The Loneliness Pandemic - Can Technology Provide A Solution?

The pandemic has brought in changes galore and changed our quotidian lifestyles. Besides disrupting a significant portion of our work and our leisure time, it constantly forces us to adopt new habits and usher in life-altering mindsets. We pride ourselves as homo sapiens on the ability to embrace change, albeit with difficulty, and emerge with the ability to not just cope with the circumstances but also to master them. With the healthcare research bandwidth around the globe today, there is a clear possibility that we would have conquered the virus and controlled such outbreaks for years to come. I am optimistic!

- Rajesh Nair

But like all wars, it will leave the debris and a trail of untoward disturbances. One of these is what the clinicians and the psychologists call the ‘loneliness pandemic’. Social media and the multifarious interactive apps have brought us closer, but the immense number of connections does not give the comfort and warmth of physical interactions and neither does it produce the closeness we require. Connections are often clicking on the devices and marking ‘Likes’ does not always replace a conversation. Conversations are often interactions, again with a device, and while technology enables us to see and to an extent, feel, it can’t be a replacement for the real thing. So is this sudden dilapidation of the collective psyche and increasing instances of professionals going to therapists, an aftermath of the pandemic? While experts say that it accentuated the problem, the writing was on the wall, for those who cared to think about it.