LONELINESS IN DIGITAL MEDIA

Do we hurt ourselves by using digital media? This unaffiliated research review looks into loneliness, feeling disconnected and struggling with real-world relationships. I aim to outline interdisciplinary research tenders on the digital media and mental health nexus.

Navigating the scientific realms of media

Effects of digital media on mental health are debated in scientific realms and tend to meet high levels of controversy. Excessive screen time during childhood for example has been associated with deteriorating health in longitudinal studies (Boone et al., 2007; Domingues‐Montanari, 2017; Lissak, 2018; Moisala et al., 2016; Neophytou, Manwell & Eikelboom, 2021) and sleep patterns (Hale & Guan, 2015). In recent times, scholars have outlined the health effects of digital media use for children and adolescents (Hoge et al., 2017; Radesky, 2018; Reid Chassiakos et al., 2016), also with a focus on changing patterns during the COVID-19 crisis (Marciano et al., 2022; Magis-Weinberg et al., 2021). On the other hand, there is a large body of research examining how digital media can aid educating adolescents and found that it enhances their feeling of autonomy (Schneider et al., 2018) and perceptions of connectedness (Frisby, Kaufmann & Beck, 2016) but leads to a decline in text comprehension (Jian, 2022). Interestingly, the severity of effects from digital media overuse may depend on the use purpose of the screen time (Sanders et al., 2019). Using a device for information-seeking purposes was positively related to educational as well as health outcomes, for example (Sanders et al., 2019). In a different study, researchers found that elderly digital media users should focus on expanding the social bond capital of the relationships they already have online instead of growing their network and forging new relationships (Simons et al., 2023). However, mobilising the power of the internet for such purposes seems to be more prevalent in socioeconomically stable households (Notten et al., 2009; Yoon et al., 2020). An explanation for this phenomenon might be that social inequality transcends into digital environments (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2019). The implications are grave and aggravate social inequality. 

Turning online experiences into offline socioeconomic benefits

Literature on loneliness or “phoneliness” (Pittman, 2017) in connection with digital media use is abominably available in science. Concurrently, loneliness is a global and societal problem which has taken a steep increase after 2012, prompting authors to claim it is at least correlated with smartphone and internet use (Twenge et al., 2021). Taking the digital divide paradigm (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2019) as a framework, also here one can observe behavioural mechanisms that take place online transcend into the physical world with real consequences indicating that “perceived loneliness associated with smartphone addiction can have negative impacts on physical health” (Peper & Harvey, 2018, p. 6). However, there are studies that find the opposite to be true (Yavich, Davidovitch & Fenkel, 2019), possibly because this seemingly causal relationship might be mitigated by factors like the valence of online experiences or previous exposure to digital media (Magis-Weinberg et al., 2021).

What’s more, Kusumota et al. (2022) point out that digital media usage can enhance one’s sense of connectedness and thus reduce perceptions of being alone. However, the literature analysis encompasses only 11 scientific articles, accounting for low external validity of their findings and other authors did not detect any positive effects of digital media (Shah et al., 2021). Other scholars have acknowledged the contradictory literature on this topic and proposed a more nuanced perspective on the matter: “When the internet is used as a way-station on the route to enhancing existing relationships and forging new social connections it is a useful tool for reducing loneliness. But when social technologies are used to escape the social world and withdraw from the “social pain” of interaction, feelings of loneliness are increased.” (Nowland, Necka & Caciopoppo, 2017, p. 1). Again, the second digital divide (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2019) plays an important role because if one knows how to utilise the internet for one’s benefits, be it emotional or material, the danger of escapism and flying down the rabbit hole reduce. Masur (2021) explains that digital media research suffers from inconclusiveness and a “fast-paced, multidisciplinary, and fragmented nature of the field that produces an inconsistent, yet exponentially growing body of work” (p. 3).

Connected but lonely — research perspectives

In recent times, the qualitative research domain has investigated this issue mostly through the lens of the pandemic (Boucher et al., 2021; Kung, Kunz & Shields, 2023; McKenna-Plumley et al., 2021; Phang et al., 2023; Van de Velde, Boudreault & Berniard, 2023). Only few studies are aware of the catalytic potential of this topic and propel systemic and technological changes forward. An exciting study by Stuart et al. (2023) found that digital social mapping could be a tool to help people cope with loneliness. Similar to findings from Simons et al. (2023), participants placed importance on reflecting on the quality and shared experience of their existing network and even weak ties were reportedly viewed as useful (Stuart et al., 2023). Rees et al. (2023) are taking a similar approach to contribute to a growing literature around “de-loneliness” through understanding experiences of loneliness and resulting development needs for technology. The paper brings forward a very useful conceptual model of loneliness divided into before, during and after stages (Rees et al., 2023) that could be applied in further research. This overlap of digital media communication studies, network theory and user interface design is highly promising ground for future research as it escapes the contradiction of findings in existing literature whilst shaping future use of digital media and educates people on how to strategically deploy it to overcome their problems. The need for a constructive approach and disentanglement of the cross-sectional research is something that scholars have repeatedly flagged in recent years (Gentina & Chen, 2019; Masur, 2021; Nowland, Necka & Caciopoppo, 2018).

Digital optimist: From a digital media optimist perspective (endogenous solution approach): exploring people’s experiences with loneliness when acting on the interface with digital media. Following a UX/UI design process and an evidence-based conceptual loneliness model (Rees et al., 2023), what technological changes in all 3 stages can be formulated that could aid coping with loneliness? However, due to sustainability concerns outlined above, viewing technology as the solution to a psychosomatic and human problem might be a too liberal methodology. Therefore, another way that neglects technology as a means could be articulated as follows.

Digital pessimist: From a digital media pessimist perspective (exogenous solution approach): how can people who feel lonely be discouraged from using digital media and enter rehabilitative programmes that focus on capitalising on the social bond capital that they already possess within a specific social group (cf. Simons et al., 2023). A good start would be investigating the digital social mapping activity (Stuart et al., 2023).

An interface that might be noteworthy in this line of research is neuroscience. There is preliminary evidence that digital media consumption or, more generally, being online, has devastating consequences over our cognition (Baron, 2010; Firth et al., 2019; Korte, 2022; Meshi, Tahir & Heekeren, 2015). To me, it would be interesting to pursue this lead further and explore possible mitigation effects by cognition over perceived loneliness online.

Area of interest: To what extent is our cognitive reality influenced by our digital lives? What effect does this might have on negative experiences like loneliness or depression resulting from online overconsumption?

Mitigating effect of gender? 

A hugely intriguing factor in all of this are gender differences that have been constant in many academic papers evolving around this issue. Gentina and Chen (2019) for instance unveiled that boys are more prone to passively cope with loneliness, meaning they wait until a person of trust establishes communicative ground and lower the threshold (Gentina & Chen, 2019). In a similar vein, Barreto et al. (2021) analysed 46.054 cases from the BBC loneliness report and found that young men living in individualistic cultures (as defined by Hofstede) are most vulnerable to loneliness. These perceptions of loneliness are differently uttered on digital media. On Twitter for example, it was observed that when women voice more emotional symptoms related to loneliness such as sadness, while men ascribe their feelings to problems in relationships, hence trust (Andy, Sherman & Guntuku, 2022). Curiously, age seems to be a variable that interplays with the utterances. For example, adolescents aged 18–22 frequently spoke on intimacy themes whereas adults aged between 35 and 60 spoke more about the way people treat each other or personal regrets (Andy, Sherman & Guntuku, 2022). However, Deutrom et al. (2022) doubted an effect of gender on perceptions of loneliness. It should be noted that concepts such as life satisfaction or loneliness are best observed in naturally occurring conversation instead of skipping this step and trying to quantify it for effects (Vethake, 2021). Alternatively, more insights can be gathered in intersectional multi-level interviews as outlined by Winker and Degele (2011). A relatively new approach is social listening combined with social network analysis (Ballestar, Cuerdo-Mir & Freire-Rubio, 2020) that tracks discourse topics across online communities to draw on insights about relevance and valence. Much like the relationship of digital media and loneliness, it remains unclear to what extent gender influences this construct. Previous research points to an interplay of various socioeconomic factors like age, gender and income which eventually accrues to an accentuation effect on mitigating loneliness. Nonetheless, these are parameters that should not be left aside in future research.

Area of interest: To what extent do socioeconomic and demographic factors like gender influence the perception of interacting with digital media when feeling lonely?

© Luka Paul Vethake, 2023