News
23 June, 2024
Grappling with an isolation crisis
AUSTRALIA’S leading social psychologist, Hugh Mackay, warns that the nation is grappling with a social isolation crisis.
AUSTRALIA’S leading social psychologist, Hugh Mackay, warns that the nation is grappling with a social isolation crisis. Addressing a sellout crowd at Maleny Community Centre last Friday, Mackay presented research indicating that Australia, like most Western countries, is experiencing increasing levels of loneliness, anxiety, and depression.
“It is deeply disturbing that in 2024, health professionals are saying the number one public health issue we face in Australia is social isolation,” he said.
“We have entered a critical period in social evolution where social cohesion is becoming increasingly fragmented, resulting in an unprecedented level of loneliness.”
Mackay argues that, over the last 30-40 years, society has adopted individualistic lifestyle choices that starkly differ from how humans have lived throughout history.
“These choices have led to a series of social trends that have significantly harmed society, pulling humans away from their essence as social beings with increasingly detrimental results,” he explained.
Appearing at Outspoken Maleny to discuss the findings in his recent book ‘The Way We Are’, Mackay highlighted key trends eroding social cohesion and fragmenting society, leading to disastrous consequences for human health and well-being. He identified shrinking households, an unprecedented number of relationship breakups, a plummeting birth rate, greater mobility resulting in less community bonding, busyness, and the paradox of the information technology ‘connection’ as key contributing factors to the current loneliness epidemic. Unsurprisingly, the ‘IT revolution’, where people are increasingly connected but also report feeling increasingly isolated, features strongly in his research.
“The information revolution is changing the way humanity lives. We are in serious danger of blurring the distinction between device-based message transfer and human communication, which relies crucially on eye contact. Without eye contact, it is not truly human interaction.”
Mackay highlights that the loneliest age cohort in contemporary Australian society is the 18-25-year-old group. Despite being the most connected generation in history, particularly through social media, they are reported as the most lonely due to a lack of human interaction.
Mackay said society is in the inevitable early stages of a technology revolution that has completely captivated us.
“It is driven by an industry dedicated to making people addicted to these devices,’ he said.
“We’ve gone berserk and haven’t yet understood the crucial importance of eye contact for human communication,” Mackay suggests. He also notes a moral dimension that has hardly been explored.
“We develop our moral sensibilities through personal relationships, constantly refreshing them. When we replace face-to-face communication with other activities, we sacrifice this crucial daily need for moral refreshment, which can have significant consequences. A more fragmented society is at risk of moral decline.”
At the core of Mackay’s current research is the proposition that contemporary society is wounded and in critical need of healing. Everyday acts of kindness, recovering the lost art of listening, and rebuilding our sense of community starting in our own neighbourhoods are key ways Mackay suggests we can overcome our societal fragmentation.
“A wounded society can only be healed when enough of us start to live differently. The good news is that we’re dreamers and storytellers: our dreams of a better world can inspire us, and the stories we tell each other can show us how to translate those dreams into action.”
