Who do you know?

You read a tweet on someone's timeline. You like a comment on an Instagram post. You watch a video on someone's Snapchat story. The internet has brought about so many new methods of interaction. You can see other people anywhere, and wherever you go, just by pulling up social media on your phone. However, with all this digital space to interact in, why do nearly half of all Americans always, or sometimes, feel alone or left out?

In today’s age of technological revolution, our biological needs remain relevant. We are lonely. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how many people you know; you just feel lonely. This phenomenon can be compounded by social media. Every post on social media is a glimpse at what your friends are feeling, but it is a permanent glimpse at a fleeting moment in time that has already passed. Rather than relieving your isolation with pictures of your friends, it adds to your growing unease.

Why am I blaming social media for these circumstances? After all, social media only acts as a conduit for communication, right? However, as Brey describes in Values in technology and disclosive computer ethics, “computer systems and software are not morally neutral”, and that some of them can “promote or demote particular moral values or norms.” Social media facilitates the spread of loneliness through the creation of another identity. Our digital personas can be so mind-numbingly different than our physical personas that there is a discomfort similar to the uncanny valley. We see others on social media, but they’re not exactly human, not exactly us. They’re facsimiles, and they prod our need for human connection.

At the same time that social media permeated among us, Pestilence rode his ivory horse into society. Loneliness is an epidemic, and it is exhausting to deal with. In today’s accelerating society, how are we supposed to deal with this draining issue?  Moor, in Why We Need Better Ethics for Emerging Technologies, describes the emergence of new technologies, and stresses that we need “better ethical responses to cope with them.” Social media falls under the umbrella of “mutually enabling revolutionary techniques”, and so it is necessary to develop a framework of ethics for the field of social media. No matter what the next steps are, the one thing that’s clear is the necessity of change. To change us for the better, social media must actively be better.