Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, the United States finds itself in the midst of another public health crisis. This particular pandemic is a psychological one: widespread loneliness and isolation.
About half of adults in the U.S. report feeling lonely – what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has characterized as an epidemic. The increase in social isolation has extensive costs for “schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished,” he wrote in 2023.
