Nostalgia won’t fix the loneliness epidemic

A year after graduating from college, Chi was adrift.

She’d gone from a life of structure to one without guardrails and her mental health was declining. As a result, she distanced herself from friends and family. She left her job as a peer facilitator at a support group for people with depression and bipolar disorder and lived in an apartment and neighborhood with people she didn’t know.

“I was very, very lonely,” says Chi, whose last name is being withheld so she could speak freely about her mental health. “[I] was trying to figure out how would I structure my days. Where could I be? Who could I talk to?”

In the past, a friend had suggested Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit that offers clinical support, housing resources, care management, and work programs for people experiencing serious mental illness, based in a physical location known as a clubhouse.

Not only could Chi get help finding work or housing, but she’d also volunteer alongside other Fountain House members to keep the place running — a cornerstone of the clubhouse model, which Fountain House originated in the 1940s. (Membership is free and work is performed on a volunteer basis without pay.) She’d have a community — and some structure — once again.

In her 13 years as a Fountain House member, Chi has been a tutor, organized cultural heritage days, and led racial equity, diversity, and gender initiatives. “I feel like I’m a person of integrity and a person of importance at Fountain House,” Chi says. “At the time when I was coming into Fountain House and really struggling with loneliness … and just feeling really lost, Fountain House has been a place where I have felt found.”

While Fountain House’s model is geared toward the needs of those with mental illness, its methods for curbing loneliness are far more widely applicable in the midst of an ongoing loneliness epidemic that touches old and young, people of all genders, the married and unpartnered. It goes to show that while simply being around people is great, being in a community you’ve willingly opted into, where you matter to others, and where you find a sense of purpose — regardless of mental health — is even better. And it’s an ingredient that’s often conspicuously missing in discussing solutions to the burgeoning crisis.

A nostalgic slate of solutions

In his 2023 advisory on loneliness and isolation, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggests increased access to volunteer groups and religious organizations. The political scientist and author of Bowling Alone Robert Putnam says to join a club. The Institute for Family Studies sings the praises of marriage and family. Introduce yourself to your neighbors, advises the National Institute on Aging. In other words, many of our leading authorities on loneliness suggest a nostalgic slate of solutions that hark back to a time when neighbors freely mingled and religious institutions provided a social and moral compass.

This perspective, of course, flattens history, and fails to account for the ways that racism, segregation, homophobia, and other acceptable forms of exclusion often kept marginalized people deeply isolated (in even more acute ways than it does today).

“It’s a distorted view of the past,” says Richard Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the Making Caring Common Project, an organization that provides research-backed resources for moral and emotional health. “Some of those forms of closeness were not, in fact, as simple and nourishing as people imagine them to be.”

Nostalgia-focused guidance also fails to account for modern ways of living. While many people still live near their hometowns, others leave for college and work, and are separated from their family support networks — if they’re emotionally close to their family at all. Smartphones, social media, endless forms of entertainment, and self-care are designed to keep us engaged and isolated. The rise of therapy-speak has helped create a social ecosystem in which people are focused on their own comfort over the well-being of others. Chance encounters with strangers are less likely given the ascent of self-checkout and remote work.

Americans also spend less time engaged in social activities and leisure. The 2023 American Time Use Survey from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that Americans spent less than five hours a day on activities like watching TV, reading, and relaxing, and even less time — fewer than 30 minutes — each day socializing. While Americans spend about eight hours a day at work, most are not devoting their free time to pursuits that would imbue meaning and belonging.

Those who feel alienated can’t be forced to join a club or ditch their phones or ascribe to a religious identity in order to help them feel more connected. Some may have a desire to be socially engaged, but don’t have access to places like Fountain House or other affirming clubs in their communities. But there are ways to find meaningful connection even in a modern, digitally connected world. Despite its seemingly classic approach to connection, Fountain House has zeroed in on something crucial — people don’t just need social connections; they need meaningful ones, too.

What prevents connection?

The issue in our modern loneliness conundrum isn’t with the number of relationships people have, but their quality. A recent study found that 75 percent of respondents were satisfied with the number of friends they had, but 40 percent wanted to be closer to them. Over a third of Weissbourd’s participants in a 2020 survey on loneliness said they felt lonely because no one took the time to meaningfully ask them how they were; 42 percent said they wished they had more people who cared about them outside of family.

If Americans recognize they desire more quality connections, what holds people back from seeking them out? In a word, Weissbourd says, individualism.

In the 1950s, American society was composed of social conformists — people who wanted to fit in publicly, but in private, desired personal freedom to live, worship, and speak as they choose. By the ensuing decades, individualism morphed from these personal freedoms into placing a premium on one’s uniqueness and personal choice. An increased interest in personal success, safety, and physical and mental well-being, in turn, breeds an internally focused culture. If you’re spending so much time trying to further your own pursuits, or thinking about yourself, you might fail to see the value in activities that require another person: friendship, service, club membership.

This self-absorption can lead to anxiety, research suggests, which prevents people from reaching out in the first place out of a fear of rejection. The possibility of discomfort is par for the course when interacting with others, says Daniel Maitland, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. But being too in your head because you don’t want to offend — or be offended, hurt, or rejected — prevents people from being vulnerable. “Getting out of our comfort zone is essential to forming connection,” he says.

For many, the costs of social interaction start to outweigh the benefits.

“People underestimate, potentially, how much value [social] groups might have for them,” says Louise Hawkley, a principal research scientist at NORC, a nonpartisan research organization at the University of Chicago. Helping your sister with child care, attending a block party, or catching up with a friend could carry too high a likelihood of social exhaustion, awkwardness, and conflict.

To move through the world in a way that fosters connection is a choice, says Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business — a choice you can make every day, even if you don’t belong to a church or book club. People inherently understand the value of sociality, he says, but some fail to make the decision to chat with people in their orbit. It’s easy to look at your phone while in the elevator — it’s a little harder to take a leap and introduce yourself to a new neighbor or colleague.

These seemingly inconsequential encounters have value. Meaningful conversations can come from everyday interactions and maintaining relationships with people of varying levels of closeness, from stranger to closest confidante, known as “relational diversity” improves well-being.

Taking advantage of ordinary moments of connection may help promote more social engagement, Epley says. Start to notice where you could engage with others — at the grocery store, for instance — and the barriers holding you back — your phone. Small choices can have a big impact. “I, for instance, don’t keep my phone in my pocket ever unless I’m supposed to talk to somebody,” he says. “I have it in my backpack. That just makes it easier for me to engage with other people when they’re around.”

Finding a way back to each other

The struggle for meaningful relationships stems from a general sense of purposelessness, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, of fear. “When you feel that way,” Weissbourd says, “you have greater needs from your connection.”

Family, career, and faith (as well as money) still remain common drivers of meaning, but some measures suggest these tent poles of connection are diminishing in significance. Americans are delaying marriage and child-rearing — if they decide to do so at all. The rise of parental estrangement signals historically traditional familial roles no longer serve adult children. Gen Z and millennials increasingly disentangle their identities from their work. Most Americans agree religion has less of an influence on their lives — and they aren’t happy about it.

The key to why these traditional forms of connection, like bowling leagues and religious institutions, were so effective at abating loneliness isn’t because they simply brought people together, but that participants derived meaning from them. Without it, they’re not likely to stay engaged and keep coming back.

But the goal shouldn’t be to compel people to take part in these traditions; it’s for those who are adrift to find something that fills the void, that imbues meaning.

Volunteerism serves such a purpose for many people, Weissbourd says. Having a clear role and a shared goal is what Fountain House members say helps them stay connected and mentally well.

If personal motivations aren’t enough to spur lonely people into action, perhaps they’re more likely to engage under doctor’s orders. One promising solution that doesn’t just tell people to go back to the imagined past is a burgeoning social prescription movement, which aims to connect patients with community volunteering, art, and movement groups. In the UK, where social prescribing is integrated into the national health care system, more than 2.5 million people have been referred by health professionals to a “social prescribing link worker” who connects those who are lonely, as well as those with chronic or mental health conditions, to social groups.

The goal, says Julia Hotz, author of The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging, is to find an activity that patients actually want to do. “Instead of focusing on just what’s the matter with you,” she says, “it asks what matters to you.” Because if a physician socially prescribes an art class to someone who really wants to ride a bike, “I’m probably going to choose staying home scrolling my feed,” Hotz says.

Taking part in a meaningful activity with other people is usually compelling enough for participants to keep their phones out of sight, Hotz says. The mutual buy-in from fellow foragers or crocheters creates a system of support: If you miss a session, group members will notice your absence. Over time, you start to suspect that not only does the work you’re doing matter, but you matter, too.

The US medical system is slowly integrating social prescribing programs. In Massachusetts, doctors at Mass General Brigham can prescribe arts and culture events to patients. The Cleveland Clinic launched a social prescribing model for geriatric patients. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey members and Rutgers University Newark students can get six months of free art prescriptions, the first insurer-involved social prescribing program in the country.

But lack of access shouldn’t prevent people from socially prescribing for themselves, Hotz says. She suggests thinking back on activities, perhaps during childhood, that brought you joy or flow or something you have a deep interest in. Are there any local organizations or events dedicated to that practice?

Hotz acknowledges that some communities will have more to offer than others, but she typically relies on Google, library and park websites, and word of mouth to find social clubs. The process of finding a group you enjoy and connect with is time intensive. And given the plethora of demands in this modern world — work at all hours, intensive parenting, other forms of caregiving — it can be a challenge to even find a second to mine your desires in the first place.

Virtual groups can also be sources of meaning. During the pandemic, Fountain House members performed their work assignments exclusively online. Even now, Chi says she begins her day at Fountain House over Zoom before heading into the clubhouse. Online communities have been essential for young LGBTQ people and those with physical disabilities to find affirming support.

Central to these caring, meaningful communities is a sense of belonging — that members are seen as essential to the group’s functioning. Vulnerability is the vehicle, according to Maitland, the psychology professor, to open up to others, even if it’s potentially uncomfortable.

Quality relationships can blossom because of, and in spite of, this digitally-connected world. It’s a comfort then that despite all the forces shaping collective values and priorities, having a purpose and being seen for who you are is what fosters community. Maybe the impulse isn’t toward nostalgic forms of connection, but for timeless ways of relating.