The Loneliness Pandemic

Covid has nothing on this pandemic. Its symptoms were cut and dry, its duration known within reason, its treatments diverse. But loneliness, how do you cure that, or at least stave it off?

More and more, we are seeing loneliness and depression in epidemic pandemic proportions. In the age of computers, cell phones and other devices, we have the world at our fingertips. Those tools make the world a smaller place, as contact with anyone and everyone is now possible, daily. There are hardly any limitations, in that regard.

Ai is now here to offer us a new way to interact with technology. We will and can make fantasy, reality. We can create avatars, people, places, scenarios, and an entire existence on a screen, with just a little know how. With Ai, we can make the unreal seem so real, that you will be hard pressed to know what actual reality is. This is a very bad thing, but Ai does have a couple merits.

It will be able to offer you a sensory experience you might not otherwise experience, when it eventually filters into virtual reality play. I use the word play lightly.

You will be able to experience other countries, art, music, people, you might never afford seeing. You can sate curiosity of other cultures and landmarks, even natural wonders, without leaving your family room. While this will, indeed be cool and valuable on some levels, it will, mark my words, cause disastrous fallout.

Technology is not a bad thing, really it’s not. What is bad is the thoughtless way it is being disseminated. The makers and creators of all technology are not thinking long term effect and thus far have not. They have not taken, nor will they take any responsibility for its use and effects. They make the product for a profit. They make it because it’s stellar advancement, but what is it all advancing.

It is causing a lot of misguiding and fraud, for sure. I have spoken to this, several times in other posts. Nefarious individuals, can become anyone and everyone, and you will swear to your grave, that they are real. While the entertainment industry will eventually have its laws, protecting their image’s or voice’s use with Ai, we will not have those protections. We don’t have the finances they do or the power. You and I are thrown to the wolves, here. Once again, I will caution all men and women, even young people. No one online, should be considered real, unless you have personally met them. That means body to body, in the same room.

Any video chat or call, any voice chat of call, can be and is being manipulated and altered to make you believe the person you have been chatting with for weeks is a real person. Oh they are real, alright, just not the celebrity or influencer you think you are talking to. Those people DO NOT engage with any public, one on one. They do not ever ask to speak to you privately or in an app. Period.

Aside from this ongoing issue and criminal activity, technology has a graver concern and effect. Loneliness.

As we become more and more addicted to instant gratification and being able to access any and every thing we want online, we are moving farther and farther into an abyss.

We no longer have to go to libraries. Anything you want to know or read is online. You barely, if ever have to go to the grocery store, it can all, for the most part, be ordered and delivered to your door. You don’t have to shop for clothes, undergarment, toy, baby items, music, movies, or even a vehicle, in person. All of it can be done with your phone and or computer. We don’t even have to leave our homes to work, worship, or interact with family of friends. We can do it all on technology with our fingertips.

With Ai and the various Alexa type products, we done even need to use our hands, just our mouths. We can even have a full on discussion with an Ai bot, that sounds more and more like a real person every day.

Here is the thing, though, none of these things or ways of interacting is remotely human. It is all tech simplifying lives, with a huge consequence. Seclusion, depression and loneliness.

It at epidemic proportions. The psych industry is booming and the pharmaceutical industry is getting filthier and richer than it was. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to keep feeding those parasites. Neither is there to cure you. They are there to maintain you and their fat wallets. Please trust me on that. It is a beast designed to retain engagement. You enter the black hole and never come out on the other side, because it is not in those entities’ best interest (money) to have you cured of anything. Just think about it.

Has anyone you know been cured of any mental illness or disorder? Has anyone been cured of diabetes, psoriasis, Aids, or even cancer for that matter? Two letters. N.O.. The disorder or diseases are staved, put off for a while, or put into remission at best, with the caveat that you need to continue taking medication the rest of your life. Psychologists may help you with your mental illness, to minimize intense symptomatology, but guess, what you need to keep visiting your psych for continued maintenance.

Depression, in the rates we see these days, is a natural reaction of the human condition’s need for other humans. That is not the only cause of depression, so you brain therapists, don’t get all hyped up. It is a major cause, though.

Humans are not made to be alone. We are not designed or predisposed to continual loneliness. And that is exactly, what we are giving our human minds, bodies, and souls. We are addicts. All of us.

We all get up, grab the old cell and immediately open it up to check email, visit anti-social media, and troll news feed, podcast, to inane memes, games, or other entertainment.

Some times, we are sitting right in front of a human being we live with, actually know and love, without even engaging in conversations with them. I see it all the time, so don’t even say, not me. Yes. You. Me too, for the matter. If you think about it, it’s not just a sad display of culture these days, but of humanity in general.

If you are one of the lonely, this is one reason.

Let me be clear on something. You can be alone and not be lonely. The reverse is also true. You can be in a room full of people and be completely lonely. These are some of the dangers of tech, in our lives.

Children are at much higher risk of depression and loneliness than adults, in this manner. Kids need socialization with other kids. It is how they learn to interact civilly with other humans, their size. It is how they learn the most important part of being civil, and that is, compromise and flexibility. They have to learn give and take in discourse, in negotiating, in relationships, intimate or not. You cannot learn any of those things, online. You have to live it and go through failures and successes to learn how to treat others.

More serious than that, kids need to have people of all types and ages for their mental health. Without physical interactions, they become depressed, badly depressed. If COVID show us anything, it showed us that we cannot be caged up alone, without human interaction and the human experience. No Ai, media or tech product will ever be able to provide that. More than likely it segregates you and sequesters you alone and in your own head.

I am not talking out of my posterior here. My son went through it. He is an only child and when COVID locks us all down, my son became depressed. We had to send him to therapy, every week, for a long time. Guess what, he was given pharmaceuticals and warned not to just stop them. Surprise, surprise.

While in therapy, he began trying drugs, to numb the pain of loneliness. The only light he had was his swimming. His club was permitted to remain open, since first responders, practiced life saving skills there, and after developing a safe plan for practices, he was at least able to be with other kids for two hours a day. Not even that was enough to ward off depression.

We, all of us need humans more than a couple hours a day.

The quality or type of interaction does not matter as long as it is for more than just a couple hours a day, a week, a month. It is imperative.

We, society has to get off the tech for more than a few minutes a day. We have to use tech, not have it use us. No one will make you or encourage you to set it down. You have to do it for you. You have to do it for your family,

If you don’t the fallout is far greater than your depression or loneliness. If you keep your head buried in your tech, you may not be giving your wife the attention she needs as a woman. Women need affection, affirmation, intimacy, love, and general interaction from their spouse. We are half of a whole. A team of two, as one unit.

If you are not married, just dating this also applies. You cannot nurture a relationship without being there in person. Being on the cell, is not being there in person, just body.

Please know, all relationships are this way.

It doesn’t not matter if you are in an intimate relationship, a conjugal one, a friend relationship or even a professional one. It does not matter if you are heterosexual or homosexual, pan sexual, asexual, or a unicorn. Like goes to like. Humans to humans. See there is no tech in those. There is not human to tech, or tech to human. Pay attention.

If you neglect your kids because you can’t put the phone down, they tend to get into trouble. A lot. Kids will scream for attention, without ever screaming. They move to doing drugs, committing crime, getting into fights, getting angry at the drop of a pin, becoming depressed, and in the most severs cases, attempt to end their lives. To kids, everything is a major thing. You not giving them attention instead of your facebook, to them, means they are not important. Period.

There are more consequences than I have time to list, but to name a few, you can lose your job if you are obsessed with your tech. That will most definitely depress you, and the lack of income will add to that.

You can lose your relationship, because I promise you, if you don’t pay attention to your significant other, there is no lack of men or women willing to take up that mantle.

You will become estranged to your family and friends. Eventually, they will give up on trying to get you to be with them. Even the most tenacious person, gives up sooner or later.

Loneliness is not by any means caused only by tech. Don’t infer that. But it is a main contributor these days and why we are seeing record numbers of depression, anxiety, and even suicides.

So what and how do you do the best you can to not remain or become lonely? How do you get un-lonely if you are there right now?

One put down the phone, laptop, social media, Netflix or Snapped marathons. get rid of the distractions. Start small if you have too.

At mealtimes, don’t bring it to the table and turn off the ringer. There is nothing that pressing that won’t keep, the time a meal takes to be consumed.

If you are brave, or when you realize you lived through that short detox, then pick it up only a couple times a day and for a predetermined length of time.

Find places to go, with friends, family, with any human beings, and keep the distractions off. Talk, laugh, cry with another human. Spend time getting to know them and their ins and outs. Take time to study their face, mannerisms, humor, sarcasm and even their triggers. They need you too. Be there in real time for them. They too may be lonely, and for the same reasons or not.

If you don’t have a lot of friends, and let’s face it, you may have estranged yourself from many, then find a faith, as in church, synagogues, or mosque, where you can connect with other kind and warm bodies. Even if you don’t want religion, it will never hurt you, and you might actually enjoy it or find something you have been looking for, or didn’t know you needed.

Even if you don’t want any part of faith, find a group that meets regularly, and get into it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Do you like gaming, find a group of gamers, (board), sport or likewise, and go.

Find what you enjoy and become part of that group, any group. It doesn’t matter what, get out and get with people. It can be gardening, skydiving, biking, reading, writing, building chairs, making art, or collecting rocks. Just find your people. People that you have a commonality with.

Get a hobby, one preferably that involves group gatherings. If it doesn’t, that defeats the purpose, here. Like trains, join a train hobbits group, like cars, join a group of mechanics working on a restoration.

If you can’t find a hobby, then do something for others. Volunteer at the pet shelter, food bank, homeless shelter, food kitchen, school, library, hospital or political interest. Doing for others and seeing that others have are in worse conditions or just as bad, is a great way to come back to earth. It does two things. It helps them feel seen, and cared for and loved, and it helps you get out of your head. Believe it or not, you feel good, when you help others. It gives you a sense of value and self worth.

The list of ways you can get from under the tech weight on life, is endless and readily available.

Please know, I am not a do as I say and not as I do person. I have done many of these suggestions, I am giving you.

I put the phone away at the dining table, I have a groups of dear friends that I meet with monthly to play board games and nosh on food with for an entires day, I keep my phone ringer off all the time now (which can make some family or friends a bit peeved, though it is a training process, until they figure it out), I have and do volunteer often, and I am an amateur artists, with my husband. I go to church regularly and I often get together with the people in my Sunday school class, but hosting them for bbq at home or going out with them.

I am home alone a lot. I don’t work anymore, and my husband works and is often away fifteen or more hours of the day. My son moved away and started his own life, and being an empty nester and alone, could have bad consequences if I am not proactive in staying physically connected to other people. I can become depressed when I am lonely. I am not different than anyone else. So, I write this from my own experience.

My point is this, you have to make adjustments. We need to make them, all. If we are going to be more and more advanced technologically every day, it is imperative that we separate time to decompress and to back off of the distractions.

It is even more important as a parent that you watch and limit your kids use of tech. Make family time when you all disconnect and put the tech down. Sport, games (non tech gaming), hobbies etc., can all be a common way to come together.

When we figured this all out, we made sure to have time with our son doing many of the things I listed here. I took him volunteering, we gamed, and even raised chickens together as a family. He got out of depression. He stopped having to take medications, and now he too makes sure to stat off media and tech most of the time.

Guess what, he is happy and healthy, living his dream.

On an additional note, the benefit of having community and a network of people you are close to, is that when something is wrong, they not only notice, but they take action in helping with the problems. When our son, did drugs, they surrounded us, made sure they knew where he was at all times, and kept him busy. In three months time, he was off the drugs, busy staying involved in groups that they helped him get into, no lonely himself and remained depression free.

If you enjoy being alone, that’s great. I do too. But I don’t enjoy loneliness. An I know no one else does either.

Tech. Put it down. Let go. Get with others, a lot, and live happier.

#life #writing