?? Friends ≠ Followers: On My Mind

Surgeon General’s Warning

“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor.” That’s from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy ’s recent call for a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms. As Dr. Murthy noted, it’s not just parents who are desperate for solutions. “Last fall, I gathered with students to talk about mental health and loneliness,” he wrote. “As often happens in such gatherings, they raised the issue of social media… There was a sadness in their voices, as if they knew what was happening to them but felt powerless to change it.”

Loneliness has been a primary concern of Dr. Murthy’s for years, and was the subject of his 2020 book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. When he called loneliness an epidemic back in 2017, it made headlines. But it’s no longer disputed. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece on our “epidemic of isolation,” noting that the number of Americans who say they’re lonely has gone up from 46% in 2018 to nearly 60% today. The answer, of course, is more connection.

Dr. Murthy is doing his part. In addition to his call for a social media warning, he’s issued an advisory on loneliness and hosts a podcast, “House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy,” where he explores how we can build more connected and meaningful lives.

Dr. Murthy shared how a few years ago he made a concerted effort to stay connected by building a “moai,” which is a tradition from Okinawa, Japan of creating a circle of friends to offer friendship and support. “We made an explicit commitment to have each others' backs,” he said. “We would video conference every two months and share our fears, disappointments, dreams, finances, and relationships. In between, if something would come up, the three of us would do a call. It changed my life.” As he said, having friends and experiencing friends are two different things.

Nourishing our need for connection is challenging in a technology-saturated world that, by connecting us with everything, often disconnects us from what’s most important. Studies have long shown a connection between social media use and loneliness, especially among the young. As Dr. Murthy points out, social media can make us believe that it’s the quantity of our connections that matter. “What we used to think of as friends became our followers,” he said. “But your followers are not the people who are showing up for you in the middle of a crisis.”

Disconnection and loneliness shouldn’t be part of the inheritance we pass on to our children. “The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children,” wrote Dr. Murthy. “Now is the time to summon the will to act. Our children’s well-being is at stake.”

And a world of real connection is possible. Dr. Murthy ended with a call to action: nothing is more powerful, he said, than a group of people who care deeply about a cause and bring their voices together to call for change.

Speaking of Loneliness

“What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience.”

— Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951)

The Ultimate Frontier

Sad news with the announcement that William Anders, who took the historic “Earthrise” photo as part of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, died at the age of 90 when a plane he was piloting crashed into the water near the San Juan Islands. Earthrise, the photo of the blue orb of the earth rising out of the shadows, was the first collective selfie, and in showing the fragility of the earth against the expanse of space, it helped fuel the environmental movement.

I’ve always loved what Anders said about the mission: “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” To me, it shows the possibilities of our newest tool for exploration, because the ultimate use of AI is helping us connect more fully with what it means to be human.

AI is broadening our frontiers in every direction. And the ultimate frontier is not outer space, but inner space. To paraphrase Anders, we’ve come all this way to develop artificial intelligence, and the most important thing we’re discovering is what makes us uniquely human.

More Human, Super Humane

Love this important and wide-ranging speech about AI by Reid Hoffman , given while receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Perugia. He urges us not to lose sight of what’s at the center of the debate: “Us. Humans. Humanity.” AI is not a replacement of humanity, but an extension.

As Reid says, “We humans are homo techne: humans as toolmakers and tool users. And more than this, we evolve with and through our tools. Through the tools we create, we become neither less human nor superhuman, nor post-human. We become more human. And with AI, we have the opportunity to become super humane… AI, with its availability, patience and simulated empathy, can have a profound impact on humanity at large. Not everyone has reliable access to human kindness and support. But when that becomes something you can have on tap, it increases your own capacity for being able to be kind to other people.”

You can listen to the whole speech here.

BEFORE YOU GO

Neologism of the Month

New words, terms or phrases that define our time

“Brainrot” — “refers primarily to low-value internet content and the effects caused by spending too much time consuming it,” writes Jessica Roy in 纽约时报 . The term has been around for years, but its usage has risen in tandem with the condition it describes. It might be one of the few conditions in which thinking you’ve never had it means you have a particularly bad case!

Game, Set, Match

I love commencement time — it’s like wisdom season, when our culture takes a moment to stop, reflect, and reinforce ancient truths about how we really thrive and what it means to live a good life. One of my favorites this year came from Roger Federer’s address at Dartmouth College on the dangers of perfectionism. As he says, “Perfection is impossible... When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.”

Table For One

The connection between our ubiquitous phones and our crisis of loneliness is well known, but M. Nolan Gray, writing in The Atlantic, points to a lesser known factor: the disappearance of the dining room. As Gray notes, many new apartments and homes have no space for tables and chairs, so eating is confined to couches and bedrooms, “designing loneliness into American floor plans.”

According to a study by the Food Marketing Institute, nearly half of our meals are eaten alone. And it’s not just an American phenomenon — in Korea, eating alone has become so common that there’s a term for it, “honbap,” a portmanteau of “hon” (“alone”), and “bap” (“rice,” or “food”). Add to that the fact that many studies have shown a connection between eating alone and our mental and physical health.

Food and connection are both fundamental human needs. They don’t have to be done together, but meal times have long served as foundations of social connection. Sustenance isn’t just about what we eat, but who we eat with.

So you don’t necessarily need to call a contractor and start work on a dining room, but calling a friend for dinner is a great idea!

Grace Note

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Best,

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