How are the problem of loneliness, social networks and Orthodox faith related?

The problem of loneliness is one of the most urgent and hard-to-solve problems of modern society. Moreover, it is not only an internal, psychological problem of an individual, but also, by and large, a problem that covers the outer, corporeal, physical side of our life.

Today, in the light of various psychological and philosophical approaches, loneliness is generally understood as the state of a human being, conscious of the fact of their alienation and estrangement from other people’s society.

In this sense, loneliness is a socio-psychological phenomenon related to the lack of close, positive emotional ties with people and to the fear of their loss as a result of forced or having psychological causes social exclusion. As part of this concept there are two different phenomena - positive (privacy) and negative (isolation) loneliness. However, most commonly the concept of loneliness has a negative impact.

For example, one of the greatest contemporary experts in the field of psychosomatic medicine, author of "The Broken Heart: health effects of loneliness" James Lynch, says that people who have psychological loneliness-related problems (suddenly widowed, divorced, experiencing difficulty in communication with loved ones, or those who do not have a family), are much more susceptible to disease than those who have a family and mutual understanding with family members. Moreover, the people who live isolated, but at the same time in constant close touch with family and friends, are less prone to all sorts of mental and physiological disorders (especially cardiovascular diseases), compared with those who have lost touch with home and familiar surroundings.

Still, the statistics of people who experience loneliness-related problems, frankly speaking, is striking: 80% of all CIS citizens are experiencing a feeling of loneliness. This is all the more strange due to the fact that today the vast majority of the population lives in major metropolises , i.e. in the places where urbanization would seem to remove the problem of loneliness as such.

And yet, this problem does not only leave the agenda, but on the contrary, it is becoming more and more sizeable. That is why scientists are increasingly trying to attract public attention to the socio-demographic predictors of loneliness.

Childhood is the period of formation of the human person

It is well known that the basis, the foundation of the human person is laid in the early years of a child's life. Many scientists now believe that it is in childhood we can find the causes which may subsequently cause psychological problems of loneliness.

Today our lives are arranged so that from the first days of his/her life, the child is forced to stay under constant adult attention. Tight control that children experience on the part of parents, educators, and later school teachers and, at the same time, lack of adults’ attention to the individual features of the child's character, to his creative abilities, according to many experts, often leads to the development of a feeling of loneliness, a feeling of alienation and misunderstanding in relation to the people around.

Among the characteristics that most negatively affect the psychological adaptability of the child, the following features can be identified: a loser feeling, self-pity, despondency, a desire to keep people at a distance. This in turn leads to the fact that the child begins to avoid close communication and trust with both adults and peers. He/she begins to feel hostile and insecure to other people, to attribute others their feelings and motives of action. Moreover, often, in case of forced contact with people afraid of appearing a loser, he/she begins to lie and pretend to be better than they actually are.

At the same time, family relationship has a fundamental influence on the formation of character and personality of the child.

In the course of numerous experiments and observations, which investigated the effect of a general family environment and the personal characteristics of both parents on the development of a human, scientists have concluded that positive characteristics that positively influence the formation of the child's personality include love and tenderness of the mother, her high moral responsibility , lively mind, intelligence, benevolence, sincerity, honesty, mental and emotional balance, close cultural interests of both parents, etc. Adverse conditions conducive to the emergence of the child's problems of loneliness and alienation from people are frequent quarrels of parents, their volatile, nervous character (especially the mother’s), preoccupation with the material, parent selfishness or a situation where the father is removed from the family problems, closed in itself; as well as the situation where the family members do not give due attention to the development of creative abilities of the child.

Back in Soviet times, Leningrad neuropsychiatrist A.I. Zakharov, who studied prevention and treatment of childhood neuroses, analyzed the effect of different types of deforming relationship to the child in the family on the development of his/her neurotic states and antisocial behaviors. Thus, for example, an extremely strict, overbearing attitude to the child by the adult members of the family, especially the mother, leads to the formation in the child of persistent traits such as lack of confidence, shyness, timidity and the propensity to addiction. If the child is predisposed to independence, authoritarian parents may contribute to the development of his irritability and aggressiveness.

Children deprived of maternal feelings of love and respect in the family where the authority with family members is won with great difficulty find themselves in particularly adverse conditions. In such circumstances, children often form a strong feeling of uselessness, humiliation and dissatisfaction with life.

However, the atmosphere of excessive attention to the child may have no less detrimental consequences. The complete absence of demands, indulging every desire of the child lead to the development of hysteria, low self-control, a desire to be constantly in the spotlight, etc. Of course, in the future, when the child goes beyond the family into a new environment, it can be difficult to reconcile with the fact that he/she is not in the focus any more, that recognition and praise must be earned by real strengths and successes. In this sense, the lack of universal love and acceptance from others can bring him/her to a nervous breakdown, facilitate the closure in itself, i.e., the emergence of a feeling of loneliness.

The last polling data show that the problem of loneliness is a real problem of modern society (especially among teenagers). In today’s society there is the growing number of adolescents who feel lonely, which often leads to personality deviations with such socially dangerous consequences like depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, internet addiction and suicide attempts. According to official statistics, in the modern world 1 million people commit suicide every year. It was found that over the past 10 years, the number of suicide attempts among young people has increased by almost 3 times. The main reasons here are unrequited love, family conflicts, the educational process, irrational fear of the future and total loneliness. It is in this context Durkheim used the term "anomic suicide" – the kind of suicide which is based on the social disorganization of the personality: disruption of social ties, a sense of loneliness, depression.

Trying to escape from loneliness into social networks

It would seem that with the advent of social networks of the Internet the problem of loneliness can be successfully solved. For now, even experiencing difficulties in communicating with loved ones, any child (usually a teenager) can easily change the setting and switch to interact with someone who has similar interests and preferences in life. Only here's the trouble: most of our youth has no interest ar all. For this reason, it is not surprising to have the situation when young people do not know what they want from life. They do not know and cannot realize themselves in a particular case. But most often, in principle, they have no desire (motivation) to such self-realization as personalities.

So sooner or later, in the process of communication in social networks most young people have all the same feeling of emptiness and loneliness. And what other feeling could arise in the process of communication of people who, as yet, make nothing of themselves? Who, in fact, has nothing to share with each other?

This is only in the beginning it seems that communication in social networks gives strength and makes you wanted and accepted (by friends on Facebook, etc.). But, in fact, everyone knows that if they should just disappear for a while from the network, no one (or almost no one) will notice it. In this sense, such online chat is more like a drug, without which it is difficult to survive, and which just takes time and effort, without giving anything in return.

So the problem of loneliness cannot be reduced only to the problem of lack of communication. In particular, not all can be explained by challenges of growing up, a difficult adolescence, etc.

Introverts and extroverts or how to become a sociable person?

In life, it is often possible to observe a situation when seemingly absolutely successful people who have gained recognition and high status in society, mentally balanced people, who do not know the problems of childhood and family problems, however, from time to time, and sometimes constantly experience an acute sense of loneliness (remember the figure of 80%, which was announced at the beginning of the article).

Psychologists and psychotherapists often face complaints of loneliness, a feeling of uselessness by people who formally have a full family and generally are very successful. And in this situation, it is no longer possible to write off the problem on lack of communication or any other "objective circumstances".

In this sense, I remember a case of suicide of the famous Hollywood actor Robin Williams, which struck the whole world. He seemed to be more than successful and cheerful man, a favorite of millions of fans around the world, and, nevertheless, he took his own life because of the serious problems of a psychological nature.

So, it may seem strange, but both extroverts (outgoing and open people) and introverts (closed people) suffer from loneliness, and those who have had a happy childhood, and those whose childhood was difficult. People with low self-esteem and quite successful people suffer from loneliness: the proud and simpletons, those who seemingly was able to realize themselves and losers.

And they, like teenagers, often try to escape from loneliness into social networks. Only with adults it works worse than with adolescents.

So what is the true cause of the problem of loneliness? Why is it so hard to avoid?

Loneliness is not a psychological problem, but spiritual. And what is spiritual emptiness?

In my opinion, the problem of loneliness has, first and foremost, not psychological, but spiritual reasons. Otherwise, how to explain those examples from the life of holy ascetics, when being a long time in conditions of complete loneliness (in seclusion or in the wilderness-dwelling), they did not only damage the mind and soul, but in the end revealed themselves to the world as the full venerable human personalities.

Of course, today their feat can only cause surprise and amazement, and therefore is unlikely to be repeated by any of our contemporaries, especially when it comes to the laity with families living in the "heart" of modern civilization (i.e. megacities).

But still, no one called for the literal imitation of the experience of the saint venerable ascetics of the past. For us, modern humans (including modern monks), it is not the external life arrangement, but the inner motivation that enabled them to reach the sanctity of life and a high degree of dispassion is more important and requires a deep understanding.

In fact, Christianity is not magic, and therefore, result in Christianity is not achieved by an external deed (which is only auxiliary, healing tool in the overall process of man’s transformation), but primarily by an internal movement of the human soul on its way to deification, on the way to Christ!

And along the way, all of us must understand that, unfortunately, in each of us lives his little life selfish, ruthless, shallow, weak, superficial little man who overshadows God and does not give himself to truly be a man. And if you focus all your life on this little man, it will inevitably turn into a prison, a narrow, uncomfortable, stinking prison cell, in which only a small window allows you to see the sunlight. The prison cell, where one can only suffocate.

That is why it is so hard to stay alone with self. Typically, in such a state a person experiences inner discomfort and a rather unpleasant feeling of emptiness. That's why we're trying to escape from ourselves into entertainment, the hustle and bustle of everyday life, social networks, work, etc.

I think each of us at least once in their life experiences this terrible feeling – a sense of anguish, sadness, and fear of despair and void that lurks in the human soul.

Particularly acute this mental anguish is felt by the saints, who managed to look into the depths of the abyss, which is hidden in our souls. They were able to look into the abyss to understand one important thing – only something Great and Absolute can fill it (our inner emptiness)! Something that contains the entire universe and at the same time surpasses it. Actually they knew that the man has some kind of immeasurable depth, some new, unexplored dimension, some huge, boundless space, to fill which is subject only to God.

Only this can explain the radical change in their lives, when being very often affluent people, they withdrew to the mountains and the wilderness, went into seclusion in order to avoid metaphysical loneliness regardless physical isolation.

For, in fact, both these conditions are interrelated: i.e. it is a metaphysical loneliness that creates a physical isolation as a sense of worthlessness and alienation from the people.

And that is why only faith in God is able to overcome the physical and metaphysical loneliness. The Holy Fathers say that God is Fire! And when He came to our world and became Man, the fire poured out on the earth only to be united with Him so that the man could be ignited by the Holy Spirit. And those who lit the fire of the Holy Spirit will no longer be suffering from loneliness; there will be no feeling of sadness, worthlessness and despair. For such a person will know God always needs him. And due to this feeling our life will be filled with light and joy; we will be able to share this light and joy with others who also often feel down-hearted and languish from loneliness. I must say that in this context I understand the words of Venerable Seraphim of Sarov: "Save Yourself and thousands around you will be saved."