A Surge in Loneliness?

These headlines caught my attention this week: “Loneliness Surges Among Key Groups of Americans”; “’Lonely, terrifying and scary’: 70% of students in UK university Halls feel isolated, poll shows”; “Tech Companies Have Created a Loneliness Doom Loop.”

It is often said that loneliness comes to a head around holiday times, so this topic seems appropriate for meditation in a time of Advent, Hanukkah, and Christmas.

According to the first article*, recent studies have found that the loneliest people in America today are middle-aged people between the ages of 45 and 49, of whom 49 percent report loneliness. People who never married report a level of 62 percent being lonely.  “Overall, 42 percent of men and 37 percent of women were lonely.”

A policy officer at AARP, who conducted the survey, reports that people in their 40s and 50s are so busy with work, raising children, and being part of the sandwich generation, that we’re not able to really invest in the relationships that can help sustain us and make us happy.

In the study of university students in the UK**, two-thirds of those living in halls or dorms “feel lonely or isolated, blaming accommodation costs and over-reliance on phones” for limiting their social life.

A 20-year-old student proposed that technology may play an important role in her loneliness. The phone allows her “to just reach all my friends back home,” and avoid making new friends where she now lives.

During her first year in college, I was terrified to make new friends, so I just relied on the fact that I had already had some and I didn’t really bother reaching out much …I didn’t realize living so far away from them (my old friends) would be such an issue.

One proposal offered by students is that university dorms have at least one staff member available 24/7 so students always have someone to talk to.

It is a myth that most students make friends instantly in college, says a student leader: “Most students experience some level of loneliness or isolation.” Schools can do a better job of encouraging students to “be the best version of themselves during this key stage of their lives,” he proposes.

Samantha Rose Hill, who is writing a book on loneliness, offered a guest essay*** for the New York Times in July, warning how tech companies are “promising relief through connection, but this kind of connection isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.” She talks of a “loneliness economy” and how loneliness isn’t a “pathology to be cured” or a “market opportunity to manufacture, sell and buy treatment.”  Instead, it is a “universal human experience” that needs our attention. She warns that declaring a “national epidemic” can result in loneliness becoming an industry.

AI gives you “what you want, how you want it, when you want it,” and skirts the reality of human-to-human contact. It ignores our need “to apologize, ask for forgiveness, suffer an uncomfortable silence or wonder what another person is thinking.” In fact, there is no other—just a reflection of yourself. Narcissism reigns. Contrary to Zuckerberg’s language of a “personalization loop,” Hill proposes that the AI path provides a “loneliness loop….The goods being sold as cures keep us stuck in a loneliness loop.”

In Monday’s DM, we will consider some medicine for loneliness that spirituality offers. How anthropomorphism itself feeds acedia, which is “a lack of energy to begin new things” (Aquinas), such as making new friends, developing the art of friendship, and ritual that births community. 

To be continued.

Shannon Najmabadi, “The Loneliest Americans, According to a Survey of 3,000 Adults,” The Washington Post, December 3, 2025

Jamie Grierson, “‘Lonely, terrifying and scary’: 70% of students in UK university halls feel isolated, poll shows,” The Guardian, December 17, 2025.

Samantha Rose Hill, “Tech Companies Have Created a Loneliness Doom Loop,” The New York Times, July 7, 2025.

Banner Image: “Loneliness.” Photo by Gabriel on Unsplash

Queries for Contemplation

Do you sense loneliness is playing a bigger role in society at this time? How do you go about combatting loneliness?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, p. 38.

“The Cosmic Mass: Reinventing Worship and Religion,” in Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, pp. 363-383.

“Acedia Invites a Cosmic Loneliness,” in Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 197f.