The incomparable study-finder Stephanie H. Murray recently shared this article from The Argument showing that the loneliness crisis is not just middle-aged men as is commonly thought (by me), but actually most pronounced among younger voters, and among them female voters. I strongly recommend reading the entire article. Maybe a survey that looks at more than just voters would reveal a different result, but it is a revealing study, particularly the way social isolation overlaps with low self-worth, anxiety, and inhibition. The COVID-19 Epidemic and the Internet are pointed to as factors contributing to this isolation and anxiety. I would also add that the #MeToo movement (for all the good it did!) likely made some young women afraid of young men and some young men inordinately afraid of crossing a line they couldn’t see.
Having worked with many young people over the years, none of these results seem particularly surprising, although I would say that the young people I work with usually tend to have the benefits of stronger social networks by virtue of being in college. But the challenge of talking with the opposite gender, socializing, and striving after employment and success all resonate with what I’ve seen with both genders. As I’ve written about before, anxiety and inhibition are two defining characteristics of this age, and they feed each other. The more anxious you are, the more you are afraid to act as an agent in the world, so the more anxious you become about your situation, and so on. The article at The Argument, written by Lakshya Jain, ends by offering no solution or action items, and that’s where I’d like to pick up here. What can we do to encourage young people to break out of social isolation and inhibition? I believe young people need to cultivate the virtue of courage in order to lean into who they were created to be.
For all of us, the world is a hostile, chaotic place. But for young people raised on the Internet and the constant dump of information, the world is an incredibly dangerous and hostitle place. There is an expectation that you present yourself to the world on social media, to advertise yourself. But this exposes you to criticism and judgment. Strangers are looking at you and judging you. Young women can be pressured to share intimate images of themselves in relationships, which exposes them literally and to blackmail. Young men can be tricked into sharing explicit images of themselves by those trying to blackmail them. Stories of abuse fill their newsfeeds. Narratives of the toxicity of the opposite sex fill their newsfeeds, of ways young women are too liberal and young men are too conservative. Influencers can convince them that they are fragile, traumatized, and vulnerable. Young people are given plenty of reasons to fear social interactions and the opposite sex.
In addition, the Internet gives young people plenty of opportunities to distract themselves in isolation. But this distraction is not healthy, it’s anxious, depressing, and lonely. It’s doomscrolling until 3am. It’s watching YouTube for hours on end. It’s choosing not to connect with real life because it feels too dangerous. This may look like working long hours at a job or at school and then retreating to their room to isolate on the Internet as a safety behavior.
It is certainly the case that some young people struggle with isolation and anxiety due to past traumas or mental health challenges, and I don’t want ot discount that. But in general, what all of us need (young or not) is to cultivate a deeper virtue of courage.
Yes, the world is a hostile place. That isn’t going to suddenly change. We can and must fight for justice (that involves another virtue), but while we live in this fallen world we must live with courage.
Courage, or fortitude, as I define it in To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, involves enduring suffering or vulnerability to suffering for the good. In the case of social interactions, the good is friendship or romantic relationships. It is good to make friends. Friends are one of the greatest gifts God gives us in this life. Marriage, though not for everyone, is a great gift. “He who finds a wife finds a good thing” (Proverbs 18:22). So we know that it is good to have friends at the very least. And for most of us, it is good to find a spouse. Therefore, we need to endure the suffering and vulnerability necessary to pursue that good!
Not all suffering is necessary to find a friend or a spouse. Abuse is not necessary. In fact, it’s wrong to suffer abuse from someone because you want to be their friend or spouse, because you are created in the Image of God and deserve to be treated with respect and honor!
But some suffering and vulnerability is natural. You’re going to get rejected. You’re going to get your heart broken. You’re going forgotten. You’re going to get offended. You’re going to have to risk sharing something personal about yourself. It takes courage to put yourself out there and go to a party, to ask someone out for coffee (as a friend or date), to call someone up.
It also takes courage to opt out of some of the Internet-driven vices that pressure young people. For example, it takes courage to say “no” to sending intimate photographs. It takes courage to not turn your social media pages into advertisements for yourself. Opting out of these activities makes you vulnerable, which is a key to courage.
I think what young people will discover if they act with courage is that they have more agency in the world than they realized, and some of their anxiety will decrease. It requires taking a step of faith, however. As I discuss in To Live Well, all the virtues are intimately tied together. In this case, courage is grounded by the faith in Christ, faith that he is the one who justifies us, not our friends or our spouse. And that when we get hurt or rejected, he will always be there to love us. We can step out in confidence because we were created to live socially and he desires us to courageously act in the world.
Young people are anxious and inhibited largely because they were not taught by their elders how to be courageous. Instead, they were taught to be afraid and worried about everything, because the world is a scary place. Well, the world is a scary place. But we have agency to act with courage and do something in this world. We can take a step to the block, we can apply for that job, ask that person out, invite that friend to coffee, go to that party, stretch our comfort zone. Yes, the world of distraction and dissipation will always be there calling us to give up and isolate and be inhibited. But we don’t have to give in. We have the freedom to act. God has given it to us. The only question is if we’ll use it.
originally published on Substack
Alan Noble
O. Alan Noble (PhD, Baylor) is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and author of On Getting Out of Bed, You Are Not Your Own, and Disruptive Witness. Noble has published articles at The Atlantic, The Gospel Coalition, First Things, and Christianity Today. He lives with his wife and three children in Oklahoma City.
