social isolation

Sebastian Prendergast, having left the safety of the geodesic dome in which he lived after his grandmother had a stroke, meets sixteen-year-old Jared Whitcomb, and together the boys experience the angst of being teenagers while forming a punk rock band, but when Jared's grandma asks him to return to her home, he is faced with choosing between her dying wish and his newfound life.

"Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one"--Provided by publisher.

Team Human is a manifesto--a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff's most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together--not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups. Team Human delivers a call to arms. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognize that being human is a team sport. In Rushkoff's own words: "Being social may be the whole point." Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology, and psychology, Rushkoff shows that when we work together we realize greater happiness, productivity, and peace. If we can find the others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity--together--we can make the world a better place to be human.

A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.

After being raped at cheerleading camp, Hermione has to deal with the reactions of her classmates, the rejection of her boyfriend, the discovery that her best friend is gay, and the need to remember what happened.

This episode profiles "Genie," a girl whose parents kept her imprisoned in near total isolation from infancy. When social workers discovered her as a teenager, she had not learned to walk or talk. This program includes never-before-seen footage of her rehabilitation and probes how and when we learn the skills that make us "human.".

"Ellie Sokoloff is attending Ventana Ranch School in Big Sur because she hopes that the wide-open setting will cure her claustrophobia and she was delighted to find Eliza Hart, her childhood friend, also in attendance. But Eliza has changed and for no apparent reason starts spreading rumors about Ellie, until one day she is found dead--now Ellie must find out what happened to her one-time best friend, and who killed her, not least because she herself is everybody's chief suspect"--Provided by publisher.

"No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy"--Jacket flap.

"[A] story about an imaginative boy whose best friend is an oak tree named Bertolt. The boy admits to being an outlier among his peers, but insists that while he is alone, he is never lonely. Being independent suits him, and he considers his difference to be his advantage"--OCLC.