The Loneliness Crisis in 2025: What We’re Seeing, What We’re Missing, and What Might Help

Loneliness is at the top of everyone’s mind right now.

After the U.S. Surgeon General named it an epidemic affecting our health as much as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, it suddenly had a spotlight. But for many of us, it didn’t feel like news. It felt like naming something we’ve been quietly living with.

More staggering facts from top studies on loneliness have found:

• Around 50% of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness. HHS+2ABC News+2
• About 30% of U.S. adults say they have felt lonely at least once a week over the past year, and 10% report feeling lonely every day. American Psychiatric Association
• Loneliness is linked with an estimated 100 deaths every hour worldwide — that’s more than 871,000 deaths annually. World Health Organization
• In one large U.S. study, people who reported loneliness were at a 32% higher risk of all-cause mortality (death from any cause). JAMA Network+1
  Among U.S. adults aged 18-34, the prevalence of loneliness in one survey was 43.3%. CDC+1
• In the U.S., adults who identify as bisexual reported loneliness at 56.7%, and transgender individuals up to 63.9% in one survey. CDC+1
  Loneliness can increase the risk of early mortality by ~26% in some meta-analyses. Campaign to End Loneliness+1

A candid look at the salon I hosted on loneliness, exploring why we’re more disconnected than ever. We discussed belonging, digital burnout, and the practices that can help rebuild real community.

A few weeks ago, I invited a small group of brilliant minds together to discuss it. It was a mix of people you don’t usually see in one room: therapists, writers, a men’s coach, a Yale professor, parents, and even a couple of people I’d only ever known online who still said yes to a slightly cryptic invitation to a stranger’s home.

I was upfront about my personal agenda: I’m tired of being online, and I want more rooms filled with real, breathing humans. And I wanted to have the conversation I don’t hear enough—not just why we’re lonely, but what we might actually do about it.

Here’s what stayed with me:

“Loneliness isn’t new… but it’s louder.”

One of the men said something that has been echoing in my mind: loneliness has been around as long as humans have, but technology is amplifying it.

Several therapists in the room shared what they’re seeing:

• People are outsourcing connection to professionals: the therapist, the healer, the coach, the massage therapist, even the Uber driver. The things we used to ask a friend to help with, we now pay for.
• A therapist said she often asks her clients, “Does anyone else know this about you?” The answer, over and over, is no.
• Another talked about “geographical loneliness”—living in a neighborhood with poor infrastructure, few public spaces, and no real third places. For her, coming to my house in Manhattan meant a 1 hour 40 minute drive and a $300 Uber if she didn’t drive. That’s the price of admission to in-person connection for a lot of people.

We talked about AI and chatbots too. One person mentioned a stat about how many people now have “romantic relationships” with bots.

Whether the number is perfectly accurate or not almost doesn’t matter, the direction of it does.

A bot doesn’t have a nervous system. It doesn’t look tired or distracted. It doesn’t say, “Honestly, that annoys me,” or “No, I disagree.” It just keeps giving you validation on demand. That can feel like connection… but it’s missing the very thing that makes human connection real: the risk.

And this came up again and again: connection and risk are inseparable.

Men, loneliness, and the temptation to disappear

I’ve spent most of my work life in rooms full of women, so having a mixed-gender circle was important to me.

The men in the room talked about something I’ve been thinking a lot about: male loneliness.

One men’s coach described it like this:

• For many men, the last time they felt deep belonging was on a team—in a locker room, in a huddle, on a field.
• After that, they’re taught that self-sufficiency is everything. Being “enough” on your own equals competence, and competence equals desirability.
• Love becomes a reward for achievement, not something you are held in while you figure life out.

He also talked about what he’s seeing with younger men: hiding behind dating apps, becoming more avoidant, less willing to risk walking across the room and saying, “Hi, I think you’re lovely, can I talk to you?”

The risk of rejection is so terrifying that an AI girlfriend or a screen starts to look easier. No messy emotions. No awkward pauses. No chance of seeing disappointment on someone’s actual face.

But here’s the thing: if we never practice tolerating that discomfort—rejection, awkwardness, vulnerability—we lose the muscles we need for real connection. We get good at swiping, and bad at looking someone in the eye.

The kids, the phones, and the lost art of “suck it up”

We inevitably got to our kids. (I can’t not; I have five teenagers.)

Every time I feel uncomfortable, I reach for my drug of choice: my phone. My kids do the same. The difference is, I remember a childhood without mine. They don’t.

At camp, when phones are banned, my kids come home glowing. They say, “If no one else had a phone, I wouldn’t want mine either. I’d be happier.” What they can’t tolerate is being the only one without it. That social risk is too high.

Somewhere between “suck it up, kid” and “never let them feel discomfort,” we’ve gotten lost. We’ve given kids endless tools to escape discomfort, and then we pathologize normal human emotions as something to be medicated, optimized, or scrolled away.

One father in the room talked about how transformative his son’s football team has been, not just for fitness, but for confidence, belonging, and resilience. No one can buy their way into a starting position. 

You earn your place. You are initiated. You fail in front of your teammates. You get back up.

We kept coming back to that idea: we need more initiation and more earned belonging. Not hazing, not cruelty—but real challenges you go through with other people, and come out the other side knowing, “I belong here because I showed up and did the hard thing.”

Systems, policy, and who even gets to be in the room

You can’t talk about loneliness without talking about:

• Racism and white supremacy
• How neighborhoods are designed or ignored
• Who has access to therapy and who doesn’t
• Who feels safe walking into a room full of strangers in the first place

Some people’s loneliness is not just “I feel a bit disconnected.” It’s: “I have been told, explicitly or implicitly, my whole life that I do not belong.”

We’re not all going to walk out of my living room and become policy makers. But we can’t pretend loneliness is just an individual mindset problem. Awareness matters. Who we invite, how we create safety, whose experiences we center—those things matter too.

Community care vs. buying it back

You know how much I love therapy. I think everyone should have access to it. But we talked about how the mental health system is being asked to treat a wound that was created, at least in part, by the disappearance of community care.

We used to have:

• The aunties, grandmas, elders, rabbis, ministers
• The neighbor who watched your kids or noticed when you didn’t come outside
• The person who drove you to the airport or helped you pay a bill online or fed your cat when you were away

Now, we often buy those things: babysitting, coaching, house help, Uber, DoorDash, “support” of every kind. We’ve turned basic mutuality, “I’ll drive you this time, you help me next time” into transactions. And then we wonder why we feel so alone.

One therapist told us about her mother, who lives a very simple life with very little money, but is constantly driving people, feeding people, picking them up from the airport, helping them with errands, surrounded by community. Her life is full, not because she has “optimized her calendar,” but because she lives in an ecosystem of mutual care.

That image stayed with me.

So… what actually helps?

We didn’t leave with a five-step loneliness solution (if only). But we did name some seeds that feel worth watering:

Clubs and “analog” hobbies.

Bridge clubs, crochet circles, death cafés, garden clubs, neighborhood meetups. Not glamorous, but deeply human. Show up, do something with your hands, talk about real things.

Third spaces that aren’t about consumption.

Libraries, parks, community centers, boardwalks. Places where you can show up and belong without buying something.

Mixed rooms.

Not just our curated corners of the internet where everyone thinks like we do. Sitting next to people you don’t fully understand and staying in the conversation anyway.

Spaces where you have permission.

Permission to talk about grief, death, heartbreak, fear, race, desire, and the things you’ve decided are “too much” for group chat.

One of the authors in the room said her favorite club so far has been a “death café”, people of all ages gathering in a cemetery to talk about death. She said everyone left lighter, more alive. That’s the paradox of honest community: the heavier the topic, the more alive we feel when we stop carrying it alone.

Where I’m headed with this

Hosting this salon confirmed something I already knew in my bones: I want more rooms like this.

Rooms where we talk about loneliness and foster real connection. Rooms where we eat good food and sit too close together and stay past when we said we would.

I’m getting more and more interested in gatherings that are a little bit “retro” on the surface (crochet, clubs, circles), but quietly radical underneath: people daring to be honest, to risk discomfort, to ask for help, to admit, “I’m lonely,” and to hear, “Me too.”

I’ll keep experimenting with these salons and with ways to bring this work to more of you, whether that’s IRL gatherings, virtual circles, or simple practices you can do where you are.