Lockdown, loneliness and social media
During last year, I found myself living alone for several months, with a social network of at best 2 or 3 people around me that I would meet in person every 3 or 4 days. I immigrated to the UK 5 years ago, my family lives in Italy and my partner in China. The pandemic brought to my life a lot of solo time, some weeks above 95% of my waking hours.
Luckily, throughout all this, I have managed to stay healthy, happy and (most times) calm. For this, I thank a few simple healthy habits: sleeping enough, eating well, exercising daily and avoiding binging with distractions. Instead, I explored boredom and struggle with curiosity. I often sat on my couch, doing nothing other than thinking and occasionally jotting down some notes on a notebook. In doing this, I learn a lot about what energises me and what stresses me. This actually helped me increase the quality of my relationships with myself, and improve my well-being as a consequence. Another thing that helped me was to have a clear purpose that took a good chunk of my time: I had a job, but during the pandemic, I also looked and interviewed for more fulfilling roles.
However, this condition of isolation generated in me a strong craving for more connections. I explored and played a little with this craving, but I am still looking for a good solution.
One thing that worked for me was to schedule or have impromptu video calls with friends and family. Yet, I have at best two non-work video calls per day and at worst one every 2–3 days. Also, they can be very mentally tiring when prolonged.
On the other hand, as a techie and internet fanboy, I wish there was a way for me to feel meaningfully connected with others online. I have to admit that in the past few years I did not make much use of social media. But as this lockdown-driven urge for connections emerged, I timidly explored different platforms, without much success. On LinkedIn, I basically feel at work. On Twitter, I feel like my feed is monopolised by networks revolving around 5 accounts whose owners probably think that I am an odd rando. I haven’t used Facebook in many years but I hear from others that is a cauldron of complaints and negativity. I don’t feel compelled to give it another shot. I installed TikTok: I had a great laugh for 20 minutes then uninstalled it shortly after: it made me feel more alienated than connected. I tried engaging with interest-based forums, but they felt sectarian to me. Either you fully believe in the stance of the forum and only talk about what relates to it, or you may as well leave.
I feel like the people I care for and have feelings towards are scattered across a bunch of different platforms and keeping tabs of who may be sharing what and where feels overwhelming. I also feel that the very public nature of these platforms impedes people from sharing bits and pieces of their authentic self, which gives me a hard time relating. I wish there was a good way for me to come across what my cousin was tinkering with or what my good old friend has been thinking about it in the last few days.
I am sure that there are many others out there whose social lives have been impoverished far further than mine and have suffered far worse consequences than anything I faced. I get goosebumps whenever I think about how many lonely people are hidden out there (4 million people in the UK feel lonely often or always!) and the countless awful moments they may experience. If there was a more meaningful way to connect, I imagine that such a way could also help people who suffer from loneliness much more often and deeply than I do.
And you? Did you suffer from loneliness recently? How did you cope with it? Have you found any good ways of using the internet to overcome it? If you have anything you’d like to share with me in regards, or really are just looking for a connection and to feel less lonely, please get in touch with me, you can either comment here below or email me at r@volpato.io
