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Is it True We Have a Loneliness Epidemic?
Do a simple Google search of the words “loneliness epidemic” and you will turn up page after page of anxious headlines, each clamoring to report on a nation of people suffering from a rampant disease of loneliness. The statistics sound positively alarming — perhaps why there has been such a staggering proliferation of such titles making their rounds online. The purported causes of this situation are numerous: they run the gamut from “cancerous” social media, the general sweep of the digital revolution, upticks in the consumption of prescription drugs, less rooted communities and the swelling of flight to urban areas, to name a few. You need only shuffle through the abundance of studies on this topic to realize that the “loneliness epidemic” is not necessarily a fear-mongering phenomenon. Some have even went so far as to run with the label of “public health crisis” with the attached reasoning that loneliness begets tangible declines in mortality, compromises one’s immune system, and raises the risk of depression (which is already a concerning upward trend being witnessed).
No doubt there is some kind of “fraying of the social fabric” underway — and granted, this is a lament that has deceivingly always been present to some degree. But in our current situation, people are outrightly confessing to it — lending credibility to this societal suspicion and solidifying a cold…
