For how we live.
A 43-year meta-analysis found loneliness in young adults rising by about half a standard deviation — while its own authors call the word 'epidemic' exaggerated. The pandemic added a small further bump.
Loneliness and isolation raise mortality risk about as much as well-known risk factors. But trials of interventions to relieve them in older people are mostly low-quality, and the best do more than arrange company.
The famous cigarette comparison is a communications gloss on a robust but observational finding: people with stronger social ties are markedly more likely to survive follow-up.
A registered report fit identical models to 11 longitudinal studies covering 175,070 people. The subjective feeling carried the signal; the objective count of social contacts largely did not.
Across 2.48 million survey responses in 159 countries, the share of people with no one to turn to rose 13.4% between 2009 and 2024 — all of it after 2019.