The Loneliness Epidemic

By Samira Jafar
Exclusive to The Times Kuwait

TikTok gets a lot of hate and slander for contributing to brain rot, but conversely, it has caused me to have a lot of epiphanies over the past few years. The other day, I was scrolling on my For You page when a video popped up of a young woman using the stair master. The caption was something along the lines of: “when you ask me to make plans with you, but I need to finish my gym session, journal, spend three hours alone, and be in bed by 9.”

The comments were mostly agreeing with this sentiment, this frustration. There was a shared belief that working on yourself took first place over spending time with others. What was most interesting was that most of these people didn’t seem to mind the sacrifice. If anything, they seemed pleased with themselves. I saw similar discourse on a video where someone asked a popular fitness creator if she lost friends when she decided to work on herself. Her response was that yes, she did, and that the only friends she had left were people she met online.

A third TikTok was what made things click for me. Someone made a video about how community is the enemy of capitalism. For example, capitalism doesn’t want your friend to drive you to the airport; it wants you to call an Uber. It doesn’t want your friend to offer you a place to stay when you visit them; it wants you to get an Airbnb. In our quest for our utmost level of personal comfort, convenience, and hassle-free living, we have gotten rid of our need for community.

We see ourselves, in some ways, as being above community. Why should I spend time with others when I can spend time by myself? In some ways, this does make sense, and I am guilty of it, too. We have a limited amount of time in our day and things we need to get done and places we need to go to. Sometimes, spending time with others falls by the wayside. But in my opinion, it is one thing to navigate the allotment of community in your daily life and another completely to skirt it altogether. Now, we see more people falling into the habit of the latter. It is easier to be alone, so I will be alone. Being alone will produce the best version of myself.

Although this is a personal take some might have, generally, its logic is flawed. If you spend all your time alone, working on yourself and reading and being physically active, you will improve in some ways; physically, perhaps, but not necessarily intellectually.

Reading and journaling aren’t the sole sources of intellect. To be intellectual, you need to come into contact with diverse opinions and situations that may be uncomfortable to face.

Furthermore, social intelligence takes a hit when we isolate ourselves. Being alone with your thoughts produces tunnel vision where you are unable to see past your own experiences. I also believe that empathy is something that we need to actively work on, which is difficult to do when you are never forced to have it. The only way to become a more empathetic person is to deal with people.

Additionally, humans are social animals. It is only recently that our species has started to believe that we are better off alone. With children, we are aware that too much screen time is bad for them, and that children today are worse at developing socially. Why can’t we make the same case for adults? And screens are not limited to phones and laptops. Facing the screen of the treadmill and (yes) even the pages of a book more than we face real life will be socially and emotionally detrimental to us.

What is most interesting about the argument for being alone is that it enables us to be the best version of ourselves. I disagree with this; it enables us to be the most convenient version of ourselves. Just like Ubers and Airbnbs are used for convenience, the act of avoiding people in the name of ‘prioritizing yourself’ is done for you to face only minimal discomfort throughout your life. But to be the best version of yourself, shouldn’t you have to go through uncomfortable things, which can include getting hurt by people or painful conversations?

But there’s another side to this coin. I like being alone. It makes me happy. I get to recharge and be creative and relax and do the things I like without worrying about catering to other people or coming across as boring.

And I work, some people might argue, a ‘social’ job, where 95% of my time is spent interacting with other people. I also feel that prioritizing myself makes me happier, especially when people I would entertain in the past didn’t have my best interests at heart or didn’t share a valuable connection with me.

Then there is the painful truth: sometimes it can feel like we have outgrown our surroundings. We’ve all felt this way in some capacity or another. So what’s the answer to that problem? Do we keep people in our orbit for the sake of feeling social, even if we do not necessarily benefit anything from interacting with them? This is kind of the mindset I have – I will never cut anyone off unless they’ve actively harmed me, and I will make time, even sparingly, to see the people I know, even if I don’t necessarily feel that they add a strong amount of value to my life.

But other people see things differently. If you work, for example, a ten-hour job, you may feel more reluctant to reach out to people when you could be spending that time on yourself. You may, at least, be more selective with your time. Sometimes, these people have even actively harmed you: maybe they make you feel bad about yourself. Maybe they prioritize gossip or harmful habits or low forms of conversations.

In these cases, everyone is entitled to make their own choices about what ‘comes first.’ But a line between fostering community and valuing yourself has to be drawn somewhere, lest you lose one component or the other in the quest for ultimate fulfillment. It’s a question we would benefit to at least think about, especially in the day and age where time is more and more of a commodity and the self is so quickly sacrificed to industry.

Discomfort can be the price we pay for community and belonging. When we look back on our lives, will we be the proudest of how much we worked out or how many hours we spent working? I’m not sure, but I believe that we might regret not seeking out community or fostering a sense of belonging with those around us.

Samira Jafar is an English instructor at Kuwait University. She is the author of two collections of poetry. You can reach her at @samirawritesstuff on instagram or samirajafar.substack.com