Solitude is transforming American society. Whether it’s a desire to be alone or involuntary loneliness, people are spending more time by themselves. And that has ramifications on democracy.
Loneliness by the numbers
There are two aspects to the solitude issue.
One is loneliness that’s unintentional. It’s been well reported that the Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic in 2023. One poll found that 30% of adults from the ages of 18 to 34 are lonely every day or several times a week. And mental health experts agree across the board that social connection is positive for our mental health.
The second type of solitude is by design. More people are choosing to be alone, going from FOMO, the fear of missing out, to JOMO, the joy of missing out.
TikTok has videos of people celebrating when people cancel plans with them.
Writer Derek Thompson, who published a piece on social isolation in The Atlantic last month, found sobering statistics on social isolation:
- School aged boys and girls socializing with friends outside of school has dropped 50% since the early 1990s.
- A woman who owns pets interacts more with the animals than face-to-face contact with her friends.
- For every one hour men are with their friends, they spend seven hours watching TV.
San Diegans and loneliness
Local tech worker Eduardo Rosenfeld, 27, said he’d rather stay at home and socialize remotely. But he doesn’t think he’s isolating himself, he says his social interaction is pretty much how it’s done now.
"I'll go to the gym, I'll come home and I'll hop on my PlayStation and I'll talk to eight of my friends that are also online and I don't have to go drive 20 minutes to go sit at someone's house and hang out with them in person," he said. "I can do that while playing a game and it's just a different world now.”
But Rosenfeld has isolated himself from social media. He unplugged about 10 years ago.
“I was in college in San Francisco studying and I would see my friends at San Diego State having a great time," he said. "Why am I not enjoying myself and having fun? And it just became something that was really difficult to deal with and manage and so I just deleted everything and felt so much better after.”
What does all of this mean for democracy?
Unlike Rosenfeld, some people who isolate themselves by choice do get their dose of interaction with other people via social media.
The problem is when those conversations veer into politics, the tone can get brutal. Political chats can devolve into toxicity and threats, which is a far cry from the days when social media was anticipated to be a platform for deliberative democracy among citizens.
And it’s the anonymity, the lack of face to face nature of social media that only intensifies the hostility. Yale historian Tim Snyder said when people are alone, they look for “big, false communities” to join. He calls social media an incubator for the angry.
“The sad thing is if you’re driven into artificial isolation by the machine, your politics become generic and predictable," he said. "Your politics are just about how you feel grievance, you're the victim, you're always the victim. You can't really change anything. Therefore, you need a big strong man to come in and clean things up for you. And that's predictable and it's sad and it's also incredibly boring."
The solution is for people and children to get out there and join sports teams, take art classes, go on field trips and ban smartphones in schools, Snyder said.
Meanwhile, 92-year-old San Diegan Delores Lukemet said she is painfully lonely.
She said she can go days without seeing or speaking to anyone and spends hours watching FOX News every day. Her view of the world is that California and the rest of the country are in awful shape, and she said she has placed her faith in President Trump to fix both.
