America’s Epidemic of Loneliness Part 4: What Do We Do About It?
At the end of the US Surgeon General’s new 85-page advisory on loneliness, there are a series of recommendations on what “we” can do – whether we work in national and local government, in private health, public health, research, philanthropy, education, the private sector, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, tech, the media. There are some more suggestions for what parents and caregivers can do and what individuals can do.
I’ve been reading a lot about loneliness lately and talking to people with ideas about how to reduce it. I don’t think there’s a chance the US will create a new “Ministry of Loneliness,” as the UK and Japan have done (and the Surgeon General seems to be doing pretty well), but we do need concerted action in each of four categories that might make a difference.
Idea 1: We need to identify, celebrate and replicate tech solutions that are working: It’s easy enough to find the ways in which technology, particularly social media platforms, have driven increases in loneliness. But there is a kitchen sink of different techy ideas being thrown at reducing loneliness in a wide range of countries, including Australia, Denmark, Japan, the UK and the US. These include:
· Social robots (the real-life version of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun), being deployed to interact with the elderly, with some success.
Pepper, a loneliness robot, at work in South End, England (Sky News photo)
Digital interaction platforms like “The Happy Movement“ and “Live Happy,” which provide tools encouraging electronic interaction and self-monitoring.
· Digital matching services (very popular in Japan) that enable lonely individuals to “rent a family” during trying times like funerals or social events.
· App-based efforts like Nesterly (US-based) or Homeshare (up and running in 16 countries), designed to match young adults who need a place to stay with older adults who may be living alone.
· Call center-based check-in services like Caring Team (US-based, for a monthly fee), or Silverline (UK-based, and free) that will regularly reach out to older adults living alone.
· Virtual reality experiences, like those Liminal and Medibank have teamed up to offer lonely people in Australia who are unable to leave their hospital beds.
I don’t have anything against these solutions, but they mostly remind me how our default tendency these days always seems to be high tech vs. high touch. The same is true of the ideas being studied in the field of medicine: we’re more likely to imagine the solution is drugs, not hugs.
Idea 2: Move health care treatment beyond pharmaceutical solutions: Thanks to a flurry of research conducted during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s now a decent amount we know about what happens to our brains when we are lonely. None of it is pretty. The neurotransmitters essential to modulating stress go into overdrive. The “fight-or-flight” portion of the brain, the amygdala, stays activated. We perceive threats more quickly than the non-lonely, making loneliness not just sad, but frightening. One approach researchers are exploring is to see if there is some sort of pill we can take that turns off those serious reactions.
But medicating loneliness, even if it worked, would do little to address the underlying causes of the condition. One suggestion is to train medical professionals to ask patients during annual physicals if they are lonely (or ask them to complete the UCLA “Loneliness Scale”). But the next step is probably even more important: medical professionals should have information they could use for “social prescribing” – places lonely patients might go to reconnect socially.
How do we create more places (and places other than bars) where everybody knows your name?
Idea 3: Create new (or better) third places: But where would doctors prescribe people to go? The “third places” (defined as something beyond our (1) homes and (2) workplaces) that we have traditionally turned to: faith-based places, clubs, civic organizations, sports leagues, neighborhood bars – places where “everybody knows your name” – have either gone out of business or lost their skills to welcome new members (see Part 1). In other cases, these places almost seem to actively discourage new entrants, preferring to hang out with their existing members or clients.
Eric Johnson, a Raleigh-based entrepreneur, has started RELATE, an organization focused on increasing social connection, He’s been thinking about what commitments, skills and programs those institutions need to have if people are going to want to go there and spend the hours they need to develop meaningful connections.
Regardless of whether they are faith-based organizations, civic clubs, YMCA’s, senior centers or something else, Johnson says, these organizations need to make an intentional commitment to reconnecting communities, and the individuals in them, to each other. The work starts with having front line representatives who know how to have the initial conversations and truly, genuinely welcome new people (not just the existing members) into the building.
With that front-end work done, organizations can start doing the work of connection. A club might begin with a comprehensive redesign of programs to ensure that people get enough time together to make genuine connections. A church might pay special attention to the people on its inactive member rolls to help them find their way back.
Idea 4: Commit to being better friends: Done right, tech-based fixes, health-care-driven fixes and third-place fixes can go a long way to reducing the number of people who are lonely. But ultimately we as individuals can have even more power. We need to rediscover something fundamental. “Our skills, what it looks like to be a friend, have atrophied,” says Johnson. “For all the thinking we need to do about diet, exercise, technology and organizations, we also need to really think about how to be a friend.”
We may need some training on how to do that as well, but don’t we instinctually know a few things already?
If you know a person you think might be lonely:
Respond to their email with a phone call; respond to their phone call with a visit;
Bring a friend a meal, or a song you’ve been listening to. One of my friends does a monthly song exchange with a small group where each person explains why they like the song they picked;
Invite a friend to a show or a movie with them. You won’t necessarily have to talk a whole lot, but there will be time on the front or back end if you want it;
Connect a friend to one other person;
Suggest a place they might volunteer. or something they might do to help you with a project. As Booker T. Washington famously said: “Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.”
What about if you are feeling lonely? Arthur Brooks, the host of the podcast How to Build a Happy Life, notes in a thoughtful article in The Atlantic that loneliness can “cut a groove” in our life, and it takes active work on our part, doing things that won’t be easy, to get ourselves out. We have to work at it.
If you are feeling lonely and can’t figure out how to get started, here are some ideas I’ve heard:
If you’ve been working exclusively remotely, find ways to come in to work one more times a week; if you’ve been taking all meetings over Zoom, schedule one more a week in person;
Try a new hobby or sport or get back to an old one;
Ask three different old friends for a ten-minute phone call and stick to the time (take the pressure off the first phone call being “too” long). If those don’t pan out try three more;
Someone needs your help with something — find the sweet spot between something you enjoy doing and somewhere that needs your help getting that done.
Somewhere around 400 BC the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Maybe the long path out of loneliness starts with a thousand (or million) of us taking a single step with a single person. Maybe today.
-Leslie
References:
US Surgeon General’s report on loneliness: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Recent research on medical impacts of loneliness: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/opinion/treating-loneliness.html
UCLA Loneliness Scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA_Loneliness_Scale
The impact of “social prescribing”: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2208029
Ideas from UK Minister of Loneliness: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/loneliness-minister-its-more-important-than-ever-to-take-action
UK “call companions”: https://www.reengage.org.uk/latest-news/call-companions-charles-and-kelly/
Live Happy and The Happy Movement tech-based approaches to increasing happiness: https://www.livehappy.com/who-we-are
https://www.joinhappymovement.com
Other tech-based fixes for loneliness: https://www.economist.com/international/2018/09/01/loneliness-is-a-serious-public-health-problem
Caremore Home Health: https://www.caremore.com
Some fun thinking about nature of third places here: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/third-places-meet-new-people-pandemic/629468/#:~:text=We%20need%20physical%20spaces%20for%20serendipitous%2C%20productivity%2Dfree%20conversation.&text=This%20article%20was%20featured%20in,The%20Atlantic%2C%20Monday%20through%20Friday.
Booker T. Washington on responsibility: https://www.usfca.edu/management/news/booker-t-washington-and-guiding-the-public-administration-program
Arthur Brooks on strategies to emerge from your loneliness: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/01/loneliness-solitude-pandemic-habit/672631/
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching