Our report suggests that 36% of all Americans—including 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children—feel “serious loneliness.” Not surprisingly, loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic.
The report also explores the many types of loneliness, various causes of loneliness, and the potentially steep costs of loneliness, including early mortality and a wide array of serious physical and emotional problems, including depression, anxiety, heart disease, substance abuse, and domestic abuse. While Americans clearly need to adopt distancing measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, the report authors argue that we also must take steps to alleviate loneliness, particularly for the populations the survey suggests are most affected.
The report is based on an online survey of approximately 950 Americans in October 2020. Because of certain data limitations, the data should be considered preliminary. More information is available in the report’s methodology section.
Authored by Richard Weissbourd, Milena Batanova, Virginia Lovison, and Eric Torres