Jennifer Senior on urban loneliness. New research, Senior says, suggests that living alone in a big city might not be so lonely.
There’s a common conception of cities as isolating places where individuals are lost among the multitudes. But the basic need for social interaction also encourages solitaires (as the article labels them) to get out into the world, and in a vibrant city, there’s a lot out there.
University of Pennsylvania sociologist Keith Hampton makes an interesting comparison between cities and the Internet, citing them as means of connecting people on a massive scale. “Hampton says he views the Internet as the ultimate city, the last stop on the continuum of human connectedness.” I’m reminded of Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk masterpiece, Snow Crash, which imagines its version of the Internet (the Metaverse) as a single, 100-meter-wide city street (the Street).
I can relate to this quote from NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg: “A lot of people who live alone say it’s very hard to enter their apartments and stare at the walls when there’s so much going on outside.” Is it that there’s so much going on outside, or that these people feel lonely inside? I live alone, and I’m not sure. Probably a bit of both.
One more quote: “[L]oneliness isn’t about objective matters, like whether we live alone. It’s about subjective matters, like whether we feel alone.”
Via rach
