The Lonely Society
I sat on the train the other day, heading to London, earphones plugged in, the norm. As the fields rolled by, my mind begin to wander, as it so often does on public transport. I work in Marketing, so I love to study adverts. I began reading the posters on the wall of the train. One in particular drew my eye and got me thinking.
It was the poster from Age UK; the poster featuring Ann, who hasn’t spoken to anyone in a month. A horrible thought isn’t it? An almost unbelievable one.
At this point, my typical snort of derision escaped me — I tend to do this when I read a claim or statistic that seems like they’re bending the words slightly. That was until I really began to think about it. Is it really that unlikely that someone could go almost a month without talking to someone in today’s society?
Almost to drive home this thought, I suddenly realised that the conductor had approached from behind and was asking for my tickets; seemingly pretty annoyed that I was completely unaware of his presence. He had a point, I always have my earphones in, purposefully shutting out the world around me. If I walk to the shop I grab my earphones, if I go for a run I grab my earphones, even if I’m walking to pick my girlfriend up for a romantic dinner, I grab my earphones. They’ve become an almost pre-requisite for leaving the house. It isn’t just me that does this either, is it?
So I thought about it; if it wasn’t for a select few people that I talk to on a daily basis, so if, for example, I didn’t work regularly, my friends or family lived far away, could I inadvertently go for a month without talking to someone?
It no longer seems such an alien concept, does it? We live in a lonely society, there’s no two ways about it. People intentionally discourage communication on the streets. Social media has allowed us to keep in touch with the people closest to us, no matter how large the geographical gap; I no longer have an incentive to talk to the stranger next to me at the train station, because, with even less effort, I can message my friend 100 miles away. Couple this with, what I call, the ‘earphone culture’ — the need for our generation to plug earphones in as soon as we leave our social comfort zones — and it quickly becomes clear how shut off we are from other members of our society. I’m a bit ashamed to admit this, but I’ve developed a habit of walking with my earphones in, even if I have no music playing, because it gives me a feeling of security to know no-one is going to try and talk to me. It’s terrible, but surely I am not the only one to have a habit like this?
Despite this habit, the societal tendency to avoid human interaction really bothers me. I grew up in the countryside where it was just the norm to make eye contact, smile or say hello. Now I live in a busier area, and even if it’s just one other person and myself on the street, neither of us make any effort to communicate, or even recognise the other’s existence.
The problem is, is that I don’t believe this is just me, doesn’t everyone do this? The next generation will see us acting like this and assume that it’s right to do so; each generation copying this and building upon it until we have a society where there is no warmth or interaction on the streets.
We all seem to live cut-off from one another, and it fills me with utter sadness that it’s a choice we have undertaken willingly. Society has begun to treat interaction with strangers as a malaise that needs to be cut out. We have chosen to become the lonely society.
Next time you reach for your earphones, spare a thought for poor, old Ann on the Age UK poster who hasn’t spoken to anyone for a month; maybe leave your earphones at home, or at least smile at someone on the street.
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