Don Martin

not only can way too much time alone be predicate for loneliness, but also not enough, like too much time with other people could also make you feel lonely.

Because again, it's that lost in the crowd feeling.

You're not actually there.

You're just one among many.

You're not actually there forming community bonds.

Oh, gosh.

I think that when we talk about loneliness, anytime I tell somebody that I'm writing a book about loneliness, the two things that they immediately say are, oh, well, are you going to talk about screens?

Everybody's on a screen and they're shutting down all the malls.

And that's why everybody's lonely.

We don't have any malls anymore.

And everybody's on a screen.

And I think that you're talking about historically, you're talking about was there any point of data in history that kind of woke you up to it?

Going back and studying kind of the history of both third places and also going back and studying and really diving into how we have blamed technology for loneliness.

over the last century and a half or so was really fascinating because we just keep doing it.

When it comes to TVs, we always say kids are on screens, but that's to absolve ourselves of the truth that we're the ones giving them the screens.

And also we don't really know what to do with our kids.

We took them out of the workforce, which is a good thing.

We don't want kids in mines.

We don't want kids putting their little fingers in machinery.

And we made school compulsory, which is great.