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CHAPTER 15Loneliness

Amy has over 1,000 friends on Facebook. She admits that she used to spend “a few hours a day” scrolling through her newsfeed, posting pictures, and commenting on the postings of other friends. She says that of the 1,000 people on Facebook, she thinks she “probably knew” about 10% of them but even many of those are people who were classmates from high school or college from decades ago. “If I had a free moment or if I was dealing with something difficult, I would just scroll through to see what was up. Sometimes, like during the elections a few years ago, I think I was logging on to find a reason to get ticked off about something from the other party.” In 2018, Amy began to realize that she wasn’t happy with her social life, thinking that she didn’t have a close circle of friends that she could confide in or who could confide in her. “I just realized that I had no one in my life who really knew me. My family is far away and my connections were on social media. It is tough to say it, but I was lonely. I had no one. I look back on it now and say to myself, ‘You were on Facebook or texting with someone when you could have been volunteering or joining a group or something where you could meet people in‐person, not just some profile’ … I wasted a lot of time. The couple hours a day on Facebook added up and it took away from making some real connections. I look back on that time now and think that I almost wasted it.” Amy has deleted her Facebook app and only ...