Understanding the Loneliness Epidemic and Its Complexities

How can you be lonely when so many people showed up at your birthday party? Can you fight loneliness by managing expectations? And where can you find company while enjoying the best garlic cheeseburger in the greater Salt Lake City metro area?

RESOURCES:

• "Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That," by Vivek H. Murthy (The New York Times, 2023).
• "Home Alone: More Than A Quarter of All Households Have One Person," by Lydia Anderson, Chanell Washington, Rose M. Kreider, and Thomas Gryn (United States Census Bureau, 2023).
• "Loneliness Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis," by Mareike Ernst, Daniel Niederer, Antonia M. Werner, Sara J. Czaja, Christopher Mikton, Anthony D. Ong, Tony Rosen, Elmar Brähler, and Manfred E. Beutel (American Psychologist, 2022).
• "Loneliness Across Time and Space," by Maike Luhmann, Susanne Buecker, and Marilena Rüsberg (Nature Reviews Psychology, 2022).
• Will, by Will Smith with Mark Manson (2021).
• "Loneliness and Social Isolation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan: An International Survey," by Bianca DiJulio, Liz Hamel, Cailey Muñana, and Mollyann Brodie (KFF, 2018).
• "Work and the Loneliness Epidemic," by Vivek Murthy (Harvard Business Review, 2017).
• "The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone," by Maria Popova (The Marginalian, 2016).

EXTRAS:

• "Is It Harder to Make Friends as an Adult?" by No Stupid Questions (2023).
• "The Side Effects of Social Distancing," by Freakonomics Radio (2020).
• "Is There Really a 'Loneliness Epidemic'?" by Freakonomics Radio (2020).

SOURCES:

• Wendell Berry, novelist and poet.
• Ty Burrell, actor.
• William James, 19th-century psychologist.
• Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of the United States.
• Maria Popova, essayist, author, and poet.
• Will Smith, actor and film producer.