A mountain of research has linked loneliness to an increased risk of dementia, depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke and early death.
Loneliness is officially a health emergency in California’s San Mateo County, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and includes part of Silicon Valley.
The county’s Board of Supervisors passed a resolution on Tuesday that declared loneliness a public health crisis and pledged to explore measures that promote social connection in the community.
It’s the first county in the U.S. to make such a declaration.
Quick random tangent. I feel like churches were a great social gathering place. Now so many are leaving religion, or at least churches behind. The sense of community is dying and it’s hard to build a physical social network anymore.
Edit: I guess I should have been more clear, I am not religious and stopped going to church around 14 when my parents stopped forcing me to go so over 20 years ago now. But in my lifetime that was a huge social gathering place. Movie theaters are dead here, there are no roller rinks or anything like that. It’s just sitting in bars or coffee shops but even there many people rightfully like to stick to themselves with headphones on instead of chatting with strangers.
I just used churches as an example as in my life I saw their utility for meeting a community of people.
I would argue it not the loss of Church’s by themselves, but their loss without a good replacement. You can’t go anywhere in America and gather without paying. There’s no place to just…exist. Even Churches usually required dues.
I’d argue the “not paying” part isn’t the problem. It would be nice not to have to pay, but most Americans could stomach a couple bucks to, say take up a barstool for a couple of hours.
The main issue IMO is that all the third spaces we do have are either dedicated to niche hobbies, or the consumption of drugs. Only people into really nerdy shit will actually go to a gaming store, people generally only go to coffee shops in the AM, and going to the bar every night is…we’ll be polite and say “unhealthy”.
Public parks would be cool, but I don’t think most people utilize them that way. I don’t know myself, because it is hot enough here going to a park is an exercise in self harm for most of the year.
I think the best idea I have is some kind if mall, where all of the stores have been replaced with activity spaces.
That’s very true. I get basically all that from my local kink community but I think less niche hobbies could really use our model of “let’s all go grab dinner one Saturday a month and just chat”. It could easily be applied to shit like people who like a genre of book or something like that. I think you definitely do need something to fall back on that you share in common and enjoy enough to leave the house though.
Really what we need are dedicated community centers. Libraries are trying but that’s not what they’re there for
Anybody who wants to get mad about this, look up the sociology concept of third place.
Here’s a great ~10 minute video from Not Just Bikes on YouTube about third places and how current city planing trends promote social isolation.
This concept and this video are so fantastic. Goes to show how broken N America is, I’ve been around the block a few times and never really had a chance to stop at a local…
this.
I’d argue the death of small businesses by large faceless corporations with no ties to the local communities has done more to kill local communities than church attendance.
Used to be your neighbors ran the stores you went to. You knew your money was helping your friends and staying with your community. You could have a little pride knowing your participating in your local community.
Now the small shops downtown are all gone and all that’s left are the big box store chains. And those big stores don’t invest in the community. They take everything they can and give it to their shareholders.
We need to break up everything.
In the US, we have also lost a lot of that “sense of community” as we have moved to a more suburban lifestyle. Our houses are spread out, our businesses are spread out and we spend more time alone and not interacting with others from our local community. For example, we don’t walk to the store to buy groceries, a mode of transport where we are more likely to meet and interact with others. Instead, we get in our cars, alone and drive to the store. Once there, we might have interactions with others, but that not a guarantee. We then get back in our cars and drive home. There is no “public square” anymore, we don’t spend out time in “third spaces” (places other than home or work) in the same way that urbanized dwellers do.
While it had a lot of other baggage, churches were one of those “third spaces”. They provided a place for people to meet and socialize on a regular basis. This still worked for the suburban lifestyle, because it kept people regularly meeting and connecting in a way that nothing else did. The church also provided an way to organize other events beyond the basic worship services. As people have left churches, that organization has been lost and not replaced with anything. Even worse, when leaving a church, it’s not uncommon for the people of that church to ostracize the person leaving.
Ultimately, I’m not sure what the fix is. Religion seems to have run its course in modern society. People are leaving it because the baggage is too much to bear for the social benefits. Suburbanism is likely here to stay in some capacity, though there is always going to be an ebb and flow of people moving into and out of cities. But, that makes it hard to create vibrant “third spaces” for people to meet and interact. Also, those folks whom most need that socialization are probably also the same people who are less likely to see it out. I do think social media can help, as it allows folks to find and interact with others. But, it is also very easy to connect with some pretty horrible people and groups.
I’m not sure I agree with loneliness being a “health emergency”. But, it also seems like the county government is just trying to marshal resource to try and figure the problem out. So, good on 'em.
"Social isolation and loneliness were associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% risk of stroke.”
”Increased risk of dementia 50%”
https://www.cdc.gov/emotional-wellbeing/social-connectedness/loneliness.htm
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not denying that loneliness has health effects. I just question if it’s actually an emergency or if this is just a bombastic response to an issue, because that’s what they see as a viable way to get funding and attention. If we declare every problem to be an emergency, then that sort of response becomes the new norm and nothing is actually treated as an emergency.
I’d rather be lonely than silly though.
Or rather lonely than, you know, filled with hatred and looking to hurt people not like me
Or rather lonely than waking up early on Sunday morning and using up most of the only two days I have off in a week.
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Give me some money and I’ll let you dance and pray and hug others like yourself in my private backyard.
Singles looking to mingle night, singles and couples, not looking to mingle night, and orgy night. Those are three good nights to start off with!
I don’t understand why everyone is saying that loneliness is an epidemic and yet nobody is trying to develop solutions for it.
If it were up to me, I would give funding to social psychologists to have them develop social programs to reduce loneliness. I’m talking about programs that actually get strangers together physically, on a regular basis, to help them form real friendships and communities. (Like Meetup.com, but more structured and more effective.) There are lots of different ways this could be approached, and I wish researchers would start running some experiments to see what works.
Saw this the other day, blue state delivering. Ned Lamont turning the force and attention of Connecticut public health agencies toward meaningfully addressing this problem. Seems like a lot of smart people are invested in this in CT as a holistic approach.
https://portal.ct.gov/DPH/Newsroom/Press-Releases---2024/Social-connection
“As a nation and a state, we are seeing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. The health impacts of this epidemic are very real – they are so significant and so widespread that the U.S. Surgeon General has put social isolation and loneliness on the same level as public health crises like tobacco addiction, AIDS, drunk driving, obesity, and gun violence.” said Lt. Governor Bysiewicz. “We’ve seen recent efforts emerging to address this crisis, and today marks an important next step in exploring how we, as a state, can best address this issue.”
Inspired by the work of U.S. Senator Chris Murphy and a recent advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General, the Social Connection Campaign will:
Facilitate collaboration on an inter-agency basis to identify opportunities to foster greater social connection.
Raise awareness of existing and new efforts by State Agencies that improve social connection.
Work with partners beyond state government (federal, municipal, nonprofit, private, grassroots orgs and the public) to identify gaps, opportunities, and ideas related to improving social connection.
“The Connecticut Department of Public Health is proud to be a part of the Social Connection Campaign and its mission of addressing the concerns of loneliness and isolation,” said Department of Public Health (DPH) Commissioner Manisha Juthani, MD. “There are several public health issues that are exacerbated by isolation. Some of these include chronic diseases, suicide and gun violence, children and adults with special health care needs, pregnant women who do not have access to proper pre-natal care, and the lack of proper eating habits and physical activity.”
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I think one problem is it’s so hard to trust strangers nowadays, hard to get to know who people really are.
