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Facebook and Loneliness

College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences


Public Relations and Advertising

Facebook and Loneliness


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Abstract
Social media, particularly social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, Pinterest and others are believed to help people feel more connected with a larger
network of friends. It seems that virtual communication is on the path of replacing real life
communication between individuals. Making new friends is only a click away and it has
never been easier. The present paper analyses the social consequences of using Facebook as
means of interacting with others. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate that despite
the general belief according to which Facebook is the most ingenious idea that was developed
in the last decade, it actually affects our lives in a rather negative way.

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Introduction
The premise of this paper is, the fact that the effect of Facebook use
is rather the opposite of its initial scope. We live under that impression
that the more friends we have on Facebook, the more popular we are and
the more people we know. The goal of the current paper is to demonstrate
the negative effects of Facebook use, with focus on loneliness. In order to
do this, we start off with the following hypotheses:

Virtual communication is actually isolating us from real human


interactions;

Facebook friends are not real friends.

I have chosen this topic because I find very interesting how more and
more people spend more and more time online on different socializing
networks, such as Facebook. In addition to this the rate of people
experiencing feelings of loneliness is increasing. With loneliness being the
most common problem of todays society, people tend to search for
connections, for constant contact with other people. And technology came
with a solution to this problem, namely social networks which provide
impressive platforms that allow people to easily, successfully and
effectively manage their social lives. But in reality this solution is rather
an illusion: Facebook gives the illusion of connection when its not really
there.
The first section of this paper is a literary review in which different
other studies conducted on the same issue are mentioned and analysed.
Then the methods of the research are explained in detail: I have opted for
the focus group as a research method; a total number of 8 participants
took place in the study, with ages ranging between 22 and 27. The
debates in the focus group were shaped by two questions:

Does Facebook actually isolate us?

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and if so,

How does Facebook isolate us?

The next section of this paper analyses the results gathered from the
focus group discussion based on the questions and the hypotheses
previously mentioned. In the last section the conclusions are summarized.

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Literature review
Facebook represents the most popular social network website in the
world. It was created in February 2004 by a Harvard undergraduate
student, Mark Zuckerberg, and by now it has gathered 1.23 billion
monthly active users, according to The Guardian 1. According to Stephen
Marche in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Facebook
arrived in the middle of a dramatic increase in the quantity and intensity
of human loneliness, a rise that initially made the sites promise of greater
connection seem deeply attractive (Marche, Mukherjee ed., 2013: 290).
This means that the initial purpose of this website was to reduce
loneliness that people were experiencing and enhance communication
and relationships between individuals.
As we know, loneliness and being alone is not one and the same
thing. There is a growing body of research on the topic of loneliness,
revealing that loneliness is not a matter of external conditions; it is a
psychological state. and that the tendency towards loneliness has
roughly the same genetic components as other psychological problems
such as neuroticism or anxiety. (Marche, Mukherjee ed., 2013: 290-291).
Being alone can be an option, a voluntary decision that can be made
based on different factors: maybe the person in question is feeling tired,
or sad, or simply not in the mood to have company; then he or she
decides to spend some time alone. But that person is in total control of
their state: he or she can consciously decide when the alone time stars
and also when it ends and effortlessly switch from one state to the other.
Whereas the state of being lonely can be triggered by all sorts of internal
factors which we cannot control. Fay Schopen stated in an article
published on the official website theguardian.com that: While there is a
difference between being alone and being lonely [] there is no getting
1 http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/04/facebook-in-numbersstatistics

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around the fact that we live in an isolated age. 2 And the loneliness factor
is increasing in an alarming way. In order to measure this variable, a tool
called the UCLA Loneliness Scale was developed. This tool consists of
twenty questions which all issue how often one person feels something.
For example: How often do you feel that you lack companionship?
According to Stephen Marche Measuring the condition in these terms,
various studies have shown loneliness rising drastically over a very short
period of recent history. (Marche, Mukherjee ed., 2013: 291).
On the other hand, loneliness has been found to be associated with
external factors such as inadequacy of one's social networks, or little
direct human contact. For example, an article

entitled All the lonely

Facebook friends: Study shows social media makes us MORE lonely and
unhappy and LESS sociable published in The Daily Mail Online shows that
not only does the frequent use of Facebook undermine the well-being of
individuals but it also increases loneliness. Psychologist Ethan Kross
conducted this study at the University of Michigan, proving how online
social media, rather than making us feel connected, contributes to
loneliness and reduces overall life-satisfaction 3. The way we interact with
others is deeply affected by our increasing daily use of social networks
such as Facebook. The study had eighty-two participants and it consisted
of a survey questioning the participants active use of Facebook, their
feelings of well-being and the amount of time spent in direct social
contact with others. The study took place over a period of two weeks and
by the time is ended it showed that Increased feelings of isolation and a
decreased sense of well-being seems connected with the way in which we
use social media, such as Facebook or Instagram: passively or actively3.

2 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/27/anyone-can-die-aloneisolated-age-uk-loneliest-country
3 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2419419/All-lonely-Facebook-friendsStudy-shows-social-media-makes-MORE-lonely-unhappy-LESS-sociable.html

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Author Jonathan Safran Foer, wrote on this matter in The New York
Times,

stating

that

Technology

celebrates

connectedness,

but

encourages retreat4. We isolate ourselves from the outside world, from


real human contact, from the emotional work of being present, behind a
computer screen and we look at the world through pictures posted by
others; we are under the illusion that we have many friends with whom we
are strongly connected, only because they like our posts or they
emphasize with what we shared, but in reality, were sitting alone in an
empty room; we believe that we communicate with our so called friends
but a 2010 study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
showed that increased internet use, which includes Facebook use, actually
led to a decline in the communication with family and friends and
increased loneliness and depression. Facebook gives the illusion of
connection when its not really there.
Through the use of Facebook, we passively consume other peoples
lives, which are, most of the times idealized. We see perfect meals with
families, perfect meetings with friends, perfect holydays and perfect jobs.
Unfortunately, we tend to perceive this idealization as reality, which
through introspection into our own lives becomes a factor of frustration:
we dont have perfect holidays, or jobs or anything else. Nothing in our
lives rises to the level of perfection that we see in Facebook pictures
representing the life of others. That is because their lives, just as ours, are
not perfect either.
A recent video5 created by graphic designer Shimi Chohen on the
Innovation of Loneliness, reveals how Facebook is isolating us from the
real world. The video had as source of inspiration and information Sherry
Turkles book, Alone Together, and Dr. Yair Amichai-Hamburgers article
The Invention of Being Lonely. It begins with explaining how social
4 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-be-alone.html?
pagewanted=all&_r=0
5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ybt_Sjrp8

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groups form: starting off from the idea that man is a social creature, the
video explains that the constant need of social contact drives men to form
groups. Sociological research shows that there are certain thresholds
which, once reached, determine the division of such groups. Thus, when
reaching a number of 150 people, the group stops growing. According to
the research, this is the maximum number of people that an individual is
capable of intimately knowing.6 In this context we can easily observe a
major contradiction when we take a look at social sites like Facebook and
see that the majority of people have over 500 friends, some of them even
over 1000.
As we know, individuals compare themselves to others and compare
individuals with other individuals, separately from their own person. The
criteria based on which this comparison takes place are personal
achievements:

Career;

Wealth;

Self-image;

Consumerism.

Thus individuals constantly try to improve themselves, their image


and the way in which they are perceived by others, hence losing their
social and familiar connections in favour of a self-actualisation ideal. The
video goes on explaining how because of this, more and more people
define themselves as lonely, loneliness being the most common factor in
modern life. It further issues one possible reason for this situation, namely
the social network. We live in a world where the increasing need for
money is constantly pressuring us to always achieve more and still keep

6 http://www.amara.org/pt/videos/z9Y36ZalOaai/en/559292/

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our social lives which become more and more demanding as a result of
the lack of free time, at a high level.
To this problem, technology offers a solution under the form of a
social network which provides an impressive platform that allows people
to

easily,

successfully

and

effectively

manage

their

social

lives.

Nevertheless, this illusion of substitution is starting to fade away and


reveal the fact that we collect friends like stamps and we turn the deep
meaning of friendship and intimacy that friendship involves into a simple
exchange of photos. Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at NYU stated in his
book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living
Alone that: Reams of published research show that its the quality, not
the

quantity

of

social

interaction,

that

best

predicts

loneliness.

(Klinenberg, 2012). This means that we are sacrificing real conversation


for mere connection and we live under the impression that we are
surrounded by hundreds of friends whil actually being alone and thus
lonely.
In the video it is further explained the problem with real
conversations: they happen in real time, face-to-face, preventing us from
creating

ourselves

in

whatever

manner

we

would

like.

Virtual

communication comes with the advantage of letting us present ourselves


in an idealised manner, how we would like ourselves to be. It allows us to
control what we are going to say, to edit and to delete. We only show the
best pictures of ourselves, we spend a lot of time trying to order words in
our messages: we are led by the constant obsession of personal
promotion. While in real time we are obliged to be ourselves whether we
like it or not. And this leads to isolation and loneliness.
According to Shimi Chohen, the social network offers us three
gratifying fantasies:

that we can put our attention on wherever we want it to be.

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That well always be heard.

That we will never have to be alone.7

The last idea is the one that most influences and changes our
subconscious. We use Facebook to define ourselves by sharing our
thoughts and feelings even as were having them. In addition to this, we
fake experiences in order to have something to post, so that we dont feel
invisible. We tend to believe that if were always connected to Facebook,
we wont feel so alone, but actually were lying to ourselves, because if
were not able to be alone, were only going to know how to be lonely.7

7 http://www.amara.org/pt/videos/z9Y36ZalOaai/en/559292/

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Method
In order to emphasize the purpose of this paper and to demonstrate its
hypotheses I have chosen the focus group method. This is the most
popular qualitative research method in which a group of random people is
formed and group discussions on various aspects are facilitated. There is
an interviewer who usually asks a series of questions to which the
members come up with answers and a discussion ensues. This method is
suited to the scope of this research because it allows the interviewer to
directly analyse the participants, their reactions and their thoughts.
For the purpose of this paper I recruited a number of 8 participants
based on two eliminatory questions:
1. Do you have a Facebook account?
2. Do you use the Facebook application on your smartphone?
If both the questions were answered with Yes the person was further
asked if he or she would like to take part in a focus group. Not many
details were given about the purpose of this focus group or the way in
which it was going to take place, but compensation was promised to be
offered to the participants for their time and effort. Namely, I offered to
buy each of them a cup of coffee and motivated them with the idea of
getting to know new people and have nice conversations. I selected the
people from my working environment in such a way that none of them
knew each other intimately, but of course, all of them were acquainted to
the level of work colleagues. Four of the subjects were females and only
three of them were men, all of them with ages ranging between
. Once the group was formed, we settled a venue and a time and the focus
group discussion could take place.

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The activity of the group was monitored by me, as the interviewer


and it focused as a first step on observation: how long until the first
person longs in on Facebook from their smartphone. The observation
process and the debate that followed focused on the hypotheses stated at
the beginning of this paper:

Virtual communication is actually isolating us from real human


interactions;

Facebook friends are not real friends.

I registered all the needed information in several tables:

Table 1. presents the time from arrival until the first log in for each
of the participants.

Table 2. presents the amount of time spent on Facebook by each of


the participants from the beginning until the end of the meeting.

Not knowing the exact purpose of the research each of the participants
felt free to act as normal as they would act in any circumstances, in the
context of a meeting with work colleagues.
After gathering enough information for the first table, I started the
debate which was created as answers to the research questions of this
paper, namely:

Does Facebook actually isolate us?


and if so,

How does Facebook isolate us?

The materials used for the purpose of this paper were: a laptop, a
watch, paper and pens.

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Results
Based on my initial observation, I have gathered the following
information:

Gender
Time
until
first log
in

Pers. 1

Pers. 2

Pers. 3

Pers. 4

Pers. 5

Pers. 6

Pers. 7

Pers. 8

30 min.

25 min.

50 min.

45 min.

1h

45 min.

45 min.

Table 1.
All of the subjects logged in on Facebook within one hour from
arrival. There was only one exception: one person does not own a
smartphone currently, which therefore makes it impossible for her to
spend time on Facebook outside her home (or any other place where a
computer exists). She was deliberately selected like this based on my
assumption that she might have different opinions from the rest of the
group.
After the first table was filled in and the group found out the purpose
and questions on the research, I gathered and summarized their answers
to the questions. To the first question that issued whether or not Facebook
isolates us, the opinions were somehow split: the males taking part in the
study answered with not necessarily whereas the general opinion of the
females was that it did. After a little more thought was given to the
question, the answers were analysed in more detail and the following
conclusions were reached:

For the not necessarily answer the explanation was that if we


knew how to manage our free time, and the time we spent online on
Facebook, this social network should not isolate us. We should not
prefer virtual communicating with our friends to face-to-face

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meetings and communication. As long as we keep the line between


real life human contact and virtual contact with people balanced,
then the use of Facebook should not affect our lives. The opinion of
the males was that we are in control of how much time we spend
online and that it stays in our power not to let our virtual lives
interfere with our real lives to the extent that the first one might
replace the second one.

The opinion of the females was that Facebook does isolate us


because it facilitates communication through a channel which allows
people to create alternate personas and present different versions
of themselves according to the expectations of their interlocutor.

The general opinion of the group was that Facebook could indeed
isolate us and determine a feeling of loneliness, because people
eventually tend to avoid real life conversations where nothing can
be edited, researched, deleted or formulated in advance. Also,
people have to reveal their real selves, from physical appearance to
the way they spoke and thought and reach a point where they fear
rejection and not being able to integrate in a certain social group.

Based on my second observation, I have gathered the following


information:

Pers. 1

Pers.
2

Pers. 3

Pers. 4

Pers.
5

Pers. 6

Pers.
7

Pers. 8

Gender

Time
spent
online

20
min.

8 min

37
min.

10 min

13
min.

5 min.

20
min.

Average

14.12
min.
Table 2.

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Without my interference, the group came to the conclusion that, as a


general rule, males spend less time logged in on Facebook than females
do. Nevertheless the number of males spending more and more time
online is increasing. From Table 2. I gathered that the average amount of
time spent online on Facebook during the three hours of the social group
discussion was 14.12 minutes. This means that for approximately 14
minutes each of the subjects was not paying attention to the others and
not taking part in the conversations. It is to be taken into consideration
the fact that this meeting did not allow the participants to feel entirely
comfortable, as would have been the case in which they would have met
with close friends. Given the nature of the meeting and the formal, workrelated relationship they had with each other, all of them admitted to have
feeling of self-awareness and to consciously control the urge to sign in on
Facebook and the time spent doing this.
When asked how many Facebook friends each of the candidates had, the numbers
ranged between 800 and 1300. When asked how many of them they personally knew, the
numbers dropped between 30 and 50 with the addition that only around 10 persons were real
friend with whom the candidates had real relationships and contact.
Without my intervention, the group reached the conclusion that the hypothesis
according to which Facebook isolates us and prevents us from forming real relationships and
thus interfering with our lives and generating feelings of loneliness does not apply in any of
their cases even though they are all Facebook users.
I received interesting thoughts from the only person not owning a smartphone, being
thus unable to access her profile when outside. Namely, she admitted that she would too
spend time online if she had the possibility. Also, she noticed how whenever she would get
together with friends or other people, there would be times when she would observe how
each of her interlocutors would be on their phones, sharing photos or other things on
Facebook while she was the one with nothing to do.

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Conclusion
I conducted this research as result of my observation that more and
more people spend more and more time on socialising networks, such as
Facebook. I have chosen Facebook as the main tool of our study because it
is the most popular socializing network with the biggest number of active
users. I have chosen this topic because I find that the most common
element of todays society is loneliness.
The hypotheses which generated the debate of the current paper were:

Virtual communication is actually isolating us from real human


interactions;

Facebook friends are not real friends.

The method of research I used was the focus group. This consisted of a
number of eight persons which voluntarily accepted to take part in this
research. They were selected on the background of whether they were
Facebook users and whether they used the Facebook application on their
mobile phones. The chosen method of research helped me demonstrate
the hypothesis and also generated interesting debates on whether
Facebook isolates individuals or not. The debate started off with the
following research questions:

Does Facebook actually isolate us?


and if so,

How does Facebook isolate us?

The results that I gathered and analysed proved that people spend
more and more time trapped in a virtual world rather than in the real
world. Moreover, even when they are outside, surrounded by other people,

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instead of spending quality time with the ones surrounding them, they
tend to retreat into their own virtual universe where they can be whoever
and however they like. This results in fear of rejection when facing real
relationships and conversations and eventually it leads to isolation.
In conclusion, too much time spent on Facebook can be harmful. As a
result to our more and more alert lives which do not allow us to correctly
manage our social lives, we tend to let ourselves fall into the trap of social
networks. These provide the illusion of never letting us feel lonely because
we can always be connected with our friends, family and loved ones, we
can meet new people, and we can share our thoughts and interests. But in
reality they do the opposite thing: they allow us collect a large number of
so called friends, from which only a very small number we really know.
They pressure us to be active and somehow they create a psychological
addiction, convincing us that if we dont share things, we dont really live.
They generate a general need of constant self-improvement, which is only
superficial: we brag about our jobs, our experiences, our friends, our lives
and our own selves, from which we only show the perfect parts.
Practically, we divide ourselves into our good elements and our negative
elements, and we tend to leave the later ones aside revealing and
emphasizing the former ones. This course of action has consequences
later when we have to deal with real life situations such as friends,
conversations, relationships.
Facebook isolates us and makes us feel lonely because we live in a
society where we have forgotten how to be alone.

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Works cited
Books
1. Marche, Stephen, Mukherjee, Siddhartha ed. 2013 The Best
American Science and Nature Writing. New York: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt.
2. Klinenberg, Eric. 2012. Going Solo: The Extraordinary Life and
Surprising Appeal of Livving Alone. London: Penguin Group.
Web sources
1. http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/04/facebook-in-numbersstatistics
2. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/27/anyone-can-die-aloneisolated-age-uk-loneliest-country
3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2419419/All-lonely-Facebook-friendsStudy-shows-social-media-makes-MORE-lonely-unhappy-LESS-sociable.html
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-be-alone.html?
pagewanted=all&_r=0
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ybt_Sjrp8
6. http://www.amara.org/pt/videos/z9Y36ZalOaai/en/559292/

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