Social and economic change

Digital By Default, Lonely By Design

Rich Denyer-Bewick – CitizensOnline

We are better connected than ever before, through a bewildering array of devices and networks. And loneliness is an acute problem, undermining wellbeing and health. This post both explores that paradox and focuses more directly on its implications for the design of public services.

There is an apparently happy alignment between the improvements to quality which come from putting services online and the consequential efficiency savings which accrue to hard pressed public sector delivery organisations. But the reduction in human interaction which follows is a fundamental and deliberate feature of the new service design. It surely can’t be right that an occasional conversation with a harried bureaucrat will stave off the adverse effects of loneliness – but it always worth remembering that making services more impersonal is always likely disproportionately to affect those who are most vulnerable and most in need of support.