Jacquie Brown moved to Honolulu from Fremont, Calif., three years ago, not knowing anyone in the Islands.

She felt completely disconnected.

After a year of flying home every month — that got too expensive — she decided there had to be an easier way to keep in touch, especially during the lonely holidays.

So Brown set up a Web site for her family on www.Ning.com, an online service that helps people create social Web sites. Everyone with access to the site can share photos, announce events and send holiday greetings.

"I love it because it keeps me in the loop," said Brown, a 26-year-old senior executive recruiter who lives in Makiki. "I'm the only one out here in Hawai'i ... (the distance) is hard."

We're living in a nonstop, 24-hour world, where meeting a friend for lunch often has to be scheduled by BlackBerry. We're moving to new cities, pursuing careers, raising families — and it's all happening at such blurring speed it's amazing the laundry gets done.

What often suffers from our busier-than-ever lifestyle are social connections. We spend more time at work and commuting than cultivating relationships. Yet despite modern obstacles, this is the time of the year when most people feel that urge to reconnect, experts say.

Technology can help; so can good old-fashioned cards, letters and get-togethers.

According to a recent study published in the American Sociological Review, Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than 20 years ago, signaling that people are living lonelier, more isolated lives. Despite advances in technology created to help us stay in touch — e-mail, text-messaging, MySpace — relationship experts say we're more emotionally disconnected than ever before, even during the holidays.

"There isn't that closeness, that physical closeness between people like there was years ago," said Beatty Cohan, a Sarasota, Fla.-based psychotherapist and author. "We're not doing well in our relationships, we really aren't. We've gotten so removed from the basics — love and meaningful work, in that order — it's not good."

TECHNOLOGY TOOLS

We plan Thanksgiving dinners, organize gift exchanges at work, and send out dozens of Christmas cards — all in an attempt to recapture our childhood fondness for the holidays.

"I think there's a part of us that wants to get back to the safety of a family," Cohan said, "to bring back those feelings we had as children of what it was like to look forward to Santa Claus or Hanukkah."

But planning Christmas dinners and sending greeting cards often require more time than many of us can spare.

Enter technology.

Today, we can send e-cards and digital photos to dozens of people at once. No waiting in lines at the post office or handwriting addresses on envelopes.

But does that personal touch get lost in cyberspace?

"Maybe we have become less personal in some ways," wrote Pepper Schwartz, sociology professor at the University of Washington, in an e-mail from China. "But I think we probably have many more contacts than we did before."

My-Tien Sadler, a 37-year-old support engineer in San Diego, used to send mass e-mails to her far-flung family and friends with photo attachments.

But that got too cumbersome. And not everyone could view the images. So, like Brown, she created a private Web site where she can post photos and updates about her family.

"They love it," said Sadler, a mother of two. "This is the one place everybody can just go to and look at pictures without doing anything technical and hard. They just launch the browser and click."

Though she keeps in touch with family and friends by updating the Web site, Sadler still sends about 60 Christmas cards every year, mostly to family and friends in Hawai'i, Arizona and Florida.

"I actually love getting those holiday newsletters from friends," Sadler said. "I love reading through them and seeing what everybody's up to."

FACE-TO-FACE IS KEY

Despite the ease of electronic communication, many people still cling to traditional ways of staying in touch, whether through holiday get-togethers or handwritten Christmas cards.

In fact, Americans send nearly 2 billion greeting cards to friends and family every year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making the holiday the largest card-sending occasion in the United States.

"Face-to-face communication — dinners and parties, for example — still give that extra intimacy," wrote Schwartz, who always hosts a big Thanksgiving dinner at her ranch in Snoqualmie Valley, Wash. "You can hug, sit next to each other, read each other's faces for true emotions."

"Between Friends" creator and cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy mails out greeting cards, has dinner with her girlfriends, even organizes a tobogganing party at her home in Welland, Ontario.

Every year she helps plan the annual Christmas party for the Canada Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, which she chairs. It's important, she said, for cartoonists to connect face-to-face, rather than through phone calls and e-mail.

"The nature of this business is that we are far-flung and don't get to see each other often," said Bell-Lundy, 48 and married with two kids.

"Keeping in touch is an obligation ... but it's a good obligation because it forces you to connect with people," she added. "Time has a way of passing so quickly when you are busy. I enjoy the effort after I have made it."

Cathy Chun, a 39-year-old operations manager in Denver, finds immense value in taking the extra time to send handwritten cards to friends and family during the holidays.

She'll wake up a little earlier most mornings to write short notes in the more than 50 Christmas cards she sends every year.

"This is the one time of the year I can actually send a handwritten note, and I think it's really special," Chun said. "Especially with e-mail now, nobody gets letters anymore, nobody writes things. The older I get, the more I feel this way. If I get something handwritten, I think it's so exciting. I think it makes people feel thought of."

However people connect during the holidays, experts say it can't hurt.

In fact, research has shown that people who have stronger ties with supportive friends are not as stressed, less likely to be depressed, better at recovering from illnesses and more likely to ward off the common cold.

"Staying connected keeps us alive," Cohan said. "It nurtures our soul. ... Community, family, affiliation — that's love. That's what really sustains us."

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.