Lonely planet: why are we addicted to the social media scroll when it is so clearly harming us?

‘I have had an at best ambivalent – and at worst deleterious – relationship with two social media platforms that I’ve had to quit cold turkey,’ writes Paul Daley. Photograph: Anatolii Frolov/Getty Images/iStockphoto

There is so much talk of all the lonely people in the world right now that the pervasive state of loneliness is being called an epidemic.

I don’t think that is an overstatement. I see loneliness around me all of the time. Everywhere. Not just in the faces of rough sleepers who look up at passers-by in the hope of finding eye contact and a little empathy – but also in the faces of those who rush past avoiding them, their heads wired or aired to their phones.