Orduna 1

Melissa Orduna
Professor B. Jaffe
English 1A
08 December 2014
Time to Log Off
With technology on the rise, and social media being our outlets for interaction, humans
are growing more dependent on machines than on normal interaction. The article, Is Facebook
Making Us Lonely? by Stephen Marche, states that there is a growing isolation problem along
with creating loneliness. Marche begins his article with the lonely death of Yvette Vickers, a
former Playmate and B-movie star, with just her computer screen as the only flickering light to
illuminate her darkened home. In this article, Marche claims that Facebook is pushing society
away from creating bonds to creating instant connections with people. Facebook is creating a
means of instant gratification for people who become trapped to their devices, removing them
from normal interaction and creating normal bonds like humans once did.
Technology on the rise has brought about a sense of dependency for people to their
devices. It seems that almost every year, as a new device comes out, everyone is quick to buy it
and reinstall their applications and restore their back-up contact lists etc. With the development
of this new technology, people are moving to an era where human interaction is being replaced
with the need to have a large social circle. Marche explains that we are looking to have a vast
group of friends but our connections are growing shallow. Marche states, We live in an
accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are (2). Marche
believes that the information we are able to gather is at the expense of our ability to
communicate and the gain of companies like Facebook, who amounted $3.7 billion in revenue

Orduna 2
(2). As technology and companies like Facebook continue to grow and accumulate followers, our
society is becoming more isolated.
This isolation is pushing humans to define true loneliness. The expression says, if you
feel lonely, while youre alone, you are in bad company; this statement is redefining how
human interaction is diminishing and people must try to learn to be alone and enjoy ones own
solitary company. Marches research from a sociologist at NYU, Eric Klinenberg, argues, its
the quality, not the quantity of social interaction, that best predicts loneliness(3). Which is why
humans, feel more alone while being connected to each other through social media outlets like
Facebook. Most who are familiar with Facebook, experience the anxiety of waiting for people to
respond to a request or message. Millions of memes, (internet mocking real life through images)
depict the exaggerated faces of people waiting to see if someone has responded to a sent
message, only to find that that person has only read a message and has not responded, or not
accepted your friend request. While really funny photos may appear on a news feed on Facebook
from time to time, people are noticing the struggle of attempting to maintain some sort of contact
with a person that they had once felt close to. Being connected has strengthened the human need
to feel wanted, but has proven to lack true bonds.
As our society moves to have more connections with people, to increase our networking
and contacts, the bonds that humans were once able to make are diminishing at an alarming rate.
Even before the mega boom in technology, by early 1990s, scholars were already noticing the
devastating effects of the Internet, calling the contradiction between an increased opportunity to
connect and a lack of human contact the Internet paradox(6). Bonds that once seemed
inevitable, like the ones we create with our families have begun to shrink. An Australian study
concluded, that people are more likely to feel connected to people in social aspect and less

Orduna 3
connected with familial relationships (6). This study concludes that people are becoming more
satisfied with others outside of unhappy home settings, turning to social media for a way to seek
normalcy from that solemn realm. In addition to noticing how people are turning to social media,
like Facebook, to escape unsavory settings of life, neuroticism is becoming part of the normalcy
of seeking happier conditions. Marche uses research from graduate student at the HumanComputer Institute at Carnegie Mellon, Moira Burke. Burke claims that how people use
Facebook is what distinguishes the lonely from the truly connected (6-7). However, John
Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of
Chicago, debunks her study by stating The idea that a Web site could deliver a more friendly,
interconnected world is bogus. The depth of ones social network outside Facebook is what
determines the depth of ones social network within Facebook, not the other way around (8).
Cacioppo also produces the human physiological responses that one can experience with the
loneliness that a person can feel with the increase use of social media like Facebook.
As humans move towards a more technology based society, our human bonds are
weakening. People are experiencing more anxiety with the pressure of needing to have a lot of
friends. We are being removed from human interaction to a more Internet based connection,
where emotions are read, not felt. People are becoming trapped to this digital age of
technological advances, while trying to feel wanted with the higher friend counts on Facebook,
or how many likes a post can get. Humans are losing the ability to communicate in person and
build bonds that were once the only way to feel connected. It is hard to log off Facebook, but
maybe its time to do so, before people lose the ability to talk to each other altogether.

Orduna 4
Work Cited
Marche, Stephen. Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company. 13
May 2012. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/05/isfacebook-making-us-lonely/8930/>.