It’s been rainy the past few days. Clouds hug the city skyline, oftentimes convincing us of nightfall even as we amble outside after an early lunch. The eight of us Duke volunteers form a cluster shuffling along the city streets and leave our umbrellas dripping near the door of our shared multiple-bed hostel room.
These living arrangements, coupled with our cultural and language barriers in a foreign country, have forced us into almost continual contact with each other. At night, we sleep mere feet apart. In the morning, we wake to talk about our dreams, plan our daily curricula and squabble about meal options.
We are never alone, it seems. But nor are we united. Instead, we pick petty fights with each other à la “The Real World.” Someone finds someone else obnoxious and talks to someone convenient about it. Someone and someone convenient giggle in the corner, unaware of someone else fuming in the hallway. At dinner, inscrutably meaningful glances fly at every word someone else says. The tension is as palpable as the sticky rice we pick at with our chopsticks.
One day during English class, we ask our students about dorm life in Chinese universities and hint that for some undergraduates, a single room gets lonely. Living alone strikes our American, collegiate sensibilities as unfulfilling—after all, having a roommate prevents reclusive tendencies while promoting normal, healthy social habits.
Americans of all ages tend to think along these lines, not just hyper-social college students. We place emphasis on personal interaction and eye seclusion suspiciously as aberrant and potentially dangerous behavior (think: Ted Kaczynski).
When the 2000 U.S. Census showed that about a quarter of American households consisted of just one person (up from around 10 percent in 1950), these figures were taken as a sign of America’s increasing loneliness. A 2006 study published in the American Sociology Review bemoaned a similar trend: In 1985, Americans had on average about three confidants. Now, we have only two. Surely, we are more forlorn than ever before.
In English class, my fellow teachers and I are so into our anti-loneliness lecture that when a student loudly protests, “Not lonely! Not lonely!” we are rather taken back. A nomad who herded sheep by himself from the ages of seven to nine, he argues that he’d much rather be alone than with an overbearing roommate. He doesn’t like living with other people, he says.
Remembering our last argument (which occurred approximately two-and-a-half minutes before class), the teachers each stifle a knowing smile. We understand the dangers of social overexposure better than our solitary student could guess.
But aren’t we supposed to be happier as a result of our temporary eight-person household? Even across the globe, we can log on to Facebook and network with any of the site’s more than 400 million other users. If the burden of loneliness ever gets too unbearable, we can Skype our stateside friends, or Google Chat them or buy a phone card and call them. Aren’t we supposed to be constantly basking in the glow of social activity?
And yet we’re not—that much is clear. Even in a group of eight peers, even in a city of more than 3 million people (especially in a city, perhaps), loneliness remains a powerful force.
I am reminded of this when I curl up in bed to read “Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy,” a poetry collection by Tao Lin—a 20-something Brooklyn hipster whose work is peppered with references to text messages, e-mails, cell phones and other modes of social communication. It reveals someone familiar with crippling loneliness and “the sensation of being the only person alive.” In one poem, he inquires, “[D]o we really live in an insane world of terrible loneliness?”
Lin strikes me as representative of other contemporary American youth battling with existential angst and meaninglessness—they do so despite their immense connectivity to the rest of society. If anything, the presence of so much social interaction via Facebook, instant messenger and countless other venues might even encourage feelings of detachment and seclusion, since the increasing ease of communication may reduce how much care we put into talking to each other. Or maybe loneliness is an emotional reaction to more deep-seated worries: self-doubt, emptiness, depression.
In the end, having people around or being able to list confidants doesn’t always ward off loneliness, just like being alone doesn’t guarantee loneliness. A shepherd alone on a mountainside may be less lonely than a college student surrounded by hundreds of classmates or a group of eight volunteers who spend every waking hour together.
If Americans are becoming lonelier, we should look to more significant causes than mere physical seclusion. As for me, I will head back to campus in the fall much more grateful for its ample opportunities for alone time.
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