Stephen Marche Is Facebook Making Us Lonely

In the article Is Facebook Making Us Lonely, Stephen Marche stated that Facebook interferes with people’s real friendships, and it distances them from each other. Facebook makes us lonelier. Being lonely is extremely bad for people’s health since it may influence people’s memory, emotion, cognition, and sleep. I disagree with Marche’s opinion since Facebook is not making us lonely. One reason I disagree with Marche is because there is no relationship between using Facebook and diminished social interaction. The researchers indicate that social media use and loneliness are not a causal link. Another reason I disagree with Marche is because there is zero evidence shows that we are more lonelier than ever. The quality and quantity of Americans’

Stephen Marche talked about Yvette Vickers who was a former playboy playmate and B-movie star. When Vickers’ neighbor found her dead, Vickers already became a mummy, and her computer was still opened. Vickers away from her family, friends, and immediate social circle, but she could be found via fan conventions and internet site. Marche asserted that many people do not face-to-face communicate with family friends because of Facebook. There is no evidence that Facebook cause “social displacement”. Vickers was not close to her family and friends for some reasons, and she liked to keep in touch with her fans on line. It could be that Vickers was lonely to begin with and turns to social media for comfort, rather than that the social media causing her loneliness in the first place. Facebook is one option for her, but it is not the cause. We do not know how much people visit and talk on the phone with family and friends, or take part in other social behaviors. Jeffrey Hall who is a University of Kansas professor and two doctoral students studied the amount of time that early adopters of

His book, Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970, refuted Stephen Marche’s viewpoint. Fischer explored forty years of survey research, which studied whether and how Americans’ personal ties have changed, including “their involvement with relatives, the number of friends they have and their contacts with those friends, and the amount of practical and emotional support they are able to count on” (p. xi). The book revealed that Americans have fewer relatives than before, and formal parties have declined. However, the overall quantity of personal relationships and the quality of those relationships has not diminished. People’ contact with family and friends and their feelings of emotional connectedness have just changed relatively little since the 1970s. Americans still pay attention to family and friends’ value, and they are willing to maintain the relationships to adapt to social environmental change. People’ personal ties remain strong. Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, but we use Wechat and QQ, which have similar function like Facebook. We often contact our family and friends through these social media. Chinese who studied overseas called their family one to two times a month about thirty years ago because international phone charges are very expensive. This situation made them lonelier than us. Social media does not alienate my relationship with my family and