You’ve heard that everyone feels alone sometimes, but the loneliness statistics show that’s a bit of an understatement.
Why are we all so lonely if we, in theory, have each other?
Are we individually responsible for our loneliness? Or is it a societal problem?
Our individual social skills can’t be solely to blame, especially when so many of us regularly feel alone.
We crunched the statistics on loneliness and found that there really is strength in numbers — the data suggest that feeling lonely isn’t a problem with you, but an effect of the world we live in.
It means that loneliness isn’t a one person, one country issue. It means that of 4 friends you have, 3 of them are probably lonely.
It means that social isolation is widespread and rampant, clearly becoming a global issue. Yet so few people talk about it.
Millennials are more likely to be lonely than Baby Boomers, and Gen Zers lonelier than both. It means that you’re likely to be lonelier than your parents, and your grandparents. Calling loneliness a simple lack of social skills doesn’t add up. There must be a bigger driving force making all of us so lonely.
Loneliness seems to relate to our ability to connect with others on a deeper level, even if there are people we could reach out to.
Loneliness has greater consequences than we may think. While it’s a social issue, loneliness can take a toll on our body as well.
We must begin to see loneliness as a serious social pattern that needs to be addressed immediately, or we risk our collective health as a consequence. All of us lonely people should stop feeling defective, and start looking at the social structures that keep us isolated.
We know that many people are lonely. The loneliness statistics say so.
We know that being lonely is bad for our mental and physical health. The medical and psychological research say so.
So what?
We must come to terms with the fact that loneliness is not an individual social issue, but rather a growing societal trend. As each generation grows lonelier than the last, we must realize that we are not approaching the loneliness epidemic in the right way.
And we need to see that our loneliness doesn’t make us broken, but that we do need to make some changes.
For the sake of our own physical and mental health, we must begin to take decisive action against loneliness. The next question is: how do we do this?
Supportiv is working on the answer, providing peer support chats to over 1 million users to date – on-demand, whenever loneliness strikes. In addition to chats at Supportiv, you can also find articles with suggestions tailored to your specific situation. No one-size-fits-all tips here.
In light of the loneliness statistics, it’s important to highlight that there are options when you feel like there’s nowhere to turn.
Anonymous chats make it easy to open up, and they’re accessible anytime at Supportiv.