Table for One…Or Why Americans Are Lonely

The next time you are in a public space like a restaurant or coffee shop, take a look around you and notice how many people may be sitting together, but are actually alone. They are often alone because of a fairly simple reason: their phones are demanding attention from them — to the exclusion of interacting with fellow human beings. Okay, so this is not an anti-phone rant, but rather I’m highlighting an issue that’s affecting Americans (and really any part of the world where phones are ubiquitous), and that’s social isolation and loneliness.

The Newshour ran a segment on 1/8/23 with the headline “Why Americans are lonelier and its effects on our health”

The general thrust is something that social scientists have known for quite some time: people who are lonely tend to have more health issues and die younger than those with robust social relationships. Even the Harvard Business School agrees that diversifying your social relationships (notice I didn’t say “network” or “social media contacts”) is very important the older we get.

It probably doesn’t take a Ph.D. in sociology to know that these days we’re inundated with time sucks. Work, school, our phones, streaming shows, DoorDash deliveries…all of these lead to greater isolation. But even when we’re in social settings, how many times do you see people doing this in groups?

And it’s not just younger folks. You can see people hiding behind their phones in most age groups. Isolation and greater loneliness cut across most adult demographics, with 60% saying they feel lonely. Is it a case of too much tech? Yes. We focus on connecting to others via our devices so much that we often lack face-to-face connections with others.

Can this trend change? Yes. Because it’s a common problem, there are common solutions to decreasing the amount of loneliness in society. One is pretty simple: connect with people without a mediating device. Sure, if you’re going to meet up with someone, you’ll need your phone to text or call. But once there, ditch the device and be in the moment with others.

As the professor interviewed in the Newshour piece said, join “third places” where there are others. Not online gaming, but maybe face-to-face gaming. As an example, we attempted to go see that new black comedy horror movie M3GAN last weekend. Well, the power was out in the theater, so we couldn’t get in. While waiting to get replacement tickets for the ones that were purchased, I noticed a group of teens playing a board game near the customer service booth. They were laughing and engaged with each other. When I was a kid, people used to do a lot of league bowling. Heck, even Fred Flintstone used to go bowling with Barney for some “third places” fun. Sure, he’s a cartoon character, but one based on what many adults used to do in the U.S. Why did they do it? Not because bowling is such a demanding sport. They did it because it was social and fun. The same can be said of attending a baseball game. It’s a slow-moving sport that allows people to sit together, watch the game, and talk. I’m not a baseball fan, but I do see the attraction of getting together with friends to catch up over a shared experience.

What about me? Well, I took some advice from that Harvard Business School article I referenced earlier: “An important part of the ‘new normal’ might be to seek out and foster connections with different people in your life,” says HBS doctoral student Hanne Collins. “Chat with your local barista, strike up a conversation with a colleague, reach out to an old acquaintance.”

It’s that last suggestion, “Reach out to an old acquaintance” that I did. That old acquaintance is a guy I was really good friends with in high school — which was 40 years ago. I had kept in touch on and off for years, but it’s been almost a decade since I spoke with him last. So, I texted him to see if his number was still his, and he wrote back. We made a plan to talk on the phone (which we did) and it turned out to be a really good conversation. We promised to get together in the spring and to keep in touch more regularly.

I gotta say, that after hanging up with him, I felt a lot better that my social relationships were now becoming an example of addition and not subtraction.