Loneliness in Connected Campuses: Social Disconnection in Digitally Saturated Students
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21681797
Dr. Ankush Sharma, Dr. Deepika Balai, Ms. Kanishka Aggarwal, Ms. Sneha Narayan
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Keywords:
loneliness; belonging; higher education; social media; social networks; student well being; campus design; digital saturation
Abstract:
Today's university students are the most connected and arguably one of the most lonely generations ever. This paper does not consider that to be a paradox that needs to be resolved through explaining loneliness as a problem of the digital, but rather a specification problem: the amount of social contact and the quality of social connection have become separated and the means by which they became separated are institutional, not technological. We expand on the notion of the Contact Connection Gap (CCG) which outlines three avenues for how exposure to ambient digital contact can coexist with, and in some arrangements lead to, a perceived belonging deficit: displacement of unstructured co-presence, comparison-driven inflation of perceived social norms, and shallowing of reciprocal self-disclosure. Six propositions are drawn out, as well as individual and institutional moderators that forecast which students and which campuses are most at risk. Since the effects found in the empirical research literature on digital media and well-being are small, heterogeneous and sensitive to the specific measures studied, we have chosen not to report any invented statistics; rather we provide a clear simulation harness for simulating tie formation with different levels of co-presence opportunity and a measurement and estimation template that uses placeholder notation. The framework shifts the policy discussion from restricting screen time (largely without evidence to support the move) to shaping the structures of campus time, space and activity that result in repeated, unstructured interactions that are the basis for friendship formation. Student services implications, timetabling, residential design and implications for intervention evaluation are discussed.