Facebook Notifications and Loneliness

37885299-lonely-pictures

Yesterday was my birthday. I’m old. It’s okay.

All day I got notifications on my phone, so and so wrote on my timeline. It’s nice.

And I write on people’s timelines when it’s their birthday. It’s just kinda what we do, right?

But man… people are lonely. Like.. deeply, devastatingly lonely. Even with all the Facebook notifications.

A guy I know, super busy and popular, successful, talented, smart, funny… lonely.

Another friend, he’s freaking brilliant, stable, caring… lonely.

Another friend, beautiful, stunning really, hard worker, sweetest thing… lonely.

What is actually going on here?

Why do we feel this/have this loneliness epidemic?

I think we’re broken. So broken. And I think we’ve been conditioned by bad relationships, by being lied to and cheated on and used and abused and… to expect people to only break us further. So, we either end up in this permanent loop of victim-hood, or we go the opposite direction and puff ourselves up and declare no one will ever hurt us again, and end up super guarded with walls around us so thick that our hearts become impenetrable. And both of those options suck. A lot. We live in fear, when it comes to love and connection and relating. We can share memes all day long, but are uncomfortable sitting down and sharing a meal. We can like your selfie on insta, but we can’t actually look you in the eye, in person.

I’m not anti-technology, I’m not against texting and posting and liking. I’m not. But that is like taking a vitamin, instead of actually eating the fruits and vegetables. It helps, but it’s not complete. It might keep you going, but it’s not going to make you radiant. It should be a supplement, not the sole… soul… supply.

 

6 thoughts on “Facebook Notifications and Loneliness

      1. You’re very welcome. I could personally relate to all you’ve said. I’ve had lengthy discussions about social media and mental health issues with people close to me. Look forward​ing to reading more from you.

        Like

  1. Such truth. A friend of mine and I, were just talking about this yesterday, its sad. I often unplug from social media and I believe it helps stop the anxiety or any other odd feelings associated with it.

    Like

    1. I love social media, obviously. Most of my interactions with people, other than co-workers, take place via Facebook so, it’s not a slam on the method of connecting, it’s… I don’t know… there is just something potent about a face to face conversation, about inhabiting the same space as your conversation partner and I fear we are losing that bit by bit.

      Like

      1. I agree as well that many are losing out on face-to-face conversations, replaced by the digital. I don’t know what the answer is except make a conscience effort myself to spend as much time with others as I can.

        Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s