For the lonely, tech offers friendship – at a price

Hamrick works nights and weekends at a water treatment plant, leaving little time to spend with friends and family. He said he’s often the only person inside the plant’s echoing halls.

To pass time while he works seven days back to back, he listens to podcasts or talks in a Discord room with a handful of old friends, some working night shifts of their own.

Between making rent and finishing chores, people in Hamrick’s life have little time for friendships, he said. But saying the word “loneliness” out loud feels scary.

On Discord, Hamrick and his longtime best friend, Dan, exchange memes and talk about sports. Without the group chat, Hamrick said, he’s not sure how he would cope.

Farmanfarmaian has days when symptoms from Crohn’s disease leave her unable to function. But when they happen, she’s ready: Her house is filled with gadgets that help her feel less alone, she said.

On a sunny summer Tuesday, Farmanfarmaian turned on her Roomba, whom she calls Mister Bot, and verbally guided him as he scooted around the house: No, not there, Mister Bot, you can’t make it over the rug.

Her robotic cat (Mister Paws) watches from the couch. The toy, created for elder care, can blink, meow and roll over. With the exception of a beating heart and personality, Mister Paws has everything a normal cat has, Farmanfarmaian said, and he’s a great icebreaker with little kids.

She stopped to ask her Alexa smart speaker if she had any more meetings that day. Sometimes when Farmanfarmaian travels for work, she wakes up in a hotel room with no Alexa. In those moments, she catches herself missing the AI voice, she said.

Morris is surrounded by people at school, home and work. But that doesn’t mean he’s never lonely.

Morris puts his feelings into songs he shares on YouTube and Instagram. It’s his best emotional outlet, he said. When you’re sad on the internet, people often rush to commiserate.

Goodsell, a part-time university lecturer in communications, sometimes gets so lonely she feels physically ill.

Goodsell is far from a homebody. She’s volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters and a local choir. She regularly invites friends and acquaintances over for dinner parties. But she doesn’t have a romantic partner or a fixed community of friends, absences that leave her lying in bed, frozen with a “quiet terror,” she said.

Social and dating apps can seem like the only way out of her isolation. But seeing loving couples or happy friend groups on Facebook is like a knife to the heart, she said. She scrolls until numbness sets in.

“My hope to become less lonely drowns out the ‘I’m exhausted, let’s stop scrolling’ mantra,” she said. “So, I keep looking.”

Smith planned to finish college and launch her life. But as her post-graduation job hunt stretched on month after month, she started feeling antsy and lonely, she said.

Smith got sent home from college during her freshman year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Three years later, she is still figuring out how to be social. She lives with her parents and has plenty of friends, she said, but something is missing.

Scrolling on YouTube or TikTok makes her feel better — other people are going through the same struggle she is. But at times, she feels herself settling into an unpleasant detachment. Dating apps are especially bad. There’s something weird about swiping through pixels that represent real people, she said. Where does the app end and the people begin?

“Sometimes when I [log off], I realize that it does make me feel more isolated because it’s like, well, I just spent all this time feeling like maybe I was connecting with this person, but it was just a screen.”

Moss Jones is gender fluid, and for a long time, it was a lonely experience. They felt confused and overwhelmed, they said, with few people to confide in. That was before they got a TikTok account.

Jones started learning about nonbinary identities from creators on the video app, even connecting with people and groups who helped them on their journey. Opening TikTok was a fast track to community, Jones said.

Now, their weekdays usually end with hours of scrolling on the app, and it can be hard to find a reason to stop. Sometimes they forget to eat or go to the bathroom, Jones said.

Without social media, Jones feels cut off from other people. With it, they feel stuck in a hole.

“For whatever reason, I crave connection,” Jones said. “Then I go on Instagram or TikTok and it feels like I have connection because of all the dopamine. But in reality, I didn’t connect to anybody. I was sitting alone in my bed for six hours scrolling on TikTok.”

The libraries in Alumbaugh’s hometown have restricted hours because of a lack of funding. Other shared spaces — gyms and co-working lounges — are beyond her budget.

Alumbaugh feels like she rubs shoulders with strangers less and less, she said. She’s taken to posting on Lex, an online community board for queer people, with invitations to meet up at a coffee shop and do crossword puzzles. Every time, one or two people trickle in. It’s fun, she said — it might even be enough to keep her social tank full for a while.

Alumbaugh used to think of personal tech, especially social media, as a hub for her social life. These days, she’s not so sure. Advertising-based apps will never fulfill their promise to be good stewards of our friendships, she said. But they give us a chance at connection.

“I’ve broadened my perspective from ‘technology is the highway to connection’ to ‘this is a tool that might lead to connection,’” she said. “That feels less disheartening.”