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| Americans Becoming Lonelier |
| Internet may be reason that Americans have less close friends now than they did 20 years ago |
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Jason Hahn (woowhee)  |
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Published 2006-06-26 16:47 (KST) |
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 |  | | | | | | ©2006 Stefanie L. | According to a group of researchers headed by Duke University Professor Lynn Smith-Lovin, Americans are lonelier than they were 20 years ago. This is mostly due to increasingly rigid work schedules, longer commutes, and later marriages.
Smith-Lovin is the lead author of the study that is to be published in the American Sociological Review. "This is a big change, and it indicates something that's not good for our society," Smith-Lovin said.
Almost a quarter of the 1,500 American adults participating in the survey indicated that they had "zero" close friends to share their personal issues with, while more than half of the people surveyed said that they could name two close friends or less. Most often these close companions included immediate family members. The survey has been ongoing since 1972.
According to the survey, there was a considerable drop in the number of close companions an American had in 1985, when participants said they typically had three close friends. These friends were people who the participant had known for a while, shared various interests with, and saw frequently.
In 1985, participants were also likely to name four or five friends that they could talk with about their personal lives, and oftentimes these relationships were founded in local communities.
Racial and educational implications are also tied to the study's findings, as minorities and people who have obtained lesser degrees of education are more likely to have smaller groups of close friends than white Americans and those with higher degrees of education.
One has to wonder how large of a role the emergence of the Internet plays in this finding. The Web has done wonders in expanding the capabilities of social interaction between people. Social and geographical boundaries that may have hindered the development of acquaintances before have been virtually obliterated.
So, on the surface it would appear that the Internet and all its social networks, instant messaging services, and e-mail enhancements have made it easier to develop friendships. However, this notion may be misleading.
As teens and young adults rely more on these "face-to-monitor" relationships and therefore avoid having to deal with face-to-face meetings with companions, their social aptitude has suffered from disuse.
In-person interactions have become somewhat unsettling to many who have come to see instant message boxes and e-mail inboxes as the normal way to communicate. Sharing personal struggles and circumstances online requires the typing of words and the use of a few smilies, where 20 years ago they would require a phone call that would allow both parties to hear each others' voices, or a face-to-face meeting.
While the Internet has made it infinitely easier to make acquaintances and casual friendships, it has made it that much more difficult to form the kind of close-knit and personal friendships that Americans seem to be losing in recent years. Ironically, Americans, and citizens of the world, are finding that the tool that they have embraced and have exalted as being one that brings the world closer together is actually bringing its individual participants farther apart.
Social atrophy due to the emerging dominance of the Internet should be considered as another major reason for the increasing loneliness of not just Americans, but people in connected places around the globe. The ambiguity of what constitutes a real friendship and what is genuine social interaction between two human beings has been smudged even further in the last 20 years, and no definitive answer or solution to this issue seems to be anywhere in sight.
Author and scholar C.S. Lewis once said that humans in modern times view friendship as "something quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet; a diversion; something that fills up the chinks of one's time."
He goes on to say that "Friendship is - in a sense not at all derogatory to it -- the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart together from the herd."
So long as people are overcome by the forces that insist that close friendships are unimportant, and that work to keep the herd all together (and yet at the same time, strangely apart), friendships will continue to become scarcer and harder to come by.
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©2006 OhmyNews
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