Is Twitter making you feel less lonely?

You sleep with your boss' lover. You steal a stranger's dog. Or you win the lottery. Who is the first person you tell? And who is the second?

I ask only because I came across this utterly depressing conclusion about humanity from John Cacioppo, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago: Americans have fewer people to confide in now than they did 20 years previously.

Apparently, it's down to two from three.

In 2004, 25 percent of people claimed that they had not been able to confide in anyone for six months. Twenty years previously, that figure had only been 7 percent.

For some people, this might explain at least one of the attractions of Twitter--or any other social-networking contraption. You feel you have to tell someone. So you tell, well, everyone. Or at least everyone that you can friend, name, follow, stalk, or badger into accepting your offer of association.

Jacqueline Olds, a psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, suggests that loneliness somehow doesn't sit comfortably with American ideals such as independence and striving and extremely large burgers. (I may have come up with that last one.)

Yet if you can get a bunch of neuroscientists into one McDonald's, most will agree that vital parts of our brains became so developed precisely because they had to deal with all of the social stimuli and coding that swirl around us.

This photograph is entitled: "its such a lonely day and i can see the sky coming to kill me." Wonder if he's twittered that.

(Credit: CC Not So Good Photography)

So might Twitter be a pathetic cry of comfort for those who truly feel the need for something even vaguely approaching human intimacy and understanding? An intimacy and understanding most people believe that they can't demand any more because everyone else is busy, successful, stressed, or simply fabulously self-centered?

There is something inherently poignant about people feeling good about bothering others with their tweets, while being entirely reluctant to bother them with real and justified needs.

Professor Cacioppo seems to see hope in, of all things, the economic recession. You might almost believe that he was praying for a great and lasting depression when the San Francisco Chronicle quoted him as saying, "People can't go out, and they have to be home together. It's nice to be able to depend on one another."

Twitter as a form of virtual human interdependence? Now there's a concept to which some enterprising college can dedicate research funds.

[jamshid]

I can't believe I'm quoting the pope, but this was spot on:

"If the desire for virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development."

I wonder if this Onion article inspired him:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/facebook_friend_apparently
Facebook Friend Apparently Dead Now

[eye-shuh]

These types of stories continue to amuse me. It's become very obvious the older generation, the pre-internet in elementary school generation, has no idea what to make of social networking.

So, they go on to explain it in ridiculous ways as shown above.

It's not about being lonely. Twitter is not some kind of neurological need.

It's a silly internet application that allows you to share little pieces of information you find interesting or funny or something you need advice on.

The limit of 140 characters gives it a sort of whimsy that sets it apart from other apps.

Really, it's just an age gap thing.

[pentest]

Online social networking is a contradiction. Total nonsense

[psudomorph]

Eye-shuh, It feels like you are making a distinction where there isn't one. Just because twitter is silly and whimsical doesn't mean it isn't fulfilling a need also.
Ask yourself the question "what do I get out of doing stuff on twitter?".
If the answer is "nothing", then why are you on it? If the answer is anything else, then twitter is fulfilling some sort of need. Even the need for funny tidbits is still a need.

To me it makes a lot of sense that twitter is fulfilling a lot of people's "need to be heard". It doesn't matter if what they are saying is funny or interesting, or boring, or important, it is still satisfying people's need to be heard.

On the other hand, I agree with eye-shuh that twitter probably isn't about being "lonely", at least not for the most part. I think for the most part it's just a faster more effective way to "be heard". Before twitter, if you thought of something interesting you might turn to your friend or the person next to you and tell them, nowadays, you twitter it. Twitter is just the electronic evolution of that type of interaction.

The increased loneliness of the modern world is an interesting phenomenon, and twitter is an interesting phenomenon, but I'm not sure the two are as related as it might seem at first.
I guess what it would come down to is how many people on twitter use it as their *sole* source of connectedness, and how many people instead use it to bring themselves and their friends closer together. If the number of people who *depend* on twitter as their confidant is very high, *then* you might be able to report that twitter actually is about being lonely.