People with robust social connections are more likely to live longer,
healthier and happier lives. But according to Census Bureau surveys,
people were spending less time with friends and more time alone even
before the pandemic, which only intensified the sense of social isolation
and loneliness. Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and psychology
professor at Yale University, where her class psychology and the
good life is one of the school's most popular courses. She's turned
it into a podcast.
The happiness lab. Laurie Santos. How pervasive is this problem in
America right now?
I mean, it's pretty bad it's often talked about as an epidemic. You
know, Some surveys reveal that around 60% of people in the U. S right
now report feeling lonely on a pretty regular basis. Um, and that's
that's pretty devastating from a public health perspective, right?
This is worse than rates of obesity. This is worse than rates of
diabetes, and everything we know suggests that loneliness might be
as big of a public health threat in terms of like the effect that
it has on our bodies and our minds. What's brought this on? Why obviously,
the pandemic, I think aggravated it.
Even before the pandemic, people were talking about this. If you
look at rates of loneliness, there's lots of evidence that they've
been increasing linearly since the 19 seventies right now, and that's
long before the pandemic That's actually long before some of the
other culprits, things like cell phones and so on. And so I think
the evidence really points to the fact that they're probably a lot
of causes going on at once. But those things are bringing together
are coming together to really make us a much more unhappy and a much
more isolated kind of population right now. What are some of those
causes that are running together?
I think one of the big ones that we don't often think about is just
time right? People are busy. People are spending more time at work.
I think that we just don't have enough free time to connect with
the people that we care about.
I think there's also lots of other interesting demands on our time.
You know, back in the 19 seventies, there wasn't Netflix and all
these video games and the kinds of things that we could be doing
by ourselves to entertain ourselves. And I think also, you know,
like this social media wasn't around in the 19 seventies, but I think
it is having a big effect right. Our technology and theory is there
to connect us socially. But how many times have you been to a restaurant
and seeing people not talking to the folks at their table? Because
they were looking down at their phones? I think more and more, we're
connecting through our technology, but that means
Missing out on the kinds of connections we can experience in real
life. What are the health effects of loneliness?
I mean, there are many and surprising so individuals who report feeling
lonely or more likely to experience things like dementia, heart disease,
stroke and actually affects longevity, meaning that people who self
report feeling lonely or even more likely to die than those that
aren't
Murphy, the current surgeon general estimates that beef is reporting
that you feel lonely is like smoking like 15 cigarettes a day in
terms of its impact on our health and our well being used to be that
a lot of this discussion about
Loneliness focused on older people, but retired people losing that
sort of social connection of work.
Ah, their spouses or partners may die. But are we seeing this more
among younger people now?
I mean, that's the most striking thing, especially for me as a college
professor, or the rates of loneliness that we see among our young
people right now. So nationally among college students, we see levels
of loneliness around 60%, which was so striking to me, right. These
are students who are young, who are living on campus, often in the
dorms with other students. Yet 60% of them are reporting feeling
very lonely most of the time and explain their talk about that They
were living in a group situation yet they're lonely. What? What sort
of alone in a crowd?
Yeah, I think I think interacting with their technology in a way
that prevents connection in real life. You know, I can't tell you
how many times I've walked into my dining hall and seeing, you know,
a crowd of students, each of whom have your big headphones on looking
down at their laptop screens looking down at their phones. I think
we're really missing out on the kind of connection that can happen
when you talk to a person in person, and you have that in real life
social connection. What can people do to avoid this or if people
are feeling lonely? What advice do you have for them? I think the
first piece of advice is just to remember that it's a con.
Common problem. I think loneliness can feel stigmatizing. It can
feel like there's something wrong with you if you're feeling lonely,
But if you realize that, you know upwards of 60% of people out there
are feeling the same. You know, it's not such a bad thing, right?
It's something that you can admit to and I think, admitting that
you're feeling loneliness is part of the first step.
I think one thing to do is then to make sure you're really connecting
with the folks who you have in your life. One of the problems with
being really busy is that we don't often take the time we need to
connect with the people. We care about our friends, our family members,
but it's as simple as picking up the phone to try to reconnect with
them. I think there's also ways that we can try to make new connections.
And this is something that I think we often forget to do right again.
It's too easy to stay in our house and watch Netflix. But you know
if you're watching the basketball game could you head out to you
know a pub and watched that basketball game if you're going to be
Doing something engaging in knitting or even on a crass can you join
a craft group and so on? This is another thing. A big change we've
seen since the 19 seventies is that these so called third places,
places that people would meet with other friends like bowling leagues
and so on. These kinds of things have gone away in the modern day,
but we can bring them back. We can take some action to make those
kinds of collective social connections as well.
Laurie Santos of Yale University. Thank you very much. Thanks so