a part of everyone knows both a major cause and way of improving loneliness yet we lie to ourselves and look to science to give us an excuse continue to ignore what we know to be true. We have built a world that revolves around money and almont everything that gets built that wants to grow no matter how pure in intentions succumbs and instead of using peoples desire for connection to actually make connections with people perverts it in a way to make more money. And we let this happen to us because its easy, it feels good in the moment they are careful to give us just enough of a taste of a real connection to keep us coming back but not letting us develop real connections that would "graduate" us to real human connections that would reduce our reliance on them thus reducing their profits.

If Television stayed live, local, honest, people you seen around your local town, it would encourage engagement. youtube could have focused on sharing videos with friends, could have ignored likes/dislikes and didnt focus on popularity and parasocial relationships. Facebook could have encouraged not on finding, adding, expanding, friends and engaging on the platform, but instead encourage real connections by encouraging prodding for real world meetups suggestions on games to play in person, finding people who like to do the similar things and suggesting times and places they can do it together with a focus on existing friends and connections. And not showing as much on what people have done but what they can do together.

Its not that these things aren't possible on the networks now but its not how these sites use their influence and primary resources, and really it would be stupid for them to do, because they are businesses and their goal is to make money, they will only improve peoples lives as long as it doesn't get in the way of making money. Part of use realize what they are doing we know they put profits above us, but they deliver what we expect a little bit of happiness a little bit of connection, we know it wont satisfy us but its easy, real easy with no risk, why put effort in for maybe a solid human connection when you can have that quick and easy hit right now.

If you read this far, why is scientific studies, or science in general not going to fix this? Because even if there is perfect research that spells out exactly the issue and lays out exactly how to not be lonely 2 things are going to happen.

1. Companies will exploit it in a way to make money if not right away then over time putting us right back to where we were. 2. We wont do it because we prefer the easy/fast way even if its worse.

this isnt going to change, its not that we cant have real connections, its just we have never had so many easy alternatives before, for a lot of people being alone has become the default we grew up with instead of the exception.