In the article “ Is Facebook making us lonely” by Stephen Marche , Facebook has a very big population, it was the first web site to receive 1 trillion pages views in a month and 2.7 billion likes. The company’s potential value of $100billion.reams of published research show that it’s the quality, not the quantity of social interaction, that best predicts loneliness. 20 percent of Americans about 60 million people are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness. As john Cacioppo says loneliness burrows deep: when we drew blood from older adults and analyzed their white cells, we found that loneliness somehow penetrated the deepest recesses of the cell to alter the way genes were being expressed. Loneliness doesn’t only affect the brain but also the basic process of DNA transcription. When you are lonely your whole body is lonely. But loneliness and being alone are not the same. Different study show that loneliness has grown but the history of our use of technology is what really making us lonely.
Loneliness is growing but is the social media the reason or it’s just part of it?  Is trust the main reason of loneliness? I had so many questions after I read “Is Facebook making us lonely”. In 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said that’s they had no one to discuss important matters with. However, in 2004 24percent had no one to talk to. I find that sad because loneliness keeps growing, I find it like a dangerous sickness is it going to fallow to out next generation. In the article it showed that in the late 40s, the United States had 2500 clinical psychologists, 30000 social workers and 500 marriage and family therapists. However, in 2010 the united states had 77000 clinical psychologists, 192000 clinical social workers, 400,000 nonclinical social workers, 50000 marriage and family therapist, 105,000 mental health counselors, 220000 substance abuse counselors, 17,000 nurse psychotherapists, and 30,000 life coaches. This makes me wonder how life would be in 20 years. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon showed that increasing internet usage was already concurring with increasing loneliness.
A study in Australia showed that people with unhappy family relationship seek companionship through other means including Facebook the study also show that people who are lonely spend more time on Facebook. Now after reading this I have come to my own conclusion social media might have a part of why we feel lonely but people usually use social media because they are lonely. A recent college graduate Moira burke did a study on 1200 Facebook users she said that the effect of Facebook depends on what you bring to it, her conclusion was that’s social network can make people feel worst about themselves, or they can feel motived. Facebook doesn’t destroy friendships but it doesn’t make them either Cacioppo says, he also says the greater the proportion of face to face interactions, the less lonely you are, the greater the proportion of online interaction, the lonelier you are, Facebook is mere a tool he says and like any tool its effectiveness will depend on its user. I agree with this everyone can control the way they use social media and how it effects them. I don’t have Facebook or twitter or any social media so I don’t know how it really feel to be so addicted to it as some people say , a girl I know back from high school said that she is so addicted to Facebook is like a drug , she said that sometimes she stays on it for 8 hours . I find that crazy sending 8 hours of your life texting and checking on people you barely know.
