My granddaughter set me up on Facebook three years ago. She said it would help me stay connected. She showed me how to post, how to scroll, how to find people I hadn’t talked to in decades. She made it sound like a gift—a window into the lives of the people I loved, available anytime I wanted it.
And she was right. It is a window. The problem is that windows work in both directions. I can see in. But what I mostly see is everything happening without me.
I didn’t expect this. I expected to feel more connected, not less. I expected the photos and the updates and the group chats to make me feel closer to my family, my old friends, and the world I used to be a bigger part of.
Instead, I scroll through a version of life that moves faster than I do, speaks a language I don’t always recognize, and reminds me—daily, quietly, without meaning to—that the world kept going, and I’m watching it from the outside now.
Nobody warns you about this part. So let me.
1. I see the family gatherings I wasn’t invited to
There’s a photo from a barbecue at my nephew’s house. My sister is in it. My cousins are in it. People I’ve known my entire life are standing around a grill laughing, and I’m finding out about it the same way a stranger would—by scrolling past it on a random afternoon.
I don’t think they meant to leave me out. I think the invitation just didn’t occur to them. And that might be worse—because being deliberately excluded is one thing, but being quietly forgotten is something else entirely. Social media didn’t create that forgetting. But it made sure I saw it.
2. The conversations move at a speed I can’t keep up with
Someone posts something.
Within minutes, there are forty comments—jokes, references, abbreviations I don’t understand, a whole conversation happening in a language I technically speak but can’t seem to follow at the speed it moves.
By the time I’ve thought of something to say, the thread is dead. The moment has passed. And the comment I type out carefully, with full punctuation and a complete thought, sits at the bottom like a note slipped under a door everyone has already walked away from.
I’ve started typing replies and deleting them before posting—not because they weren’t good, but because by the time I finished writing, the conversation had already moved three topics ahead.
3. I watch my grandchildren grow up through a screen instead of in person
According to researchers who study aging and technology, older adults who rely on social media to maintain family connections often report a paradoxical increase in loneliness—because digital updates create the illusion of closeness while reinforcing the physical distance that separates them from the people they love most.
My granddaughter’s first day of school was a photo I liked with a heart emoji.
My grandson’s basketball game was a fifteen-second video I watched three times.
Their birthdays, their milestones, their ordinary days—I know about all of it.
But knowing about a life and being part of it are two completely different things. And the screen gives me just enough access to feel the gap without closing it.
4. I see how much the world has changed, and that there aren’t many places for me
The trends I don’t understand.
The humor that doesn’t land.
The debates about things I’ve never heard of, fought with a passion I can’t relate to.
The world on social media isn’t the world I grew up in—and while I know that’s how it’s supposed to work, knowing it doesn’t make it less disorienting.
I used to feel like I understood how things worked. Now I scroll through conversations about culture and technology and social norms and realize that my frame of reference has an expiration date that already passed. Nobody told me directly. The feed did.
5. The people I want to hear from most are the ones who post the least
My closest friends—the ones I actually care about—aren’t on social media, or they are and never use it.
The people who post constantly are acquaintances, distant relatives, people I haven’t spoken to in thirty years.
So my feed is full of strangers living their lives while the people who matter most to me remain silent.
I thought social media would help me stay in touch with the people I love. Instead, it flooded my feed with people I barely know.
6. I compare my quiet life to everyone else’s curated one
Researchers have found that older adults are particularly vulnerable to the distorted sense of social reality that social media creates—because they’re comparing their actual daily experience, which may include significant solitude, to a highlight reel that makes everyone else’s life look full, busy, and surrounded by people.
My Saturday is a book and a cup of tea. Theirs—at least the version they posted—is a brunch, a hike, a sunset, a group photo with twelve smiling people. I know it’s not the full picture. I know people only post the good parts.
But knowing that doesn’t stop the feeling that everyone else is living louder than I am, and the quiet I used to enjoy now feels like something I should be ashamed of.
7. I get more birthday wishes from strangers than from people who know me
Facebook reminded fifty-three people it was my birthday last year. Most of them wrote “Happy Birthday!” with an exclamation point and nothing else. A few added a balloon emoji. One person I haven’t spoken to since 1987 wrote “Hope it’s a great one!!” with two exclamation points.
My daughter called. My neighbor brought a card. And those two gestures meant more than all fifty-three digital messages combined—but the sheer volume of hollow ones made the meaningful ones feel smaller somehow. Like the currency of being remembered had been diluted by people who wouldn’t recognize me in a grocery store.
8. I’ve realized “staying connected” and “feeling connected” are two different things
Studies suggest that the availability of digital communication tools doesn’t reduce feelings of loneliness. Connection requires more than information exchange, and many older adults find that social media gives the appearance of staying in touch without delivering the emotional substance that an actual connection provides.
I’m more connected than I’ve ever been. I can see what everyone is doing at any hour of the day. I can read their thoughts, view their photos, and react to their milestones.
And I have never felt lonelier in my life. Because connection without presence is just observation. And observation without participation is just watching your own irrelevance play out in real time.
9. I miss when staying in touch required effort
A phone call meant someone set aside time for you. A letter meant someone sat down, thought about you, and chose words carefully. A visit meant someone drove to your house because being in the same room mattered more than efficiency.
Social media replaced all of that with something faster, easier, and emptier—and the people who remember what connection used to cost know exactly what was lost in the trade.
I got a letter last month from a friend I’ve had since 1974. She wrote two pages by hand. I read it three times. And it satisfied something in me that six months of scrolling never had.
10. I stay on social media anyway because the alternative feels worse
I’ve thought about deleting it. Plenty of times. But every time I get close, I think about the photos I’d miss. The updates I’d lose. The thin thread of visibility that keeps me in the orbit of people who might otherwise forget I’m here entirely.
Social media didn’t make me lonely. But it gave my loneliness a front-row seat to everything it was missing. And the cruelest part is that the thing making me feel left out is the same thing that makes me feel like I still exist to the people I love—even if existing to them now means a name on a screen they scroll past on their way to something else.
Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.
