Online isolation: Are digital platforms making us lonely?
“The mythology has not changed: Romantic love is depicted as a dramatic event, nothing is the same again after, an external force, a revolution, something transformative that cannot be controlled - hit by Cupid’s arrow, the poet fell in love and into an endless torment.” - Dr Carolina Bandinelli
In the modern world, we have unparalleled access to other like-minded people and limitless potential for social connection through technological platforms. Yet there is widespread concern that our society is becoming more fragmented and lonely, with time spent on social media making us feel increasingly isolated and depressed. Dating apps now play a huge role in finding love, but are they hindering the formation of genuine connections?
I wanted to ask this of Dr Carolina Bandinelli. Carolina is an Associate Professor in Media and Creative Industries at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research has focused on analysing discourses and the digital culture of love, investigating digital technologies of love and how they shape emerging cultural tropes in the dimensions of romance, sexuality, and intimacy. In 2021, she curated a series of events entitled ‘Summer of Love: Dialogues on Digital Romance,' hosted by Warwick's Centre for Digital Inquiry.
Some of her papers include: ‘Romantic opportunism: Doing the work of structures in post-feminist creative industries (2024)’, ‘Bye bye romance, welcome reputation: An analysis of the digital enclosure of dating’ (2023), and ‘Dating apps: towards post-romantic love in digital societies’ (2022).
Dr Bandinelli has also published on the organisation and significance of work in the creative industries: self-branding, coworking and collaborative economies. Some pieces include: ‘Social Entrepreneurship and Neoliberalism: Making Money While Doing Good’ and ‘The Production of Subjectivities in Neoliberal Culture Industries: The Case of Coworking Spaces’. She also published a book last year: ‘The post-romantics: on new ways of loving’, where Dr Bandinelli makes the case that, ‘The new ideal is that of a love that does not hurt. But how can we love without ever suffering?’
How indeed, but before we get into that - I wanted to start with the broadest of questions: what is love, as a field of enquiry? After all, we use the word “love” for the most trite and humdrum of pronouncements. “Love is a social construct”, that has a substantial social and cultural footprint, according to Carolina. She became interested in the idea of a love that hurts whilst doing her PhD. We discussed the various kinds of love, the restrictive nature of the English language in defining and separating them, and how romantic love, particularly hetronormative love, dominates online and cultural influences.
“Unless you are Socrates, how can you do a study of ‘what is love’? As a cultural scholar, I decided to study the culture of romantic love - as defined by sexual connection and emotional intimacy.”
One of the key themes of The Great RomCon? is exploring the role and influence that romanticism is having on people and their relationships. But what is romanticism, where did it come from? Dr Bandinelli explained that what is commonly referred to as ‘romanticism’ springs from a French literary and cultural movement of the late 18th Century. The idea of ‘romantic love’, which the movement built on, was a far older concept, coming from French poetry of the late Middle Ages - “The stories were of knights and princesses, heroic adventures of sacrifice that were not based on discussions of god and the divine.”
Romantic love, then, was essentially invented by men and was originally based on the model of the unrequited, unfathomable religious love of the Messiah, a love that defies all explanation, such as The Passion of the Christ on the cross, absolving the sins of humanity in the sight of His Father. Dr Bandinelli said that this novel romantic poetry took the form of, “the disembodied love of dead women”.
Modern representations of romanticism, such as romantic comedies, are based on the same tropes and structure. Carolina evokes the example of Julia Roberts in the film ‘Notting Hill’ - there was Hugh Grant’s life before he spilt the orange juice all over her - and after ‘the event’, where things were never the same again for either of them. Carolina spoke about her interest in the English word to ‘fall’ in love. It is, therefore, defined as an involuntary and perhaps dangerous, solipsistic event that you had little control over. In the past, to see a friend fall in love, was to pity their misfortune.
It seems counterintuitive that the very devices and platforms that were intended to bring us together would, in practice, drive us apart. A recent rise in isolation and loneliness, especially among young people, appears to be closely correlated with our near ubiquitous reliance on digital platforms. According to a 2023 Axios study of US college students and other Gen Zers, 79% said they were forgoing regular dating app usage. I wanted to ask Dr Bandinelli whether these tools are getting in the way of people making more human in-person connections?
“Dating apps are encoded technologies of a post-Romantic love… I think we are witnessing a cultural shift in how we see love, that it is inextricably linked to pain… There is a disenchantment with romantic love.”
Dr Bandinelli explained how digital technologies, such as dating apps, look to drive efficiency through a controlled, quantifiable, and predictable framework, thereby, possibly to the chagrin of app users, actually “minimising the risk of falling in love”. The apps, then, are ironically inherently unromantic.
“Dating apps provide the illusion of control… Who helps me choose [a partner]? Not the priest, not the family. No-one, it is all in my hands. But this is a double-edged sword… If things don’t work out, it must be your fault.”
The user experiences this illusion through the hyper-personalised platform, reminiscent of turn-based video games: things will not ‘just happen’ to you, you must act in sequence on the platform in order to prompt further engagement. This is completely unlike the traditional way that you might meet someone in real life, such as meeting a stranger in a bar, which represent a volatile environment that you have little control over: you don’t know who will be there at any given time, when they will leave, whether they are looking to meet someone and whether they would be open to speaking to you.
“The messiness of finding love is reduced to a three-step process in the app - you no longer have to surrender yourself to the whims of chance. This is the fantasy of control, to find the formula to find the soul mate, the other half of the apple.”
Carolina said that the dating apps look to streamline the dating process for their users, citing how the marketing and taglines of match.com, Bumble and Tinder for example, often allude to how their clever mathematics can give a secret insight into finding ‘the one’: Such as ‘The brain behind the butterfly’, or ‘Let the algorithm do the magic.’
This encapsulates two key tenets of romantic love: that there is a soulmate out there for you, and the only thing needed to find bliss is to embark on the odyssey to find them. It's all about the journey, with the destination's suitability taken as a given. The idea of the perfect other being is a comforting and alluring one, but it has insidious implications. After all, if you aren’t happy in your relationship, then they obviously aren’t the one. You are meant to recognise your soulmate when you see them, so I must therefore discard you and resume the search. By making love all about the search, the quest, and the apps, they tap into the virtual, endless possibilities and easy comparison that they facilitate. Some platforms overtly state this; “Plenty of Fish basically says that in its name,” says Carolina.
Dating apps are already taking on the feedback of users however, due to the fatigue and exhaustion of their users. Carolina mentions the app, Breeze, which will now make things easy for users by organising the dates for them. Whilst this appeals to my inner lazy-boy, isn’t a good way of vetting a potential date however, by seeing where they propose for a first date?
In her book, The Post Romantics, Dr Bandinelli says that: ‘We are still romantic, yes, but also capable of separating sex and love; we are all free to live relationships as we wish and with whom we wish’. This freedom to attempt to separate physical expressions of love from its idea in the abstract has proved a challenge for many people, despite the spread and acceptance of new models of relationships. This is especially true when apps and social media can give us an unhealthy overview and perceived connection with following our crush’s every movement in the real and online world. Carolina says that her future work will look at other forms of intimacy and relationship models that are present in modern love: polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, for instance.
Not just in extreme forms of cyber-stalking, so much is lost when we don’t interact with someone in real life and have to rely upon apps and platforms. Instead, we have to infer someone’s core personality from a smattering of photos and words in their online presence. In this sense, Carolina describes herself as a ‘sottesexual’, attracted to the voice and words people use. Voice notes just won’t cut it. I subscribe entirely to admiration, as well as the role of the ‘dentesexual’ - the attraction to people who have good teeth. Watch out, Aimee Lou Wood.
“I dream of a more creative algorithm, where the matching is less formulaic and predictable - the algorithm logic reduced the romantic experience to computable compatibility… desire is much more complex than that.”
Dating apps are here to stay, then. What is Dr Bandinelli’s vision for the future? More creativity in the algorithmic matches, so that they are less formulaic in nature. She is not sure this is possible, given the financial incentives of the dating apps to maximise engagement, and therefore profits.
Would socialist love be any different, I wonder? “In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love”, muses Joseph Fiennes in the film ‘Enemy at the Gates’. No matter the prevailing economic paradigm at play in society, perhaps then we have one other universal equality. Death, taxes, and love hurts.