Issue 01 - Loneliness

SOCIAL MEDIA MAKES ME
ANXIOUS
P7
THE
LONELINESS
ISSUE
IRL
IRL
IRL
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

@HOPE_IRL

A ZINE BY YOUNG PEOPLE,
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
My Loneliness Experience and
Awakening
.......................Page 1
Reflections of a First Year College
Student
..................Page 5
Social Media Makes Me Anxious ....................Page 7
Poem: The Kiss
.............................................Page 11
Struggling with Social Connections in
College
..........Page 12
Lonely AF.......................................................Page 13

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: ROBIN RASKOB
Welcome to HopeIRL’s first issue. We are so excited that
you’ve found us. This magazine is a project of Hopelab,
a small nonprofit social innovation lab based in San
Francisco that works with young people to co-create
technology products that improve health and happiness.
It’s a pretty rad place. Every day, we get to build cool
products and work with amazing young people like you.
And every day we’re hearing your stories. The
experiences you’re having are incredible. We’re
fascinated by what’s going on in your lives.
HopeIRL is a place to share those stories.
When our editorial team first sat down to talk about what
HopeIRL would look like, we all agreed on our vision:
create a magazine by young people, for young people.
It’s a no-brainer; your voices are so strong and
meaningful. We want to hold close to our core values for
this magazine, and will try our best to embrace your
authentic voices, promote a community built on trust,
and make it stylish AF.
This magazine is for you—the rebels, the changemakers,
the peacekeepers, the entrepreneurs, the extroverts, the
quiet ones, he, her, they, and everyone in between. It’s a
digital and print collection of stories about the things that
make us human and give us hope. Join us in this
experiment we’re calling HopeIRL.
Robin Raskob
Editor-in-Chief
HopeIRL
Share your story; email editor@hopeirl.org

LONELINESS
AWAKENING

My sophomore year of college I lived in a
Berkeley duplex with my four best friends. To
an outsider, or maybe an Instagram follower,
our day-to-day lives looked a lot like any
college movie. All four of them were in
sororities, which made it easy to find
something to do on a Saturday night. As the
year progressed, a strained relationship with
one of the “best friends” led me to spend more
and more time in my room, away from the
kitchen or living room where the others would
hang out. I felt anxious about spending time
with my housemates and often doubted
myself and their feelings towards me. I told
myself they didn’t really want me to join them
for dinner, or movie night. My self-confidence
reached an all-time low.
It took a big blow-up between two of the other
girls for me to recognize and accept that I was
unhappy and that I had pulled away from my
community and also myself. To this day I still
consider each of these women close friends,
but in that house, at that time, I didn’t feel
understood, heard, or supported. I felt alone.
Really alone.
My
self-co
nfiden
ce
reache
d an
all-tim
e low.
02
I simply
didn’t
know
what
loneline
ss was
or that
people
my age
could
experie
nce it.
Not only did I feel this way, but I also felt
embarrassed about the fact that I felt alone. I
didn’t think anyone else ever felt alone, and
tapping through snapchat stories seemed to
confirm that thought. Even within my hippie
liberal Berkeley bubble I felt ashamed and
discouraged. I didn’t know what I was
experiencing or that those around me were
feeling it too.
I am a public health student who speaks
openly and honestly with classmates, friends,
and family about mental health. I take pride in
my awareness and understanding of mental
health and the impacts it has on everyday life.
But somehow, I had never spoken with
anyone about loneliness as something that
affected people my age. I simply didn’t know
what loneliness was or that people my age
could experience it.

Thanks to incredibly supportive high school
friends and family, I was able to confront my
feelings. I worked hard to find new friendships
and work on existing ones to make sure they
were healthy and supportive. Throughout this
process, I still never realized how impactful
loneliness could be on our health and
well-being.
It wasn’t until Margaret Laws, Hopelab’s CEO,
came and spoke at The Fung Fellowship, a
tech and wellness fellowship I am a part of,
that I learned what loneliness is. Loneliness
is a painful feeling that acts as an “alarm
bell,” signaling that our fundamental need
for connection and belonging isn’t being
adequately met, and it’s a real problem among
college students.
I proceeded to apply for an internship at
Hopelab, and began to work on the very
project that introduced me to loneliness. Over
the course of my time here, I’ve dug into the
rich dataset from Hopelab’s 2018 National
Survey, where we measured loneliness and
social media use in over 1,300 young people,
ages 14-22. I’m now turning my focus
outwards, looking at loneliness, not only from
a research lens, but also as a student who has
recently experienced and is surrounded by
these emotions.
Written by Lena Bertozzi
Photography feat. Lena Bertozzi
03

LONELINESS
ALARM
CONNECTION
LEM
PROB-
04

R efle ctio n s of a First Year Colleg e S t u d e nt
“We’ll call every weekend.”
“Promise.”
“And every free night.”
“Yes.”
We stayed there hugging in the driveway, a
small knot of four people, no one wanting to
let go first. Such were the friendships I made
in high school; I spent my time mingling
between and within small groups, forming
bonds catered to specific niches.
Going into college, I expected the same. I
was rooming with two of my close friends
from high school, and looking back on it now,
I think we all assumed we’d add a few people
into our group and settle down quickly.
As it turned out, my social experience at
college was distinctly different from those
early expectations. Coming from a relatively
large graduating class, we looked forward
to meeting people from a more diverse
population and finding our niche. In practice,
this goal proved difficult. I trooped through
orientations, computer science residential
programs, club meetings, tutoring sessions,
and day-to-day classrooms, searching for
the people that I could call my day-ones,
my go-tos, my ride-or-dies. I shared many
similarities and interests with other students,
but I didn’t experience the magic click with
a single group like I expected to. In a crowd
of tens of thousands of students, there were
times when I still felt alone.
WHO KNEW THAT
FLOATING IN A
SEA OF PEOPLE
COULD FEEL SO
IMPERSONAL?
05

Bumping into people I knew meant lots of
heys and hellos and how are yous, always
parting on “We should catch up sometime”
and “I’ll see you soon,” promises that would
rarely be fulfilled. Everyone was always going
somewhere, running on their own ticking
timeline—“I wish I could talk more but I’m
late to class!”—like invisible stopwatches
that were always just a few seconds apart.
Friendships that seemed obvious (“I share
three classes with her; we’ll probably end
up close”) never seemed to blossom in the
right way, and the ones that were random
and utterly spontaneous seemed to take off
more than the obvious choices. Was I doing
something wrong?
Through the ups and downs of my freshman
semesters, I realized little by little that a
college experience was never going to fit my
high school expectations.
SO I AM LIFTING
THE COOKIE
CUTTER THIS
YEAR.
I don’t have a friend type. I don’t have one
group. I freely engage in multiple circles and
still other shapes, aiming to diversify, aiming
to build a kaleidoscope of personalities
whose experiences I can learn from and
dance among. College is still a sea of people,
but I’m finding my way through.
My college social experience so far was not
fitting into the mold that I had brought from
high school.
Written by Trevina Tran
Photography feat. Monique Nguyen
06

SOCIAL MEDIA
MAKES ME
ANXIOUS
“What you’re describing is grief.”
Those words were spoken by a middle-aged female psychologist who proceeded to
recline back into her chair and cross her fingers. I recall this specific detail because the
time before I was appointed to a male therapist (against my preference) with only three
fingers on each hand. He had said the same thing. Grief; an apparent explanation for the
nauseating pain in my lower stomach, the same pain that drove me to prematurely leave
my Chinese lecture, walk three blocks down Bancroft Way and check myself into student
mental health services. “There’s no point,” I would say to myself in class “being physically
present but mentally unavailable.”
This was the prevailing mindset for my first semester at Berkeley. I began to operate in
insecurity, triggered by the prospect of taking responsibility for my own choices. The
negative beliefs I once held to be true started to materialize through unrighteous anger and
were only exacerbated by a tendency to surround myself with people who were objectively
important by virtue of inherited looks and money. Selfies were staged, alcohol was in
abundance, and as a teenager I somehow fancied myself a socialite by the likes of Zelda
Fitzgerald, determined to be seen with the “right people” at the “right parties.” In short, I
was a severely unhappy and superficial person.
07

Photography feat.Christopher Lloyd Chang
It is a way of functioning that does not presently strike me as foreign. As a great deal of
curious children do, throughout childhood I held onto little snippets of my parents’ dialogue
which unnerved me and tasked myself with rationalizing those words. Over time, I came to
suspect a genetic component; that they too suffered from obsessive thoughts, despair, and
possibly, that same immobilizing grief. I began to take note of such symptoms as they came
to hamper even my most basic endeavors, such as getting out of bed or eating. In January
of the next year I sought treatment from a psychiatrist in San Francisco and was formally
diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, an affliction that annually affects roughly 3%
of the US population.
I tell you this not as an aimless revelation but because visibility is important, particularly
among an audience that suppresses each perceptible sign of weakness. Pathophysiological
research suggests that “GAD” is linked to disrupted functional connectivity of the
amygdala, a set of neurons in the brain’s medial temporal lobe integral for processing
human emotion. To disregard this diagnosis with the common notion that teenagers
nowadays are entirely too fragile would be to miss the point entirely. More than anything, the
news indicated to me that more introspective work was necessary.
08

“WE CAPTURE A CONTEXTUALIZING,
AFFECTIVE MOMENT THROUGH
TRUST IN TECHNOLOGY,”
Although now, some time later, I’m scarcely able to pinpoint all of the non-biological stressors
that contributed to my anxiety, in the moment I was certain about one thing: limiting
social media use. Before even arriving on campus, I had already gained hundreds of mutual
followers on Instagram via the class page on Facebook. Excited by the idea of meeting
people unlike those from my rural hometown, these online connections did not appear
unusual to me. Upon walking to class, however, I was taken aback by the multiple people I
would run into who referred to me by my username. Friendships would develop through
real life interactions, only to have it later revealed that those same people already had an
idea of me through social media. “I didn’t want it to be weird,” one girl later conceded. All
judgment suspended, it still felt weird.
These awkward situations are symptomatic of my generation, “Generation Z.” The age
group which market research suggests has a preference for emojis over text, and entertains
the impulse to consume information as quickly as possible. Patience and rumination are
characteristics which, although approved in the abstract, lose ground to more instantly
negotiable gratifications. To swiftly navigate the digital era is potentially to have everything:
the world at your fingertips; validation at a whim.
“We capture a contextualizing, affective moment through trust in technology,” contends
digital rhetoric professor, Aaron Hess. “The intersection of body and machine, of analog
and digital, enables users to generate new perceptions of both the self and the device.” But
what happens when the digital mindset is imposed onto the physical world? What happens
when young adults become preoccupied with manipulating photographs to fit an unobtainable
image? We begin to neglect the people we are in real life.
This was the case for me, and thus I adopted the philosophy that if I had only spoken to
someone a handful of times or no longer saw them on a regular basis, then I was not
obligated to follow them. Being informed about these people’s lives from social media
posts as opposed to in-person interaction felt ingenuine, especially considering most of
them lived within a five block vicinity. By the end of the school year, I had unfollowed over
200 students.
09

It was a relief to no longer be constantly confronted with visuals of white teeth and Gucci belts
and vacations to remote Grecian islands. It was a relief to accept myself without Facetune or
filters, to not conceal the cystic acne scars which remind me that I am indeed still a teenager.
It was a relief to be exempt from the calculated portrayals which innately disagree with who I
am as a writer. No longer did I have to sacrifice authenticity for digital approval, or even
subdue my healthy sense of self-deprecation. Documenting each tragic mistake and act of
charming naivety allows for reflection, a virtue which does not currently appear to be resonant
with social media use. Take for example, Hopelab’s sponsored national survey of more than
1,300 U.S. teens and young adults which found that, “social media users are somewhat more
likely to agree than disagree that they feel like they always have to show the best version of
themselves on social media, with 53% agreeing. A majority (57%) reported feeling like other
people are doing better than they are (15% often feel that way when using social media).”
The aim here is not to point out all of Generation Z’s shortcomings, nor to suggest that I’m by
any means absolved from contemporary technological culture. It is simply to draw attention to
the increasing importance of social media in young adults’ identity formation and the means
by which different age groups utilize it differently. Is “social media” indeed being used for
social purposes, or is this a term that masks the behavior of teenagers obsessed with self
image? Should we reevaluate the perceived legitimacy behind modern online interactions?
Are social media’s benefits fleeting or long-term? These are the types of questions we at
Hopelab are asking. It is my hope that older generations, particularly those individuals who
build technologies to be disseminated across young audiences, confront these uncertainties
head on.
FEATURED ARTIST:
CHRISTOPHER LLOYD CHANG
Christopher is 20 years old and lives in San Francisco, CA. He spends much of his time
arranging words and fulfilling dog dad responsibilities. On the weekends he is likely to be
found reviving dead houseplants or scouting for new thrift spots in the city.
10

A KISS
WRITTEN BY TREVINA TRAN
Was it right?
Had I sacrificed my emotional timeline
in favor of the movie scene
first kiss?
A stone bench in Yerba Buena park,
overlooking the city and the
sunset.
It was picture perfect.
Yet, emotionally blurred.
The night sky, speckled with stars
-- my cheek, speckled with your
kisses.
There are small candle flames, but
no fireworks today.
The air feels a little too tense.
Was it me?
Intimacy, admittedly slightly damp,
with a hint of resolve to make it a
memorable night.
I wander home eventually.
“Are you judging me”
I ask my best friend.
“Not really … just
When did you grow up”
I didn’t know. Did I?
Unless I didn’t grow up. Unless
this wasn’t really me.
Did I choose the pretty memory over
the rightful timing?
The pattern continues.
11

STRUGGLING WITH SOCIAL CONNECTIONS IN COLLEGE
Prior to attending college, I would say my
experience with social connections was
easier. Growing up and attending schools
in Oakland, I was surrounded by those
that came from similar socioeconomic
backgrounds. We just wanted to make it out
and eventually give back either to ourselves
or to our families and our community. The
stories of how our parents immigrated to
the U.S. for a better life resonated with most
of us. Even as someone reclusive as I am,
I was still able to make connections that,
so far, I haven’t been able to make at UC
Berkeley. Maybe it’s because I’d known my
friends from home for years, or because we
can all relate to each other; whatever it is,
these connections I’d made prior to college
had a really positive impact on me.
came true.” For the rest of the time I’ve
been at Berkeley, I haven’t been able to
make as strong connections. Sure, I made
some good friends and got along well with
my first-year roommates, but it wasn’t the
same. I couldn’t talk about the struggles
of being a low-income first-generation Indian-Lao
American cisgender male because
I was mostly surrounded by individuals that
did not come from these backgrounds.
I got diagnosed with depression and an
eating disorder in the Fall of my first year
of college, which probably contributed to
my not socializing as much as I had prior to
college. Things just seemed to get worse
socially; the only person that I really hung
out with most of the time was my girlfriend,
whom I’d also met in Summer Bridge.
I had high expectations for social connections
in college. I expected to make way
more friends in college since everyone is
supposed to be more open-minded and
we’re all on the same path of attaining a
higher education.
Part of my expectation came true while
attending Summer Bridge, which is the
summer program available to incoming
freshmen at UC Berkeley. It’s an opportunity
for scholars to take Berkeley classes while
staying in one of the on-campus dorms, and
to meet other incoming Berkeley freshmen,
potentially making long-lasting friendships.
I’m now in my sophomore year of college,
and I will still say that most of the friends
that I’ve made at Berkeley were from
Summer Bridge. I felt super connected to
my dorm floor, as if they were family.
That’s why I say “part of my expectation
12
That is why I’ve made it my mission to “go
out more”—literally out of my dorm—and
make new friends during my second year of
college. From my first year, I learned that I
can’t wait for potential connections to come
to me like I did prior to college; I have to
go out and search for them. Colleges are
full of students from various backgrounds.
It’s not like it’s one school where you’re
surrounded by people who look like you and
were raised like you. I’ve recently joined the
Southeast Asian Student Coalition (partly
because I’m half-Laotian and I wanted to
be in a community where I’m surrounded by
familiarity) so that I can increase my social
connections. And so far… it’s been looking
pretty good, and I have hope for myself this
year.
WRITTEN BY
HITESH KUMAR KHILWANI

What does loneliness look like to you?
Loneliness, unlike other health
paradigms, doesn’t have the most
obvious symptoms. A person can be
highly functional and lonely. A person
can be social, have a wide network of
friends and colleagues, and still be
lonely. Lonely people don’t always
“look” lonely.
If we’re being honest, I don’t look like
loneliness.
From the outside, I seem like a friendly,
“normal” person. I have a large social
network. I am naturally extroverted
and outgoing, and I always have
been. Even as a kid, I used to put
on “shows” for literally anyone and
everyone, and would PERFORM,
even when my audience seemed to
have way better things to do (Cough
cough, mom and dad). What I didn’t
realize is that just because I was all of
these things—outgoing, eccentric, an
audience seeker—didn’t mean I was
immune to loneliness. Which is such
a relief to now know, because I have
always felt a disconnect between my
environment and the way I felt in it.
By definition, this all makes sense
now. Loneliness can be defined as
the gap between relationships you
want and those you have, which
causes emotional pain. 1 Loneliness
is subjective, because there isn’t a
specific criteria for loneliness; you just
feel it when you do. And I feel it, in
various ways and to varying amounts,
every. Single. Day.
So when asked to listen to our newest
Hopelab project dedicated to building
social connection and reducing
loneliness in young adults, I shrank into
myself a little bit. I have many emotions
surrounding this project—I would be
lying if I didn’t say it hits a little too close
to my inner world. Why didn’t I have this
information when I was in school? Why
did no one tell me that you could be a
social butterfly and still feel so lonely
inside?
“Why didn’t I have this information
when I was in school? Why did no
one tell me that you could be a
social butterfly and still feel so
lonely inside?”
When I reminisce about my early
college years, especially my first
year, it was one of the loneliest points
in my life. Leaving high school was
exciting—a new opportunity to be this
person I had mentally built up in my
mind—a new identity, new friends, a
new place. But it was wildly different
than what I was expecting. My thought
process progressed from being
extremely excited, to “it’s going to be
okay, trust the process,” to “wait, how
are other people already so acquainted
with each other,” to “maybe I will just
14

felt like everyone had friends, while I
was just floating from group to group.
I felt not only disconnected from my
outer world, but from my inner world
as well. I didn’t understand how I, such
an outgoing person who was talking to
people and making “friends,” still felt
completely and utterly alone. Not only
that, I didn’t even have the language to
describe what was happening to me. I
was exhausted by constantly reaching
out to people to try to garner some sort
of social connection, especially when it
seemed like I was the only one who was
really having to try.
“I felt not only disconnected from
my outer world, but from my inner
world as well. I didn’t understand
how I, such an outgoing person who
was talking to people and making
“friends,” still felt completely and
utterly alone. “
How did everyone already have
friends? Was everyone just
automatically best friends with their
roommate? Was I missing something?
Did I just peak in high school? Maybe
I’m not as social as I thought I was. I
had all of these people around me but
no idea how to connect with them. And
even if I did—how was I going to know
if they actually liked me?
Like I mentioned, I’m an extrovert, so
making friends should be easy for me,
right? Wrong. While I do enjoy getting
to know people, I have a hard time
making deep connections with people
past a surface level. I have a guarded
approach to social connection, even
when it doesn’t seem like I do when a
person is talking to me. I won’t lie—I
have been burned in the past by close
friends. I have plenty of trauma from
my middle school years (I was severely
bullied), and that accounts for the way
I approach social connection. While I
believe these experiences made me
a stronger, more empathetic person,
those years still affect me (trauma, am I
right?). Even after joining a sorority—a
supposed network of women with
whom I was to feel immediately
connected—everything still felt forced. I
was intensely uncomfortable, paranoid
that I wasn’t doing enough, that no one
really liked me, that I was a weirdo. For
at least six months it felt like I had the
word desperate tattooed across my
forehead.
The thing about loneliness is it can
trigger a cycle of connection or
disconnection, depending on our
perception of making friends and
reaching out to people. People who are
lonely generally have fixed beliefs about
themselves and their ability to form
friendships in general; this could be in
part related to the fact that society has
ingrained in us this idea that friendship
should be “easy and effortless,” that if
you have to try at a friendship it
probably isn’t worth it or going to work
15

16

awkward moments as a society, but the
truth is that any attempt at connection
runs the risk of awkwardness.
The Hopelab project I was hearing
about, Nod, is actively attempting
to shift these beliefs and disrupt the
cycle of disconnection. While I’m still
a tad bitter that this information wasn’t
available to me when I was starting
out in school, I still managed to find a
way to overcome intense feelings of
loneliness on my own, with time and my
own strategies, not surprisingly similar
to the ones presented in the share out.
“Everyone is lonely. So why is no one
talking about it? ”
Drake raps about it on his newest
album in the song Emotionless. We
explore it on television shows like
13 Reasons Why. We hear about
tragedies like suicides without any prior
knowledge of mental health issues or
depression. Thirty percent of college
students reported feeling very lonely in
the recent past; 2 even though I didn’t
realize it in college, my peers were
struggling with their own loneliness
battles. But still, no one was making an
active effort to change the narrative of
what it means to be lonely.
on campus. We can meet people 6,000
miles away through a direct message
on Instagram. Connecting isn’t the
problem. It’s the depth of connection
that is lacking. The challenge is being
able to talk about that loneliness
and express it in a way that makes
ourselves feel heard.
What Hopelab is trying to do is
change the way we think about social
interactions, and the social norms
surrounding them. Friendships aren’t
as easy to build as people say they are,
the best years of your life don’t just end
in college, and even the most social
of butterflies are sometimes secretly
hiding in their cocoons. Loneliness
will always have a bit of a hold over us
because it’s our individual perception.
But learning strategies to overcome our
own perceptions and ideations of self is
how we can conquer it.
We have the tools to connect to
each other. Facebook (or, back in the
day, “The Facebook”) was originally
created to connect college freshman
1.
Peplau & Perlman, 1982
2.
ACHA National College Health Assessment, 2019
17

A personal perspective on
loneliness in college
LONELY
AF
Written by
Maria Santana
18

CLOSING NOTE: CAROLINE FITZGERALD
As my understanding of loneliness and its impact on our health
and well-being has deepened over the past three years, so has
my appreciation of the gravity of psychologist Chris Peterson’s
simple but powerful statement, “other people matter.” Other people
matter, not only to our survival, but as irreplaceable contributors
to the precious, joyful experiences in life. Alongside learning to live
in harmony with our natural environment, there is nothing more
important right now than learning how to connect with our fellow
humans in a rapidly changing social and cultural world. Adding
urgency to the call is the troubling trend of increasing levels of
loneliness among teens and young adults in the U.S. As the stories
in this zine evidence, loneliness is not the same as being alone.
Gen Z students suffer more loneliness than any other generation
that we know of, but Gen Z students are not to blame. Loneliness is
a state that cannot be explained by one root cause, andthe fact that
it is on the rise across the entire population points to the influence
of social, cultural,and environmental factors. Personally, I think
bringing youth and experts together to work on and test solutions
that address loneliness is the way forward. By learning what works,
we can not only improve the health and quality of life for people who
experience loneliness, but we can also contribute new knowledge
to better understand its psychological and behavioral drivers.
At Hopelab, we’re working with students to design a mobile app
that empowers them to build the social connections they want
and need to be successful in college. You can check it out at
www.heynod.com. It’s not quite ready yet, but you can sign up, and
when it is, you can use it and tell us what you think.
In the meantime, you can take the enhanced awareness you have
around loneliness and turn it into motivation to invest in your own
social connections. I’m certain if you do, you’ll find that, indeed,
other people matter.
Caroline Fitzgerald
Project Lead, Strategy and Design
Hopelab

COMING SOON: ISSUE 2, THE QUEER ISSUE
FOCUSED ON THE STORIES OF LGBTQIA+ YOUTH
Get featured!
Email us: editor@hopeirl.org
DM us: @hope_irl

EDITOR
IN CHIEF:
ROBIN
RASKOB
CREATIVE
DIRECTOR:
DENISE HO
ART
DIRECTOR:
KADY
BARNFIELD
MANAGING
EDITOR:
MARIA
SANTANA
COPY
EDITOR:
LISSA
MORAN

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HopeIRL is produced with generous support from Hopelab, a social
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behavior-change tech to help teens and young adults live happier
healthier lives. To learn more about how the organization works with
young people to co-create products to improve health and
well-being visit hopelab.org.

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1:
THE LONELINESS ISSUE
SPRING 2020
My Loneliness Experience
and Awakening
Reflections of a First Year
College Student
Social Media Makes Me
Anxious
Poem: The Kiss
Struggling with Social
Connections in College
Lonely AF