Instagram is Making Valentine’s Day Even Lonelier by Margaret Renkl

Instagram is Making Valentine’s Day Even Lonelier

(Link): Instagram is Making Valentine’s Day Even Lonelier

On New York Times: “A Valentine’s P.S.A.: Instagram Is Not Your Friend Today”

Excerpts:

by Margaret Renkl

By now, whatever time of day you read this essay, your Facebook and Instagram feeds are most likely filled with hothouse flowers and lovely hand-dipped chocolates and stories of the funny way two people met, how lucky they are to have found each other, how grateful they feel, on this day of love especially, to be moving through the world together. Such stories can be incredibly sweet, but their cumulative effect is … not.

…Thing is, it makes a lot of people feel awful. They’re already lonely, and along comes Valentine’s Day to rub their noses in it.

Or they’re perfectly happy in their own relationships, but everyone else’s relationships suddenly look happier somehow. Sweeter. Tenderer. Filled with better chocolate.

…But much of the unhappiness engendered by “social” media doesn’t come from its poisonous effect on society. It comes from its poisonous effect on us.

Other people’s beautifully curated Facebook and Instagram posts are no closer to real life than reality TV is, and maybe we even know it, but it still makes us feel bad.

“I don’t know very many people that come away from 30 minutes on Instagram feeling really good about who they are,” the designer and podcaster Debbie Millman told Kara Swisher last week in an interview on Sway.

No wonder loneliness is an epidemic now, and the loneliness of the 21st century isn’t like the loneliness of the 20th.

Now it’s exacerbated by however many hundred — or thousands — of “friends” we have online.

All Valentine’s Day long, it’s love notes and jewelry and heart-bedazzled pajamagrams. All day long, it’s candlelight and candy and flowers thrust under our noses. Don’t they smell divine?

Romantic love is a beautiful thing, but it is not the only way to feel connected, to feel seen, to feel loved. It’s not even the most important way to feel those things.

The fullest happiness comes from a community — a real community of real people.

Whether or not that community includes a partner, it definitely doesn’t arise from an online platform that sows discord and sorrow, an algorithm that only deepens human despair.

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Related:

(Link): American Romance Standards Are Changing as People Have Less Sex and Marriage Rates Drop 

(Link): Four in 10 Adults Between the Ages of 25 and 54 are Single, Up From 29% in 1990

(Link): Authors at The Federalist Keep Bashing Singleness in the Service of Promoting Marriage – Which Is Not Okay

❤ (Link): Brands Let Customers Opt Out of Valentine’s Day Deluge

(Link): Can’t Find “The One”? Blame Easy Dating Apps by S. Hendricks

❤ (Link): Chinese Singles Buy Movie Tickets So Couples Can’t Sit Together on Valentine’s Day

❤ (Link):  A Valentine for the Single Christian by K L Bishop

(Link): Love Does Not Have to Be Romantic or Erotic: Maleficent Movie

❤ (Link): Valentine’s Day Messaging For Singles: Empowering Or Exploitative? by G.  Stearns

❤ (Link): Valentine’s Day: The Unromantic Origins of the Holiday by S. Barr

❤ (Link): Valentine’s Day / Singles Appreciation Day For Never Married People and Other Singles 2014

❤ (Link): Dating App Horror Stories That Will Make You Feel Thankful You Are Single on Valentine’s Day by D. Cho

❤ (Link):  Valentine’s Day, the Church and Single Awareness Day? by J. Storment

❤ (Link):  Meet the Most Vitriolic Valentine’s Day Haters Around the World

(Link): BreakPoint Unfortunately Pushing the False and Un-Biblical “Society Needs Marriage and the Nuclear Family” Rhetoric (and I say this as a Conservative)

(Link): Ever Notice That Christians Don’t Care About or Value Singleness, Unless Jesus Christ’s Singleness and Celibacy is Doubted or Called Into Question by Scholars?

(Link): Love Couldn’t Save Me From Loneliness By M. Puniewska

(Link): Woman Says She is Lonely in Marriage to Husband Who Ignores Her in Favor of His Job, Watching TV, etc.

(Link): Cathy The Single Woman Asks Pat Robertson Why God Has Not Replied to Her Prayers for Years to Send Her a Spouse

(Link): What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse – What if marriage is not the social good that so many believe and want it to be? by M. Catron

(Link): It’s Better To Be Single, According To Science by Erin Brodwin

(Link):  Craigslist confessional: I’m in my 40s, never married, and a virgin—but I’m happy by Abigail

(Link): Unmarried and Childless Women Are the Happiest, Happiness Expert Claims (2019 Study)

(Link):  Never-Married Adult Man Named Stephen Asks Christian Host Why God Has Not Answered His 3-Decades Long Prayers To Send Him A Wife

(Link): What Christians Really Think About the Church’s Relationship Advice by Anna Broadway

(Link): Husband-Hunting is the Worst Part of a Christian Upbringing – Christianity Made Me Obsessed with Finding a Husband – by B. Ramos

(Link): False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy” or (also false): “God’s gifting of singleness is rare”

(Link): Do You Need a Partner to Have a Happy Life? by D. LaBier

In Opinion

"Whatever the world seems determined to tell us on this day for love that shuts so many people out, no one is alone," writes Margaret Renkl about Valentine's Day. "We are, all of us, made for one another."https://t.co/7X9rWLUGuT

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 14, 2022