The Pros And Cons Of Loneliness

Loneliness. So many emotions are evoked from this simple word. What is loneliness? Webster 's dictionary defines loneliness as sadness because one has no friends or company. Thus it is of no surprise that human beings strive to avoid and dread any remote feelings of sadness that might be derived from solitude. After all, the human species is a social being. In this fight against loneliness humans are compelled to increase our social circles by incrementing and or adapting any new forms of socialization possible. In order to combat loneliness and or maintain a social life, there are those who might recruit and use technology as their anti-loneliness ally. And there seems to be no better ally than the popular social networking site Facebook. With over 1.28 billion active users, making it the largest online social network to date, being a Facebook user and having this social network as an ally against

Various studies such as one survey which concluded that the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant (Bercovici). In addition, a 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely, as opposed to 20 percent of a similar group only a decade earlier (Marche). By analyzing all of this compiled data it is evident that the sense of loneliness is on the rise especially after the launch of Facebook in 2004. Thus this has led critics to correlate the increased use and number of Facebook users with the noted increase in loneliness. This in turn has led critics to hypothesize and condemn the social network as the not so social network and therefore believing that Facebook causes loneliness. But is this all