Loneliness. I’ve personally felt it more and more lately. I experience this a type of dull, low-grade, always-on grumpiness. It exists even though I’m an introvert, and despite the fact that I’m in a long-term, loving relationship and have two daughters at home through the holidays. This is a feeling I have not felt to such a degree since my awkward teenage years.
I know the trappings of COVID-19 are responsible for much of the pain. We didn’t get to visit with my Mom or extended family over Thanksgiving. I miss the +80 co-workers at the company that I sold and left in April. Meanwhile, my small but mighty new team is stuck at home with quarantined kids. This week I sat in a co-working space with just one or two other brave, masked souls, all carefully spread throughout the three-story complex.
Don’t worry, dear friends. I’m managing. We all are. I’ve spent some of this time alone getting in touch with these feelings, learning why they seem to be increasing across society, and thinking what we all might do about it.
Loneliness May be the Key Issue of our Age
A growing number of studies show that loneliness is real—and growing. Since the 1980s, the percentage of American adults who report being lonely has doubled from 20% to 40%. Younger people feel more alone than any other age group, and we all spend less time with other people as we age. We are social creatures, programmed through our genetic selection to rely on each other. That’s why our brains react to loneliness similar to hunger and thirst.
One fascinating study used in-person interviews with a wide cross-section of Americans and asked, “Do you have someone that you discuss important topics with?” It is a generally accepted way to discern Strong connections between people. Follow up questions went into the number of such people and whether they are family or friends. The study was first done in 1985 and then repeated in 2004. The findings are chilling:
The average number of these strong connections decreased from 2.9 to 2.1
43.6% of people in 2004 either have none or just one strong connection
The number of people with at least one connection that is not a family member declined from 80.1% to 57.2%
Loneliness leads to compounding problems and challenges. We miss ideas, insights, introductions and serendipitous opportunities—from job openings to blind dates to financial advice. We participate in fewer community organizations for our common good. We suffer political polarization and a lack of social cohesion, as people retreat into smaller networks and lock themselves into echo chambers. It is a cause of the mental pain of depression, and physical pain and disease as well.
But why are we increasingly alone when this brings us so much pain—and at time when modern technology is supposedly bringing us closer together?
Time is the (Growing) Challenge
For the past few weeks I’ve been listening to the 40-hour Audible narration of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Aside from many interesting lessons on leadership and American history, I’ve been awestruck in learning how people of that age spent their time. They spent hours re-reading classic books, writing pages and pages of correspondence, and, well, meeting with people. There seemed to be a constant social calendar filled with multi-course dinners, discussion salons, and 3 hour political speeches—at a time when the means of travel was mostly horseback or by foot. Hell, it took them an hour to wash, shave and get dressed! Where did they get the time?
The economics major in me can’t help but think about supply and demand…of time. You see, we have only so many productive waking hours in the day, so the Supply of time is fixed. However the Demand for time continues to shift up as we have more and more things to do in our lives. We are working longer hours—in fact, work-life integration means we are always-on—and we have escalating information and entertainment distractions begging for our time and attention.
The result is an increase in the Cost or Value of the time we spend. We use technology to try and save time, yet this same technology brings more and more potential pulls on our time. Email is more efficient than a phone call, yet there is always just one more email to send and receive. Think back to Lincoln’s day for a moment, and consider how much time you would have on your hands if your television, phone, car and computer were suddenly taken away.
In my 30 years of work I have experienced the shifts of preferred business communication from mailed letters to telephone calls to email to text and Slack. Each step brought time-saving speed, yet weakened the human connection. Some might remember when we would randomly call each other on the phone, have someone pick up, and engage in a lengthy conversation. Now, we look at this “synchronous” phone call as a chore that must be (grudgingly) scheduled days in advance. When we read an IRL request we think 🙄 NFW. Yep, we don’t have time to write complete words, much less complete sentences.
The other day an entrepreneur said his competitive advantage was that, “I read books”—which his competitors don’t have time for. (By the way, I hope someone’s still reading my post at this point…)
I fear that the rise of remote work will pull us even further apart—permanently. Many of us have been thrown into working from home online, and there is some real, high-value time being freed up. No more commutes, no leaving the office for lunch, even less laundry and personal grooming! We fill that time quickly, and when the vaccines arrive, we will be loathe to give back that time. But we’re not as directly feeling and accounting for the cost in lost human contact and connection. We just lock in more loneliness.
Even when families are together they are increasingly apart. Over the last 30 years, family dinners and conversation declined more than 30%, which weakens children’s social development. I see I’m not the only one who is increasingly texting with their spouse from the next room.
LinkedIn Encourages a Darker Path
Technology should help us stay closer together, despite the real and perceived pulls on our time. Some digital platforms, like social media, were built specifically to deepen our connections. LinkedIn, for example, rose quickly in the business world over a decade ago, and many of use it daily to stay in touch with current and former business colleagues. Social media can offer helpful ways to, say, learn that a friend got a promotion, or see that a co-worker was mentioned in an article.
However I’m frankly terrified by the direction LinkedIn and others are going lately. In an effort to save us time—and increase usage of their platforms—they are making it easier for us to be completely thoughtless about how we communicate. Take the example below. My friend, Marc, started a new job recently. LinkedIn shares the news and presents me with the option to click button and automatically congratulate him in the comment box without typing words.
So, thanks to LinkedIn, I can put even less effort into reacting to his personal news and I can quickly move on to the next update in my feed. I can now show twice as many people that I care about them in half the time! Look how productive I am! Oh, and someone on the LinkedIn Engagement Team gets a gold star this quarter for increasing the comment rate on such posts. Everyone’s happy!
Or are we?
C’mon, we’re smarter than that. It doesn’t take us long to see people add these stock answers and think, “Thanks for nothing.” Some of us actually go out of our way to write a response that LinkedIn would never pre-populate (we hope) in order to prove that we really do care.
I loathe products like this that play on our desire to be loved and connect with our fellow humans. As my friend, Brad Berens, remarked in a catch-up conversation we had recently: “There’s a lot of people out there looking at social media as an escape from loneliness.” When we see the comment or connection request notification pop up we get a spark of belonging:
“The founder of JetBlue wants to connect with me? Really? Cool!
Oh, it’s his agency trying to push his book…”
Too many technology tools make us feel more manipulated, more depressed, and even more isolated.
What Can We do to Spark Each Other?
But we’ve got to snap out of the funk that we’re in and take some small steps of progress. Here’s a few things I’m trying to do to improve.
Lock in regularity - Create and hold to recurring get-togethers with friends and family. I’ve got an annual trip with a group of friends every week before the Super Bowl, which has been going on for over 10 years. I have a few friends that commit to monthly drinks at the same time and location. At my company I used to hold a quarterly one-on-one chat with every employee. Once you make that single recurring decision and stick with it, the momentum makes it easier.
Be or cherish the leader - Every group has at least one person who takes the initiative and gets everyone organized. Either be that person or give them enormous credit for doing so. One of our neighbors does this well—she organized a socially-distant street party during the summer and an outdoor Thanksgiving open house. We had an extra box of donuts this morning—and it was a no brainer to give them to her in thanks.
(Virtual) visit an old friend - Take the time to get back together with someone you love working with that you haven’t seen in some time. Don’t come with an agenda, and don’t ask for help on anything. Just talk. You know, like humans used to do before Slack and text.
Be the friend you’d like to have - Great point from this post. Reply to people, quickly, and without those bullshit canned responses. Practice random acts of kindness.
Use technology to your advantage - I’m trying to put all these tips together with some help from the tools I use for work everyday. Each week I am regularly reconnecting with trusted colleagues from past days. I’m using my own product, Hearty, to rediscover and select who to reach out to (you can set up an account here). I use zoom and turn off all other alerts and apps so that I’m not distracted. And I’ve set myself a weekly reminder to do this throughout 2021.
Whatever works for you, just please do something. Remember that every time you connect with another human you’re improving at least two lives at once! Humanity is so much better together. Think about this: How many of the top 5 moments in your lifetime happened when you were alone? People are what makes life great, and our time with them is precious, and very limited—shouldn’t we value this time even higher?
Now please excuse me while I answer this text from my wife about dinner plans tonight—by actually walking into the other room to speak with her. That’s the best time I will spend all day.