If you feel it, you are far from alone
Between June 2022 and February 2023, Gallup and Meta asked people in 142 countries and territories a simple question about how lonely they feel. It is the first global measure of its kind.1
1,000,000,000+
people across the countries surveyed said they felt very or fairly lonely: 24% of adults, roughly one in four.1
In the United States, the Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory reported that about one in two adults experience loneliness.2 That is not a fringe experience. It is roughly half the adults around you, and the numbers say something gentle along with something hard: if you feel this way, nothing is wrong with you. You are in very large company.
It is not only a feeling. The body keeps count.
The Surgeon General’s advisory puts the health cost in a comparison doctors understand: the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is “similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.”2
A day without real connection, measured the way medicine measures it: up to 15 cigarettes.
According to the same advisory, poor or insufficient social connection is associated with:
Loneliness and social isolation raise the risk of premature death by 26% and 29% respectively.2 The question is no longer whether this matters. It is why it has been growing, and what actually helps.
Nobody chose this. We drifted into it.
In 1990, a third of Americans said they had ten or more close friends. By 2021, 13% did, and the share with no close friends at all had gone from 3% to 12%.4
Friendship did not go out of fashion. It went out of the calendar.
The American Time Use Survey asks people to diary their days. Between 2003 and 2020, time spent with friends fell from 60 minutes a day to 20. Time spent alone rose from 285 minutes a day to 333.2,3
Picture loneliness and you picture old age. The data points elsewhere.
In the global survey, the loneliest age group was young adults, aged 19 to 29. People aged 65 and over were the least lonely, and majorities of those aged 45 and older said they did not feel lonely at all.1
Being young, with a phone full of contacts, is no protection. More contact has not meant more connection. Which raises the question the rest of this story is about: what kind of contact actually helps?
The remedy is older than any app: being heard.
The same body of research that measures the harm also measures the opposite. Across 148 studies and 308,849 people, those with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival over the follow-up periods.6
The cure is not more followers, more likes, a better profile. It is someone on the other end, actually listening.
What kind of connection? The evidence keeps pointing at the plainest kind.
- i.
A voice, not a feed
When people reconnected with an old friend by phone instead of email, they felt a stronger bond, and no more awkward, even though they had expected the call to be awkward.8
- ii.
Listening, closely
People read what others feel most accurately when they can only hear them: better than by watching, and better than by watching and listening at once.7
- iii.
Even with a stranger
Commuters asked to talk to a stranger had a more positive journey than those who kept to themselves, though they had predicted the opposite. People who were talked to enjoyed it just as much as those who started the conversation.9
Among the Surgeon General’s recommendations for individuals is a step this small: “Take time each day to reach out to a friend or family member.”2 His letter at the front of the advisory is plainer still: “Listen without the distraction of your phone.”2
Loneliness is common, and it is heavy. But the smallest unit of relief is within reach of almost everyone: one honest conversation, with a voice on the other end that is really listening.