There is a new silence inhabiting our lives. It is not that of empty rooms, not that of friends who are not looking for you, but the one that creeps in even when the smartphone vibrates, when a notification snatches us from our thoughts, when a call lights up the screen and not the heart.
You no longer need to stay home alone to be lonely. All it takes is a feed full of faces, a text that doesn’t arrive, a call that doesn’t warm up. A reading tick that doesn’t ark, reminiscent of our generation looking at the phone hoping it would ring.
Loneliness today is not isolation, but overload. Of contacts, of digital words, of images that flow quickly without leaving anything inside.
The promise of continuous connection is proving, more and more, to be a deception. We are present everywhere, but absent from ourselves. We share moments, but no longer emotions. And in relationships – the real ones – there is a void that is hard to fill.
The pandemic, which has made everything more difficult, has only accelerated an already ongoing process: the erosion of emotional closeness. Today it is difficult to stop, to really listen, to look into one’s eyes without getting distracted. Communication has become rapid, but impoverished. Empathy, a rare commodity.
Meanwhile, mental health scores the bill. There are growing discomforts, disorders, and frailties that no emoji can tell. Especially in the latest generation, the youngest, who prefer to lock themselves in their rooms rather than go out with friends. Relationships become liquid, temporary, light to the point of disappearance.
It is time to give weight back to the word “closeness.” Because if we don’t learn to really be together, we will end up connected to everything — except ourselves.
The article The new loneliness comes from TheNewyorker.
