Socialization is a critical aspect to good health for kids and adults.[1][2] That’s why constant connection through social media, chatrooms, texting, and online gaming has become irresistible to us. For help managing in the online world and avoiding costly digital injuries, check out Dr. Bennett’s positive parenting and family coaching videos in our Screen Safety Essentials Course. We all need each other online and off. Afterall, the early people of our species were hunters and gatherers. Having a tribe was critical for our survival. In modern times, with many families living away from extended families and our lives as busy as ever, it’s often hard for adults to make friends. Today’s GKIS article covers the costly results of loneliness and offers suggestions for how to break out of our loneliness and enter the realm of meaningful connectedness.
The Prevalence of Loneliness
Higher rates of loneliness are found among young adults, seniors, those who are visually impaired, victims of abuse, and the unemployed.[3] Due to its prevalence, numerous outlets including Time, Forbes, US News, Cigna Insurance, and the Health Resources & Services Administration have referred to loneliness as an epidemic in the last decade.
Feelings of loneliness can result from a lack of friendships, intimacy, or emotional connection.[4] The long-term impacts of loneliness include poor sleep, depression, suicidal ideation, increases in cortisol (a stress hormone), compromised immune responses, and inflammation. Chronic loneliness has also been linked to the progression of Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic diseases. Further, loneliness is associated with poor lifestyle habits which include sedentariness and smoking.[5]
To avoid unfortunate outcomes, we must carve out the time to hang out with friends and family. For kids and teens, school is an easy resource to draw from. But for adults, social resources can be hard to find. To help you reach out and find more connection and community in your life, we’ve uncovered some novel ideas and resources!
Finding Community in Person
Volunteer
Volunteering is a fantastic way to meet friends, give back, and cultivate a sense of belonging. Research has found that volunteering is particularly helpful for those who have recently lost a loved one. In a study by Dawn Carr and colleagues observing over 5,000 recently widowed spouses, subjects who volunteered two or more hours per week had lower rates of loneliness than those who did not volunteer at all.[6]
Volunteering also has benefits for the whole family. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension notes that youth volunteerism can help with the development of identity, empathy, skill-building, self-esteem, and relationships with like-minded people.[7] A study by Sandi Nenga from Southwestern University notes similar improvements in youth volunteerism. But Nenga also emphasizes that volunteering can connect multiple, diverse communities, creating better outcomes in future civic roles for youth volunteers.[8]
Join a gym
Many gyms offer classes like Zumba, pilates, yoga, kickboxing, and barre. Attending exercise classes provides opportunities to talk with others and explore your workout journeys together!
Exercise is associated with decreases in stress hormones including cortisol and adrenaline, and promotes the production of mood-enhancing endorphins.[9] For those who have social anxiety, these feel-good-feelings can help you gain confidence in seeking and maintaining new relationships.
Join a club or team
Clubs and teams offer great opportunities to make new friends and work together. Bulletins for clubs and teams may be found at your local college campus or community recreation center. A study by Scott Graupensperger and colleagues notes that being on a club sports team results in greater prosocial behaviors. Additionally, being on a team creates a strong sense of community and bonds, thus enhancing identification with others. A greater sense of identification can improve one’s mental health, social life, and well-being.[10]
Find Community Online
Online resources have made meeting like-minded people easier than ever. Today’s platforms allow us to connect with a host of individuals and groups that offer various forms of entertainment whether it is sushi classes, book clubs, or family potlucks! Of course, proper cautions are necessary when meeting people online. To help tweens and teens prepare for the potential hazards that await them on social media, we recommend they take our Social Media Readiness Course. This online course not only offers the information they need to stay safe, Dr. Bennett also shares critical wellness strategies she’s developed in over 25 years of clinical practice! Here are 4 GKIS recommended online platforms to help you connect with others
Meetup
Meetup.com is a great website to start your search for like-minded people. The groups available are diverse and range from substance abuse support groups to groups for beginner hikers! Some groups are also geared towards entire families and may host events to bring families together. You can also create your own group, however, a monthly charge to Meetup is needed to keep your group active.
Hey! VINA
Hey! VINA is a free new app with a design similar to the dating app Tinder. Hey! Vina is geared toward women and nonbinary people looking to make friends with other women and nonbinary people. The VIP membership gives users special access to certain features including faster matches, seeing who swiped right on (liked) your profile, and more.
The Dinner Party
The Dinner Party is an organization founded in 2018. The purpose of this organization is to bring grieving individuals who are between the ages 20 to 39 together. The intent is to connect and provide support for each other over dinner. They also expanded to create dinner parties for a wider audience of individuals who may be dealing with a different type of issue and would like a companion to talk to. To accommodate the recent COVID-19 guidelines, individuals are currently hosting Zoom dinner parties as a safer way to get together.
Eventbrite
Eventbrite is a popular platform used to get tickets for live events ranging from stadium concerts to yoga meetups at the park. While the service is free, the organizer of the event may require a small fee to attend while others offer their events for free.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Avery Flower for researching ways to battle loneliness, and for co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
[1] Williams, C. Y. K., Townson, A. T., Kapur, M., Ferreira, A. F., Nunn, R., Galante, J., Phillips, V., Gentry, S., & Usher-Smith, J. A. (2021). Interventions to reduce social isolation and loneliness during COVID-19 physical distancing measures: A rapid systematic review. PLoS ONE, 16(2). https://doi-org.ezproxy.csuci.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0247139
[2] Lun, V. M.-C., & Bond, M. H. (2016). Achieving subjective well-being around the world: The moderating influence of gender, age and national goals for socializing children. Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being, 17(2), 587–608. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csuci.edu/10.1007/s10902-015-9614-z
[3]Brunes, A., Hansen, M. B., & Heir, T. (2019). Loneliness among adults with visual impairment: Prevalence, associated factors, and relationship to life satisfaction. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 17. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csuci.edu/10.1186/s12955-019-1096-y
[4] Tiwari, S. (2013). Loneliness: A disease? Indian Journal of Psychiatry,55(4), 320. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.120536
[5] Beutel, M. E., Klein, E. M., Brähler, E., Reiner, I., Jünger, C., Michal, M., Wiltink, J., Wild, P. S., Münzel, T., Lackner, K. J., & Tibubos, A. N. (2017). Loneliness in the general population: Prevalence, determinants and relations to mental health. BMC Psychiatry, 17.
[6]Carr, D. C., Kail, B. L., Matz-Costa, C., & Shavit, Y. Z. (2018). Does becoming a volunteer attenuate loneliness among recently widowed older adults? The Journals of Gerontology: Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 73(3), 501–510. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csuci.edu/10.1093/geronb/gbx092
[10]Graupensperger, S., Panza, M., & Evans, M. B. (2020). Network centrality, group density, and strength of social identification in college club sport teams. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 24(2), 59–73. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csuci.edu/10.1037/gdn0000106
It’s easy to think that only people who make a series of bad choices become addicts. After all, hard work in recovery seems to switch things around for even the most hardcore addict. But brain research is uncovering processes that demonstrate the same areas in the brain for drug addiction are activated when using social media and other addictive behaviors. For some, genetic inheritance makes them particularly susceptible. Psychological research is also showing the environment plays a big role in sustaining addictive behaviors. Further, using an addictive substance can change your brain wiring immediately. With each use, that change becomes even more pronounced. That means that one momentary lapse of decision-making alters the way you experience reward and punishment. That is why experts say addiction is a disease rather than a moral failing. Once bitten, the addictive drug or behavior behaves more like a disease process. Overcoming the symptoms becomes far more difficult than a simple choice. In today’s article find out the brain processes behind addiction to understand how we are all susceptible. Then I explain the importance the environment plays on addictive behaviors and theories from the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman. After reading the article, you will know the secret inoculation to online addictions…and it’s not what you’d expect.
What is a behavioral addiction?
Behavioral addictions involve behaviors like gambling, video gaming, shopping, exercise, food, and internet and social media use. “Our brains are made to respond to rewards, which then motivates our actions. Rewards are a brilliant solution to ensure we will do behaviors that are indispensable for the individual and the species.”[1]
For our ancestors, finding foods that tasted sweet meant the food was safe to eat and triggered a rewarding, pleasurable feeling. Once rewarded, we encode a pleasant experience to memory. Now the memory is pleasurable even when the food is nowhere around. In our modern on-demand society, we are surrounded by virtual rewards on our screens, including data about the steps we walk, the calories we eat, and the likes on social media.[2]
Dopamine’s role in reward and punishment has helped us survive.
The neurotransmitter, dopamine, is a primary factor behind reward and punishment. This chemical is released in our brains when we encounter an uncomfortable stimulus, like being chased by a bear, or pleasurable stimulus, like finding berries in the wilderness. Once stimulated, we remember that information for future use. Evolutionarily speaking, these actions helped us identify edible foods, select the right partners, and avoid predators.
Dopamine is also involved in other critical functions, including movement, memory, attention, motivation, arousal, and sleep regulation.[3] Not only is dopamine released when we experience pleasure, but neuroscientists have also found that simply anticipating a reward causes dopamine release. In some circumstances, almost getting the reward is even more reinforcing than actually experiencing the reward. For example, we may be rewarded for posting on social media just by anticipating the “likes” we may receive. Another example was recognized by Netflix producers. They discovered that watching a series cliffhangers is just as satisfying to customers as watching the problem being solved during the following episode.[4]
With periodic dopamine stimulation from experiencing reward, anticipating a reward, and remembering reward, the stage is set to develop behavioral addictions.
The conditioned response of dopamine release makes leaving a rewarding task harder to do. So we seek it, keep on doing it, and miss it when we don’t have it.
How does our evolutionary-based brain wiring lead to behavioral addiction?
In a study conducted at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Volkow found behavioral and substance addicted individuals showed a reduction in dopamine D2 receptors. These receptors regulate the frontal part of our brain that allows us to exert self-control. With repeated and frequent administrations of dopamine, the brain progressively loses these D2 receptors.[5] With the desensitization due to lost receptors, we experience a “ludic loop,” a kind of hypnotic state that occurs when we are hooked in doing something with no real reward. Being in a ludic loop is like being trapped in an empty state of limbo, which is characteristic of addictive behavior.[6] The first high sets the trap, and from then on you are simply going through the motions unable to get out.
Furthermore, these brain patterns tap into the oldest parts of our reptilian brain as well as the newer cerebral cortex that surrounds it. With addiction highjacking the emotional seat of our brain (the limbic system) and our control center (the prefrontal region), we lock into reward pursuit and avoid actions that are less likely to bring a reward.[7] Our wiring is built to lock us into these patterns based on evolutionary principles.
Our environment also makes a difference.
A classic 1950s experiment that illustrates addiction involves rats pushing a lever for water or water laced with cocaine. Rats will choose water laced with cocaine over all other stimuli, resulting in a dead rat. But in the 1970s, a psychologist named Bruce Alexander noticed that these experiments were always done in empty cages. Nothing in the rat’s environment was meaningful but the drug. He wondered if this was because of the appeal of drug or could it be because of the environment they were in?
He tested his theory by building “rat parks,” where the rats had everything that makes a rat’s life worth living. They were equipped with exercise wheels, colored balls, and other rats to socialize and mate with. Then he set up the two kinds of waters. The researcher found that when the experiment was administered in “rat park”, the rats had stopped preferring the water with the drug in it. He took this outcome as an illustration that a meaningful environment can influence the pursuit of addictive behaviors. “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is a sense of meaning and connection with others.”[8]
The brain hacks baked into screen technology and how they are impacting us.
In the digital age, we have multiple real-life and virtual identities where cookies mean very different things. We are motivated by online rewards just as we are offline. Programmers and developers have found ways to continually bombard us with new types of rewards like “likes” on social media and “kills” in video games. The first time these activities brought us pleasure, a path was forged for compulsive reward-seeking online.
It’s not unhealthy to seek pleasure that has meaning and brings you happiness, the problem is that the resulting addictive behaviors rarely provide us with meaning. The passion fades to a dull pursuit of something less than we felt initially. It’s the classic chasing of that first high.
To reverse that process, some must detox from that behavior and cultivate an environment rich in meaning so we do not return to the addictive cycle. Instead of a sterile room with one lever that delivers digital cocaine, we must invest in a room rich with opportunity for creativity, socialization, good food, exercise, rejuvenating sleep, productivity, and play.
Three Paths to Happiness
Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, studies resilience. He believes there are three paths for the pursuit of happiness, the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. To inoculate oneself from addiction, one must have a good or meaningful life characterized by personal meaning.
The Pleasant Life
Dr. Seligman describes the pleasant life as the pursuit of pleasurable things. This life revolves around the “ludic loops” of social media likes, endless dating, partying, and learning the skills to amplify them. This life is “not very modifiable.” It makes one vulnerable to routine, addictions, and obsession.
Online, people are extrinsically rewarded through the “likes” of other people and “views” they obtained in their profiles, continuing the habit even after knowing they no longer want to.[9] The person becomes unable to reliably predict when the behavior will occur, how long it will go on, and when it will stop. The problem with the life of pleasure is that it’s hedonistic and lacks meaningfulness.
The Good Life
Dr. Seligman describes the good life with having an “engagement to one’s work, where the individual may be so involved in his craft, that time stops for him,” a harmonious passion where the individual works to strive without the need of feeling obligated or forced. [10] There are no positive emotions, instead it is characterized by flow, a concept first identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1990.
Flow is a mental state of intense concentration where the individual is incredibly focused on an enjoyable activity. They are, “in the zone.” This idea has been around for thousands of years and was predominate in eastern cultures. Flow is distinct from pleasure because, during flow, you can’t feel anything.
The Meaningful Life
Dr. Seligman explains the meaningful life as when an individual knows their highest strengths and use them to belong to and be of the service to something larger than themselves.[13] This is important because it provides an individual meaning in life through helping others and having a positive effect in the world, something a life of pleasure cannot provide.
We can’t rely on technology to give us meaning.
Technology is great for instant gratification when we need it. It’s not only the screen itself that is so addictive but the content that is accessible on it. We use technology when we have a psychological need when we feel confused about what to do next, or when we feel we have no effect on the world. Adam Atler describes how these are the moments when we’re most prone to developing behavioral addictions. He analogizes technology as being an “adult pacifier. It soothes and calms our minds by delivering small hits of bottomless entertainment and information.”[14] It characterizes a pleasurable life.
Of course, screens and technology are not all bad. They enable us to be connected with our loved ones and offer apps for health, reading, exercise, meditation, the weather, and education. Technology isn’t the source of meaning, rather it is a bridge to the tasks that bring us meaning, the tasks that allow us to develop a skill and have a positive effect on the world.
Are you using tech as a bridge to a meaningful life, or are you still stuck in the pursuit of pleasure?
Thanks to Andrew Weissmann for writing this important GKIS article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, emphasized the strength of social influence and how it can create meaning in life. We all need purpose. Despite its challenges, sometimes social media can help spread positive influence. Today’s GKIS article highlights some beautiful bright spots on GoFundMe and in the Twitter community. I hope you find it inspiring to join the joyful fray!
Paying it Forward: GoFundMe
GoFundMe.com is a popular website used for personal fundraising. For example, Dana Barrett’s tragic story of suffering from a traumatic spinal injury left her unable to breathe on her own. She’d already suffered a great loss with the death of both of her parents when she was only twenty-one years old. Now, after her accident, she was left struggling with quadriplegia. Dana is a loving, positive, and strong individual who is mightily loved and appreciated by her community. Her medical expenses will cost over $500,000. GoFundMe offered a platform for her loving community to come together for support. At the time of this writing, her fund was nearing $300,000 and growing!
Recent updates say that, with the support and money coming in from GoFundMe.com, Dana has been able to eat and drink on her own! She was told those goals were outside of her reach. The online community has consistently promoted events since her accident via social media, attracting the attention of singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan, comedian Amy Schumer, and actor Adrian Grenier.
The Ripple Effect
It doesn’t take a celebrity to spread generosity and joy; it can begin straight from your social media feed.
Recently I experimented with the ripple effect meaning one good deed spreads and encourages others. By offering thoughtful comments of appreciation and support on Instagram to friends and acquaintances, I let them know I read their captions and enjoyed their photos rather than mindlessly scrolling and clicking the heart eyes emoji. I took Martin Seligman’s active listening techniques and applied them to social media posts.
I saw a positive return on my posts almost immediately. I felt connected in an online world where connection is sometimes lost. Soon I started messaging people I wanted to be friends with just by watching their Instagram stories and saying something nice about the content. In a short time, I felt like I had a whole tribe of new friends eager to connect and share the joy.
Social media isn’t all about distraction. With a little bit of authentic, mindful effort, it is a tool for a fun and convenient connection.
The Positive Impact of Twitter Influencers
Twitter is, in my opinion, the fastest way to find hilarious memes, political content, and trolling. Trollingrefers to the act of intentionally fighting with someone online, often in a joking manner, just to spark a reaction.
My favorite Twitter account right now is that of rapper @lilNasX. He’s used his charismatic online presence to create the longest-leading Billboard No.1 track “Old Town Road.” He takes Twitter harassment and comments from “trolls” as gracefully as anyone I’ve ever seen.
In response to his brushing a mean comment off his shoulders recently, comedian Chris D’elia tweeted, “We love you, kid.” The music industry seems to have welcomed LilNas silly endless remixes of “Old Town Road” (ft. Billy Ray Cyrus, Diplo, Young Thug & popular meme “yodeling kid” Mason, Seol Town Road K pop version, and Cupcakkke) with open arms.
In response to lilNasX’s release“C7osure (you like)” on the last day of Pride month, Twitter went wild for LilNas’s came out as a full-time African American rapper LGBTQ representative with a country NO.1 hit and a hilarious Twitter account. The LGBTQ community loved it, adopting it as a new theme song, a voice spreading positivity, energy, and love.
Thank you LilNas for your positive representation. I found it so positive and inspiring. It’s time to use social media as a tool for positivity. The first step starts with your online footprint!
I’m Kaitlin Hoover, GKIS intern. Paying it forward is a great way to feel connected to the world and finding representatives that make you laugh is a great start. Check out GKIS article Gaming Together Increases Family Bonding for more ways to incite spontaneous joy and connection!
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
