry, vol. 19, no. 3, 1956, pp. 215–229, 10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049. 

Martinie, Alexander, and Brielle Aguayo. "The psychology behind parasocial relationships." UWIRE Text, 8 Nov. 2021, p. 1. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A681622927/AONE?u=mlin_m_massbay&sid=summon&xid=36c27f65. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.