Technology made reaching out technically easier, yet fewer people make the move – and loneliness is a growing issue. I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Sena Aydin Bergfalk, a cultural anthropologist, UX researcher, and strategist, about these fascinating topics. This is part of the TouchBase Reach Out series.
You can watch the interview here, or read the transcript, lightly edited for clarity.
Yohay Elam (YE): Hi, everybody. Thanks for watching or listening. This is our first episode of a series called Reach Out. I’m Yohai Elam, founder of TouchBase, which tackles loneliness by empowering and nudging people to reach out to each other and to loved ones. And today, I’m excited to host, uh, Dr. Sena Aydin Bergfalk, a UX CX,, researcher and strategist, and a cultural anthropologist by training.
Thanks for joining, Sena.
Sena Aydin Bergfalk (SAB): Hi. Thanks for having me.
YE: Thanks. Sena, before we jump into today’s topic, Loneliness and Technology, I’d love to hear more about, you. Could you please introduce yourself, and tell us a bit about how loneliness became part of your, uh, professional journey?
SAB: Of course. So, I would say that I wear two main hats that you just mentioned. On the one hand, as a CX UX researcher, I provide user and customer insights to develop products, services, or brands. And, um, I’m also trained as a cultural anthropologist with a sub-disciplinary specialty in urban anthropology, which is my second hat.
So, under that hat, I examine the dynamics between urban design and municipal politics, and my work has been focused on Barcelona and the effects of the city’s municipal policies on its peripheral communities.
And I guess in the industry, urban design is usually associated with service design, but think, especially in the case of, touristic cities like Barcelona, they are talking about the commercialization of a city as a product, that, in the case of Barcelona, has been branded in very ethical terms, you know, such as sustainable, I don’t know, ecological, feminist, or participative, or what you have.
So, my academic work questioned the extent to which this ethical vision included the city’s peripheries and the peripheral residents.
Asking this question, I think, exposes one to the profound impact that social exclusion and lack of resources can have on individuals’ and communities’ well-being. And that
I haven’t specifically researched loneliness in academic or industry settings, but I also see it emerging, um, as a recurrent theme in whatever I do, not just as an emotional but also as a consequence of systemic issues and social injustices. But also, I think, as a byproduct of the high-speed, high-rhythm urban lives that we live.
YE: I see. Yeah. As we’re recording this, um, Barcelona is undergoing protests about tourism and, uh, it’s all, it’s all related. So, um, well, very interesting background. Uh, undoubtedly, urban life is a significant aspect. Uh, how does loneliness interact with other social issues, such as mental health, aging, and urbanization?
SAB: I would say that it is deeply interconnected with all the social issues that you just mentioned because, um, it is a social state or an emotion, which is entirely different than, for example, being alone, which simply means you’re just not in physical proximity to other people.
Rapid urbanization has created environments and everyday realities where we live in close proximity to others and frequently find ourselves in crowds, yet we often feel socially lost or disconnected, likely due to the fast pace of life. We have trouble forging meaningful social connections.
And I think that being the case, like you said, loneliness can worsen mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, or social anxiety. It can particularly affect older adults facing social isolation, and I believe it’s one of the most pressing but still somewhat invisible social problems in Europe, which is leading the world in the proportion of elderly population nowadays.
YE: Indeed. It’s a growing, uh, issue, and you studied the city here, and you’ve worked with policymakers. What do you think are the most important steps society, uh, should take to address the, the root causes of loneliness?
SAB: So in terms of, I think, policy making or thinking in the lines of policy making, I mean, of course an immediate answer would be, you know, boosting community building initiatives like community centers, public spaces or increasing accessible and affordable mental health services. But I think we also should realize that these are not simply policy interventions on paper.
Of course they look good on paper, but at the same time, they are also budget choices, um, that most policymakers are not willing to make or prioritize. But I think we also have to complicate this even further, and I would like to offer maybe two more thoughts on that.
First is kind of a fallacy that I see both in policy making but also in product development, which is that, um, that we believe that if we have the right tools, those right tools will automatically yield the desired results.
So, for example, in the case of urban policy, I don’t know, opening a community center doesn’t automatically make loneliness disappear or forge meaningful connections in and of itself. And I’ve seen, um, many municipal community building initiatives along these lines fail in Barcelona time and again during my research.
And I believe the reason for that is a kind of lack of concern about the end users and their needs-… which are never really independent of their social context, which kind of brings me to my second thought, which is that, you know, the root causes of loneliness, um, for example, that a young person can experience, might be entirely different than those that cause loneliness for an elderly person.
Or, you know, similarly, a peripheral working-class resident of Barcelona might experience loneliness differently than, say, a more relatively well-off expat living in Poblenou. And even the ways in which these people define loneliness might be completely distinct from each other. So, I think, unfortunately, there is not a one-size-fits-all type of solution, neither in product nor in policymaking.
But whatever solution, uh, we devise must be flexible and adaptable enough to diverse contexts and diverse people.
YE: I totally agree. It’s, um, yeah, in product it doesn’t work, “You build it and they will come.” You have to think
Yeah.
SAB: End users and their, how they live their lives outside, outside the products and outside, uh, um, the community center in this case. Um, from an anthropological perspective, how has, uh, community and social, uh, interaction, uh, evolved in recent years?
I think that, at least in recent years, we have been living in a paradoxical situation.
Because thanks to technological advances, we’re able to participate in global communities and have social interactions that are far-reaching than our immediate, physical circle. But then at the same time, we have never felt this lonely and overwhelmed at once. So maybe, like to put it in a different way, it’s like we gained an unprecedented level of breadth, of interaction thanks to technology, but then it came at the cost of losing depth of connection.
And it is to the point that, for example, there is something, uh, that is called social media detox now, which we all understand what it means.
It’s like the need to turn to face-to-face or one-to-one interactions. I mean, this in and of itself is kind of indicative of this paradox that we have.
YE:, It’s something, sometimes contradictive. What would you say are the biggest advantages and disadvantages of using technology?
SAB: I guess like I said, it has kind of a dual nature. I mean, it’s like I don’t want to throw it out the window or just limit it to social media when we talk about technology. And also, don’t get me wrong, it’s not, it’s not like I’m against social media, and like I’m an active user of most social media platforms.
But I think, we have to take it for what it is.
Meaning it mainly allows us to connect to others through consuming impersonal public content, and it is at the mercy of algorithms, more than anything. And this can lead to superficial connections, it can lead to cyberbullying, it can lead to unrealistic social comparisons between us and the lives of others, which then can aggravate the sense of loneliness.
But then it can also have the opposite effect. So, I don’t know, I’m like thinking of, for example, the #MeToo movement and how it addressed the loneliness that many women felt in the face of sexual harassment. Or if I were to give a personal example, I am a runner, and I like running alone.
I don’t like running with people. But at the same time, seeing other people’s running activities on different social media platforms designed for that, it kind of makes me feel like I’m part of an invisible community, and it actually motivates me to run better and more.
So, there’s also that. But then I think, besides social media, we should also value the power of technology in connecting people across distances. So, for example, now I can make an overseas call and talk to my parents with the same ease that I can just call my friend down the street, or I can monitor my grandmother’s health from miles away.
So, there are also other things that were unthinkable a few years ago, such as the fact that, for example, we’re now able to reach support networks or access resources like online therapy, for instance. So, I feel like it is tough to make a cost-benefit analysis when it comes
Advantages and disadvantages of using technology to alleviate loneliness. I think it’s a very kind of case-by-case situation.
YE: , I always find that technology makes things accessible, but it, it depends. I mean, the best usage depends on how we use it, I mean, to get the benefits.
How can technology be designed to better address the needs of those experiencing loneliness?
SAB: That is also very hard question. Um, so like earlier I talked about this concept of social media detox, right? And this increasing need to turn to more personal and personalized connections in a way. So, if I were to say something, I think it would be that the next technological move is to go beyond just simply facilitating any communication, but then focus on strengthening and using more personal types of communication between people.
That would be, I think, my answer.
YE: Sounds good. Um, so you and I met in an in-person event. We both run, but we didn’t meet, uh, running. And I see, I go to conferences, I go to meet-ups, I see a growing desire for these in, in-person events, people seeing each other physically.
SAB:, But many, but there are still tons of communities that thrive online. How effective are these virtual communities in providing general social uh, genuine social connections compared to face-to-face, uh, interactions?
I think virtual communities and social media can provide genuine social connections, so it’s not like they can’t at all, even though it’s rare. And it is especially I think the case for individuals, um, who might be geographically isolated, who might be facing social anxieties, et cetera. But at the same time, I don’t think that they are a direct substitute for face-to-face interactions, which they…
I mean, the face-to-face interaction has the power to offer much richer, I don’t know, non-verbal, emotional and sensory cues that we can only experience in the shared presence of others. So, I mean, we, we even experienced that, so we all have the firsthand experience of the difference between the in-person and the virtual during the pandemic.
That’s exactly what happened. The difference between in-person and virtual socializing is… I don’t know, it’s hard to kind of put it into words, but at the same time, it’s something that most of us will say, “Oh, yeah, you know, I know what you mean,” in, in
Because we all kind of do. We all, it’s more like we sense it. So, I guess we are social animals after all, and I think in that, our bodies are one of the fundamental engines of our sociality, which can never be, I think, fully replaced by, replaced or mediated by machines.
So there will always be something that will lack in that. And this is my anthropologist response, I think.
YE: We, as animals, haven’t evolved as fast.
We’re nearing the, the finish line, and I’d like to end perhaps on a higher note. What gives you hope and optimism about our ability to combat the loneliness epidemic?
Let’s see. I guess I’ll respond more like a social scientist to this question, and I would say that… I mean, I believe, like probably many other social scientists, that there is a power in naming things.
And if… I want to digress and give an example, so, I mean, we all know what PTSD is. It’s post-traumatic stress disorder. And as a term, it was coined in the ’70s, or as a condition, but then this didn’t mean that people didn’t suffer from the symptoms of PTSD prior to the 1970s, but it’s just that giving it a name made it easier to address its effects.
This is not going as far as to suggest that, um, naming creates the thing named, but then at the same time, it certainly does give it a public existence and makes it visible. So, the mere fact that you and I are now talking about loneliness as a thing, that it’s a problem, a condition, or a symptom, or a state, it is indicative of the fact that there is a growing awareness and visibility of loneliness as an issue, as a public health issue that, uh, can no longer remain receded, um, to the background in our daily social lives or in our interactions with, with technology, right?
So, I think this gives me the fundamental hope that we can combat it because we’re able to name it and see it much more clearly now.
YE: So even this conversation is a contribution
SAB: Yeah. I think so.
Thanks, Sena, for joining today. That was, fascinating. Really learned lots of new stuff. Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap it up?
SAB: I would just say let’s not lose hope, and thank you very much for this opportunity.
Most welcome. Okay. So, thank you, everybody, for, uh, joining us today. Thanks, Sena. Follow TouchBase on social media we mentioned here and on GetTouchBase.com. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much