Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions

A lack of meaning and purpose impacts contemporary society, Hari argues. The need for purpose is universal. Lack of meaning stems from various aspects of people’s lives, including jobs, poverty, or hope for the future. For Hari, these count as a form of disconnection as much as loneliness. According to one study, the more fulfilling one’s work “the more friends and social activity you had after work” (83). Acknowledging traumas also help free individuals from the shame that interferes with their lives and relationships (294-97).

Recovering one’s sense of meaning underlies Hari’s ideas for reconnection. Although meaning and purpose are personal and individual, they can affect one’s connections with others and society as a whole.

Materialism is one of the major obstacles to forming necessary connections, Hari argues. Materialism includes “junk values,” which originates from Hari’s comparison of materialism to junk food. Junk values “look like real values; they appeal to the part of us that has evolved to need some basic principles to guide us through life; yet they don’t give us what we need from values—a path to a satisfying life. Instead, they fill us with psychological toxins” (117).

In Hari’s view, junk values are extrinsic values, or what people do to receive rewards, rather than intrinsic values, or the actions people perform for the sake of their own joy. The effect of junk values impacts both our understanding of ourselves and our connections with others, Hari says. They worsen relationships with other people, and individuals with junk values are less likely to “simply lose ourselves doing something we love” (118), more likely to be strongly affected by others’ judgments, and are pressured to spend more time working than forming connections.

Hari views junk values not as an individual weakness, but as something actively encouraged by contemporary society. This is especially because of the power advertising has in the modern world: “[A]dvertising plays a key role in why we are, every day, choosing a value system that makes us feel worse” (122). Junk values and materialism negatively shape a person’s relationships and self-perception. The solution to junk values is reconnection, both with people and with our own intrinsic needs: “By coming together with other people, and thinking deeply, and reconnecting with what really matters, we can begin to dig a tunnel back to meaningful values” (264).