Horowitz: America’s Pervasive Loneliness Problem Exacerbated by COVID-19

Horowitz: America’s Pervasive Loneliness Problem Exacerbated by COVID-19

The social distancing and in many cases, complete isolation, that is essential to combating the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is in the short-term going to exacerbate our existing pervasive loneliness problem.  Minimizing the resulting damage requires all of us to make special proactive personal outreach efforts.

 As the American Enterprise Institute’s Yuval Levin writes in his timely new book, A Time To Build, “Generally speaking, American adults have fewer close friends, spend less time with others and feel more disconnected today than they did a generation or two ago.” More than three-in-five Americans are lonely, according to a recent large-scale national survey conducted by Cigna that employed a loneliness scale developed by UCLA.  This is a 13% uptick in loneliness from the previous year’s survey.

A lack of social support, infrequent meaningful social interactions and negative feelings about one’s personal relationships are among the key factors driving the widespread feeling of loneliness, according to Cigna and to experts who study loneliness.   “Loneliness is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need — the feeling of closeness, trust and affection of genuine friends, loved ones and community,” former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, MD told The New York Times.  Loneliness is different from solitude, which can sometimes by a source of renewal, according to Murthy.

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Loneliness has marked negative impacts on the 1-in-5 Americans who experience mental illness in a given year and is a contributing factor to the advent of mental illness in some people in the first place. Additionally, there is a mounting body of evidence that it negatively impacts our physical health as well. This appears to be the case across the board, but the impacts on older Americans' physical health seem particularly pronounced. “Though hard to measure precisely, strong evidence suggests that, for older adults, social isolation and loneliness are associated with an increased likelihood of early death, dementia, heart disease, and more,” found a recent study by the Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

Not surprisingly, those who telecommute or work remotely have significantly higher loneliness scores, according to the Cigna survey.  This has now moved from about 30 % of the workforce to nearly all of us and has implications for college and high school students as well. Covid-19 is taking an existing serious problem and turbocharging it.

This makes it all the more important for all of us to proactively reach out to our elders who tend to the most isolated, our extended family, our neighbors who live alone, and our friends. The balm for loneliness is connection and that connection requires a personal touch.   Heavy social media use, in fact, is associated with higher loneliness scores.  Pick up the phone or with appropriate social distance check on a neighbor and see how they are doing.

As Dr. Dean Ornish put it, “We are creatures of community. That which seems the most soft—love, intimacy, and meaning—is, in reality, the most powerful.”  These words to live by take on even more urgency today.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island