Digital Isolation Quotes

The more social media we have, the more we think we're connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other.

I'm equally guilty of using technology - I Twitter, I text people, I chat. But I think there's something strangely insidious about it that it makes us think we're closer when in fact we're not seeing each other, we're not connecting.

The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it's allowed is silos of interest.

Your filter bubble is your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. What's in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But you don't decide what gets in - and more importantly, you don't see what gets edited out.

A troll's life is a no-physical-contact existence. You will die alone, as you die daily, online.

We have to wonder whether digital technology, rather than making it easier to communicate, is actually doing the opposite. We now sit alone at a keyboard, firing off zeros and ones into the ether. Offices are silent.

Social media is making us more anti-social.

We haven't evolved as loners, we need each other. It's easy to believe in the illusion of technology bringing us closer together. But if you were to protest that and say, 'I'm not going to use a smartphone, I'm not going to use email, I'm not going to use social media,' it's like you're no longer a part of humanity.

The Muslim community is completely fractured - it doesn't really exist anymore; the only place it does exist is online.

Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.

And it occurred to me that in this new millennial life of instant and ubiquitous connection, you don't in fact communicate so much as leave messages for one another, these odd improvisational performances, often sorry bits and samplings of ourselves that can't help but seem out of context. And then when you do finally reach someone, everyone's so out of practice or too hopeful or else embittered that you wonder if it would be better not to attempt contact at all.

Social media puts us inside our phones and our computers and our headphones, and we're not connecting so much with our outside environment. Even when people go to the Grand Canyon they're more concerned about the selfies than actually looking at the canyon. I see it with my own kids - the addiction to needing things fast, never pausing to just see what's around us and connect with our fellow human beings in real time.

We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.

The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialize alone.

We thought that the Internet was going to connect us all together. As a young geek in rural Maine, I got excited about the Internet because it seemed that I could be connected to the world. What it's looking like increasingly is that the Web is connecting us back to ourselves.

Facebook may not only propagate cyber-loneliness but exacerbate the pain of loss that estranged family members feel when they hear only indirectly, through a third-party posting, news of a child or parent with whom they have not spoken in years.

We're all simultaneously separated and connected by our devices, staring into our little screens, and also hungry for experience and community.

I try not to spend too much time online but at the same time if I didn't, I'd be isolated.

Since our online libraries are so extensive, we think we can make all the right decisions about our personal health and well-being by pushing buttons. It's not intuitive anymore. That's the internet. Before the net, we would have gone to the community or our families to see what we should do. We often feel more isolated on our own little islands because of it.

Everyone is on the internet but they're not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don't talk to one another. So while the internet brings everyone into a shared space, it does not necessarily bring them together.

The world is shrinking into a kind of technological funnel. I think people are drawn into their technological devices, and this becomes a kind of subjective universe, into which much of the rest of the world simply does not enter.

Since I've got on the Internet, it's opened a whole world of wasted time for me. My wife says she's an Internet widow.

I see people growing more and more isolated in their lives. It's not like it's a new thing, but it's more preoccupying now as you can do so many things without leaving your home. You can work, shop, do everything from home, and I find this unsettling.

Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.

Critics worry that if we spend time paying attention to that new kind of media or technology instead of talking to each other that that is somehow isolating. But humans are fundamentally social. So I think in reality, if a technology doesn't actually help us socially understand each other better, it isn't going to catch on and succeed.