Loneliness in America: How the Pandemic Has Deepened an Epidemic of Loneliness and What We Can Do About It
February 2021
The global pandemic has deepened an epidemic of loneliness in America.
Our report suggests that 36% of all Americans—including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children—feel “serious loneliness.” Not surprisingly, loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic.
The report also explores the many types of loneliness, various causes of loneliness, and the potentially steep costs of loneliness, including early mortality and a wide array of serious physical and emotional problems, including depression, anxiety, heart disease, substance abuse, and domestic abuse. While Americans clearly need to adopt distancing measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, the report authors argue that we also must take steps to alleviate loneliness, particularly for the populations the survey suggests are most affected.
The report is based on an online survey of approximately 950 Americans in October 2020. Because of certain data limitations, the data should be considered preliminary. More information is available in the report’s methodology section.
Authored by Richard Weissbourd, Milena Batanova, Virginia Lovison, and Eric Torres
“As a society, we do little to support emerging adults at precisely the time when they are dealing with the most defining, stressful decisions of their lives related to work, love, and identity. Who to love? What to be?”
Key findings
In our recent national survey of American adults, 36% of respondents reported serious loneliness—feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time or all the time” in the four weeks prior to the survey. This included 61% of young people aged 18-25 and 51% of mothers with young children.
43% of young adults reported increases in loneliness since the outbreak of the pandemic. About half of lonely young adults in our survey reported that no one in the past few weeks had “taken more than just a few minutes” to ask how they are doing in a way that made them feel like the person “genuinely cared.”
Young adults suffer high rates of both loneliness and anxiety and depression. According to a recent CDC survey, 63% of this age group are suffering significant symptoms of anxiety or depression.
“We need to return to an idea that was central to our founding and is at the heart of many great religious traditions: We have commitments to ourselves, but we also have vital commitments to each other, including to those who are vulnerable.”
Key recommendations
Providing people with information and strategies, including public education campaigns, that can help them cope with loneliness, including strategies that help them identify and manage the self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that fuel loneliness.
Building not just our physical but our social infrastructure at every level of government and in our communities. We need to begin reimagining and reweaving our social relationships in health care, schools, and many other institutions.
Working to restore our commitments to each other and the common good to renew a founding promise of this country: that we have commitments to ourselves, but we also have vital commitments to each other, including to those who are vulnerable.
