Loneliness is a growing problem. It’s time we started talking to each other

Big Issue’s survey on social interactions throws up many findings. Social connection is really fraying across the country. In any given week, more than 40% of people don’t have any real interactions with people they don’t know. And over half the time, our colleagues who sell Big Issue to make a living are being ignored. 

This is not a surprise. The desiccation of human interaction has been a reality for some time. Polling continues to show that increasingly people are more comfortable with digital communication than with real life. According to YouGov last year, 38% of people across the world prefer digital. A 2021 poll by Natterhub – an online safety platform – found that only 23% of kids from 5-11 years old preferred in person to digital. Admittedly, this was in the teeth of Covid, so it’s potentially skewed, but still, such a finding has to give some pause. 

And still we allow the pernicious, accelerated growth of those who would promote less real-life interaction, and find more profit from it, profit that ultimately will not cascade down to the less well-offs but will be ever more centralised with a tiny few.   

Giuliano da Empoli’s The Hour of the Predator, as must-read as any book can be this year, attempts to burrow down into the wheres and the whos and who profits and why we all lose. He’s a man who has been in the room where it happened in contemporary, global affairs and he has witnessed the changes wrought by technological overlords.

Read more:

• ‘For people alone at Christmas, it offers a community’: The wonderful projects taking on loneliness
• Real vendors’ real stories in real time: Big Issue launches groundbreaking new “one take” Christmas ad
• Loneliness is nothing new – but modern life is making it worse

While AI is still positioned as the great life-enhancer by many politicians, it is, reminds da Empoli, “a form of authoritarian intelligence, centralising data and transforming it into power”. He also says: “Instead of developing under the guidance of government – as was the case for atomic weapons and other military technologies – AI has escaped all regulatory control and is in the hands of private companies that have elevated themselves to the ranks of nation states.” 

The money and the power is one thing – and, yes, that is a significant ONE thing (the trillion dollars salary for Elon Musk is so ludicrous an idea for one man to pocket, it becomes unreal, a grotesque, one that feels as though it belongs in an ancient allegory in which nature delivers a telling response) – but it’s the reality at the other end that is where we must keep focus, and potentially change. AI may bring convenience, but there is still a human element.

“Delivery workers, for example,” – Da Empoli again – “have practically no contact with other humans in the course of their working day. Their only interface is with an app on the phone.” And so, this means, that if there is an unexpected incident or the app stops functioning, the worker can’t turn to anyone. Then, the app draws conclusions and decides consequences. The human is dealt with according the law of AI. Profit moves up, the human moves down. Society cheapens.   

However, there is always some way to clip back. Da Empoli still believes in the power of the media to challenge. “The press retains an ability to counter their power”, he says. Good man, Giuliano.  

But the power is wider. Despite the findings of that YouGov polling, people insist, in other polls globally, that when it is moments that need something done – like on a helpline – they want to speak to a human, regardless of the leaps and bounds of generative AI. We are at heart social animals. We must remain so. 

There is a really straightforward and clear way of resolving the issue in the middle of the Big Issue stats that I mentioned before.  

Stop and talk to one of our vendors. See how they’re doing, and they’ll do the same with you. This may seem like the most straightforward thing in the world, but clearly, it’s not. That divide between people is broached. 

When you buy, take your Big Issue and tell everybody you know that you’re making things better, one Big Issue at a time. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue.Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.

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