Technology and Loneliness – new podcast from The Pod Delusion

Check out The Pod Delusion, episode 35, in which I have a pop at the idea that new technology is contributing to the (alleged) increase in loneliness. I felt like saying something after listening to an episode of Radio Four’s You and Yours earlier in the week, entitled Is Modern Life Making You Lonely?.

I do want to tear my hair out when people blame technology for current problems. It’s not perfect, because nothing is, but the capacity to communicate with others is mostly good, isn’t it? I just don’t buy the idea that virtual communication is somehow ‘not real’.

I first got email and a web connection at home in 1995. Around that time, I did some temping in an office which had its own intranet. When I asked whether the staff used the intranet to send emails to each other, the bemused reply was, ‘Oh, we don’t use email here. We talk to each other.’ As you can imagine, this humanity-drenched attitude did not extend to the office politics in the place.

Humans aren’t actually that good at being around each other too much, so this idea that getting in touch through a machine is somehow distancing or alienating is laughable. Watch what people do as they earn they way up the ladder. If someone is fortunate and fulfilled, the usual pattern is to go from flatshare to living alone, to larger flat, to (if they then gather a family together) house, to bigger house further from other big houses, to country mansion, and if the person is very lucky in their choice of career, to buying an island. It is rare that anyone would choose to live physically closer to lots of others if they have any choice in the matter. And, of course, family life itself can cause huge amounts of aggro, tempered only by the fact that nature is very cunning in getting us to reproduce.

So while I can riff happily about the shortcomings of, for example, Facebook and Twitter, I’m not buying the idea that they cause fundamental harm.