Why Our 'Loneliness Epidemic' Is Only Getting Worse

If loneliness could be solved by just "making friends" then very few people would be lonely.

Americans are lonely. In 2019, we spent just four hours a week on average with friends, nearly a 40 percent decline from just five years earlier. That was before the pandemic forced us all indoors and we started spending even less time with friends (roughly two and a half hours per week — a 58 percent drop from ten years earlier). Our time spent with friends since 2020 has not rebounded significantly, as a recent Washington Post op-ed made clear. 

These numbers are pretty startling, and even they come 20 years after Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone book, which was sounding the alarm about an American epidemic of loneliness back when, by today’s standards, we were all party animals with packed social calendars. 

It’s definitely a problem, but one reason we can’t seem to make any headway might be the quality of our proposed solutions, or lack thereof. The Post piece ends with a call to reverse this trend. “Go to that holiday party (or throw one yourself). Go hang out with friends for coffee, or a hike, or in a museum, or a concert — whatever. You will feel better, create memories, boost your health, stumble across valuable information — and so will your companions.”

Hilarious. Like a mom telling her gamer son to get out there and find a girlfriend. Our loneliness epidemic is often blamed on those danged smartphones and if we would just go outside, we’d be warmly met with a fresh crop of fun and interesting friends like a Disney princess meeting woodland creatures every time she steps foot outside the castle. 

Let’s be real here. If making friends was as simple as “go hang out” then very few people would be lonely. And it seems at least possible that this is a case of blaming individuals for what are, in fact, broad systemic issues that most of us have very little control over. 

I’m not a sociologist and I’m not going to set myself as any sort of expert here but off the dome, I can think of a few reasons that friendships are more difficult to make and maintain now than they used to be. At the end of this piece, I’m going to float a way for churches to get involved here but I’ll warn you upfront that I’m not sure it’s a good idea yet.