Finding Belonging in the Social Media Age

As a 40 year old superfan of the pop band Bastille, I often find myself singing along to their haunting lyrics all by myself. What I would give to share this joy with someone.

I don’t need to dissect the lyrics, like a 15 year old Nirvana fan, but I would like to occasionally look another person in the eye while listening to the lyrics of, say, The Anchor, and have that sense of yes, I see you and I know what you’re feeling right now. It fosters a sense of camaraderie, or BELONGING, which is my word of the month for February.

It’s human nature to want to be among people who understand us (while being aware of the risk of creating an echo chamber, where everyone around us thinks and feels the same way.) Belonging is about finding the place where you feel seen and heard. Where your experiences, tastes and preferences matter. Where conversation never runs dry because you know when you share an anecdote, other people will get it. A place where shame doesn’t take over and stop you from saying something you worry is silly, because everyone else in the group gets it.

Growing up in the 1990s, I never admitted my true musical preferences because the group of friends I’d stumbled into had very different tastes. They would have taken the piss out of me and I’d have been cast out of the group. And as a teenager especially, belonging to a group was crucial to survival. So young Lisa kept her love of indie music a secret until much later, when I finally connected with people who liked the same stuff as me, and I started attending gigs and live music. This was when a side of me that had been long hidden emerged. Nowadays, my taste in music is broad and eclectic and I never keep any of it secret. I love Taylor Swift as much as I love Elvis Presley and that’s just who I am.

The childless community is a group no-one wants to join, but for me it’s been the source of the most incredible comfort, having travelled a path in life I never expected. For those of us who are involuntarily childless, meaning we wanted to have children but didn’t for whatever reason, there’s few spaces where this truth can be openly discussed. The typical response to “No, I don’t have kids” might be pity (“oh you poor thing, what’s wrong with you”, “you can have one of mine”) or dismissal (“you’ll never know true love”, “you’ll change your mind”).

Before I found the childless community, I’d rarely talk candidly about myself because it filled me with anxiety. Inside this community, I tell my story, because I know how important it is for other people to hear it. I needed to hear other people’s stories so I could accept my circumstances and believe life could be wonderful even though it didn’t give me the children I’d once wanted.

There’s an epidemic of loneliness in the UK because too many people haven’t found a place they can belong, or they can’t find ways to engage with their community in a meaningful way. That’s why Age UK and other amazing charities offer events like friendship coffee drop ins, knitting circles, or whatever it may be in each local area.

Because finding people who share our interests or life experiences is critical to our health.

It’s not always easy to find places where we belong, even with the multi-connected facets of the internet. Sometimes even because of the damn internet. With so much choice and information, finding the right thing can be impossibly overwhelming.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been slowly abandoning social media, because having a large following (or even a modest one) isn’t the same as having a support network. I might have 300 friends on Facebook, but if I wouldn’t reach out to a single one of them in an emergency, what exactly is the point?

In Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism, he talks about conversation-centred communication (as opposed to connection-focussed). He separates conversation from connection because the former is a deep way of being with someone, whereas the latter can be as simple as clicking ‘like’ on a post.

Being connected to another person is not the same thing as having a relationship with them.

As a society, through the use of social media, we’ve developed ways of staying connected to swathes of people through likes and short comments but we’ve lost the art of having a meaningful conversation. How many times have you looked at your phone to double-tap an Instagram post (for example), cutting the real-life conversation you were having in two? These simple acts, which the social media companies have spent millions on getting you to take, are costing us precious in-person relationships.

But there’s a paradox, especially for people whose circumstances or abilities can make them feel incredibly isolated or alone. For me, I’m childless and neurodivergent, and in my real life there’s literally no-one that has the same experiences or gets it, which is important for me to feel like my life is valid. It’s only because of things like social media and digital tools that I’ve been able to find a community of people who understand the daily challenges I face due to these elements of myself.

As I ruminate on what BELONGING means to me, I’m drawn to others who’ve found a group of friends based on interesting and niche traits or experiences. The internet has made it possible to find people like us, and I can’t help but wonder about what we did before.

There was a time before we had billions of people at the tip of our finger when lovers of Dungeons & Dragons found each other. How was it possible? And how can we tap into that again without being slaves to our devices?

Do you belong to a group with a unique thread or commonality? I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks for reading, connect with me here.

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