Remember the last time you spent 40 minutes on Instagram before going to bed? You looked at what your friends were doing, watched a couple of reels, and maybe liked a couple of posts. And then when you finally hung up the phone, there was this funny feeling, full and empty at the same time, like you ate a whole bag of chips and still want dinner.
That feeling isn’t weakness. It is not the lack of will. According to a nine-year longitudinal study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by researchers at Baylor University, the platforms built to bring people together may, in practice, be contributing to a rise in loneliness, and the cycle is harder to escape than most people realize.
