We Need to Hang Out by Billy Baker

Author:Billy Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

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A few weeks after my visit to Yale, my twenty-fifth high school reunion rolled around, followed two days later by my birthday. The confluence of these two events brought to a head something that had been percolating since SXSW and had come up in interesting ways during my trip to New Haven. Yet it was that one-two punch of a reunion and a birthday that forced me to finally take a position on something many people had asked me about. And that was the role of social media in friendship and loneliness.

It was a topic I had avoided in my original article, and then kind of sidestepped ever since, usually pointing out that I’d yet to see any conclusive evidence of its effect on loneliness. There were studies that showed those who felt lonely or socially isolated spent more time online than those who did not. A 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that young adults who used social media the most, defined as more than 50 visits a week, tripled the odds that they would feel socially isolated over those who went online nine times or less. But there was a chicken-and-egg problem in such research. It was unclear whether social media made people feel lonely, which would mean it was bad, or if the already lonely went to social media looking for connection, in which case I’d argue it was good.

It was a question I fielded several times in interviews and on panels, and I’d always slide out the side door by pointing out that the evidence didn’t feel solid in either direction, so it was up to each person to decide whether it felt healthy for them. Which is just a roundabout way of saying I was struggling to figure out whether it was healthy for me.

When I was in the Yale dorm that night, George made some sort of crack about my being old, and I responded by saying, “Tell me about it; I’ve got my twenty-fifth high school reunion in a couple weeks.” One of George’s friends had stopped by, and he chimed in to say that he had a theory that Facebook had largely rendered reunions unnecessary, for it had robbed everyone of the joy of catching up. Several light bulbs lit up in my brain, and there was much to unpack, but the conversation moved elsewhere and I gave it no more thought. Then the following day, when I was having my conversation with Laurie Santos, she mentioned an accidental breakthrough that some of her students had had. During a lecture, she had mentioned a study that showed people who quit social media reported being happier, and a few of her eager-beaver students misinterpreted that as an assignment to quit social media. And sure as shit, when they reported the results of their accidental assignment, it was with the same outcome: They felt happier.

My own personal experience with social media feels fairly typical. If I were to

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