In April I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Cancer sucks and I also felt incredibly alone. I live far away from my family, I’m single, I don’t really know my neighbors and I’m not an active member of a religious institution. Like many Americans, I’m far removed from the ‘village’ infrastructure we are supposed to look to in our times of need. The people you’d traditionally expect to stop by with a casserole or schlep you home from a doctor's appointment. Like many Americans, I’ve spent a lifetime working overtime, moving States to chase jobs and generally feeling a disconnect from any community I'm supposed to be a part of.
We’re in a loneliness epidemic. We’ve all felt it to some degree over the last couple of years — if our growing communal fantasy of moving to Stars Hollow and growing our own tomatoes is any indication. The Surgeon General has officially declared it. It’s social media, the pandemic, the general cadence of modern life — but add it all up and it’s very real. And the impact on our society, young people and families in particular, has the potential to be drastic and the effects felt for years to come.
When I was going through cancer treatment, people did show up for me, they weren’t neighbors, they weren’t college friends, they weren’t distant cousins … they were the people I met from civic engagement. I post a lot about politics on the internet — and through that I’ve built a community of people based on our shared values.
The thing is, while these are people I originally met online, they are all relationships I’ve moved off of it. We have phone chats, we go to events, we meet each other's significant others - we talk about politics via text incessantly. While social media can often scratch the itch of social connection in our brains, it doesn’t replace the benefits of genuine, in-person friends and connections. There is a reason that despite the fact that we are all connecting with hundreds of people online daily, so many of us feel lonelier than ever before.
Authentic connections keep us grounded in terms of how we perceive our own lives, the innate value of all human beings, and the facts about the world we live in. Moreover, social media algorithms are at their most threatening when influencing individuals who feel lonely or rejected by society, creating echo chambers that amplify feelings of victimhood and blame, while simultaneously providing a simulacrum of a community full of people who confirm their (false and/or cult-friendly) perspectives. This is especially dangerous when someone has zero authentic real-world relationships to keep them tethered to reality in their offline hours.
The digital era has created a fascinating paradox: we experience more connectivity than our brains can handle yet feel lonelier than ever. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar has posited that our brains can handle only 150 relationships, a number far exceeded by a nightly scroll on Instagram. The result is that people have many online connections, but the real ties—the ones that improve our quality of life—are fewer than ever. The loneliness epidemic is a public health crisis, and its correlation with our fracturing communities gets at the very heart of what it means to have a happy life—being cared for and caring for other people.
While we might no longer be forced to farm with our neighbor to feed ourselves through the winter, we still share resources. How should we run our schools? Our police? When should we repave our sidewalks? At even larger scales, the act of policymaking is just village building. It’s deciding the contours, pulleys, and levers of society.
Some of our elected officials (we won’t name names) would love to send us back in time. The feed off a nostalgic fantasy of the Pleasantville– style neighborliness, but without mentioning the structural inequalities and regressive ideologies that go along with it. Baking sourdough all day is fun until you can’t have your own bank account.
But just because the tradwives are currently dominating my FYP doesn’t mean they get to own the totality of the conversations. Building community is the core of humanity, it’s the way we connect, it’s the way support each other, it’s the way we get through the hard times. It’s the fundamental flaw of the tradwife lifestyle pushed by the algorithm, it’s fun to grow all your own vegetables and heal yourself with tinctures until you get cancer. Then you want modern medicine and food from the grocery store.
For me, the cure to loneliness wasn’t found at the pickleball court or at a running club. It was found in a community of people who care about the same things that I do. And then when I was down — they cared about me.
I created the emilyinyourphone@gmail.com Instagram account and newsletter to reach women where they are to help them find new ways to get involved in politics and consumer political news In our book Democracy in Retrograde, our goal is to empower you to find a way to weave civic engagement into your everyday life in a sustainable way, however that looks. There’s a quiz to find your civic personality, journaling prompts because we know you are hopeless and worksheets to help you find your personal mission statement and your civic calendar. It’s about finding a way to get involved that fills your cup, builds community and pushes for changes that reflect the things you care about most.
Excerpted from DEMOCRACY IN RETROGRADE by Emily Amick and Sami Sage. Copyright © by Emily Amick and Samantha Sage. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
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