Overcoming Loneliness in our Suddenly Virtual World

“It feels good to talk with you guys. It’s been lonely at home.”

On Saturday morning, a group of Write of Passage students gathered for our weekly live writing workshop. One of our best students, Lindsay, shared this positive thought before we began. This type of virtual connection is suddenly common in our strange new reality.

The world has moved online.

A years-long process of digital migration has been compressed into a week. Around the country and the world, companies and schools are dealing with logistical challenges and concerns as the world migrates to the internet.

Few saw this crisis coming. We’re not sure what’s next. But amid a sea of challenges, perhaps there’s an opportunity to develop solutions for the cultural atomization that spread throughout the past decade.​

It's clear that technology has changed our social fabric in recent years. Since 2010, in-person socializing has dropped across all age groups. High school students spend far less time socializing in person. Americans host fewer dinner parties than 20 years ago. With a digital universe available at your fingertips, the outside world holds less of a draw.

Jonah Bennett outlines this phenomenon in an excellent recent essay. He labels this the “atomization problem”, a fragmentation of society that is a byproduct our all-too-addictive machines. Bennett explains that despite our best efforts to limit screen time, individuals are “radically inadequate” to beat the pull of machines on our own. Rather than more willpower or another self-control app on your iPhone, he calls for a new set of social technologies to “reinvigorate a decaying social fabric.” Rather than offering a tidy solution, Bennett explains that this is a hard problem, and that any new solution will look “extremely strange to the rest of society.” Wishfully hoping new app or platform is too limited. The world craves new myths, metaphors and norms around technology that highlight their "very real potential for accelerating spiritual and physical decay.”

I read Bennett’s article last Saturday. In the past week, the world has seen a sharp, dramatic shift toward the digital. In response to the threatening coronavirus, online communication has absorbed business and education systems. With each new closing and cancellation, the in-person world retreats and the virtual world advances. Meetings and classrooms are shifting online at a pace we couldn’t have imagined just weeks ago. Teachers, students, and employees are getting acquainted with the norms of videoconferencing and virtual meetings.

As the western world shuts down, it becomes likely that weeks of social distancing will give way to months. No one knows how long the crisis will last. Eventually, mandatory isolation will ease, businesses will reopen, markets will recover and sports will resume. But the world we return to will not be the same.

COVID-19 is shuffling society like an Etch A Sketch. Millions of people are stepping into a fully online world. Along with the suffering that awaits in the days ahead, there will also be opportunity. People are resilient and will adapt to new virtual conditions. Innovations will arise. New ways of meeting, socializing, and establishing meaningful connections will arrive. When we emerge from our quarantines and isolations, perhaps we’ll find a world that’s less atomized and more equipped to be social in the digital age. Perhaps beating coronavirus will lead to a more vibrant social fabric, newly unified and less lonely, thanks to necessary shifts in our relationship with technology and each other.

Note: This article is adapted from my weekly newsletter, Future Glance, where I share writing and ideas about how technology is transforming media, education, and governance. Plus, cool stuff I find on Twitter. Click here to subscribe.