Why is America struggling with a loneliness epidemic?

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Why is America struggling with a loneliness epidemic?

Another epidemic is on the rise in the US, and there’s no vaccine for this one. Loneliness is spreading across the country, even after the isolation of the COVID pandemic ended. The percentage of adults feeling lonely is down from the pandemic high, but one poll earlier this year found that 30% of adults reported feeling lonely at least once a week. theSkimm spoke with public health expert Jody Gan to better understand how loneliness is shaping America. 

“Back even many decades ago, loneliness was starting to creep up as people were buying houses further away from the city for various reasons, for economic reasons, and maybe people wanted a bigger house and a bigger yard, which put people further away from one another,” Gan said. 

Technology is also partly to blame according to Gan. She said “people are getting so much out of their screens that they don’t feel a need to make plans.”

”People just need more practice to get their social groove back, but it’s hard to get that practice…Sometimes it feels awkward to kind of flex that social muscle or build that social muscle back up.”

As for how loneliness could shape American society as a whole, Gan said “if we are not a cohesive society, how are we going to tackle some of the big problems that are ahead of us like climate change and gun violence?...I think that it is something that can have very big and serious ramifications and [I am] hoping there’s some definite things we can do as a country, as a society, to make it easier for people to connect.”