Are you lonely tonight?
You may have heard about the latest study on loneliness by now. If you haven’t there are two key messages:
- Loneliness spreads between social networks like a virus
- If you are lonely you tend to act more negatively to others therefore reinforcing your loneliness.
There are some conclusions to be drawn from this, namely 1. If someone has been ignoring you for a while, when you see them next don’t bring it up and confront them – just be nice (put on a happy face). What’s interesting about this is it goes against the common psychological convention that we should always express how we feel in search of an authentic life and authentic relationships. The implication of this study is – if you don’t want to lose more friends then keep your issues to yourself (to a degree of course). 2. If you find yourself in a lonely cluster then do what you can to get out, as it’s only going to get worse (as loneliness spreads).
This study helps show lonely people that the issue is systemic and is happening everywhere. There may be comfort for them to know that others are as lonely as they are. It’s only going to get worse too, according to the ABS over a third of us will live alone by 2026. Loneliness is going to become omnipresent in our society, especially prevalent among older people (i.e. us).
The interesting thing with loneliness is that it is very situational and there is a cure, of which interacting with, and forming relationships with others is a key part. Therefore it’s relatively easy for companies and brands to help play a role in this.
For example, brands playing in the telecommunications space, may benefit by teaming up with brands in the experiential space, and encourage people to actually physically meet each other once in a while. Now brands such as www.meetup.com have successfully brought vampire worshipping bungy jumpers together for years. However, these brands don’t take into account how hard it is for someone who is feeling negative, and has a lack of confidence, to meet others. Companies and brands who can tap into this mindset, and offer a real difference to people will be rewarded. Brands can take a role in facilitating interaction between lonely people (not people who are already socially doing fine).
Loneliness, boredom and depression are all closely correlated. It would be fantastic to see brands divert some of their investment in high gloss advertising into actions that would help fix the problem.
PS I couldn’t bring myself to use the tired black and white shot of the man on the beach to illustrate lonely – hence The Beatles.
Fritz Bachen is a Consumer Psychologist and Founding Partner at Naked Communications. Fritz can be seen, read or heard at; The Gruen Transfer, ABC Radio (Sunday nights), Adnews columnist, as well as The Australian, Cleo, Mumbrella, Shop Till You Drop and so on. He speaks at numerous conferences on marketing, ideas, contemporary culture, and consumer behaviour. Fritz has degress in clinical psychology and commerce (marketing). A registered psychologist and has worked in private practice, forensic settings, advertising (Saatchi & Saatchi) and marketing consultancy (Added Value). He was also state under 12 chess champion on WA, and has a board game called The Analyst selling well in the Benelux countries.
Comments
Anonymous
Dec 5th, 2009Why such a silly picture for such an important topic. Loneliness is the curse of the 21st century and social media is doing its bit to reinforce it.
Anonymous
Dec 9th, 2009Great post Fritz!!!! Love your work!!!!
jemster
Dec 9th, 2009Now then
mabe I need to read the paper but was wondering how 'Loneliness spreads between social networks like a virus' when, by definition, lonley people have very little contact with others and so have little opportunity to pass it on?
Fritz Bachen
Dec 13th, 2009jemster, the theory is the few people the lonely person knows begin to drop off (due to being negative / poor social skills / etc), making not only the person lonelier, but also the dropped off person now has less contacts too…. and so it goes on.
Anonymous
Jan 26th, 2010mate, it's posts like this that make your blog a must-read.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks
Leave a Comment