45. Match in-person social time with online time. (Your smartphone may be making you lonelier).
Do you feel glued to your phone? You’re not alone!
Data point of the week
The average American spends more than four and a half hours on their phone every day (that rises to 6 hours a day for Gen Z). Compare that to the average of just over half an hour a day spent socializing and communicating. That’s an 8:1 phone time to social time ratio!
This is doubly concerning, because there appears to be a link between increased smartphone use and the parallel increases in loneliness and depression.
A 2000 to 2018 study of over one million high school students from 37 countries, titled Worldwide increases in adolescent loneliness, found a sharp spike in rates of loneliness starting in 2012. In fact, loneliness rates doubled between 2012 (18%) and 2018 (37%), as you can see on this graph.
PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey results
The researchers noted that 2012 was around the time that smartphones were widely adopted, and the study results showed that “school loneliness was high when smartphone access and internet use were high.” Schools that didn’t allow cellphone use during the day had lower rates of loneliness. (BTW, Canada just passed a nationwide school cellphone ban)!
School loneliness was linked to depressive symptoms, so the spike in adolescent loneliness may be responsible for the twin spike in depression over the same time period.
Reflection
We can only hope that this is a case of “what goes up must come down,” but so far loneliness, depression, and anxiety just seem to be going up, up, and up.
I'm optimistic that we can reverse this trend by building more high-quality connection into our lives. But that will take behavior change (and hopefully policy change).
Smartphones, technology, and social media are just one of the factors that contribute to loneliness. They are not going away, and they are not all bad. Technology can be used as a tool for genuine connection.
However, it is also true that a large amount of in-person social time has been replaced with online time, particularly in the younger generations. And online interactions tend to be quicker, more superficial, and less beneficial to our mental health. How we interact online is also different. It’s easier to distance ourselves, to see people as two-dimensional, and to be rude. If we don’t interact with people IRL (in real life), will our social skills—and empathy—atrophy?
Connection Skill & Action Step: Match online time with IRL social time
In his book, Friendship in the Age of Loneliness, Adam Smiley Powolsky suggests matching social media time with IRL social time. If you want to up the ante, you could try matching the free time you spend online with in person social time. If this appeals to you, here are 3 simple steps:
Track your online time. On your phone, go to “settings” and click on “screen time” to see how much time you use your phone each day, and what you spend it on. You can also try out a time tracker on your computer.
Increase your IRL social time. For example, book some friend dates, join a local club or group, or bring ProjectConnect to your community. The purpose of ProjectConnect is to facilitate meaningful conversation, interaction, and connection, and to make the process of building relationships easy. Participants have ranged in age from 12 to 92. ProjectConnect groups can be run in schools, colleges, workplaces, congregations, senior centers, and anywhere else you want to build connection.
Take political action. Check out the Center for Humane Technology’s actions for creating tech that is aligned with humanity’s best interests.
Questions (Please share in the comments):
Do you think technology is gradually eroding our in-person social skills? Why or why not?
You can’t do this online!