Human connection is among our most basic needs- equivalent to food, water, and shelter. Infants deprived of regular nurturing physical contact have an exponentially higher mortality rate than those given enough physical affection. At the start of the 20th century, death rates of infants in orphanages were in some instances close to 100% in the US and the UK. While some of these deaths were due to disease, most of them were due to extreme emotional and sensorial deprivation. The babies were given adequate food and medical care, but they were completely deprived of physical touch and love. (1) Put simply, lack of connection is a survival threat for babies.
As it turns out, lack of connection is also a survival threat for adults- and everyone in between. Studies have shown that chronic social isolation correlates with a 26% increase in the risk of all-cause death among adults. (2) And loneliness is extraordinarily common: a 2020 study by Harvard University found that among Americans aged 18 to 25, 61% of them reported experiencing chronic and severe loneliness, compared with 39% of the general population. (3)
Loneliness is also the greatest preventable risk factor for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, addiction, and self-harm. (3) Social media sites were developed with the promise of addressing our loneliness and increasing connection, but instead they have severely exacerbated the problem. Research shows that heavy use of social media actually leads to increased feelings of loneliness. (3) The dopamine hit we get from scrolling social media and getting “likes” on our posts feels good temporarily, but does not build real relationships.
We are hard-wired for connection and interdependence, and the prevalence of loneliness and isolation among Americans is fueling what many public health experts are calling our number one public health crisis. Clearly, this problem has escalated to epidemic proportions. Yet the average individual experiencing these feelings tends to wonder whether they feel alone because something is wrong with them.
Through my therapy practice, I see clients seeking help for a wide range of issues. Regardless of the specific challenges bringing someone to therapy, I find that for the vast majority of people I work with, lack of connection is often at the core. Because we are meaning-making creatures, we try to understand our circumstances in order to fix them and feel better. We seek something or someone to blame- and often that person is ourselves.
My clients often tell me that they don’t know how to meet people and make friends. And my clients are lovely human beings- through my work with them, I am an absolute believer in the goodness of humanity. Some of them are lucky enough to have work colleagues with whom they establish friendships, but even those in partnered relationships often talk about their struggles with feeling alone. Every one of them blames themself. Almost without exception, they believe that the reason they feel disconnected is because something is wrong with them.
Obviously, we can play a role in our own loneliness with behaviors that might push other people away. But the scale of this problem is so massive that for most of us, the problem has less to do with our own socially off-putting behaviors and more to do with the overall trend toward disconnection in our society. Think about the last time you were on an airplane, or waiting for your appointment at the doctor’s office. Most likely, the faces around you were buried in cell phones- possibly including your own. Notice how in most situations that require us to wait for something, our tendency is to pull out our phones and start scrolling. This habit is so normalized that we think nothing of it. It seems harmless to seek out a little entertainment in a boring (or anxiety-producing) situation.
However, this decision carries a powerful consequence. We might think that ignoring the people around us in favor of our screens is a neutral act, but this is far from true. We send a powerful message to others when we act as if they’re invisible. It’s like saying, “You don’t exist. You are so unimportant that I can’t be bothered to look you in the eyes.” When we are surrounded by a sea of people who don’t acknowledge our presence, the impact is isolating and alienating. It’s like being a ghost: we can see people, but no one is available for engagement or connection. And we wonder why rates of social anxiety and loneliness continue to climb.
We know that increased cell phone usage correlates with increased rates of ADHD diagnoses, depression, poor cognition, loneliness, physical pain, mood disorders, anxiety, psychological distress, sleep disturbances, weight gain, and poor academic performance. Yet because everyone around us is also staring at their screens, we’re lulled into a false sense of security. We slip into herd mentality: if no one else is reacting to the smell of smoke, maybe there is no fire. Except that there is a fire, and it’s fueling all of the major problems we face on our planet.
We are profoundly connected. We depend on each other for survival- even if we’ve never met. We rely on people all over the globe to grow the food we eat, produce the materials we need to build our homes, develop the medicines to treat our diseases, etc. Moreover, our nervous systems are designed to sync up with each other when we are in physical proximity. This is called limbic resonance: our heart rate, breathing rate, and level of threat sensitivity adjust based on the physiology of the person with whom we are interacting, and vice versa. We are quite literally wired to “leak into” each other, and yet in this country we are fed the idea that we should be able to make it on our own. American culture loves the narrative of the rugged individual fighting upstream to achieve success. We are rewarded for “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps” to climb the rungs of some imaginary ladder. We are rewarded for being “unique,” “independent,” “distinctive.” We often measure the quality of our lives by the level of our achievements. Many of us feel ashamed of the depth of our need for social connection, since it’s often framed by our culture as a weakness. Yet greater connection is the very thing we need most in order to address the largest challenges in our world.
We are living in a state of collective trauma. The difficulties of our time are much larger and more complex than any our species has ever faced, and our nervous systems are not designed to sustain the level of chronic stress we experience on a daily basis. Even watching the news can sometimes be enough to tip our physiology into a trauma response. Our deep brain structures are unable to fully recognize that the catastrophes happening in other parts of the world are not actually happening outside our own window, and our bodies and minds respond to some degree as they would to a true survival threat. Trauma disrupts our ability to connect- but the irony is that in order to heal, we need supportive relationships. When the faces around us are turned toward the warm glow of their screens, it means that no one is available for connection- making it harder for all of us to heal, and inclining us more toward our own phones as well. And the dopamine hit provided by our screens cements this behavior into place.
All of the existential threats we face today- climate change, the risk of nuclear war, unraveling societies, decline of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation- are the result of disconnection: with each other, with ourselves, and with the earth. The illusion that we are separate from each other and from our planet is what fuels the vast majority of human suffering, and leads to the destruction of our planet. Author Tara Brach calls this “the trance of separation:” we mistakenly believe that we are separate, that we are unworthy, and that we don’t belong. If we are under the false impression that we don’t belong to each other or to the planet, we erroneously believe that our actions have no larger consequence. We therefore continue behaving as if we have no responsibility to the broader world, unaware of the ripple effect of our behaviors and attitudes. The fabric of our felt sense of interconnection must be intact if we are to make meaningful progress on the issues threatening our very existence. It’s quite simple: when we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves. When we abuse the earth, we harm our own bodies in turn.
Many of us are waiting for someone else to reach their hand through the curtain and offer connection. We seem to expect some benevolent, larger-than-life figure to do the work of convincing us that we belong, and that we are intrinsically worthy, before we are willing to tiptoe into the vulnerability required to connect with others in a real way. Many of us have our masks firmly cemented to our faces, disguising our true feelings and thoughts, waiting for someone to hand-deliver a sense of our belonging to us. No one is doing that work for us. We have to become the ones offering connection- for ourselves and for others. Yes, it’s vulnerable and risky- but it’s our moral imperative.
Each one of us must become an agent for social change. Start by assuming that most people with whom you cross paths share a longing for connection, and a sense of its lacking. Remind yourself that your own feelings of disconnection are not a reflection of your worth. Instead of worrying about how others are judging you, ask yourself: how can I reassure this person in front of me that they belong? This is a gift you can offer to the world. Maybe this means starting a conversation with the person sitting next to you at the doctor’s office. Maybe you decide to set up a recurring community potluck. Create opportunities for people to connect with you and with each other, even if this idea scares you. It might feel awkward at first since you’ll be breaking the rules of our unspoken social contract in which we all pretend that everyone else is invisible, but this is not a social code worth keeping- so break it. Our developmental task is to overcome our own insecurities and grow into the largest-possible version of ourselves so that we can help others start to recognize their own belonging.
The battles playing out in society are reflected inside each of us on a smaller scale. It is essential for us to course-correct and re-orient toward social connection as a species in order to solve the many existential problems we now face. We must grapple with our own behaviors and attitudes that fuel our disconnection in order to become a part of the solutions we so urgently need. This involves intentionally working to remember our belonging and interconnection- and finding ways to deliver that connection and sense of belonging to others.
1. Bowlby, J. (2016) Can a lack of love be deadly? The Conversation
2. Holt-Lunstad, J. (2021) Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors: The Power of Social Connection in Prevention, American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 15(5): 567–573
3. Rodriguez, A. (2023) Americans are lonely and it’s killing them. How the US can combat this new epidemic. USA Today