We're back with "All the Lonely People," a series diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives. This week: can tech cure our loneliness? Companies like Meeno (an AI relationship coaching app), Peoplehood (a platform that organizes guided group conversations), Timeleft (an app which matches strangers for dinner), and Bumble for Friends all say they want to help people make more and better connections. But do we need tech solutions to what may partially be a tech problem? Brittany sits down with Sam Pressler, who studies community and social connection at the University of Virginia's Karsh Institute of Democracy, and Vauhini Vara, veteran tech reporter and author of the upcoming book Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, to break it all down.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the significance of loneliness in today's society?
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So I think to a certain degree, people can... understand the value, or at least they see the utility in getting on dating apps and looking for people to date, right? But also there's so much fatigue from people matching apps like, you know, OkCupid, where admittedly I did find my husband. Congratulations. Success story. But people are tired of them.
Would people even be excited to do the same kind of song and dance to meet friends? Okay, I have a hot take. Okay, I'm ready.
Okay. A couple of years ago, I spent a year in Madrid because my husband had a sabbatical. We started the year, I didn't speak Spanish at all. And then I took intensive Spanish classes and started to learn. And then about halfway through the year, I got on this website called ConversationExchange.com, which is very like old school, not some new bells and whistles, well-funded startup or anything.
And I wrote to people on this website who were Spanish speakers who wanted to practice their English and started meeting up with them in person. I now have three very good friends in Madrid who I met through that site. Notably, we don't use the site anymore. We just used it to meet up the first time. And we, you know, we talk on Zoom all the time when we're in different countries.
When I'm in Madrid, we spend a lot of time together. And like they're three of my close friends and I met them on a website, I will say.
There's something really interesting in what he said. And I think it gets this idea that like tools are neutral, right? And what we've decided is to apply values to these tools, like growth, scale, efficiency, values of the market.
two tools that ultimately if our end goal is facilitating human relationships and community those values are misapplied and so wahini what i hear in your experience is like that was actually a tool that was well designed to facilitate connection right there are other examples of that as well right there's this group that i wrote about it's in vermont called the front porch forum and they're like the opposite of next door like they are intentionally designed to facilitate slow frictionful interactions that demonstrate social trust in neighborhoods
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Chapter 2: Can technology help reduce loneliness?
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