Loneliness & depersonalization

 Aeon -  While the consequences of loneliness are not controversial, its causes are. Scientists do not agree about the impact of screen time or age, nor do they agree about loneliness trends over time. While it is certainly important and pervasive, the ‘epidemic’ might not be new. Loneliness in older adults appears largely stable over time, although there has been a small, gradual increase in loneliness among young adults over the past 50 years. A glimpse at trends in Australia collected by the government tells the story: although there are differences by age group, the proportion of people aged 15 and over who are lonely is similar to two decades ago, at about 15 per cent. Even the COVID-19 pandemic did not have the devastating effect on people’s social relations that might have been predicted: recent research suggests that, overall, people’s social-gathering habits and number of confidants were resilient, dipping during the pandemic but then bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels. Loneliness is a serious health risk, then, but we are likely not lonelier now than we have ever been before.

Instead, pundits and policymakers are applying the word ‘loneliness’ to address a real and growing problem, but they are applying the wrong diagnosis. What they might call ‘loneliness’ is actually a different sort of crisis, one of depersonalisation. Depersonalisation is what happens when people feel not exactly lonely, but rather profoundly invisible. What is missing here is what scholars call ‘recognition’, ‘mattering’ or ‘being seen’ – the notion that you are seen and heard, even emotionally understood, by the people around you, as opposed to feeling insignificant or invisible to others.

The depersonalisation crisis reflects changes in both the supply and demand for this kind of attention. Anonymity has long been the curse of modernity, given enduring trends like industrialisation and urbanisation, but even contemporary developments such as the spread of standardisation in service work – like when the grocery checkout clerk asks ‘paper or plastic’ or the call-centre worker races through their closing spiel to get it in before you hang up – can make us feel like a number. At the same time, while infants may have a basic need for it, the sense that we deserve or require emotional recognition by others is historically new, reflecting the rise of a therapeutic culture and changes in what counts as ‘good enough’ parenting, among other trends.