Working On Our Loneliness Problem

The smartphones in our hands, and the philosophies of our time push us toward isolation. And yet there is a possible solution — from an unlikely source.

Ben Dockery | Est. 5 minutes

Tame problems have clear solutions. There is a formula or technique that, once discovered, can be applied to a definite set of variables to resolve a tame problem. Think math class. Wicked problems, on the other hand, are described as unique, ongoing, and without a formula. Wicked problems are primarily human problems. They require curiosity and iterative attempts to build a solution.[1]

Loneliness is a wicked problem. It is deemed a public health crisis and studies are showing it is a social contagion, spreading like flu or chicken pox. Several macro factors are shaping our loneliness – we’ll discuss two: technology and government. Then, and I’ll tip my hat now, I want to foreground the workplace as an opportunity to counter the spread of loneliness. 

Matters of Technology

Felicia Wu Song describes technology as social, embedded, and novel. The first two imply that you can’t remove technology and continue relationships as they are. If you stop texting or snapping, your relationships change. You will be left out of groups. 

The third trait, novel, explains the power behind technology and tendency toward isolation. Novelty lures us to return over and over. Anna Lemke, an addiction researcher at Stanford University, studies a variety of drug and behavioral addictions. Recently, she began to treat teenagers who had digital addictions like people with heroin or cocaine, addictions where “nothing feels good anymore.” In her book, Dopamine Nation, she writes, “The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.” [2]

One fruit on the technology tree is loneliness. While connected to everyone in the world, we are disconnected from those around us. Jonathan Haidt argues, Gen Z was already socially distanced before COVID restrictions were put in place. It’s the phones, he concludes, but it is also the context. The younger generation experiences over-protection in the real world and under-protection in the virtual world. [3] Both lead to anxiety, a cousin of loneliness. 

One further reason smartphones are shifting status from hero to villain is the reduction in regular time with friends. (see graphs below) It can be easy to isolate one culprit so let’s look at a seemingly unrelated background issue.

Matters of Government 

Instead of talking red and blue poll numbers, let’s fly up in the clouds of political theory for a moment. I attended an event with some Lakelight supporters last week where Rusty Reno, First Things editor, interviewed the Notre Dame political scientist, Patrick Deneen. Deneen argues that democratic liberalism (both right and left versions) is perfectly positioned to lead to loneliness. Ouch. 

He made this claim in his book, Why Liberalism Failed, about the same time Britain appointed a minister of loneliness in 2018. This was pre-pandemic and pre-Jonathan Haidt’s public warning on anxiety and loneliness in a phone-based childhood.

How exactly is liberty related to loneliness? At the risk of oversimplification, he argues that ancient ideals of liberty champion freedom from our base desires by taking on constraints (self-denial). Such virtues have been replaced with modern ideals of liberty that reject all constraints to pursue our base desires. Liberalism, therefore, breaks down because there is no common goal of human society and individuals create their own meaning. It’s lonely to live in one’s own reality.

Deneen punches right and left. He maintains that market-based self-interest leads to loneliness – as do sexual freedom and autonomy. In Deneen’s view, both are reliant on the same urge to have government provide the individual freedom for profits or pleasures. In a pithy summary, he suggests, the state isn’t our sibling; the market won’t be our mate.

Deneen’s thesis has been critiqued here, here, and here. I’ll leave that to the political philosophers, but I do want to ask if the emphasis on individual fulfillment and the autonomous self is truly the spinal column of our modern approach to social life? If so, the increase in loneliness stats seem unpreventable.

So both the devices in our hands (phones) and the ideas in our minds (liberalism) nudge us toward rootless loneliness. How can we counter both of those forces?

Workplaces to the Foreground

What does all this have to do with work? Turns out, quite a bit. According to the Survey Center on American Life, “Americans are now more likely to make friends at work than any other way — including at school, in their neighborhood, at their place of worship, or even through existing friends.” Problem solving, proximity, and a common mission are good fodder for friends.  

Gallup reports on the importance of best friends at work. Others are studying the workplace impact of socially disconnected workers. 

The fear is inefficiency. Friendships aren’t tame - it can be complicated to promote or fire friends. Friendly banter doesn’t immediately help the balance sheet, but engaged employees do. In fact, The Engagement Institute research showed disengaged employees cost companies between $450 and $550 billion a year. 

The future trend on workplace friendships is unsure, especially with equivocating rules on remote work and new forms of friendship. Big venture money is hoping “AI Companions” trend upward and close the loneliness gap. But, as one analyst described, asking AI to make friends is like asking a casino to fix a gambling addiction. Non-human agents might respond quicker, go away when we want, ask little, and promise much, but can they solve the problem of human loneliness?

I’m championing workplace opportunities that foster friendships, especially as the middling layers of the social fabric unravel. Friends are not only powerful neutralizers for loneliness but also give value to work. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” 

Fine Friendships > Digital Dopamine

Macro factors matter, but ultimately loneliness is personal. Abstract societies aren't lonely. People are. When we are in the workplace, in the home, in the gym, and at the grocery store - the invitation to know and be known remains. The risks of rejection are clear, but connecting with other humans is a ground up approach that can withstand regime changes in government and technology. It’s a human-centered solution to a wicked problem.

So, instead of delivering digital dopamine, let's furnish fine friendships, at work and home. As Dorothy Day says, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

[1]  Dave Evans, at Stanford Design Lab, uses this design thinking framework to help people discover what they want to do with their lives. See Talk Notes

[2]  See Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an epidemic of mental illness. 2024

[3] Haidt, The Anxious Generation, 139.

© Ben Dockery | This article was first published in Lakelight Monthly, May 2024 Edition