Why is it so hard to cure the loneliness epidemic?

The same sentiment is present in many proposed policies, such as the UK’s postmen’s plan, and Murthy’s 2023 guidance, which, at the end of its advice, suggests that lonely people “reach out to a friend or family member” and that parents encourage their children to take part in organised in-person activities “such as volunteering, sports, community activities and mentoring programmes”. One of the conclusions is that closing the gap between realised and desired social relationships, and thus ultimately ending the loneliness epidemic, will be a matter of recreating, in some updated form, the types of communities that existed in an older era.

Unfortunately, history rarely works that way. “One of the biggest problems I have with the current rhetoric about loneliness is that we treat it as if it’s going in one direction all the time,” Klinenberg told me. “It’s not. It’s a much more engaging phenomenon”—and more nuanced. When loneliness gripped the Western world during the Industrial Revolution, everyone didn’t suddenly retreat to their villages; radio didn’t make us permanently lonely. We built novel communities in the city, far from our families; we used radio to expand our world and talk to people on the other side of the country. We adapted. And as challenging as it may be to accept, the path out of loneliness in 2024 is almost certainly along a similar path—forward, forward.

There are signs that a similar mass evolution is already underway. Take the smartphone, a device that has been blamed for our lack of physical connection and that has simultaneously led to other, but no less significant, forms of togetherness. “I wrote an entire book about online dating, and to give you one example, I know as much as anyone how much Tinder can suck,” Klinenberg says. “I also know that the internet is now the primary way people meet their spouses. I think about people with uncommon diseases who are able to share information, get better care, and feel connected because the internet allows them to do so. I think about trans kids who are vulnerable because they feel rejected and lonely in some families, and now they can talk to people who are like them—get messages that validate them.”

None of this is to say that we won’t still need physical closeness—only that there might be less of it, and the physical closeness that survives might look different than it did for our ancestors. Ninety-six thousand Taylor Swift fans singing in sync, the roar of a packed football stadium, and then a billion online threads in which participants relive and post photos and reminisce about the euphoria of their shared experience. A romance that exists partly in the real world and partly online, and in which emotional closeness is not diminished but enhanced by a steady stream of the kind of candid confessions that social media apps can facilitate.

There may be obstacles, hurdles, and obstacles, but as with Cacioppo and Hawkley’s evolutionary theory, these obstacles may be part of the learning process, the adaptation process. Part of the drive that unites us.

Squint and you’ll see this: a scenario in which today’s crisis of loneliness is actually a period of mass acclimatization. It’s a bridge, an evolutionary step in which we come to terms with certain compromises and realities—that in 2024 we won’t all be racing to join a local community. That we won’t all be returning to church, temple, or mosque. That our children may grow up far from their grandparents, aunts, and uncles—far from the cities we grew up in. That the workplace will remain fragmented, tethered to Zoom meetings and the occasional in-person joyful hour. That we may often see our friends more on FaceTime than in real life. And most importantly, that despite everything, we will find each other again.

Max Guther is a Berlin-based illustrator known for his hyperrealistic, isometric 3D style, often using an unusual top-down perspective.