Have you noticed that the world has become a lonelier place? I see it all the time and I can’t now unsee it. Not just in others but in myself too.
We’re now more likely to work from home over Zoom, exercise at home using a YouTube fitness class, and socialise from home with a Whatsapp video call. Is this a worthy substitute for a face to face connection?
Some of us may even go a whole day or multiple days without physically interacting with another person! No hi, no hug, no handshake. Nada.
But being alone in this way can’t be good for you. I think about my grandad, an ex-coal miner, who spent 37 years doing back-breaking work.
When he retired, he spent most of his time on his own as my nan passed away 25 years before he did.
We’d go round and see him for an hour or so a few times a week and he’d come round to our house too. He was old school. He was incredibly proud and he ‘wouldn’t want to put us out and be a burden’. The problem was that he would be by himself for days and days. Because he was disabled, it was hard for him to get around, so he spent most of his time stuck indoors watching films. He got out every so often as he had a mobility scooter, thankfully.
When we tried to visit him more often, he’d usually try and stop us. “I’m fine.” He’d say. “Leave me be”. But we knew he was lonely, how could he not be?
He died in 2011, and I often find myself wondering how much longer he would’ve lived for if he hadn’t been so isolated.
In the past, it was less common for older people to be on their own. There was more of a sense of community. We all know this, right.
We also had charities and organisations which tried to deal with the loneliness older people experience. But organisations such as Manchester Cares and North London Cares for example have now closed down and so the problem continues to grow.
Of course it’s not just older people who are experiencing loneliness. Many people of all ages now find themselves spending more and more time on their own.
However, as Mathew Lieberman writes in the book “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired for Connection”, we feel a need to connect with others. It’s the most natural feeling in the world to want to be seen and heard.
We also crave physical touch. This is why connecting with people on Skype or WhatsApp can never replace actual physical connection. Yes, you can see them, in two-dimensions at least, and, yes, you can hear them too. But you’re missing out on all of the other senses.
Studies have shown that regular physical touch improves our immune systems and reduces diseases associated with heart rate and blood pressure. So being alone for extended periods of time is literally bad for our health.
There are other issues associated with loneliness too. To attempt to mask the negative feelings loneliness causes, we’re more likely to drink to excess, to eat to excess or to gamble to excess. It’s a distraction from having to face up to what’s missing in our lives; namely, each other.
We’re also more likely to use our phones to excess. For more on the negative impact of using distractions to get through life, give this article a read.
One way that people are trying to combat loneliness is by using dating apps and friend apps. Both of which can be helpful.
My sister, for example, has found friends using Bumble. Have any of you used this app before? Yeah, it’s that app where women have to make the first move. I’m sure it’s probably a good one for guys who struggle to break the ice! Apps have never been my thing, personally but I see their benefits in healthy quantities.
Although many of us men might be happy to use an app to find a date, some of you might be thinking that finding a friend online would be too cringey, almost like admitting that we can’t find mates out in the real world.
But the truth is that many men do struggle to make friends. According to some studies, around 15% of men now have no close friendships at all, which is five times the percentage reported 35 years ago. 5 times!
I have a mate whose dad is in this situation. He’s 60 years old and has no-one he feels he could call on if in need.
Then there are those of us who think we have friends when, in reality, we are surrounded by acquaintances. I’m sure many of us have those friends who we only get together with when we’re watching the football or getting a few beers in at the pub. But how deep do those friendships really go?
This makes me think of Noel Gallagher, who said in an interview once that when he decided to stop the excessive boozing and drug-taking that he did at the start of his music career, he realised that he didn’t actually like any of the people around him. He decided to stop talking to these people and took the time to go out and meet people who he could get along with and actually liked while sober.
Anecdotes like this remind me of the Richard Ashcroft album “Alone with Everybody.” You can have people around you but you’ll still feel lonely if they’re not people who you can meaningfully communicate with.
Listen to this story, where Luke talks about being surrounded by friends but feeling that there was no-one he could talk to during his most desperate moment.
I asked one of my mates years ago why he only seemed to get together with his other mates over the weekend. “Why couldn’t you meet up during a weeknight?” I asked him. “Oh no,” he said, “I couldn’t do that, I can’t be meeting up with them on a school night.” How real is a friendship if you can only see them at set times during the week? That doesn’t feel like a meaningful friendship to me. Why did it have to involve drink? Can we not go for a walk and chat? Watch the Champions league games on a Tuesday evening? I never understood it. Being a northerner, I found it more prevalent living there but I don’t see the same issues in London, in a big city.
Something I was watching recently that really opened my eyes was the Netflix documentary “Blue Zones”. Have you seen it? If not, it looks at common patterns for communities around the world where large sections of the population live up to 100 years old. It studied people from Sardinia to Okinawa and one of the things that all of the places had in common is that they all had a strong sense of community.
So that’s what I think we should be trying to rebuild in our own lives: a sense of community. This is very different to the online friends many of us have got used to having. Just because you have hundreds of friends on Facebook, doesn’t mean that you have anyone to call on when you need them most.
I think it’s better to go deeper, rather than wider when it comes to friendship. I think it’s better to focus on those few people who you can really mean something to, and who really mean something to you. 4 genuine friends makes up for 400 Facebook friends or Instagram followers any day of the week, in my view.
When it comes to genuine friendship, listen to this episode and ask yourself how many friends you have in your life who would be willing to do what Mark did for his brother?
But what do you think? Do you think that you have enough friends in your life? Or perhaps you think you have too many? And how deep do your current friendships go?
