I Wandered Lonely in the Cloud: A Review of Loneliness, Social Isolation and Digital Footprint Data

Dominic Reedman-Flint, John Harvey, James Goulding, Gary Priestnall

2022

Abstract

The harm that social isolation and loneliness can have on physical, mental, and emotional well-being is now well evidenced. With social distancing and remote working now commonplace, the dangers of loneliness are ever more acute. Consequently, information technologies have taken on renewed importance to support healthy communication and reduce the negative impacts of social isolation. However, existing literature remains highly conflicted as to the relationship between technology use and its impact on loneliness. This is perhaps understandable: measures of loneliness have traditionally been examined within clinical settings, far removed from the everyday realities of computational interactions. Yet data logged about such interactions now offers potential to help identify isolation and loneliness and support those experiencing resulting health issues. We present a scoping review of this domain, focusing on detection of loneliness and social isolation through digital data. We interrogate a corpus of published articles from the HCI literature, identifying a series of methodological, epistemological, and ethical tensions therein, as well as emerging opportunities for future empirical study. We identify a need to examine such phenomena via actual behavioural data, rather than reliance on historical proxies such as age and gender, to help modernize our understanding of this growing social ill.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Reedman-Flint D., Harvey J., Goulding J. and Priestnall G. (2022). I Wandered Lonely in the Cloud: A Review of Loneliness, Social Isolation and Digital Footprint Data. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications - Volume 1: CHIRA, ISBN 978-989-758-609-5, pages 225-235. DOI: 10.5220/0011578500003323

in Bibtex Style

@conference{chira22,
author={Dominic Reedman-Flint and John Harvey and James Goulding and Gary Priestnall},
title={I Wandered Lonely in the Cloud: A Review of Loneliness, Social Isolation and Digital Footprint Data},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications - Volume 1: CHIRA,},
year={2022},
pages={225-235},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011578500003323},
isbn={978-989-758-609-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications - Volume 1: CHIRA,
TI - I Wandered Lonely in the Cloud: A Review of Loneliness, Social Isolation and Digital Footprint Data
SN - 978-989-758-609-5
AU - Reedman-Flint D.
AU - Harvey J.
AU - Goulding J.
AU - Priestnall G.
PY - 2022
SP - 225
EP - 235
DO - 10.5220/0011578500003323