Are we just lonely
Hello,
A lot of blogs that I have been reading are personal. People talk about their own lives and the things they think they should or should not do. Even I wrote a post like that.
It seems to me that everyone who posts things like these is trying to get off social media and use their energy to improve their lives. Everyone wants to sleep more, eat better, work out more, get off the internet, and dedicate their time to hobbies. Usually, after these posts full of motivation, you will see the posts where nothing went as expected and where one tries to reconcile what has happened, or rather has not happened, and find another way to start improving their lives.
I am not criticizing or making fun of anyone here. I, too, want to read more, spend more time studying French, coding, walking, riding my bike etc, especially since I have no algorithms to distract me. Every couple of days I, too, think about starting anew and how none of it worked and that I need something else.
One thing that all of these posts have in common is that we seem to want to optimize our lives while neglecting the social aspect of life. Yes, it would be nice to have a structure to my free time where I do not just mindlessly scroll my life away and where I live a physically healthy life, but I think I, takes a deep introverted breath, I need people, in real life, that I meet with and talk to regularly. I feel like I have sort of replaced social media and doomscrolling with optimization, ignoring the el.. the Sims 2 Tragic clown in the room.
I honestly think that two things are happening here, at least for me. Before graduating college, I was always surrounded by people. I'd always hang out with someone and everyone knew me as the more introverted fun guy, so I could choose how social I wanted to be. Eventually, a lot of it moved over to the internet, especially after I moved abroad. Now that I still don't really have any friends here and have only started making some about a year ago, mostly thanks to my slightly more extroverted partner, I feel like instead of optimizing myself, I need to find ways to be part of a community, somehow. At the same time, I also feel like I have forgotten how to be lonely. I don't remember feeling the need to talk to someone 24/7 like I do now.
I don't know, but I am just going to go ahead and blame the internet for it. If we all felt lonely and the alternative was not doomscrolling and social media, but rather to meet new people and hang out, then maybe the loneliness epidemic wouldn't be getting worse.