When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went on a nationwide college tour last fall, he started to hear the same kind of question time and again: How are we supposed to connect with one another when nobody talks anymore?
In an age when participation in community organizations, clubs and religious groups has declined, and more social interaction is happening online instead of in person, some young people are reporting levels of loneliness that, in past decades, were typically associated with older adults.
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It’s one of the many reasons loneliness has become a problem at both the beginning and end of our life span. In a study published last Tuesday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve: Starting from young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline as people approach midlife only to rise again after the age of 60, becoming especially pronounced by around age 80.