As a preview, here are some nuggets from "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" that might make you want to read the whole thing:
- "We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible."
- "Facebook arrived in the middle of a dramatic increase in the quantity and intensity of human loneliness, a rise that initially made the site's promise of greater connection seem deeply attractive."
- "We know intuitively that loneliness and being alone are not the same thing."
- "The idea that a Web site could deliver a more friendly, interconnected world is bogus."
- "We make our decisions about how we use our machines, not the other way around."
- "Our omnipresent new technologies lure us toward increasingly superficial connections at exactly the same moment that they make avoiding the mess of human interaction easy. The beauty of Facebook, the source of its power, is that it enables us to be social while sparing us the embarrassing reality of society -- the accidental revelations we make at parties, the awkward pauses, the farting and the spilled drinks and the general gaucherie of face-to-face contact."
- "Among people older than 65, 3 percent reported symptoms [of narcissistic personality disorder]. Among people in their 20s, the proportion was nearly 10 percent."
- "What Facebook has revealed about human nature -- and this is not a minor revelation -- is that a connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity. Solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are. Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect."
