We're back with a bonus episode of "All the Lonely People," a series diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives. This week: how do we get out of loneliness? Brittany hears from listeners about what worked for them. Then, we head over to our friends at NPR's Life Kit to get even more practical steps for connection: NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey speaks with Dr. Jeremy Nobel about his book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis Of Disconnection, and they came up with concrete tips for how to be less lonely. Support public media and receive ad-free listening & bonus content. Join NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What are the statistics on loneliness in America?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Do you relate? Well, you may be lonely, but you're not alone. One third of Americans report feeling lonely at least once a week. And 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time.
A lot of attention is being paid to loneliness right now. After the former American Surgeon General declared a loneliness epidemic, news organizations from The New York Times to The Atlantic to NPR jumped to cover it. And it's hard to say definitively if loneliness has gotten worse. But what we do know is that a significant amount of people are feeling it.
And I know a lot of you have been feeling lonely too. That's because so many of you wrote to me sharing your own stories about loneliness and how you got out of it. It was really incredible how many of you responded. It really showed, I guess, how not alone we all are in our loneliness and that there's no one way to reconnect with people. Here's what just a few of you said.
Chapter 2: What personal stories can help us understand loneliness?
I started college in 2020, so during the pandemic, and that was definitely a very lonely time to be in what is supposed to be such a social place. And I decided that I needed to do something to stop from being so miserable. I decided to join a sorority, and I was never the type of person to join a sorority. Did it end up helping my loneliness? Yeah, I would definitely say so.
To beat loneliness is to feel community and belonging.
I'm a 63-year-old lonely man. It's gotten much better. I've found gym classes and dance classes and movement classes, meeting people and going for walks with or without the dog.
Hi, my name is Lisa. I'm a middle-aged divorced woman, and I was really lonely. When I decided I wanted to make a change, I didn't even really know where to start. So I actually got into local live music. I didn't have anyone to go with, you know, because that's kind of what happens when you're lonely. So I started going to these things alone.
And what I found is when you go enough times, you start seeing the same people. And then you start saying hi to those people because you see them a lot. And then next thing you know, you have friends.
Thanks to Corinne Averill, Rick Klebanow, and Lisa Stewart for sharing with us. Now, my friends at NPR's Life Kit did some really incredible reporting about how to get out of loneliness too. I wanted to share it with you because I think their advice lines up with a lot of what you all were sharing with me. Here's Mariel Sagara, host of Life Kit.
Hey, everybody. It's Mariel. Raise your hand if you've been lonely before. I'm guessing if we were in a room together, every hand would be raised. It's a hard thing for a lot of us to admit because we may have gotten messages that that's needy or weak, but everybody gets lonely.
The challenge isn't to avoid loneliness, but to see it as a signal. Just like thirst is a signal you need hydration, loneliness is a signal you need human connection.
Jeremy Nobel is a primary care physician and public health practitioner at Harvard, and he created an initiative called Project Unlonely, which partners with campuses and communities to address loneliness and social isolation. He says the problem is if we don't satisfy that longing to be with other people, we start to withdraw even more.
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Chapter 3: What are the different types of loneliness?
But Dr. Nobel says we don't have to end up there. We can interrupt the spiral. NPR health correspondent Alison Aubrey talked to Dr. Nobel recently about his book, Project Unlonely, Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. On this episode of Life Kit, you'll hear that conversation with practical steps you can take to feel less lonely and open up to connection again.
I was struck in your book that you identify three types of loneliness. There's psychological, societal, existential. Can you describe the differences?
Chapter 4: How can loneliness signal a need for connection?
Absolutely. So loneliness is it's a mood state. It's an emotion just like love. There are different kinds of love. Why shouldn't there be different kinds of loneliness? Right. So there's brotherly love, love of country, romantic love.
I do point to these three types of loneliness you mentioned because I think it's useful not just for academic purposes, but if you understand the type of loneliness you're navigating, then it gives you some insight into what might be useful in that navigation. So let me go through them all really quickly. So first, psychological loneliness.
This is what most people think of when they hear the word lonely. Do I have a friend, a confidant, someone I can tell my troubles to? The second type, societal loneliness, one way I describe that to people is imagine a room filled with people, and you have to go into that room. Is your arrival anticipated, welcome, and safe?
If it's not, you might be reluctant, wondering, what am I doing in that room? And so whether it's race, class, Even disability, if we're systematically excluded, that's a kind of loneliness also. The third, existential or spiritual loneliness, I think is fascinating. It's probably been around quite a long time. How do we fit into the bigger universe, the human narrative, if you will?
Does our life have meaning and purpose, consequence? So this is another kind of disorientation to connection with others that I think can trouble some people. And of course, you could have one, two, three, or all of these types of loneliness all interthreaded.
It does seem like these are woven together, and to some extent, as you described them, it feels like all of us must have some societal loneliness, some existential loneliness. The one that really strikes me is the first one, psychological loneliness. And if the litmus test is, do I have a friend, that seems like a really important thing. I have three kids, and as you watch your kids grow,
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Chapter 5: What practical steps can we take to combat loneliness?
sort of thrive in social space or struggle, one kind of through line of whether they're doing well is do they have a friend or two at the moment that they're really connecting with? It always seems like there's madness in the world, but having that one confidant is really important, right?
Yes, we do need a sense that we are visible and matter to someone else. And I think uncertainty around that does invite a kind of spiraling into self-doubt, lack of self-worth, and then it makes it harder to take the risk of trying to connect with other people you're already anticipating. You won't be successful at that.
And so these are the kind of things that I think are troubling many people right now.
So let's talk about smartphones and the amount of time that people spend online. How do you think that this can help or hinder kind of authentic connections with others?
I think like many technologies, smartphones can be a source of great benefit to people individually in communities, but also great harm. And as I talk about in the book, one of the worrisome ways social media and smartphones are often used, particularly by younger generations, is a kind of performance platform where we curate what we put on that platform to tell a very
What we think or guess is an attractive story about ourselves to increase numbers, likes, and follows. And so you're not only performing, you're continually being judged by this unseen audience. And you start changing your, say, posting behavior or your social media behavior to try to accelerate the attention you're getting at the external persona level, if you will, your digital persona.
And that often is different from how you truly feel inside. So that can be very lonely making for people as they feel that in order to truly connect, they have to not be who they are.
Now, there's other ways we could use social media if we choose to tolerate the discomfort of authentic disclosure, to find people we share authentic interests with, and then be able to share personal stories and respond in kind. And that's how we build more authentic, more sustainable connections. And we now have technology that can amplify that. Technology in and of itself isn't the problem.
It's how we use it.
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Chapter 6: How do technology and social media affect our loneliness?
So why is it so hard to take the first step to sharing who we are with other people? And I think a lot of it has to do with individuals' early experiences. If you've had a stressful upbringing or a stressful experience, other points in your life.
One of the things that often happens when you have these traumas, because that's what they are, injury, pain on a sustained or significant basis, we tend to push ourselves away from other people. We don't want to risk getting hurt again.
And so that's why having a little bit of a catalyst for that, whether it's the kind of exciting, fun activity of a social creative making experience or even watching a film with some people and sharing your thoughts and then maybe expressing yourself creatively. If we can just provide just that little nudge for people, right? to take that first step. Very hard for some, easy for others.
Then I think it becomes quite reinforcing because it's often quite pleasurable. It's joyous to feel connection. It increases dopamine levels to tell our story. It's a very positive experience.
And so part of my goal in Project Unlonely, in this book, in this conversation with you, Allison, is to encourage people to take those risks, tolerate that discomfort of disclosure and see where it leads them.
What I've heard from you throughout this conversation is that people can try this prescription on their own. So let's recap. Takeaway number one, which may be the first step to overcoming loneliness, is to take a risk.
Share something about yourself. It doesn't have to be the biggest, darkest secret of your life, but just something you think other people might find interesting and compelling and see where it goes.
Takeaway number two is to make something.
Do a drawing, a doodle, a dance move. Make something that puts your thoughts and feelings and vision about who you are and what matters into a tangible artifact that then can express those thoughts and feelings to others.
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