Life in the Network Society and the Escalation of Late-Modern Lonelinesses

The problem of loneliness in late modern contemporary societies has long since arrived in daily news coverage, popular literature and political discourse, and increasingly dominates the perception of Western social systems against the backdrop of multiple forms of social disintegration. Social theorists and contemporary diagnosticians characterize our present as an age in which society threatens to degenerate into a network, a complex structure of nodes indifferently opposed to one another. Not least because of the increasing importance of the Internet, this interpretation of contemporary society is more popular than ever. What consequences does this have for the experience of modern loneliness? And can they still be stopped, for example by consciously being alone?