Opinion editorial from The Detroit News, published October 1, 2024 by Capita‘s Joe Waters and Steelcase Foundation‘s Daniel Williams, EdD
A newly released nationwide survey conducted by Making Caring Common at Harvard University and supported by the think tank Capita shows that loneliness has reached epidemic proportions: almost half of adults are lonely.
The data reveals a genuine crisis spanning multiple generations. Twenty-one percent of adults said they’re frequently or almost always lonely (in the past 30 days). In another study, one in five millennials reported having no friends, with Gen Z taking over as the loneliest generation. Notably, Gen Z’s childbirth rate outpaced millennials in 2023, so their loneliness has implications for their children: how they feel, enter school and engage with the world around them.
We have also entered a point in time where we are raising children who have had high-speed technology at their fingertips since they were old enough to hold a phone, and who are increasingly lonely, anxious and depressed as they leave childhood behind to become parents and professionals themselves.
While this study is new, loneliness and its challenges have been building for decades, so much so that Robert Putnam authored “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” in the early 2000s. The current study has found that Americans continue to distrust and engage less with places and institutions that have historically played a role in building community, like clubs and houses of worship. People’s sense of disconnection are fostering a culture that does not support or uplift families and children, jeopardizing their physical and mental health.
Research shows loneliness leads to poor social, economic and health outcomes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke among lonely people, who also exhibit higher smoking rates. The Cost of Loneliness Project, a partnership between the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, determined that the costs of major depressive disorders, addiction and suicide — all linked to loneliness — totaled $960 billion.
Parents particularly struggle with loneliness, affecting core parenting virtues and, in turn, their children’s long-term well-being beginning with early relationship building at home.
Fortunately, this new data can lead to more informed conversations and a better understanding of the issues in local, statewide and national communities. We know that isolation, disconnection and loneliness breed fear, divisiveness and depression. We must challenge this in our communities and across government to create spaces, structures and policies that foster deep connections, invested listening and radical compassion.
Across the country, organizations like ours aim to use this data to further our strategic work focusing on how families actually feel and what we can do to improve what they experience on a daily basis. This means decentering “individual attainment” and attending to a more community-driven approach that fosters self-efficacy, agency and collective well-being. This requires us to interrogate all of our policies and practices to ensure they prioritize people first.
In Michigan, where young adults, parents of young children, and those making less than $30,000 a year report higher rates of loneliness than the average across the country, we must join forces to connect, convene and engage to address the loneliness epidemic in our state.
As a community and society, we must face loneliness head-on, address root causes and nurture connections for our children, families and future generations.
We now know better, so we must do better.
Daniel Williams is president of the Steelcase Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Grand Rapids. Joe Waters is co-founder and CEO of Capita.