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Vaniver comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - Less Wrong
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Lots of things, but some off the top of my head:
Communication technologies probably top the list. Sure, the Internet has given birth to lots of great communities, like the one where I'm typing this comment. But it has also created a hugely polarized environment. (See the picture on page 4 of this study.) It's ever easier to follow your biases and only read the opinions of people who agree with you, and to think that anyone who disagrees is stupid or evil or both. On one hand, it's great that people can withdraw to their own subcultures where they feel comfortable, but the groupthink that this allows...
"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want." -- Clive Barnes. That's even more true for the Internet.
Also, it's getting easier and easier to work, study and live for weeks without talking to anyone else than the grocery store clerk. I don't think that's a particularly good thing from a mental health perspective.
Talking with your mouth, or talking? Because it's not clear to me that talking online is significantly worse than talking in person at sustaining mental health. I suspect getting a girlfriend/boyfriend will do more for your mental health and social satisfaction than interacting with people face-to-face more.
Personally I find that if I don't hang out with people in real life every 2-4 days I will get increasingly lethargic and incapable of getting anything done. To what degree this generalizes is another matter.
I find the same thing as Kaj. I've started literally percieving myself as having that set of "needs" bars in the Sims. Bladder bar gets empty, and I need to use the toilet or I'll be uncomfortable. Sleep bar gets low, and I'll be tired until I get enough. Social bar (face to face time) gets low, and I'll feel bleah until I get some face to face time.
The good news is that I've noticed this, become able to distinguish between "not enough facetime Bleah" and other types of Bleah, and then make sure to get face-to-face time when I need it.
It's spooky how similar I am in this regard.
What's the bad news?
That up until recently the internet (and a wide array of other neural-reward-generating things) made it very easy to NOT notice this and distinguish between various types of mental lethargy.
Very much the same way. The internet has been a mixed blessing -- it allowed me to have the life I have at all, way back when, but now it's also a massive hook for akrasia and encourages sub-optimal use of free time. I'm still trying to get that under control.
If you mean a face-to-face bf/gf, you're not actually disagreeing with Kaj. Also, I concur with his points about social deprivation leading to lethargy, based on personal experience.
I've been working from home for a year now. I don't get out and see people often, my family live far away, so I don't have many opportunities to see people in person. The exception is, my brother is staying with me while he studies at University. There have been a few periods however where he's been away up with our parents, or off at a different university in a different state. I have a few friends I talk with regularly online through IM, and it helps, but the periods when my brother was away were still very difficult and I was getting very stressed towards the end, even though we don't interact all that much on a day to day basis, and even though I've always been much more tolerant and even thriving on loneliness than most people I know.
Maybe video chatting with people would be an adequate substitute? I haven't tried that, but my anecdote is that IM / talking online alleviates some of the stress, but goes nowhere near to mitigating it.