Deresiewicz Summary

It is no secret that technology has had an immense impact on modern society with regard to connectivity. In just the last decade social networking sites have become the norm in everyday activities. Nearly everyone is already on a social networking site, Facebook alone has one billion users, about 1/7 of the world's total population. Even without social networking, people are still interconnected through texting and video chat. If someone goes abroad for a business trip, they will have never really left loved ones behind because they can speak face-to-face with them on a mobile device. Some may say that this is a hindrance to human kind because we need to be in some form of solitude at certain times. What is not known is that to what extent
He then presents the reader with his claim that because we live with such close connections with people from around the world, we are losing our sense of solitude. He alludes to the past like Puritanism and Henry David Thoreau to support his idea that solitude has always been around. It is easy to spot that Deresiewicz is using allusions to relate solitude with great thinkers or eras of mankind. He moderately says to the reader that these great thinkers or eras are great because of solitude. He says that solitude is a religious value as well as a tool to achieve greater self-knowledge. It inherently comes up that Deresiewicz claims that with modern technology, solitude is diminishing and the reader is left with the question of whether or not this effect is
He explains that people are not making the time to focus on themselves because they are focused on others. Deresiewicz himself goes against his own claim when he mentions that “Man may be a social animal,” (1). He seems to think that the lack of self-knowledge is a bad thing, when in fact, people have always been social creatures. The more time we spend connected, the more our society advances with respect to sociability. Exposing a young child to a telephone might make them more open to meeting new people once they reach adulthood. It is a matter of how we treat technology with regard to if it is really a hindrance at all. Humans have an innate trait that makes them want to explore, this is shown in our current interest in space and in history during the Age of Exploration. Just like physical exploration, humans also want to explore and reach new people. Deresiewicz’ main claim is that not being alone will harm us because we will not be prepared for solitude when we come into contact with it. This claim cannot stand for long because humans are ever-learning and will adapt to new things; therefore, Deresiewicz does not supply the reader with sufficient information to prove that lack of solitude is harmful. Humans will eventually disregard the notion of solitude because we would have never experienced it and would not need it any