Human Intimacy in the Digital Age
i want to introduce you
to someone his name
is kazushike nishida and seen here
he’s having dinner with his family
nice right but let me tell you something
it’s not his family because he rented
them
he rented these mere strangers to
pretend to be his family
for fifty dollars an hour
now why would anyone ever want
to rent a family according to the
american psychologist abraham maslow
intimacy is a human need
as much as we need food water warmth
we need a sense of belonging
but according to the u.s census 28
percent
more than a quarter of the entire
american population are living alone
and that’s a 10 increase within the past
decade
and because of this loneliness
industries like rent a family exist
allowing people like nishida and many
more like him
to rent families rent friends friend
bosses
but the question is do we really
want to live in a society with the need
to rent
companionship if loneliness
is the issue that invigorated this need
for human connection
then what is causing this increase in
loneliness
hello my name is vassen shantipaporn
and today i want to talk about how and
why
loneliness is increasing in an age with
social technology
surrounding us with 3.484 billion social
media users and 60 billion messages a
day
we’re more connected than we’ve ever
been in the history of mankind but still
more and more people are feeling lonely
despite the various tools allowing them
to connect
in fact health resources and service
administration reveals
that one in five americans say they’re
socially isolated
that’s 65.4 million people
and loneliness isn’t just detrimental to
our mental health but plays a havoc on
our physical health as well
according to julian holt lundstad
experiencing loneliness can be as deadly
as smoking
not one not two but 15
cigarettes a day
so why is loneliness increasing in an
age with social technology surrounding
us
firstly imagine imagine a notification
just popped up on your phone and you can
feel it buzzing in your pockets right
now
what is chemically happening in your
brain
a surge of dopamine is released in the
brain’s opioid system as you anticipate
you anticipate who sent you the message
and what the message is about and here’s
the key part
the anticipation causes us to feel a
pleasurable sensation
and when we experience this pleasure
over and
over and over again the pleasure turns
into cravings
and then addiction
and this process is better known as the
dopamine driven feedback loop and
through this
loop our society has grown to interact
less because our attention is turned
away
from face-to-face communication
even top executives at social media
companies like facebook are feeling
guilty
the former vice president of user growth
at facebook said this
i feel tremendous guilt
the short term dopamine driven feedback
loops that we have created
are destroying how society works
without a doubt the addiction to social
media
has deteriorated real life conversations
and even even when we even if we do
interact
through text online it’s not as
meaningful as real life conversations
because it’s not real time
sherry turkle reveals that teenagers
avoid making telephone calls in real
time communication
because they’re fearful that they might
reveal too much
and because of this 61 percent
of teenagers rather text than talk face
to face
so with a society with
less interaction and addiction it’s no
wonder that our society
has become more disconnected but in the
future
not only will social media play a role
in how we humans interact
but also artificial intelligence
in fact there are already ai
applications that are trying to solve
our loneliness issues
for example replica is an ai chatbot
a chatbot that is your friend that you
can text anytime
24 7 and guess what they respond to you
back
instantly
and because of things like this our
society may become something like this
a society dominated by robots
we may be able to program these robots
to be our faithful companion
to learn all our preferences to play
games with us
fulfill emotional needs and with robots
we don’t need to set aside schedules
from our busy lives they’re always free
we don’t need to experience that awkward
science when talking with real people
we don’t need to try to understand its
feelings
but even with this amount of control
with the problem of loneliness be solved
no matter what humans need
some sort of intimacy from other humans
somewhere somehow
if i were to tell you today that
technology diminishes human relationship
and it’s the pure causation to
loneliness i’d be telling a lie
because that’s not true in fact
i think technology has great potential
to
enrich our lives but only if we know how
to use it
in a modern society so that it doesn’t
take away face-to-face
conversation no one wants to live in a
society with the need to rent
companionship
no one wants to live in a society with
the need to talk to robots
at the expense of meaningful
conversations
so stop texting and start
talking before it’s too late
and all you can do is to live in a
society with the need to rent families
at fifty dollars an hour thank you