All of us sense that the internet is no cure for loneliness, and research supports our intuition. Loneliness, in turn, is an actual hazard to our health, more dangerous than obesity and nearly as lethal as smoking. Social media makes it easy to hang onto and follow along with “friends” with whom we rarely or never speak. Communicating through the internet also necessitates the construction of a digital self, which is by nature incomplete and often false. The internet also creates a mental equivalence between everything and everyone on a given network, one that erases the boundaries between our interpersonal relationships and parasocial ones.

Source: Wall Street Journal March 13, 2020 01:41 UTC