Apparently a few studies have been done showing that heavy Facebook usage is associated with loneliness. There are also some other articles out there that are anti-Facebook and anti-social media, but I found all of their arguments to be absurd.
First of all, I find that the notion that heavy Facebook use makes you lonely is idiotic.
The studies suggested that instead of Facebook causing loneliness, instead lonely people gravitated to Facebook. Which makes perfect sense to me. According to the study, many people were using Facebook instead of talking on the phone or meeting people in person. They thought that shy people with poor social skills were using Facebook to try to overcome their loneliness. And apparently it wasn’t working. If you want to make the argument that Facebook will not fix your loneliness, I would agree with that, and that is an interesting argument to make. Lonely people gravitate to Facebook to try to cure their loneliness, but it doesn’t fix the problem. Ok, that’s interesting.
I have some problems with the study.
I have known people, including family members, who are longtime Internet haters. I never found any of their arguments against the Net to be convincing. One of their arguments was that many people have two personalities, one for the Net and one for meatspace.
In all of my experience online especially in chatrooms, I never found this to be true. People who were extroverted in real life, guess how they acted in chatrooms? Life of the party.
I have been in chatrooms full of introverts on anxiety disorder sites. They are dead as doorknobs. Nobody is talking.
Then if you do message one of these introverts privately, they are still introverted. You get these long pauses. You get a lot of one word and one sentence answers.
And I met a number of introverts in r/l. I always asked them about their Internet use. All of them told me sure they used the net, but they never used chat programs or chatrooms. They all said that they hated chatting on the Net. Why? Because they are introverts! How would you expect them to act?
I found that people displayed the whole range of wild emotional spectrum even on typing chat. I have caused quite a few women to burst into tears or explode with rage while I was typing to them. Which is of course exactly what females do when you talk to them on the phone and meet them in real life.
The use of emoticons is very helpful. Very emotional people, especially women, use emoticons heavily and use a wide range of emoticons in a short period of time, which of course adds a certain depth to the conversation.
I also voice chatted with some people and even cammed back when I had a working cam program. When you talk to a longtime chatter on voice chat or cam to cam, how do you think they act? The same as when they were typing to you!
In addition, I met and befriended a number of people online and then talked to them on the phone. They were exactly the same on the phone as they were in typing chat. Exactly.
Beyond that, I have actually met quite a few Net friends in public. I even had love affairs that started passionately on the Net and moved into wild, crazy, head over heels tumultuous love affairs in meatspace. Guess how your Net friends act when you finally meet them in person?
Exactly the same as when they are typing, voice chatting, camming or talking on the phone!
If you can get along with someone really well on the Net, you can always get along well with them after you meet them too. Although I did meet some women who were a lot more bitchy when I was staying with them than when we were talking on the phone all the time. But to be fair, they had regular bitchouts on the phone and on the Net too. It’s just that it was worse when I was staying with them.
This whole argument that people have one persona for the Net and another one for meatspace is insane. I have not found it to be true.
You can get to know people very well on the Net, even just typing. Sooner or later, the whole personality comes right through the letters on the screen and if you are good at reading people, you can start to see what these people are like.
These people who are deathly shy in real life but are social butterflies on the Net do not even seem to exist. Or at least I never meet them.
I also find the notion that the Net does not help your social skills to be quite bizarre. You need very good social skills to be able to chat on the Net or in a chatroom. People with lousy social skills in life are lousy chatters. They screw up all the time.
You need even better skills to voice chat or certainly to cam or talk on the phone.
If you need to sharpen your social skills, as I think we all do, texting, chatting, voicing and camming are great ways to start.
You still have to know what to say and when and how to say it. You can still blow up whole conversations or even relationships, usually with women, with a single ill-advised sentence or a few poorly timed words. Of course this is what happens with relationships with women in real life too.
You have to watch every sentence you type with a woman online, just as I guard, monitor, censor, edit and chew over every single sentence I say to a woman in meatspace.
Women are sensitive creatures. I have blown up whole long-term relationships with a single sentence.
And does the Net really make you lonely? I have had long-distance relationships on the Net before. Not because I chose it. They were the ones who came to me and fell in love with me, not vice versa. One was with a woman in Thailand. It was only on for about 3 months, but while it was on, it was pretty wild. She fell completely head over hells nuts in love with me.
We would talk all day. Sometimes we would talk off and on for 8 hours a day, as she would talk to me through work.
Once my Mom called, and I asked her why people thought a relationship like that was ridiculous.
She said, “What? You are talking to her all day long, for 8 hours a day!?”
I said, “Sure.”
She said, “Well that’s pretty intense. That’s way more than most married couples talk to each other in a day.”
The Net makes you lonely? Says whom?
When I used to talk to people off and on all day on the Net, I did not feel very lonely at all. Even if no one came over that day. The way I saw it was I was around people all day, socializing, and in a way, I was.
Chatrooms were especially great if I was feeling lonely. Back before they got taken over by scammers, camwhores and bots, they were a blast, with a wild, party-like atmosphere.
I have another problem. The researchers say that people are using Facebook as a crutch to treat their loneliness problem rather than talking on the phone or meeting someone in real life.
I suppose my first question would be, “Why in the Hell would anyone want to do that?”
I mean, there are people close by who I could call or go visit, but I will never call them or go visit them if I can text and chat them instead? How ridiculous. Why would I do that?
There are people who are close enough to call, but I never call them because I can text or chat them instead? What would I do that for? I like to talk on the phone. Plus, phone talking is a bit more intimate than net texting and chatting, and I enjoy that. I enjoy the increased intimacy.
If there is a Net friend who is close by, of course I will go visit them. Why not? And I have even gone to visit and stay with Net friends who were very far away, like thousands of miles away, and they have come from thousands of miles to see and stay with me.
I enjoy that because, let’s face it, a purely net relationship is a bit frustrating and unsatisfying, especially if you are emotionally involved. And phone sex, cyber sex, and especially voice sex or cam sex are not as good as the real thing, but the last two, especially the last one, comes awfully close.
There are actually people who are too scared to talk on the phone to people or meet people in meatspace but are not scared when it comes to texting or chatting? What a weird notion.
I have yet another problem with this anti-Facebook argument. Sure, Facebook doesn’t fix your loneliness problem (though it might fix mine). That’s sad.
The researchers said these people should go out into the world or pick up the phone and stop using Facebook as a crutch. My argument would be that I am glad that these shy or awkward people are on the Net. At least they get to talk to someone that way. If they give up the Facebook chatting, they are not suddenly going to go on phone marathons or go to five parties a night. It’s not going to happen. They are probably either going to be Facebook chatting or, if not, they will be sitting at home not talking to anyone at all. And if they do venture out into the world, if they are as shy or socially inept as the researchers said, they will only fail badly in meatspace, so what’s the point of going?
One more beef I have with these “poor social skills” arguments is that it is a bit stupid.