Baylor Scholar Studies How Culture Created a New Kind of Loneliness
Even in a crowd, many Americans say they feel alone. Paul Carron, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, is exploring why that experience has become so common and what it reveals about modern life.
“For most of human history, being alone simply meant being separated from your tribe,” Carron said. “Today you can stand in a room full of people and feel utterly unseen. Loneliness is no longer about physical isolation. It is about feeling disconnected even when others are all around you.”
Carron studies the philosophy of emotions and how cultural environments influence what people feel. He draws on thinkers such as Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger to trace how loneliness has changed as societies change.
“We live alone together,” he said. “The Industrial Revolution pulled people out of tight communities into crowded cities where they knew almost no one. Later, suburban life and television pushed us further apart. Now smartphones promise connection while quietly keeping us isolated from real, embodied relationships.”
His interest in the topic sharpened during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching from home while his wife worked long hours on Zoom, Carron noticed a striking disconnect in his students’ lives.
“We had all these technological ways to communicate, yet everyone felt incredibly lonely,” he said. “I wanted to understand why the tools meant to keep us together were also making us feel more alone.”
Carron calls this modern reality profound loneliness, a background mood that shapes behavior and perception. It is not simply missing friends but losing a sense of belonging.
“Profound loneliness becomes the background noise of your life,” Carron said. “It affects how you move through the world, even if you cannot explain why you feel disconnected. You are surrounded by people but do not feel known by them.”
To help students recognize that mood in their own lives, Carron builds small but intentional practices into his classes that interrupt the constant pull of screens and distractions.
“So much of our isolation comes from routines we do not even think about,” he said. “We default to our devices. We default to distraction. Students often do not realize how isolated their habits have become until they step away from them.”
Those practices include “awe walks” without phones or headphones, gratitude letters and brief media fasts that highlight the influence of technology on attention and relationships.
“They come back saying they feel smaller in a good way, because awe reduces our ego and helps us see we are part of something bigger,” Carron said. “And even just two days without social media can be eye-opening. Students suddenly notice the people right in front of them and realize how many opportunities for connection are already there.”
Carron’s upcoming book traces how new technologies and built environments have created emotional experiences that earlier generations never faced. He emphasizes, however, that the trend can change.
“Loneliness is not a personal failure,” he said. “Our environment has trained us for separation, which means we can build environments and habits that draw us back together. We were made to be in relationship. We just have to remember how.”