WHEN I FIRST MOVED from Portland to Los Angeles, my world of available familiarity collapsed. Suddenly, my best friends, my family, my various loved ones were hundreds of miles away—it was a steep decline in social comfort. I went from living where even the familiar architecture of a coffee shop could make me feel less lonely, to a city where I had to start using Google Maps the second I stepped out of my bedroom.

Needless to say I was lonely. Even someone like me, WHO BENCHED 320 POUNDS IN HIGH SCHOOL. It was during this time that I should have pushed my boundaries of comfort in a new city, turned acquaintances into decent friends, decent friends into better friends, CAN'T FIND A BETTER FRIEND, Pearl Jams into pearls, and so on.

I did do these things... to an extent. I made real-life friends, but in my isolation, I also put a lot of my burden on social media, specifically Twitter, and I've often wondered about that. Was it healthy? Was it making me happier? Was it training wheels on the bike of being an actual person with friends in a new city, or did it just delay that process and make me less happy?

I don't know if Twitter is a healthy thing for people. Sometimes I jump on there to read some jokes about the Blazers, appointment-viewing television shows, or what have you—and I end up feeling like I'm watching an emotional snuff film. I see so many lonely people on Twitter dipping their isolation in a thin coat of humor, then tossing it out to whoever might see it. I understand it, but I also worry about it.

The world can be a lonely place, and in this day and age (IN THIS DAY AND AGE! What an old-man phrase. TIME WAS, TWITTER HAPPENED WITH A PEN AND PAPER AND AN UNBEKNOWNST-TO-YOU DECEASED CIVIL WAR ERA LOVED ONE).... Sorry, in this day and age, it's not unreasonable to reach outside your surrounding 10 miles for friendship. But I worry about the people who only reach outside of that 10-mile zone. The validation of being heard and accepted by strangers is great, and you gotta think it's better to talk to SOMEONE, even if they're a faceless stranger with some kind of self-aware meme as an avatar than it is not to interact with anyone, right? It's gonna be better to have someone understand you than to spend your whole life in darker and darker rooms waiting to die and getting into Lou Reed, or whatever lonely people did before the internet.

What if social media is hurting us, though? What if it's just loneliness methadone, and it's keeping people from going out and making actual friends, the kind of friends who will actually show up at your birthday party, or help you move, or drag you out of a break-up stupor and make you eat a meal and shower? Maybe Twitter is making you lonelier.

Of course, it's also a great place to see pictures of kittens... so maybe it's worth it.