Loneliness as the Major Issue of Contemporary Society
One of the hardest effects COVID-19 had on society was actually the loss of socialization for those who got used to having an active social life and the growth of loneliness. War conflicts in Ukraine, Palestine and the rest of the countries cause growing waves of migration, that also separate individuals from the society they got used to and transform already chaotic reality even harder, provoking growing feelings of loneliness among youths, middle-aged people and social isolation for teenagers and older generations, who can’t overcome social trauma.
6 years ago I was studying chaotization. Back then, I was reading Bauman and Baudrillard a lot, who (the first in a more scientific way and the second in a more fantastic concept) predicted great changes in the future society. Back then, even before COVID-19 and war, the major factor for the global chaotization, that already started provoking the feeling of frustration and loneliness in the society was the turn of the reality from the strong into the liquid state. In other words, traditions and norms, we could rely on, deep family connections that could make us feel “rooted” vanished with the new social order. How it happened?
Several decades ago, when society lived not in the era of Technology or the era of Knowledge, but in the Industrial Era, people used to live in a “hard” society. That means, from school and up to the University they knew who would they become and worked by profession. Most of the works involved manufactory work, where people had to create something with their hands — this process of creation when the creator (you) could see the creature (the result of the work) inspired people and gave an effect of the “complete work” and meaning on the daily bases. That means, even an employee in the factory was feeling happier than currently middle-level front-end developer for example. Apart from that, a lot of families lived next to each other, in the same houses with different generations of people. This approach, involving family dinners, celebrations and traditions, formed a stable ground of “traditional values” people could rely on. Of course, there were deviations and changes, but such a reality was easy to predict and understand for people. In such a reality it was simple to identify yourself, set the goal (knowing that there will not be any unpredicted circumstances) and build long-standing goals, achieving them step-by-step. Well, most of us could see such a living approach in the example of our parents.
With the switch in society and the appearance of the Internet, people slowly started migrating into the new era: a growing amount of information with seamless access to any set of news started vanishing these hard social structures. For example: with the presence of informational spectrum, people started changing work and sexual partners more often, since you can more often see other options, and other stories and at the same time you start paying less attention to the traditional mindset. It becomes not so attractive living in the city you were born when you see an ad for a low-price Miami-based villa. Migration, humans of the world and globalization were the first factors of the liquid society. Even wars and international conflicts start not on the field of the battle, but in social media and on the air. Yet back then, people believed, that such power of information can reduce actually social injustice and international conflicts since it makes no sense to cause them, when you will be rapidly banned from the informational sphere.
However, as we can see nowadays, the informational revolution not only increased the number of conflicts because every person got access to the information creation and the right to cause any virtual conflict, that means many people became victims of abuse. Moreover, physical abuse started happening even more often, because the feeling of “being not in control” and leaving without any punishment, given by social networks, migrated to real life.
There even became more evidence when teenagers started mixing reality with the virtual world and stopped taking the surrounding world seriously, which led to pretty sad consequences. In other words, the informational revolution vanished itself slowly and the power that words and actions used to have previously, as well as the concept of the traditional family or a stable work career, became completely lost. People started working without seeing the real result of their work, what means for example being a manager or economist — you can work from day to day, without seeing a real “product” of your actions, which caused frustration on the global level, since most people migrated from the “production work” to the “service and intelligent” sphere. At the same time, marriage now lasts shorter and people change their life partners more often or used to follow “free relations” instead of having traditional family. The same informational growth caused social deviations, that can be easily noticed among teenagers.
And of course, such easy access to any information finally led to the increasing number of war conflicts, since non-regulated information, that was flooding the world, led to the complete break of all the norms and regulations that were holding society. When COVID-19 occurred, and people lost access to the normal way of living, losing their attachment to the daily offline routines, more and more were living at home and “migrated to the virtual life” completely. At the same time, this created a global feeling of loneliness. For example, remote works make employees feel not so attached to the small social group, which creates a feel of social frustration even today 16% of companies in the world stay completely remote, while 98% of companies give employees the right to work from home if needed. At the same time, children who couldn’t attend school due to the shutdown lost incredibly important skills of socialization. At the same time, this trauma occurs in those who are attending universities online. Online learning is a must in the modern world, so that people who simply couldn’t reach offline institutions all this time finally have a chance to get an education, but at the same time this equality caused vanish of the classical socialization model, that hit the all the society.
Here it’s time to recall what Baudrillard predicted in the form of “social death”. He said, that having copies without the original causes people to lose the connection with reality. Such copies are posts on social media, replicated items and even photos. They make us exist in the “new society” where social connections are not needed and a real, deep feel of the attachment — to the family, community or institution is being replaced with the replication of this feel and imaginative attachment to social media instead, that will reflect in the complete isolation and a-social behaviour on the global level, provoking such amount of social deviations that it will be impossible to overcome them and finally, social constructs like family, friendship and communication in the traditional meaning will be lost.
Attention now: all of the above sounds bad. Obviously. Yet, it all happened back in 2020–2021, before Ukraine, Gaza and other conflicts that affect both social life, economy and ecology nowadays. And here is what happened next:
2 years after COVID-19, when neither the economy nor society was ready, both Palestine conflict with the consequences across all surrounding countries currently and a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine happened. These war conflicts provoked great waves of migrants, who lost everything they had and were forced to leave European countries for example in search of a safe place. Migrants, who flooded Europe completely provoked not only an expanding feeling of loneliness, the break of a thousand families and a feeling of deep depression due to the loss of personal identity in the process, but also social crises for the local community, which welcomed migrants as well. At the same time, not only migrants started feeling lonely, due to the studies those who live in the war zone feel loneliness even deeper, feeling like they have been “isolated” and “given up on”: “While loneliness may offer temporary relief from the demands of others, it can also have long-term consequences. The effects of social isolation on physical and mental health are well-documented, and they can be especially pronounced during wartime. Social isolation can lead to reduced immune function, sleep and metabolism disorders, cardiovascular problems, hypertension, and stroke [2]. Additionally, loneliness can cause anxiety and depression, exacerbating the already challenging conditions of living in a warzone”, — Olena Musakova and Olena Ivasyuta in the study.
At the same time, teenagers and children who were growing up in a war-affected society and due to the war in Ukraine all Europe is affected by war currently, lost a chance to socialize normally. For example, most Ukrainian children can’t attend schools and due to COVID-19 and the war most lost all the chances to get friends and be socialized. Such children need the urgent help of psychologists and social workers since in Ukraine socialization is about to die for the next generations already. The same goes for well-developed countries like Japan, which is a chaotic world nowadays: when you live and suddenly a virus occurs and kills millions of people across the globe and then there are a lot of conflicts of a fear of the new conflict (in Taiwan in this case) many people can’t survive this constant pressure on the mentality and we can see either full social isolation or expanding occasions of the mental illnesses. For example, a growing amount of information caused a wave of ADHD sickness. At the same time, instead of attending doctors, due to the accessibility of social networks, most people started giving themselves diagnoses and treatment that in many cases make life of such “patients” even harder. Moreover, such deviations and drug, and alcohol addictions also increased due to the overall global instability.
The current world is in a new era of struggle, frustration and social crises and obviously what is needed to overcome it is a new approach to international security both in terms of health and war regulations. Investing money in health, climate, nutrition and social sectors instead of the bombs and political conflicts would save this world from the dark ending potentially. Or, potentially, we’ve already got used to virtual socialization — will see what it brings us next.
