The Hidden Epidemic: Why Loneliness Is On the Rise – and How to Overcome It
In December 2018, Tina, a transport worker based in Bridgend, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died the following March. There was little time to prepare, and little time to make plans. Her husband of 38 years, Rob, had spent their final summer together being tested for prostate cancer; it was his illness that they had been contending with. But now Rob had been given the all-clear and Tina was gone. ‘I had a lot of feelings of guilt then,’ he tells me today. ‘If I could have swapped places with her, I would have.’
Rob describes himself as ‘a pretty private person’. Yet he was always a hard worker with ‘an active professional life’, also in the transport sector. Both he and Tina were too preoccupied with their jobs and their role as parents of two grown-up children to expect the worst. Maybe that’s why, when the worst did come, Rob was so overwhelmed. He didn’t know what to do. ‘I was just lost and broken,’ he says. Hoping to console him, friends would invite him out to the pub. But with alcoholism in his family, he sensed that a drink, at that point, was the last thing he needed. ‘Besides, when I went outside, I felt that I didn’t belong there,’ he says. ‘And I didn’t want to burden my children with it all, because they had their own lives to lead.’
So he withdrew from his old life. He felt a crushing loneliness but kept himself to himself. Despite his hitherto happy, ordinary life, he was now all alone.
According to the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, a cross-party parliamentary initiative launched in 2016 to address the issue, about eight million men across the UK experience a sense of desolation at least once a week. This longing for meaningful personal ties is often associated with the elderly; indeed, the charity Age UK estimates that the number of people in their fifties and beyond who suffer from loneliness will reach 2 million in the next couple of years, an increase of almost 50% over the past decade.
Yet loneliness can affect any of us at any time, no matter how old – or young – we are. In the UK, people aged between 16 and 34 are among the most at risk, with a five-times-greater chance of feeling chronically alone than those over 65. Meanwhile, a recent investigation by the British Red Cross revealed that more than one in 10 working-age people often or always experienced aspects of loneliness during their employment. In short, it’s not something that we can ever grow out of, or that we succumb to only late in life. It’s an abyss into which even the fittest, healthiest and most outgoing of us can tumble.
The Silent Struggle of Modern Isolation
I’m a failed musician in my early forties; my years of stomping on the stages of London’s ‘toilet-circuit’ gig venues with my bandmates are largely behind me. Time with my partner and our fast-growing son is what’s most precious to me now. I work hard as a journalist, and my office hours often spill into evenings and weekends. I don’t think I’ve ever truly been lonely, but scrolling through my WhatsApp feed, I notice that it’s increasingly punctuated with variations on ‘It’s been ages!’ or ‘Where’ve you been?’ – messages from people I know who, perhaps, are slowly turning into people I knew. I want to keep in touch with everyone, but I simply don’t have the energy. Maybe I’m too busy to be lonely. Or maybe I’m too busy, or hesitant, to ask myself whether I am. No one expects to end up atomised and adrift. But I wonder now, as I exhaustedly ignore messages from my friends, whether that’s what I’m heading towards.
I speak to Malcolm, a 75-year-old retiree based in Kent, who tells me that he’s been ‘aware of a kind of mental separation’ from others since he was a teenager. He describes the feeling as one of ‘slightly standing back from the crowd’ and says that it has resulted in a ‘temerity or shyness’ that have long exacerbated his feelings of loneliness. Despite a background in the sciences, Malcolm worked mostly as an artist. Office environments never suited him, so he chose to go it alone. However, he has always craved ‘a wider range of acquaintances and friends, people I can have a proper conversation with’.
Tall and eloquent, Malcolm has a charisma that immediately draws you in. Nonetheless, he’s found it hard to maintain close connections with others throughout his life. ‘I have very few friends now,’ he says. ‘In fact, I’ve almost got no friends.’ Despite a ‘very happy’ family life as the father of two daughters, he says that he suffers from ‘loneliness, even within marriage’. It’s an experience that he finds difficult to fully comprehend. ‘My wife is my best friend and confidante,’ he tells me. ‘We’re able to talk to each other very deeply.’ And yet he can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. ‘I’m tempted to say that loneliness is a human condition,’ he says. ‘We’re born with it and we live with it. I go to the gym and lift weights, and it helps. A cycle ride helps, too. But the feeling can strike at odd times. I’ve been on my bike on the seafront and suddenly felt terribly alone.’
‘We will all experience loneliness, some more than others,’ says Ron Moody, interim CEO of the Marmalade Trust, a Bristol-based charity dedicated to raising awareness of the issue. He cites a study showing that as many as 85% of adults across the country have experienced loneliness in some form within the past 12 months. And the problem, he tells me, is getting worse. ‘It’s certainly more prevalent today.’ Moody believes that the Covid pandemic and lockdowns were ‘a trigger for higher levels of isolation’; he cites ‘too much screen time’ as another factor.
A Public Health Crisis
In May 2023, Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, issued an urgent advisory message entitled ‘Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation’. ‘Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling,’ he warned, and should be seen as a ‘major public health concern’. In a key passage, he pointed out that persistent alienation ‘harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, strokes, depression, anxiety and premature death’. This stark assessment of a condition that’s all too frequently dismissed as a trifling, passing emotion came as a much-needed wake-up call. The advisory’s headline statistic – that the mortality impact of loneliness is ‘similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day’ – hit headlines worldwide.
Dr Murthy attributed this new epidemic to causes ranging from the encroachment of digital technology into our lives to wider changes in work and society. Interpersonal networks, he noted, are getting smaller, and the average time that Americans are physically alone is rising. In 2003, people typically spent 285 minutes per day in solitude; that had risen to 333 minutes by 2020. Over the same period, their social engagement with friends plummeted from an hour per day to just 20 minutes. When, in 2022, researchers asked adults across the US how close they felt to others emotionally, just 39% said ‘very connected’.
A similar picture has emerged around the world. According to a meta-analysis of data from 113 nations, loneliness is now a significant global issue, with ‘problematic levels’ found in countries such as Japan and the Netherlands, as well as the US and the UK. And as its effects bleed from the personal sphere to those of politics and the economy, even the hardest-headed governments have been starting to pay attention. The cost of loneliness to employers in the UK is estimated to be about £2.5bn per year, mostly as a result of increased staff turnover, lower productivity, sickness absences and the burden of caring responsibilities on workers. Perhaps it was this financial toll that nudged the UK’s Conservative Party to appoint the world’s first minister for loneliness in 2018.
This heightened scrutiny on the issue from lawmakers is welcome. Though isolation is felt personally, there’s only so much individuals can do to address it alone. State-level interventions are crucial, as many of the causes demand holistic, society-wide solutions.
Loneliness has ‘a complex economy of reasons’, says Charlie Bethel, CEO of the UK Men’s Sheds Association, a charity that offers members spaces in which to connect, converse and create together. ‘For example, one cause of elevated levels of loneliness has been the gradual change in our communities,’ he says. ‘People today are rarely born and educated in the same town where they work, marry and die. We move around, leaving friends, family and loved ones behind. We are a much more transient population now.’ He adds that, today, ‘Particular industries or companies no longer tend to dominate a town, so you don’t really have communities working in the same place with a shared connection.’
These factors will take years of concerted political action to address – as will others such as the erosion of traditional social spaces, including music venues, pubs and youth centres. There’s plenty to fix. Bethel, however, is optimistic that real changes are afoot. ‘Government and society have moved on from not acknowledging the problem to now, at last, recognising that there are solutions that work,’ he says. ‘We need to embed loneliness interventions in government policy and practices, as well as in our organisations, companies, universities, schools – all of our areas of life – because the benefit is a happier and healthier country.’
I find Bethel’s positivity inspiring, and he speaks with the authority of someone who spends his days actively working to deal with the problem. Launched 11 years ago, the organisation he leads supports 1,180 ‘Sheds’ across the UK, in which men are provided with the means to ‘make and do stuff’ alongside their peers. ‘Most Sheds offer woodworking, and many have 3D-printing facilities,’ he says. Crucially, these volunteer-run spaces are easy to set up anywhere. Some are based in community centres or retail units, while two, Bethel tells me, are in ‘disused morgues’.
Crafting Connections
As its name makes clear, Men’s Sheds focuses on male loneliness, which presents its own particular challenges. ‘Men tend to hide their feelings more,’ Moody tells me. ‘That makes opening up a slower process.’ Bethel concurs, suggesting that we ‘avoid talking because of a fear of coming across as vulnerable. It can be a matter of how society frames men, with expectations and ideas such as “big boys don’t cry”.’
Malcolm, the retiree, also attributes some of the difficulties that he faces in forging lasting connections to masculine norms. ‘I think that women are more emotionally open and discuss things with each other,’ he says. ‘That’s partly because – at least, in my experience – men tend to be more competitive, which makes us more cautious about being judged. We don’t temperamentally like to talk about personal things.’
This reticence can have severe consequences. In England and Wales, suicide is three times more common among men than among women. For many who suffer from loneliness or depression, talking to someone is the first step towards seeking help, but restrictive notions of what it means to be a man can prevent those worst affected from ever doing so.
The UK Men’s Sheds Association’s solution is elegantly simple. Bethel says that while many men shy away from high-pressure, ‘face-to-face’ interrogations of how they feel, most are more inclined to discuss their interior lives while working ‘shoulder to shoulder’ on unrelated tasks. He explains to me what he calls ‘the lawnmower analogy’. ‘If you put 12 men in a room and ask them to talk about their feelings, six will leave and the other six will try to find the corners of the room,’ he says. ‘But if you give them a broken lawnmower and ask them to fix it, by the end of two hours, the 12 men will know each other intimately – what ails them, their children’s names, even how they take their tea and coffee.’
The Sheds, he says, are ‘spaces where people feel safe to speak’. Members have no obligation to unburden themselves; they are merely given an opportunity to meet like-minded people. ‘Essentially, a Shed is a place to go and do stuff, on your own or with other people. It’s your choice. There is no rank, no ego. Just men trying to solve problems.’
Rob, the bereaved transport worker from Bridgend, is now a ‘shedder’. A few years ago, his brother-in-law, seeing him sinking into depression, dragged him to the charity’s local outpost. ‘At first, I thought that it wasn’t for me,’ he recalls. ‘I knew that people went there to make stuff out of wood or whatever, and I really wasn’t interested in it. But I noticed that everyone there was having fun and they welcomed me.’ Though nervous, he dropped by one Sunday soon afterwards. ‘I don’t know why, but it made me feel normal for the first time in a while,’ he explains. ‘That gave me strength. Everyone goes there with a story to tell, and you can let your feelings be known. It makes a difference to know that I’m not on my own.’
Malcolm, meanwhile, belongs to a number of sports clubs and is a regular at a gym. He says that he’s often keenly aware that his interactions with the people he meets amount only to ‘superficial conversation’, but that hasn’t discouraged him from showing up, week in, week out. And that’s the best thing he could do. As Moody tells me, ‘Many friendships are formed by the simple act of talking to someone in a park, pub or check-out queue.’ The important thing is to ‘make an informed decision to get out and socialise’.
Dealing with loneliness starts with the understanding that there’s no shame in it. And the more we talk about it, the more we can help ourselves and those around us. We shouldn’t ignore the feeling when it comes. ‘You need to work at assuaging it,’ says Malcolm. ‘We have to try to develop our lives, maintain as much interest in living as we can and get through it.’
He’s right. As for me, I’m getting my old band back together. Why not? After all, it’s been ages.
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