Why So Many People Are Lonely Today - And What to Do About It!
Do you often feel lonely? If you do, you may spend a lot of time
wondering what's wrong with you.
It may seem as if everyone else but you has lots of friends. It
may seem like everyone else is always getting invited to go to
exciting parties. And it may seem like you're the only one who
is left at home, waiting for the phone to ring, wondering why no
one ever calls you to invite you out.
Actually, loneliness is much more common than you might think.
There is actually an epidemic of loneliness in many societies
today.
This may surprise you.
After all, so many millions of us in the modern world are jammed
close together in large teeming cities, and we have at hand all
the technological conveniences that are supposed to bring people
closer together, such as e-mail, telephones, faxes, and the
Internet. Why are so many of us more lonely than ever?
The reason is that society has changed very rapidly in the past
two or three hundred years. Many of the social factors that used
to make it easy to make and keep friends for a lifetime have
disappeared.
Families have changed a lot in recent decades. A hundred years
ago, most families were very large, with many children, aunts
and uncles and cousins living close by. Family members often
worked together on the farm or in a family business all day
long.
Today, families have shrunk in size, and family members are now
so busy with their own separate projects, they rarely see each
other. Families break up more often than they used to, and it is
now much more common for family members to move thousands of
miles away, to new jobs, new wives, or new husbands.
People used to live in the same small community for their entire
lives. They stayed in the same job for decades.
These factors made it easy to make friends and keep friends.
Today, many people change jobs every few years, and they move to
new cities, and leave behind family members and friends.
And many people today are very, very busy. In many ways, modern
technology has not freed us from having to work harder. It has
actually had the opposite effect of making us work harder and
faster just to stay in the same place.
Another factor that contributes to increased loneliness is
modern entertainment and communication technology.
Before the advent of television and the Internet, people had
ways of having fun together every day. Many of these primitive
methods of having fun have almost disappeared in the modern
world.
In the old days, people used to actually talk to each other!
They would play games together. They would make music.
Now this sort of primitive entertainment only occurs during a
power outage. Most people now feel lost without a TV set and
computer. Even in the same family, people barely know each other.
The increase in these modern forms of communication have
actually decreased other forms of human interaction.
As people spend more time on the Internet, or with their text
messaging, or playing games on computers, they are spending far
less time actually interacting with the people around them. It
has become a lot easier for people to cocoon themselves in their
homes, and never see anyone.
Many people are actually spending less time developing their
social skills while they may be vastly improving their computer
skills.
In the modern world it seems almost everyone is pressed for
time. We are often far too busy at work to develop friendships,
and when we come home exhausted at the end of the day, we are
too tired to make plans to socialize.
Some of us live in neighborhoods where it isn't really safe to
go out after dark. It becomes all too easy to eat a quick supper
and spend our evening hours mentally decompressing in front of
the television set or computer.
Loneliness is a bigger problem for more people today than at any
previous time in history. The truly ironic fact about loneliness
is that if you are lonely, you are not alone!
Still, it is possible to make new friends in this modern world.
If you have been suffering from loneliness, it's time to stop
blaming yourself, and it's time to stop blaming the rest of the
world.
You can make new friends, but you will have to learn new
techniques, and you will have to make the effort to meet many
more new people.
If you learn the secrets of those people who make friends
easily, you too can have a happy social life, and your
loneliness will be a thing of the past!