The epidemic of loneliness, and what we can do to combat it.

More and more people don't have real friendships. The cause is their mindset.

Human beings have a predisposition to feel lonely from time to time, no matter what our life is like, whether we are introverted or extraverted. This is because we are social animals, and it is very easy for us to suffer discomfort at any given moment for not being able to connect with someone as much as we would like to. This is normal.

However, the feeling of loneliness can be accentuated by social phenomena, and that is exactly what has been happening in recent decades. In fact, since the 1980s, the number of Americans who say they have no close friends has tripled, and the most common response to the question, "I'm lonely. the most common response to the question "How many true friends do you have?" is "zero.".

This trend has also been found in many other countries of a West that, despite having popularized the use of social networks, seems to pose serious problems for its inhabitants when it comes to finding faithful friends. It is a real epidemic of loneliness..

The shortage of friendships and its psychological effects

The downside of paying so much attention to the number of friends added on Facebook is that it is very easy to stop paying attention to the quality of these relationships.. In that sense it is not surprising that despite the fact that last year the average number of friends each user has on their Facebook profile hovered around 330, most Americans report having only one confidant at most.

Why has this epidemic of loneliness emerged? It should be noted that the criticisms that are often made about smartphones and social networks as being to blame for this are not very well-founded. They may help to mask this problem of lack of contact between people, but they are not at the root of it.In fact, what has happened may have to do with the development of a way of thinking, and not so much with a habit of technological consumption.

This way of thinking that isolates us more from the rest and makes us frequent more the warm waters of loneliness is individualism and, fundamentally, the idea that we have to stand out above the rest. The reason for this is that it causes us to enter into a logic whereby personal a logic according to which personal relationships are an instrument of our own personal development..

The epidemic of loneliness and individualism.

Imagine that you are a person whose main goal is to gain power to stand out from the crowd..

Advertisements sell you ideals of beauty that you can use to distinguish yourself from the rest. Leisure services constantly tempt you with the concept of exclusivity, the meaning of which is basically that few people can access it, as if that speaks to the value of their product (and by extension your value as a consumer of it). Business training plans talk about the importance of teamwork, but ultimately what they sell is the need to be your own boss and to improve yourself by overcoming obstacles (whatever they may be) in order to build a good future for yourself. And the dominant discourse on the Internet oriented to young people, of course, is that the important thing is to be visible, to be someone relevant.

Now ask yourself if with this mental framework you would not mix a good part of your personal and informal relationships with this project of accumulation of power. A project that, on the other hand, does not aim to create good living conditions, but to have the ability to control one's own life and avoid being harmed from the outside. In individualism, even the goal we set for ourselves is part of the individualistic mentality.

All these aspects of individualism lead us to the same conclusion: life can be an exciting place in the future, but in the present, what you experience in the present is what you will experience in the future. in the present what you get to experience is a prudential loneliness.. No one looks out for anyone and there are no bonds of solidarity because everyone tries to squeeze his or her life out of the resources to which he or she has access. In this situation of constant emergency, building genuine friendships is meaningless.

What to do to better connect with others?

Of course, not everyone is extremely individualistic, but that doesn't mean that we are not infected by this philosophy when it comes to developing life habits. The simple fact of living in a world where this way of thinking is publicized makes us imitate its precepts, even if we only believe them to a certain extent. Quite simply, everyone does it.

Interestingly, this simple fact already gives us a clue as to what we can do to combat the epidemic of loneliness: lift that veil of appearances and reject the imposition of individualism in a collective and supportive manner. How can we do this? Although it may sound unglamorous, a good option is to show our own vulnerabilities, a good option is to show our own vulnerabilities to others..

Proving that we truly believe in a philosophy of life based on genuine bonds of friendship and solidarity shatters the idea that "life is a jungle". It may cost at first (all small personal and collective revolutions do), but the fruits of this can be very sweet as we see how, little by little, others begin to look at us beyond the illusion of mistrust.