The need to feel love and for that human connection is a basic psychological need, so if that isn’t being fulfilled it would be understandable for people to have a reaction to that lack.
Society has changed too. While we may live closer (units/apartments) and be in proximity to other people, we may not actually connect with them. So people can feel lonely even if there are lots of people around. I was messaging with someone the other day and mentioned I don’t know any of my neighbours. I might know them in passing, but we don’t talk and connect. Yet in my youth, I knew all my neighbours. They were there to step in when my parent’s weren’t available. There were closer bonds with even those people who we weren’t in close relationships with.
I also think the mediated world we live in leads to discontent. It can create a sense of lacking something. A sense that we need stuff to make us feel happy. We see advertisements constantly for goods. We have credit pushed at us so we can buy more and more stuff. For some people this leads to the development of a feeling that they don’t have enough to meet their needs. Their friend has the new iPhone and if only they did, they would be happy. Or if only I had a nose like Angelina Jolie, perhaps someone would love me. We are surrounded by unreal and distorted images of ‘happy’ life and what it takes to be happy.
Along the same lines, I feel people are less able to delay gratification. They need that new car, house, furniture, dress, phone or whatever – now. When I was a child my parents saved to buy a new washing machine and it meant something because they worked, and scrimped to get that appliance. The same was true when I was first married. We had secondhand furniture and a small house but we were content with it and felt we were doing okay. Now some people seem to need a MacMansion for a couple with no children and have to fill it with designer furniture and have a new car in the garage to feel they have ‘made it’. Those people are going to feel sad and disatisfied if they can’t have those things ‘now’.
Perhaps in becoming so advanced and prosperous, we’ve forgotten what really counts in order to be happy.