Connection and community are often considered antidotes to loneliness. Here in the mid-2020s, however, accessing these antidotes is often fraught. Why? In an era when we are more connected than ever, why do we feel so alone? Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and researcher, wrote in a 2024 Instagram post, “One of the factors is the emptiness and ubiquity of internet connections.” At a time when a simple swipe or tap can create connections, why do we find ourselves lonelier than ever?
This paradox highlights a shift from meaningful relationships to surface-level interactions. Haidt says that social media fosters this “emptiness and ubiquity,” thus making relationships more transactional than communal. To reverse this trend that leads to and fosters loneliness, we must reimagine what it means to connect — not just online, but in real life. Despite an increase in digital connections, loneliness has reached epidemic levels. Modern interactions have mainly become transactional rather than deeply connective. To combat loneliness as a society, we must shift from transactional engagement to intentional community building.
At a time when a simple swipe or tap can create connections, why do we find ourselves lonelier than ever?
The shift to transactional relationships
Loneliness is not just a by-product of social media; it reflects a broader shift toward transactional relationships. To counter this, we must cultivate deeper, more intentional online and offline connections that prioritize belonging over productivity. Let me be clear: these device-centered spaces are not creating loneliness. They are helping to maintain and in some cases even expand loneliness, but the actual issue is that devices elevate connections that are only related to transactions. Ideally, conversations are meant to build a shared connection; they are not meant to achieve a mutual or even individual goal. Social media has not built the temple of transaction, but it has greatly propagated and celebrated the art and act of transaction.
Loneliness is not just a by-product of social media; it reflects a broader shift toward transactional relationships.
When language follows a transactional move, society follows it, too. This shift to transactional relationships results from social media, and it also reflects a broader cultural trend. As Mel Robbins suggested in an episode of her podcast, friendships rely on three key elements: proximity, timing and energy. When these factors are missing or manipulated by algorithms, our relationships lose their depth. If friends are the foundation of connections, community and collaboration, then the idea of a space where a connection is boiled down into a transaction – a moment of attention, a pause before flipping the wrist and scrolling the page – turns a connection into a time-limited transaction.
It’s not that connection via social media is all bad. After experiencing a devastating flood because of a hurricane, I sent a plea for help out on social media that resulted in true action. Friends showed up with fans, dehumidifiers and hands to help. I don’t want to bash the digital spaces. But I do want to call out that they are not, nor should they be, the only space where we can connect and build. As much as I feel supported by my family and friends online, I would be remiss not to realize that my request for help and my receipt of that help was, in a sense, also transactional.
Personal experience and teaching: The burden of happiness
Post-pandemic, we can genuinely see the lack of community in many spaces. Humans are wired for social connection and proximity to others. This wiring is how and who we are. Without it, we are simply severed from our ability to be human.
In a classroom of first-year students, some eager and some not, I prepare to teach a class on the work of being happy. For the last three years, I have taught this course, The Burden of Happiness, that focuses on aspects of happiness, explores how and why happiness is often ill-defined and conceived and how, as a result, we struggle to define, engage and pursue it. I am always surprised by the students’ recognition – and sometimes my own – of how much individual happiness is directly tied to connections with others and into a sense of community and belonging. Using Haidt’s work on social media and loneliness as a base, I help them explore the tension between what we – especially young people – see as we move beyond the screen into real community, and what the consequences are if we don’t or can’t find community.
Recently, I realized that the many reasons I experience loneliness are not simply due to the social media apps on my phone. And my loneliness is not just because my email inbox demands attention constantly. I experience loneliness in moments when I lack human, and humane, connection. There is a lack of belonging. There is a lack of care.
With this realization, I started to examine how we communicate. At work, we are so tightly scheduled that a morning chat is seen as a distraction, and a chance encounter in the halls reflects a lack of productivity. What have we done when we reduce exchanges to gain or loss?
Building community and battling loneliness require that we shift the focus from transaction to engagement, that we create a culture or community. To do this, we must cultivate what I call “connective communication”: interactions that prioritize relationship building over mere exchange. Consider that the difference between transactional and connective interactions is that connective interaction fosters a relationship between time, energy and location. It is not easy or quick. It requires vulnerability and openness. It requires empathy. Humans in our time and age don’t do these well — and more than likely, we never have.
Building community and battling loneliness require that we shift the focus from transaction to engagement, that we create a culture or community.
The consequences of disconnection
To engage in connective interaction, we must see the value in people and in ourselves beyond just processing and performing. We must see each other as supporting each of us in a network of care. This shift doesn’t mean that each conversation, each connection, needs to be profound. It simply means that we need to escape the aim of getting something from the other person in that moment. We need to retrain our brains away from looking for a dopamine hit because we posted something on social media and someone else passively liked it. We need to move beyond interacting with others only to move a project or career along, or to receive follows, likes or claps. We need to shift our focus on connecting with others to come from a place of compassion. This shift is hard, especially when divisiveness and distrust have been sown and cultivated into a hardy and rough landscape.
Social media offers the blissful safety of a cultivated space where we don’t have to fear not connecting. But that space is a Pandora’s box of loneliness. To break the cycle, we must recognize that social media doesn’t create disconnection — but it does amplify it. Yet breaking the cycle of transactional engagement is a bigger project with ties to the social media space. We must break out of transaction and into connection to address the loneliness epidemic.
In his 2023 report, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy asserted, “A culture of connection is vital to creating the changes needed in society. While formal programs and policies can be impactful, the informal practices of everyday life – the norms and culture of how we engage one another – significantly influence social connection. These shared beliefs and values drive our individual and collective behaviors that then shape programs and policies.” The work of the individual that we can first build a connected culture and stem the epidemic of isolation.
Murthy’s observations and guidance align with a need to build community into the individual life experience. We need to acknowledge the power of exiting a productivity loop of loneliness and look up and out of our selves. This acknowledgment requires work. It requires risk. It requires time. And in all of this, there are costs. We simply must bear them if we are to contribute to a life of connection and a community of health. The idea of gathering, crafting community and enabling change in this world is not new. Yet it is revolutionary in the face of the pressures currently facing individuals. To connect is to build a world not based on a transaction or a moment of productivity. Instead, this vision depicts a world that is shared and supported.
Murthy’s insights align with broader research showing that strong friendships remain central to human fulfillment. Research consistently affirms the importance of deep, meaningful relationships. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey on friendship, 61% of U.S. adults say that close friendships are important for living a fulfilling life. This is a percentage far greater than those who prioritize marriage (23%), parenting (26%) or financial wealth (24%). These findings reveal a disconnect between what we claim to value and how we often live. If we recognize friendship as central to a meaningful life, how do we cultivate it in a culture that increasingly prioritizes productivity and digital engagement over deep connection?
Solutions, and a call to action
Connection is also linked to care and compassion for ourselves, others, and, more broadly speaking, the world. In the acts of connection we both experience and perform, and we create a world in our image. In so many ways, we can see the outcome of our disconnected world right now. Our programs and policies privilege the individual. Our shared beliefs and values have fractured and now contribute to building a space where chaos and discord are channeled only by a desire for productivity and financial gain. This trajectory must stop.
To stop this progression, we must offer ourselves freedom from the devices that have created channels that are only interested in the transactional. We must engage in connective moments with others, not simply focus on productivity. And we must learn to gather again. We can start with proximity, timing and energy.
Begin by stepping out and saying hello to your neighbors. Continue by remembering the name of the person from whom you picked up your morning coffee. Community can grow as you create time during the day to take a walk with a co-worker. Build on those moments by joining a group – an organization, a book club – and give time directly to yourself and others instead of emailing. Build on this work as you set a reminder to send an email or write someone a card of gratitude every Monday or Wednesday, or whatever day you can. This work will take time, will require energy and must start with where you are. But you can start.
If we all start doing this – laying down the screens, then releasing ourselves from the bounds of productivity and taking the leap and opening to others – we will find ourselves connecting. In these connections, we will also find ourselves creating communities. These communities will be imperfect and messy. Bumping up against others always is messy. Yet in the imperfect, messy and uncontrolled, we will find peace, connection and community — truly antidotes to loneliness for us all. Reclaiming connection requires us to step beyond the comfort of our screens and into the often messy, unpredictable beauty of genuine relationships. This work starts with small steps: saying hello, remembering names, making time for others. If we do this, we won’t just fight loneliness; we will rebuild a culture of belonging.
