On May 11, 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared the COVID pandemic officially over, but the U.S.’ health catastrophes didn’t end here—seven days before this announcement, the same department announced the rise of another kind of crisis: a loneliness epidemic. Unlike the COVID pandemic, which could be beat back through science, this crisis did not have the courtesy to provide a clear route to its end.
There is irony in one pandemic ending as another begins, though it’s not unsurprising, given the loneliness inherent to the forced isolation of quarantine. The HHS announcement gained significant attention, but this isn’t a new issue; the U.S. Surgeon General, who wrote the “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” report, has advocated for this issue since 2017, and, in 2018 the United Kingdom appointed a Loneliness Minister. Culturally, this issue has been recognized for decades. Though not the exact phrase “loneliness epidemic,” the Beatles famously wrote about loneliness in their song “Eleanor Rigby” with the repeated chorus:
“All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?”
The release—and success—of their song coincided with the rise of individualism-induced-loneliness in the 1970s and ’80s. While the dramatic orchestral build and fairytale-esque lyrics of the song held appeal, listeners were drawn by the question it asks—if there are so many people, why are so many of them lonely?
In 2021, Cody Fry released a cover of the song and its popularity granted him a Grammy nomination. In an article for Musicradar, Fry says the relevance of this theme inspired his recreation.
“During the pandemic the song took on a whole new meaning for me. […] I thought—what a cool thing to have this song that is centred around the theme of loneliness,” Fry said. “Then, bring together 500 people to make it. I love that sort of oxymoronic thing where we’re all lonely together. It’s all a little microcosm of what the pandemic felt like.”
The pandemic highlighted what the Beatles had seen decades before: society’s growing inability to connect. A variety of factors are labeled “the cause” of the loneliness epidemic—the rise of hyper individualism, the distracting prevalence of screens, busy schedules and the mass downfall of social skills due to the pandemic. Gen Z, the generation which has never known a world where these factors weren’t all too present, are identified as the group suffering the most. The 2018 BBC Loneliness Experiment 40% of 16-24 year olds “often or very often feel lonely,” the largest demographic by several percentage points. Granted, this was an online survey; the so-called “chronically online” generation may have been more likely to respond. The self-discovery inherent of this age range is also isolating, even if these are the years when one is most surrounded by peers. But the effects of growing up in a culture where the “causes” of loneliness are so ingrained cannot be discounted, nor can the fact that many of this generation spent their formative social years—late elementary through early high school—isolated and online.
“The pandemic and staying home, I think, developmentally, people were stunted in their personal growth and those stages of growth that they were supposed to go through during that time, so it’s almost like everybody’s just a couple of years behind developmentally in terms of their peer and social relationships,” Madison’s School Social Worker, Amy Caccamo said.
Not only were students, in many ways, unable to form long term friendships in this period, but their ability to connect with others was hindered.
“People got out of practice, you know, problem solving and learning nuance, learning how to read social cues, learning that it’s okay that not everybody likes you,” Caccamo said. “You will never be in a point in your life where everyone likes you and that’s okay, because it would be impossible.”
This impacts people’s ability to have deep, honest conversations with one another—conversations crucial to one’s feeling of connectivity.
“Being able to have those [intimate] conversations is so critical but I don’t think it’s happening,” Caccamo said. “People’s heads are in their phones all the time.”
Madison School Counselor T.J. Anderson builds on Caccamo’s point,
“I think that it can be difficult and uncomfortable and sometimes even horrible to have conversations with people who don’t know you and [when you’re] in unfamiliar settings, but not doing that can be self perpetuating and we don’t have the skill set to be able to navigate socially different situations if we’re not comfortable, and that’s just kind of spirals into more isolation,” Anderson said.
Across generations, young adults in particular, many try to solve this isolation online, be that DMs to vague online acquaintances, gaming streams or even becoming “friends” with AI recreations of celebrities. Caryn Marjorie popularized this last option; Marjorie’s $1 per minute subscription service allows users to “talk” to her—or rather, an AI recreation of her—a service employed primarily by middle aged men. But social media can’t solve a problem social media created. The internet is limited in its ability to allow people to truly connect; while online friends are possible, it is rare that these connections are as deep as in-person relationships. Social media can be an asset to social engagement, but it cannot be the sole means by which people connect.
“Loneliness is just as much of a perception as it is a reality,” Anderson said. “Even for somebody that has strong relationships, [the dynamics of social media] can amplify the experience of loneliness, just as much for students with lots of connections or students who feel, who maybe are more isolated.”
On Mar. 20 Gallup released its 2024 World Happiness Report which analyzes data on happiness across countries and age groups from 2021 through 2023. Gallup found that, not only has the U.S. fallen to 23rd on the list of 143 countries—its first time out of the top 20—but, in the U.S., young adults are suffering the most.
A March episode of the “Political Gabfest” podcast produced by Slate, hosted by David Plotz alongside Emily Bazelon of New York Times Magazine and Yale University, as well as John Dickerson, host of “The Daily Report” on CBS, discussed how these findings relate to social media use, pointing to the comparative nature of these platforms.
“The accumulative and acquisitive route to happiness through products is so much more a part of your daily life,” Dickerson said of social media’s presence in the lives of young adults. “Therefore, your expectations about happiness are unachievable. And that’s fed to you all day long. And if disappointment is the distance between expectation and reality, you’re constantly feeling that distance.”
Bazelon also points out how technology almost encourages people to withdraw from reality into the digital world.
“We have a generation of kids who, you know, especially with the blight of COVID in only the recent rear-view mirror, are living more isolated lives that are tied to screens in a way that’s just not conducive to people feeling good about their lives,” Bazelon said.
Social media isn’t designed to improve lives. It’s a collection of platforms run by rich men who want to make themselves richer—as much as they may pretend to work to help their users, they do so out of a desire to retain (or increase) usership, not because they care about democracy or mental health or anything besides.
Though Congress seems to believe otherwise, getting rid of social media won’t erase all of society’s problems. Its effects should not be ignored, but its overwhelming influence shouldn’t be used to hide the multitude of other factors which create an epidemic.
One of the dominant theories as to why this epidemic of loneliness has worsened is the loss of third places, the spaces outside of one’s home and work (or, for students, school) which encourage interactions with one’s community. (Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined this term; his books, such as “The Great Good Place” have helped popularize research in this field. Oldenburg’s theory defines third places more narrowly than the evolved definition created by popular media, however, this article will use the more colloquial understanding of the concept. More on this difference is explained in this Radical Planning video.) While people can gather at work or home or school, these places have their limits; however, the alternate third place options have become increasingly limited and deterringly expensive. There are some options—libraries (but silence is required), coffeeshops (but they can be pricey) and, thanks to the D.C.-proximity, the Smithsonians. Yet, in a survey of Madison students 45.1% say they have limited options for places to meet with friends outside of home or school and 47.6% say they don’t regularly spend time in third spaces.
“It’s not always an option to go home,” Natalie Basin (’27) said. “Houses can be pretty far away or parents say ‘oh we’re away now, we can’t have anyone over,’ so third places are just easier because you’re not in anyone else’s, like, territory, so it’s a more comfortable option than inviting yourself to someone else’s house.”
But the appeal of third places doesn’t always make them accessible.
“I think a lot of the barriers in third places is just the money, because a lot of them, like coffeeshops and lunch places, you have to pay money to be there,” Baslin said. “You can’t just sit in a coffee shop and not buy anything and just do work, so what ends up happening is that, if you don’t have access to money or you just didn’t bring any to school that day, you end up not being able to hang out or do what your friends are doing.”
The outdoors is an option, but there are few public gathering spaces and there’s been a cultural shift in how outdoor spaces are viewed. The U.S. has never not had laws which criminalized existing in public spaces, with “vagrancy laws” carried over to the colonies from England which, history professor Dr. Catharine Coleborne explains, prohibited things like “wandering abroad” or “[being] idle.” In modern times even the term “street” is deemed derogatory, seen most in phrases like “street gangs” or “from the street.” (These laws would later become the Jim Crow laws whose effects continue to echo across the United States, as explained by Leeja Miller in her video on America’s homelessness crisis.)
Third places aren’t—at least, shouldn’t be—a luxury as their existence is vital in the casual interactions which create a community and build one’s social network. In many ways these places and their role in the personal and social development of an adult is comparable to that of unstructured play for children. Play gives children the opportunity to create, experiment and imagine without consequences for failure. And this is true for adults as well—the need for and impacts of play don’t dissipate with age like one’s love for “Cocomelon.” Modern culture relies on planned social interactions: coffee with Daniel at noon, soccer practice Thursday night, family hike on Saturday. Though this seems a way to prioritize relationships—specific points in the week have been set aside to ensure time for others—it has instead created a society in which everyone is always busy. This flies in the face of the spontaneous, carefree nature of play. Want to schedule brunch with a few friends? Good luck, they’re all booked six weeks out.
Third spaces create the opportunity for unintended meetups. Go to the local cafe to read and look, there’s Bea’s sister or Aria from robotics or Aiman whose notes got everyone through AP Psych. Someone grabs coffee between shifts, someone else has a few hours to kill.
The loss of third places is, in part, a result of zonal planning. A creation of industrialization, zoning is used by urban planners to predetermine what a section of land can be used for—one street may be zoned for religious institutions, another for residential buildings. The origins of this system weren’t nefarious, they were intended to organize cities and prevent rapid business turnover. Justice George Sutherland explained the necessity of zoning in his write up of the Supreme Court’s opinion on the 1926 case Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., which aimed to define the limits of this new system.
“Until recent years, urban life was comparatively simple; but, with the great increase and concentration of population, problems have developed, and constantly are developing, which require, and will continue to require, additional restrictions in respect of the use and occupation of private lands in urban communities,” Sutherland said.
But zoning succumbed to America’s car culture, establishing an urban plan which prioritizes the capacious highway over local restaurants. This means more places meant for transition, for moving from place to place in a car, than for existence.
Madison student Nina Howell (’24) is one of the few upperclassmen without a driver’s license—instead, she chooses to walk or carpool everywhere she goes. The decision was in part for the environmental impact and in part a result of a trade with her parents: she could go through drivers ed and get her license, or get a new bass for college
“I could either get a driver’s license and drive for two years in high school […] or [my parents] could buy me a new bass for college and I chose the new bass because I knew that would last me 20 years,” Howell said.
She explains that, for the most part, she enjoys not having a license.
“I will walk for half an hour if it can mean I avoid driving,” Howell said. “It’s not a big deal, having to walk places or ask to carpool with friends, it’s honestly more fun.”
But even in Vienna, which, as Howell says, “is a very walkable town,” struggles to both accommodate car culture and create spaces for people to exist outdoors. Howell explains that, when walking home from school, she’ll text her parents she’s arrived to confirm she hasn’t been hit on the short walk home, a not unwarranted concern.
“You know, my mom and dad will always tell me to text them when I get home because they want to make sure I haven’t been hit by a car because it’s almost happened multiple times,” Howell said.
Howell, being part French, visits France often and notes the difference in their approach to transport compared to America’s car culture.
“I mean, the US in general is just not very walkable,” Howell said. “[It’s] definitely a cultural thing because in Europe there are subsidies for taking public transportation, so your work will cover it if it encourages you not to drive. Just, in general, the system is so much more efficient that it makes more sense to walk or to bike than to go off and have to drive a car. It is a little disappointing because, as someone who walks, it sometimes takes me a really long time and sometimes I don’t want to go in a car, but I also don’t want to spend an hour walking so I just have to make that choice.”
The U.S. approach to public spaces fails to support anything that isn’t a car; if Vienna can be considered “very walkable” and still struggles to so much as create safe walking places, how can Americans in the deepest pits of suburbia even imagine walking more?
In a video exploring how suburbs might be improved, YouTuber Streetcraft explains how the Lakewood Ranch community in Florida—which, according to its website, is the “number one community in the U.S. for all ages”—demonstrates the often dangerous flaws in suburban design. He describes how suburban development designs are often disjointed, like a puzzle never put together, pointing to a church and subdivision within Lakewood Ranch as an example.
“They weren’t built with any consideration for each other,” Streetcraft said. “So, while they exist in close physical proximity, they’re not connected. If you lived in this house and attended this church, while it’s only 500 feet away, because of the disconnect it would take nearly an hour to walk there and this is incredibly common in the suburbs.”
Zoning places residential development in one area and churches or grocery stores or schools in another. It divides these elements of daily life into pockets separated by roads—roads which are inherently dangerous. This was proven within Lakewood Ranch itself by the death of two teenagers on their way to their homecoming dance in 2018, a result of poor safety measures in the community’s major intersection.
Vienna is a lesser extreme of suburbia, but even it suffers from this compartmentalized urban layout. Maple Avenue is home to most of Vienna’s commercial establishments, while nearly all residential areas are outside of the Town center; in areas like Fairfax or Falls Church these divides are more extreme, both in that the areas are more divided, and that the roads causing the divides are far more dangerous. Students at Chantilly High School are surrounded by major highways while most of Fairfax is strip malls and sprawling parking lots. The effects of these car-centric are more than evident by the sheer number of reports on the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Incidents Table for Fairfax County and its neighbors.
City planning can’t keep up with this type of organization, as demonstrated by attempts to solve traffic issues through additional road lanes. Rather than reduce traffic by spreading demand across more lanes, demand is induced: by offering more opportunities to use roads more people will use the roads. This creates an unsustainable cycle of perpetually expanding roads and parking lots and garages. Not only does this mean city spaces must constantly expand, but it creates liminal spaces: eerie, disquieting places no one wants to spend time in.
“[The order of the old city] is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance—not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole,” urbanist and journalist Jane Jacobs said in her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”
The beauty of the sidewalk, the dozens of people living dozens of lives, interacting, even if only for brief moments, is lost in the detached, aggressive rush of cars. Urbanist Carlos Moreno has proposed an alternative to the urban sprawl which defines most modern cities in his “15-minute city” model, a place where everyday activities are within a 15-minute walk from one’s home. Though he first introduced the idea in 2016, it gained traction in 2021 when he, alongside a group of other researchers, proposed the model be implemented as cities recovered from the pandemic.
“The emergence of this pandemic exposed the vulnerability of cities in their current establishment and the need for a radical re-thinking, where innovative measures need to be tailored to ensure that urban residents are able to cope and continue with their basic activities, including cultural ones, to ensure that cities remain both resilient and livable in the short and long terms,” their study said.
Such a model contradicts zoning, or, at least, zoning as it exists now, but it also solves the problems zoning creates in making community-filled outdoor areas—third places—central. This was seen to some degree during the pandemic when outdoor spaces previously reserved for cars were repurposed for use as seating by restaurants, or market spaces for shops. The 15-minute model encourages the community absent in the car-dominant public spaces created by modern urban planning.
While these cities are the ideal, this mindset that prioritizes walking can be applied to any context. Take Marshall High School: it’s located on a highway, when school gets out it’s near impossible to drive anywhere within a three mile radius because of the traffic and walking across a three lane highway seems out of the question. Yet the minute the bell rings a small crowd walks across the street to the public library. Indeed, one must arrive within minutes of school being released to get a good spot.
Not only is it a convenient, (semi) walkable spot for people to get work done, but it’s a space students can get together with friends; though it’s a library, quiet conversation isn’t discouraged because the sense of community is so strong. Imagine how much more popular it would be if students didn’t have to cross a highway to get there.
In the past third spaces were abundant: music halls, where friends could meet to see musicians, actors, or whoever else might be performing. Community centers, where there was always something to do, from pickup games to public art classes. Student associations, recreational sports teams, Dungeons and Dragons groups. Some semblance of these things exist today, but they are hindered by the cultural disinterest towards community engagement. Religious spaces are, perhaps, the most obvious manifestation of this decline. Christianity, for all the U.S. preaches religious freedom, has forever been central to American culture, and, while this certainly had its pitfalls, it meant, once a week, large portions of the community met up to talk and learn and serve. Churches offered youth groups; care for the elderly; a chance to meet up with people going through similar struggles, from grief to parenting to addiction. But, over the past 50 years, church attendance has declined, dropping 26% between 1970 and 2020. As Christianity has loosened its chokehold on the country, no replacements have filled the gaping hole it has left in Americans’ social lives.
(Considering the earlier stats on declining happiness in the United States and seeing this decline in the role of the church, it is also interesting to note the evidence indicating those who are religiously active are happier, with a 2019 Pew Research Center study finding 36% of religiously active adults are “very happy,” compared to 25% in both the religiously unaffiliated and religiously affiliated but inactive groups.
“This analysis finds that in the U.S. and many other countries around the world, regular participation in a religious community clearly is linked with higher levels of happiness and civic engagement (specifically, voting in elections and joining community groups or other voluntary organizations),” the report said. “This may suggest that societies with declining levels of religious engagement, like the U.S., could be at risk for declines in personal and societal well-being.”)
As with the church, third spaces of all forms didn’t just disappear, rather, they lost their cultural importance, and that loss of attendance made their existence unsustainable. Leisure has been privatized, from TVs to home pools, activities which used to double as social gatherings are now enjoyed from the secluded comforts of one’s home.
Researcher Robert D. Putnam studied the decline of social capital in the US for decades, with much of his research compiled in his book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” The title is a reference to the downfall of bowling groups in 1990s America; such groups had been prominent in years past, yet, when Putnam went to bowling alleys, he instead found most people bowling alone. Putnam found various answers to this question “why are Americans bowling alone,” but one thing stood out above all others: T.V. As T.V. played an increasing role in people’s lives they spent less time with friends or out in public. Not only did this weaken relationships, it led to a decline in social trust.
“This perspective invites us not merely to consider how technology is privatizing our lives—if, as it seems to me, it is—but to ask whether we like the result, and if not, what we might do about it,” Putnam said in an article which continued the conversation started by his book. “Those are questions we should, of course, be asking together, not alone.”
But T.V. was only the start of Pandora’s digital box. Computers, phones, Airpods, tablets, smart watches—not only do these have the effects Putnam explains, but, because they’re portable, their effect is tenfold. While TV meant people spent less time in public, these technologies make it so even when people do spend time in public they aren’t truly there, instead absorbed in whatever is happening in their own digital world. Instead of making crucial one-on-one connections, people are reading the news, writing emails, scrolling through TikTok.
It’s cyclical: people don’t use public spaces, public spaces become less available, people use them even less because it’s no longer a cultural norm; on and on and on. It’s easy to blame the system and the shoddy urban planning which prioritizes office buildings over public parks, but culture and how people spend their time is just as much to blame. The lack of demand for third spaces will mean fewer such spaces are available, but the reverse is also true. Indeed, as the pandemic has come to an end, the lingering effects of quarantine and its months of isolation are evident. People are as lonely as ever—the Beatles said it in 1966, and Cody Fry echoed their refrains five decades later. But with that loneliness has come an increased demand for public spaces and a greater appreciation for true human interaction. Take “sober bars.” Though the name may be oxymoronic, their success is understandable; bars have forever been a central third space, a tenet of society everywhere from Babylon to Rhode Island.
“Taverns [in colonial America] were utilized as meeting places for assemblies and courts, destinations for refreshment and entertainment, and, most importantly, democratic venues of debate and discussion,” one study on these institutions said.
That centricity to community hasn’t changed, but the demand for alcohol has, thus, non-alcoholic bars. Demand for a public space, for a space to connect with others, has risen, so the space has emerged, even as its primary purpose seems antithetical to its name.
But not all problems can be solved as easily as this and few solutions come at the financial benefit of their provider. The past five decades of the Digital Revolution aren’t going to be reversed, and a car-free America sounds like the plot of a post-apocalyptic film, yet the problems they have created must be accounted for.
Baylee Hodil (’24) has attended cyber school for the past four years and spends most of her time on her family’s farm in rural Pennsylvania, but she is far from the socially inept homeschool stereotype—rather, she has an admirable level of social intelligence and a plethora of stories about conversations with strangers.
“There was an old guy who just came up to me [on the beach],” Hodil said. “We were the only two because it wasn’t sunrise yet, but I had half a sand dollar and he asked me ‘are you getting any good shells?’ […] and we just sat and talked.”
Hodil explains that she doesn’t seek out these interactions, but she goes beyond simple one-word answers when people talk to her, a skill most people lack.
“Once there’s something there, continue to feed it […], ask them questions,” Hodil said. “Keep the conversation going because people enjoy just talking.”
While it can be difficult to initiate conversation, doing so rarely ends poorly, and pushing for that social interaction, rather than avoid eye contact and stare at one’s phone creates social opportunities where seemingly none existed.
“I think people would be a lot happier [if they talked with strangers more], to be honest,” Hodil said. “For me, being cyber schooled and not having social interaction on a daily basis, it didn’t bother me until I did have some and then I realized what [joy] it can bring.
Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” explores many reasons social interactions are declining, but across the reasons he explores he returns to the central idea that, whatever the reason, the decline of interaction results in a decline in social capital, which he defines as “connections among individuals — social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.”
Social capital is central to a community which truly feels like a community.
“Networks of community engagement foster sturdy norms of reciprocity: I’ll do this for you now, in the expectation that you (or perhaps someone else) will return the favor,” Putnam says. He later adds that “Sometimes […] reciprocity is specific: I’ll do this for you if you do that for me. Even more valuable, however, is a norm of generalized reciprocity: I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road.”
Yet Putnam claims that these norms are, for whatever reason, declining—people no longer believe they should help others for the sake of helping others. This ripples out to create a society in which social networks and trust decline. It seems only fair to assume that when a society lacks social capital, the people within the society become detached, isolated and thus lonely.
How can these problems be accounted for? By being friendly. By reaching out to others, by utilizing the public spaces that are available, by acknowledging the distraction technology poses and ignoring it. Students, constantly surrounded by peers, people at a similar stage in life, experiencing similar things, have the greatest opportunity to meet new people. Prioritizing social interactions now, as a student, when it’s easy, helps create a habit with lifelong rewards.
Talking to new people counters the cultural norm, the idea of the stranger has been villainized so far that the phrase “stranger danger” is recognized by all. But the man in line at checkout isn’t waiting to lure someone into his white van and a conversation with him won’t start a kidnapping.
“Nobody wants to feel lonely, but sometimes the fear of talking to people overrides that so you’ve just got to be that person for somebody else,” Hodil said.
Yes, loneliness is an issue, the loss of third spaces, over-reliance on phones and an increasingly car-reliant world are issues. But when all that’s done about these issues is half-hearted grumbling, when people don’t take advantage of existing opportunities, the existence of these issues become an excuse not to engage in community. Person by person change won’t solve an epidemic, but that doesn’t mean it won’t make an impact.
Find a full list of resources used for this article here.
