I agree with you about the disconnect. The last date I went on the guy talked to his phone instead of me. I don't use a smart phone anymore. Human interaction helps us use our social skills. We are becoming too impersonal and less social.

Get dressed, put on shoes, get out of the house. Talk to people in line or next to you in the coffee shop, the bookstore, the library, the bus stop. Just say something nice about the weather or their clothing....other people feel the exact same way as you do & it just takes a bit of courage.
Plus, if a particular person is an asshole, you never have to see them again anyway.....

I have the opposite experience. I am isolated due to the religious community I am in. Online I find real people whom share my experience. The one thing I lack is the intimacy of a hearty hug from a friend male or female, the shake of a hand, the look in the eye of understanding. This I miss but with time I will make local friends that share my thoughts. Perhaps those friendships will start online.

As I get older I also find I'm more and more invisible. I say hello and people walk by as if they hadn't heard me and don't see me. Luckily I have terrific friends and activities and community. And a dog.

What you say is very real, personally I avoid people as much as possible, I prefer email, I engage with people so much more now than I ever did pre computers. But as far as society goes, people are losing the skills to communicate directly, I just never had them.

SOmetimes I think this move to depersonalization is a preparation for separation from this earth into realms that contact may only be on a screen.I would like to hang out at a coffee shop and chat with friends for a while every day then go about my business

its a sign of the times and a bad one

About a Dozen years ago... a nice restaurant in Baltimore, In a table 5 young people in their 20's each on the cell phone talking to somebody else. While "being connected" they were the worst example of disconnection I ever seen. One day I will do a painting about them.

When I was driving to work today there was a show on this very topic on NPR Radio. Wished I could have listened to the whole show. It talked about loneliness experienced by older people brought on by technology. How elders used to be revered for the knowledge they accumulated in their lifetime and how many are ignored now and feel lonely and obsolete because we can just use google. How if they have a tremor of the hand cell phones and other technologies are basically useless to them and they feel left out. They might as well be holding a brick.

Also how lonely people become without interpersonal relationships. How virtual friends can't fulfill that need. How loneliness effect heath to the extent where a former US Surgeon General sees it as a growing epidemic and why Great Britain just appointed a Minister of Loneliness.

I absolutely believe it is a huge issue nowadays. But, I don't think it's too difficult to overcome. I'm a pretty gregarious person, and will just start talking to someone if I feel like it. I have never had anyone tell me to get lost , or just flat ignore me. Anyway, I had to relocate about 6 months ago (end of a bad relationship), and I started looking online for trails, and for hiking and biking groups; lo and behold, there were several going to nearby areas.

The thing I like about going online in a forum such as this (and Quora), is that you can get perspectives from people all over the country, and the world. I think that keeps us from becoming too parochial.

Lots of people do volunteer work, often I think, as much for the social contact as to be doing positive in the community.

Living alone, on one's own, however, can be quite depressing. I don't like it at all, even though I have dogs. Probably the only positive thing about living alone is that you're accountable only to yourself.

Sometimes, I'll just go over to the bookstore, or a a coffee shop, and take a book to read just to be around other people. Being around other people is about the only thing I miss about not working.

There is nothing more beautiful and more telling that seeing someone walking to meet you for the first time and moving with grace as they approach you. You guys can computer all you want... I can do music with computers but I wish I could take a musical instrument and make it my own. Computers are so cold and impersonal. Is not who I am. Face to face please.
"She could take away my loneliness
with her cold hands on my face
her warmth smile
gentle as a sun
who's just awoken
at dawn
and the coffee brewing
and her hips moving
and her fingers
soothing...
yesterday's pain
in any place on my flesh
that felt wrong"
I just wrote this up... gotta go... I got something here to work on. Gotta have it while is hot. Do not relegate yourself guys to the role of a toy.

I do feel that so many people today spend so much time fiddling with their electronic devices that they are fostering a disconnect in terms of real face-to-face contact.

I think a lot of this disconnect is due a change in our social habits as well. Smoking used to give us free time in groups with an excuse to ask for a lighter, which was a conversation starter. Also it is easier to exchange ideas with complete strangers on social media, I think we used to cruise the strip in town for that in earlier times.

I don't think these changes are bad necessarily bad, but they had a social contact element that needs to be replaced. Perhaps bring back town squares and Sunday socials?

In the apartment complex where I live, window blinds are always down, curtains drawn. Doors are locked and few people speak when passing. This is all new behavior to me and I admit it stresses me.
I leave my blinds up, day & night, have a dog that demands she be walked, and I make a point of saying hello. I have started locking my door but only because the dog opens it and takes her self for a walk if I don't lock it.

I think it's more about a person is more enabled to indulge in protecting their insecurities. People were always this way, but now it's easier and easier to go overboard. On the other hand, even as an introvert I get restless at home and crave a chance to drain my batteries in public, because they are feeling overcharged at home. I welcome good conversation, or just being around strangers because it distracts me from my overactive mind sometimes. I haven't found many introverts who share that sentiment, however, which makes me feel like the black sheep of the black sheep sometimes lol.

It was always difficult for me to make friends....in particular because my Atheism....but since the arrival of Internet and years later my retirement... it have been even more complicated. So, I force myself to do things that will take me away from the puter....like going to the comm. center to read and to knit with the old believers (lol) and to join a book club (local library). Next step will be re-taking the learning of languages.

I live alone , it has it's perks , but I did have to learn to appreciate me time , deeply , & a lot . It's what I've had to work with , but it doesn't mean that I can't move on .

I get out as much as possible. Meetup.com has a lot of groups that go out and do stuff, even freethinker groups. Networking isn't all bad.

They have an app for this lol! It's called meetup and it's really nifty. I'm going to a local play of Stephen king 's misery this Saturday night! I would have never known about it otherwise. Got to go cave exploring and had coffee with local writers, belly dancing, how to knit, drum circles .....use the tech you feel is isolating to find things to do with people!

Isn't all; this loneliness that we blame the Internet for... nothing else but a huge fear of rejection?

As a self confessed extrovert I totally understand what you mean but think it is even more insidious than that. Not only do we except the virtual as a substitute for the real, even in face to face interactions we don't touch for fear of it being inappropriate, or misunderstood and seen as provocative. But if you look at the work of Harlowe and Prescott we aren't protecting people, we are merely making society more violent, depressed and anxious. Now this suits those parties that want to sell us something or control us through fear but what we are actually doing is substituting the risk of someone doing something inappropriate or harmful with the certainty of psychological damage.

Me, I'll give anyone a hug as long as their personal hygiene isn't too offensive and if their hands start to wander in a manner I disapprove of I'll give them an earful as a first warning, after that it may get a bit painful. I'll talk to anyone until they give me a reason not to. As a woman driving at night by themselves I've stopped for breakdowns on lonely country roads and given people a lift. And no I'm not foolish, I'm aware of the risk, been in situations I'd have preferred to have avoided but I refuse to be scared of living and for me not interacting with people face to face is not living, it's surviving.

For me or hugs just doesn't cut it. Used to go to the Pool Comp and any live band that was on but living 12 km out from a small town where nothing of the sort has happened in the last 3 months, yes I get lonely. Would get a pet but my personal ambition is to get a job that will allow me to move somewhere a bit more lively and don't know if I could take it with me. And all over Facebook we hear how we have to be considerate of the Introverts, well yes we do, but it is the extroverts that are taking a hammering these days in a world that is so disconnected and so, I'm not sure if it's afraid or ashamed, of being just another primate species with all the needs and desires that go with that.

Due to my emotional issues (which I will not mention here), my disconnection from others started at a very early age, ie. kindergarten. So, now I appreciate face-to-face communication and have found others are not.

All that stuff is a godsen-- er, bless-- uh, I mean... It's super awesome not to have to talk to anyone, or leave your house, if you don't have to, when you are a shy, socially-anxious introvert.

Iget way more fulfilling social contact online than I ever would in meatspace because online it's super easy to find people of common interest, attitude, and intelligence with which to connect. Not so in meatspace.

I need this.

I go to work at least 5 days a week, and I have my kids and a few local friends and my Humanists group.

It's called alienation, and it's a defining characteristic of the late stages of Capitalism.