Patterico's Pontifications

12/17/2018

Loneliness Is Killing More Americans Every Year

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:14 am



Karol Markowicz in the New York Post:

Americans are dying — earlier than they have been and often at their own hands.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 tally, there has been a dramatic rise in the numbers of US deaths by suicide and drug overdose.

Many of the books I have read lately have discussed this phenomenon and have reached the same conclusion about its cause: loneliness. These books range from The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, to Them: Why We Hate Each Other–and How to Heal by Ben Sasse (both affiliate links). Markowicz agrees:

An op-ed in The New York Times by Arthur Brooks a few weeks ago noted that Americans are suffering from an “epidemic of loneliness.” Brooks cited a large-scale survey by the insurance company Cigna, in which nearly half of respondents said “they sometimes or always feel alone or ‘left out.’ ” More than 10 percent of respondents reported that “zero people know them well.”

That’s a lot of people adrift without anyone to cling to. In 2019, let’s work on being kinder to each other.

Let’s be the people who step in when someone is hurting or in trouble. Let’s put down our phones and laptops
and make connections on our blocks and in our neighborhoods. Let’s seek out the lonely, the outcasts. Let 2018’s victims open our eyes to the desperation all around us.

We’re literally dying without each other.

Great piece. Read it all.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

61 Responses to “Loneliness Is Killing More Americans Every Year”

  1. I had the good fortune to reconnect with a high school sweetheart after many years of ups-and-downs, and we married this past July. Better late than never. 😀

    Gryph (08c844)

  2. i blame facebook

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  3. Good for you, gryph.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  4. Family is important. That’s been known for a long time, and we don’t need to rephrase Beatles and Springsteen songs into pop-psych terms. When you see a person on the skids — whether it’s a homeless paranoid schizophrenic or a “celebrity” — you can be pretty sure that the major change in their lives immediately before had been the loss of family support.

    nk (dbc370)

  5. Ages ago, in my Freshman year at university, I read Helplessness by Martin Seligman. I had no idea why it was assigned reading. The situations in which the subjects were trapped seamed so remote to my own circumstances. I wondered to myself, “didn’t they have anyone to whom they could turn?”

    felipe (5b25e2)

  6. I blame facebook (and its ilk) as well.

    And smart phones. So frequently, I’ll look around – at a restaurant, an airport, etc. – and see 80% of the people around me sucked into their phones, when their friends or loved ones are right next to them (frequently similarly absorbed).

    I’m guilty of it too, of course, but it scares the sh*t out of me and I am trying to get away from it.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  7. Spent the last year getting my sister in the right place. Put her in a few places and finally found a good fit with a psychiatrist and an out-patient program. My sister asked me when I left if tough love came easy for me? We both laughed and hugged good-bye.

    mg (8cbc69)

  8. the dirty appletrash sent me a text saying my screen time was down 77% last week

    yay me

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  9. This hits close to home. It has been 10 years since I lost my wife, and I have felt loneliness acutely in those years. But something amazing happened in my life just a few months ago, and everything has changed.

    On the subject of isolating ourselves with technology, I first saw this video in 2012. It seems even more appropriate today.

    Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71)

  10. I honestly believe my late, but enthusiastic adoption of a smartphone was a contributing factor in the dissolution of my marriage (circa late 2012).

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  11. it’s not smartphones though

    it’s specifically the soul-dead promiscuous evil of zuckertwat’s facebook on them smartphones

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  12. The three states with the highest suicide rate were Montana, Alaska, and Wyoming. The three with the lowest rates were New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. I wonder whether isolation in the low population density states plays a role or does the influence of the Catholic Church affect the rate in those Eastern states. I looked at rates by county in New York, and the crowded urban counties do better than upstate, but I don’t know religious affiliation in upstate versus the NYC area.
    We do need to reach out to people. I know that older white men who are isolated are a high risk group.

    Slugger (f944f8)

  13. you know who’s lonely is pete davidson

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  14. There are a lot of possibilities to unpack in that, Slugger.
    I do know that urban areas have a lot more ethnic communities, and many of them value large families, and extended family. Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, for example. Growing up, I was expected to be moderately interested in second and third cousins who I never met because they lived in different states, but who were constantly in contact with my parents and their siblings.

    So the family network was more a farflung clan, but automatically available for support.

    I suspect that this has changed over the years…smaller more mobile families, etc.
    But you would need a bunch of sociological research to determine how close that is to the truth.

    Kishnevi (7ee5f0)

  15. jersey, ny, and massachusetts have very low incarceration rates

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  16. “Ctrl-F ‘Putnam'”
    “Ctrl-F ‘Bowling Alone'”

    no results found lol, guess we’ll continue not learning anything from even the recent past in true conservative fashion.

    Loneliness is profitable for advertisers and nostalgia merchants, though, so I strongly doubt we’ll see any effective action on that front, which is why they’re doing the PR strategy of restating the problem in a dumb and ill-informed way without referring to effective solutions:

    https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1074678293012627456

    There have always been effective solutions to this problem, the trouble is they’d cost money and time to people living in the urban areas, so they’re not talked about. Pull yourself out of loneliness by your own bootstraps!

    Timmy (cd73ff)

  17. Loneliness is not the cause.

    It’s more of a prerequisite.

    And being surrounded by the wrong people and not being able to escape them actually could be more related, although, actually that sort of situation can be interpreted as a (very serious) form of loneliness.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  18. Once, I was dining alone in a restaurant, and a very pretty woman in her 20s approached me. She asked, “Are you single?”

    I smiled and told her I was.

    Then she took my other chair and brought it back to her table.

    Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71)

  19. Heh!

    nk (dbc370)

  20. @ Timmy (#16): Sasse’s book cites, quotes at length from, and builds upon Putnam’s “Bowling Alone.” Perhaps you should read it instead of making false accusations.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  21. 18 – thats lonely

    mg (8cbc69)

  22. I don’t think Sasse’s book’s prescription, by the way, is that we should pull ourselves out of loneliness by our own bootstraps, so much as that we should each try to help one another pull ourselves out of loneliness, and that we should do so through means which don’t involve dependency on either government programs or “anti-tribes” with whom our only shared experience is a hatred, expressed via the internet, of other tribes.

    Sasse writes very specifically about internet communications, which were still in their infancy in 1995 when Putnam first expressed his thesis in a 1995 essay in the Journal of Democracy, and even when he turned that essay into a 2000 book with the same title, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” As part of that, he also writes at length about those who, for monetary or political profit, seek to define tribes and directly promote conflict among them, which fits nicely with your observation, Timmy, that “[l]oneliness is profitable for advertisers and nostalgia merchants.” To them, Sasse would add political leaders (and, especially, their fundraisers and supporting special interest groups) on both sides of the aisle.

    I probably ought not have characterized your comment as making false accusations, but I do think you’re wrong that nobody’s talking about this or that no-one is learning from past work such as Putnam’s. I recommend the book to you and all of Patterico’s other readers, and as our host has written here, it’s substantially less preachy and more constructive than one might guess from reviews or summaries. It’s extremely accessible, and less about politics than culture.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  23. Chelsea Clinton working on new children’s book about endangered animals

    god i hate her

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  24. And thank you, happyfeet, for immediately providing in #23 an example of an internet bleat from a loyal member of an anti-tribe. Sasse’ theory is that the other internet members of the anti-Chelsea Clinton anti-tribe will identify with you based upon this comment, but that you’ll both end up lonely rather than sharing any real common bond. Hence, too, the intentional corruption of your screenname I’ve used for the last couple of years, but shall forbear from repeating now under the blog’s new civility rules.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  25. Errata: “[Y]ou’ll all end up lonely” (rather than “you’ll both”), I meant to write in #24.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  26. i’m a very good bleater, timely and pro-active

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  27. Congratulations Gryph.

    NJRob (8ee854)

  28. Chuck Batowski,

    As I recall, you mentioned some time ago that you were struggling after losing your wife and grandson. I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to hear fhat life has brightened up for you, and dare I say, your sense of hope is fully active. I would love to hear about that amazing thing that happened.

    Dana (023079)

  29. My, tough love is indeed the toughest of all. Am currently walking through it and it’s no easy feat to keep your eye on the prize and dig in and do what best for our loved ones in dire need. Stay strong.

    Dana (023079)

  30. tough love seems like a process of getting one to submit to the truth, but severe depression leaves people in a dark lonely suffocating place, which makes the submission slow and painful.

    mg (8cbc69)

  31. nk: for many of us, family has *never* been a source of support.

    my mother had no contact with her siblings (for reasons nobody understands) and was the abused spouse in a series of broken abusive marriages; she would have the strength to get out of them, but then her next relationship would turn the same.

    so i’ve never felt like i have a family to support me. and … the sad thing is, i’m not alone in that; for many of us who came from families formed by emotionally broken people, the family is the thing we need support from, rather than the thing that supports us.

    (and i won’t even get into the hell experienced by gay people whose families throw them out of their lives because they think their religious beliefs require them to ostracize their children when their children are gay).

    aphrael (3f0569)

  32. Leviticus,

    So wise to act upon your concerns re screen/phones. Especially giventhat you’re a new parent. I was at a diner recently, and the couple had a little one (about 2, I’d guess), and as soon as they were all seated, they , propped up a screen against the napkin holder and put a little show on for her, and then each parent began to use their phones too. No interaction, no talking, no coloring, and no reading books to her while they waited for their order. Everyone was absorbed in their screens. And of course, when the the food came and they took her screen away, she began to wail. Loudly.

    Here is a wonderful article by Erika Christakis ( you may remember her for getting in trouble at Harvard for defending free speech) that examines the impact of distracted parenting. A giant red flag:

    Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices.

    Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents.

    I read this one, as well, which discusses the developmental impact screens have on little ones and the positive results of college kids going without their screen time:

    Dr. Dimitri Christakis: So what we do know about babies playing with iPads is that they don’t transfer what they learn from the iPad to the real world, which is to say that if you give a child an app where they play with virtual Legos, virtual blocks, and stack them, and then put real blocks in front of them, they start all over.

    Anderson Cooper: If they try to do it in real life, it’s as if they’ve never done it before.

    Dr. Dimitri Christakis: Exactly. It’s not a transferable skill. They don’t transfer the knowledge from two dimensions to three.

    Finding definitive answers about social media’s influence on mental health can be a frustrating exercise. Eighty-one percent of teens in a new national survey by the Pew Research Center said they feel more connected to their friends and associated social media use with feeling included. But in a month-long experiment at the University of Pennsylvania, college students who limited themselves to just 30 minutes a day on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat reported significant decreases in loneliness and depression.

    Dana (023079)

  33. That’s heartbreaking Dana. Phones are tools. They are no replacement for parenting or personal communication.

    NJRob (8ee854)

  34. Yes, it wouldn’t hurt to “pay it forward” more often. I like to remind myself that a small smile, or gift, can mean a lot to someone. I’d like to give my postal carrier a little something for Christmas for example. It won’t hurt me financially, but might make their whole day.

    One jaw-dropping experience I had, in my 20s, as sort of a quasi-intern in psychology long ago… I worked for a psychologist who specialized in elderly people, and I was asked to go visit an elderly lady and ask her some questions. But I was told not to take any gifts from her.
    I got there and she was very needy for attention, nervous and acted like she wanted me to stay there. When it came time to leave, she started crying and begging me to stay, and gave me a little pillow she’d made. I wasn’t supposed to take it, but she acted like she’d be heartbroken if I didn’t. I’ll always remember her. It was so sad.

    Elderly people are especially really lonely. If we aren’t careful, we will end up like her.

    Tillman (61f3c8)

  35. at the end of the day zuckertwat and his trashy social media ilk haven’t done a damn thing to make people less lonely

    #nevergiveuponlove #thechristmasshoes #homefortheholidays #nevergiveuponchristmas

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  36. learned how to play snooker and billiards as a kid visiting relatives in an old folks home, loved those old timers.

    mg (8cbc69)

  37. @Dana #28

    Thank you for your kindness, Dana. The amazing thing, in a nutshell, was finding a woman who wasn’t terrified at being within 10 feet of me 🙂

    In all seriousness, this was sudden and completely unexpected, and it is the best I have felt in many years.

    Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71)

  38. I’m sorry to hear that, aphrael.

    nk (dbc370)

  39. My apologies, Beldar, I did follow the link, but not the book. I will, however, continue to maintain that those who make their money following the emotions of society and building profit structures on them for their own personal gain will be very, very, VERY likely to resist, deflect, interrupt, offer purposefully incomplete information, offer purposefully incomplete solutions, and straight-up lie about the greater social structures that were lost.

    In terms of ‘reasons to live and avoid despair’, however, fighting for the destruction, exposure, and disempowerment of these people within ranks quite highly among the most powerful motivators.

    Another forum had this to say about the effects of structural dislocation on marriages, that I do think explains much of the Baby Boomer dissolution:

    “Spouse/mate as “best friend” happened as people moved farther from their (shrinking) families, and suggests in its own right a devolution of social relations to that of child playmates.

    To make a long story short it is another characteristic of urbanism that produces a kind of social consumerism and behavioral retardation. And naturally as this happened, as these “best friend” marriages became the norm, so too did the “no longer my best friend” divorce–because if you aren’t truly a family, if you are not woven into a larger fabric, then any change of fancy or circumstance can unmarry you.

    Perversely, social relations are now so reduced that people seek to marry a best friend without even really having a best friend, only the memory of one. So as the marriage is less buttressed by family, it is also forced to do more and more social work. One of the reasons the physical home increased in size–the domestic situation becomes the entire world and must meet every need. When this inevitably fails due to so many factors against it, you see a further reduction in maturity of social behavior in the post-divorce middle-aged second childhood.”

    Timmy (69150e)

  40. When I came board this rock, there were less than 3 billion of us; today, there are over 7 billion, so somebody is being lonely with somebody else for sure.

    It’s an old story in a new guise. Revisit A Nation Of Strangers by Vance Packard. Those of us sentenced to travel the trails as corporate nomads in an earlier era, pre-web, shackled by the golden handcuffs, moving a dozen times in as many years and so on- forfeited roots for roving and riches. You get practiced in packing up your world in three days and relocating to a new one. It becomes routine. And of the hundred or so circle of friends at each stop, over time, you usually lose touch with all but a handful, as they move on as well. It does broaden your horizons and life experience but you do give up any sense of a value to long standing traditions and the intimacies of neighborhoods. And you can envy- if only for a moment- the comforting experience of those who chose to anchor themselves in the same place for decades on end. Today it is the great gift of gadgetry that we are capable of being literally being connected to virtually everyone alive on the planet– or off it. So if anyone feels lonely- it is by choice.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  41. 39. Loneliness is a state of mind. One can be lonely while surrounded by people, or likewise be alone without being lonely.

    Gryph (08c844)

  42. Chuck Bartowski @ 37,

    Way to brighten my day! May you be continually overwhelmed with a contented heart and joy overflowing.

    Dana (023079)

  43. aphrael,

    I’m also sorry to hear about the difficulties you endure. Even the best of families are a messy proposition. When there isn’t the support system we typically expect from families, the sting is extraordinarily painful. And it is long lasting. All of our hard wiring comes with built-in expectations from our parents. When they are unable, for whatever reason, to meet those needs, or the family dynamic isn’t healthy, or is even toxic, it takes a long time and a lot of hurt before one is able to either seriously readjust those expectations from the people who bore us but are unable to be what we need, or we get those expectations met elsewhere. It’s taken me a very, very long time to come to a place of peace with both of my parents, and accept them, lovingly, for who they are, and not who I wished they had been or who I needed them to be. There is no bitterness, just sadness. And yet, a wonderful freedom, too.

    I’m hoping that you have had others come along side you during times of need, and be the light of hope and encouragement to get you through the dark times. For me the peace came first through God’s love, and then the people He sent along the way.

    Dana (023079)

  44. I think its more fundamental, why don’t Americans want more human connection, it’s about the soul.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  45. Americans are just fine. To a hammer, everything is a nail. The CDC deals with epidemics, so to them suicides and overdoses are epidemics. Except that they’re not. Not unless you can show me a vector which causes people to despair with their lives, or misgauge the potency of the junk they shoot in their veins. And I don’t see one. Each unhappy person is unhappy for his or her own reasons. We could numb down the unhappiness in everyone, I suppose. Did Aldous Huxley give the formula for soma?

    nk (dbc370)

  46. Yes the CDC should focus on pandemics and they probably cook the numbers like cheese stuffed peppers but still, Eric holder’s medicine man act, nonwithstatanding

    Narciso (d1f714)

  47. This is such an important post. Thanks to Patterico, and to the folks like Dana who comment with kindness and understanding.

    Simon Jester (78e977)

  48. Aphrael and Chuck B.: my thoughts and best wishes are with both of you. Truly.

    Simon Jester (78e977)

  49. this post has a heartbeat.

    mg (8cbc69)

  50. I agree that Fb, smart phones are to blame, also, hook-up culture, sex divorced from meaning, the pursuit of comfort elevated to primary calling. We sit in our bubbles nursing grievances, swiping right. We have forgotten what it means to serve others. Love is passe.

    JRH (fe281f)

  51. in my life where everything was wrong something finally went right

    eat yummy noodles and never never NEVER give up on Christmas

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  52. Here’s a good video. More talent on one stage than I dunno where. And it’s on topic too.

    nk (dbc370)

  53. Simon Jester, Nk, Dana: thank you.

    I have a wonderful collection of close friends. But my marriage is in a shambles and recovery may be impossible.

    aphrael (de797c)

  54. Focus on you, aphrael.

    mg (8cbc69)

  55. Prayers for you, aphrael. And prayers for your spouse, as well.

    Dana (bc8f1a)


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