Surgeon General says loneliness is driving US into anxiety and pessimism

December 5, 2024 9:17 AM

Cause of Loneliness as told by Vivek Murthy "If I told you, 'I went into my backyard, I made this pill. It's amazing. It's free. If you take it, it'll actually improve your health, make you feel better, improve your performance at work, improve your grades, boost your immunity,' you'd be like, 'Sign me up. I'll take that tomorrow.'" It turns out that's what social connection is. Just a little connection can go a long way in keeping us healthy.
posted by PecanWalnut (29 comments total)

(well, to be sure, if someone told me that they made a pill in their back yard that did all those things, i would assume they're a phony trying to get me to inject overpriced bleach for their own enrichment. but, in context, point taken.)
posted by kaibutsu at 9:23 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

Hah, true that. Definitely would sound too phony in real life.
posted by PecanWalnut at 9:27 AM on December 5, 2024

I dunno. About four and a half years ago I started taking a pill that did a bunch of those things for me.

It's called estradiol.
posted by SansPoint at 9:28 AM on December 5, 2024 [19 favorites]

No, thanks. I live a solitary life by choice and find face-to-face interaction draining. I wish folks like this Murthy would acknowledge the existence of people like me.
posted by SPrintF at 9:29 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

You must be someone who enjoys solitude and really thrives in abundance of it. Many are not as fortunate as you though!
posted by PecanWalnut at 9:31 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

I live a solitary life by choice and find face-to-face interaction draining. I wish folks like this Murthy would acknowledge the existence of people like me.

This is a "yes and" response:

I'm like the flip side of this, because I've been single nearly my whole life and I found myself nodding and saying "yep, loneliness is a big deal - but it's been going on for some people since way before social media."

The times when I have felt the most bone-crushingly alone are times when, say, I've dragged myself home from work and I feel a cold coming on and all I want to do is crawl into bed in my jammies with a bowl of soup - in fact, I even change into my jammies in anticipation - but then I discover that I'm out of cat food or toilet paper or something, and there is no one else to rely on so I have to change back into street clothes and drag myself back outside and go get whatever it is I needed. I've nearly been close to tears a couple times at moments like that. Once when I had an incredibly severe cold but my roommate was out of town I had to get on Facebook and beg for one of my friends to pick me up some groceries. (One very kind soul did.)

We need stronger IRL communities and we've needed that for a long time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:36 AM on December 5, 2024 [18 favorites]

When was the last time my town built a community center, I wonder.
posted by mhoye at 9:49 AM on December 5, 2024

I read the first sentence of this - "I was recommended a podcast by our Bubblic user in Utah." - and I just kinda got stuck on "Bubblic". I tried to read further but I kept on wondering what the fuck a Bubblic is.

Turns out it's some kind of voice chat app. And somehow that really just feels like it's part of the problem, not the solution. I have spent so much time sitting at home talking on the internet instead of getting out in the flesh. So, so much time. It's been nice to connect to other people outside of my local area who share my more esoteric interests but there comes a time when it all starts to feel like a super weak-ass substitute for getting the fuck out in the sun and doing things. Especially when so much communication is now happening over for-profit networks whose core mission has shifted from "connect people" to "keep people on our site for as long as possible, by any means possible, so we can serve them ads".
posted by egypturnash at 9:55 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

I'm also an introvert, but I found that sitting alone did really bad things for me mentally, so I've made sure that I get out and interact with people. Fortunately, it's not hard now, since I have a lot of family and friends in the area, but for a while, I was in bad shape.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:10 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

No, thanks. I live a solitary life by choice and find face-to-face interaction draining. I wish folks like this Murthy would acknowledge the existence of people like me.

I wish more people would understand the difference between alone and lonely.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 10:11 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

I don't think every advertisement is meant to cover all people. Like, if you're happy alone and minimizing social interaction, this obviously isn't about or for you, nor is it asserting that you're lonely because your alone.

There is something interesting about loners who prefer to be alone and avoid social interaction pleading to be acknowledged by a stranger composing an ad.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:22 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

The reason for anxiety and pessimism is because people are feeling more lonely.

I can't say that I am all that lonely but I can give you pretty concrete reasons for my anxiety and pessimism.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:26 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

Yikes yeah this is kind of a Pepsi Blue post? This page wants us to download an app, of all things, to cure loneliness? Yeah right.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:27 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

if only some people weren't trying to remove free publicly accessible 3rd spaces... maybe that's helping with the anxiety and pessimism.
posted by kokaku at 10:31 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

The problem with 3rd spaces is they're hard to keep open because of staffing. There's an awesome giant bakery/bar/open space where I live, and pre-COVID a bunch of us used to hang out there every Wednesday, noodling on trad music and buying drinks. But they can't afford to pay people to work in the evenings, and they don't quite make enough to justify keeping it open. This makes a self-perpetuating cycle where the evening hangouts tip over into being non-viable, which makes them less viable.

Your screens are open 24 hours a day.
posted by argybarg at 10:45 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

But wait, if there were no social connections there would be no wars, crime, interpersonal conflict, or oppression. Ergo, social connection and the horrors that it brings must be avoided at all costs.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:46 AM on December 5, 2024

So his kid is in my kid's class at school and when he issued the report on parental stress and mental health I had to be like "dude, stop following me!"
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:47 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

I thought this was going to be some kind of actual study or an interview but appears to be roughly 500 words written for the 6th grade level that amounts to "the cure for loneliness? Social interaction". Then it links to an app called bubblic which has a whole FAQ section that still can not seem to succinctly explain what the fuck it does or what problem it solves, something about sending voice notes to strangers to "make connections" "across the globe"

???
posted by windbox at 11:16 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

Not mentioned in the article is that a ton of stress is also caused by social interactions. Figuring out how to find, make, and prioritize positive connections is a whole endeavor. This article makes it sound like a breeze.

I feel like I have good social connections, but making the plans and following up and remembering birthdays and figuring out gifts and all that jazz does take effort and isn't always pleasant and delightful. See also the Emotional Labor Thread.
posted by mersen at 11:26 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

If you take it, it'll actually improve your health, make you feel better, improve your performance at work, improve your grades, boost your immunity,' ... It turns out that's what social connection is.

Great, can I get Social Connection^TM in convenient one-a-day pill form?

It sounds like I'm making a joke -- ok, I am -- but it illustrates an important point. A pill is quick and easy; actually creating social connections as a working adult/parent/what-have-you is hard. And all that hifalutin "building social infrastructure" the author talks about in the lovely abstract is not only not exactly an original idea, but it's doubly hard in reality. It requires both groundswell support by individuals (that we already don't have time or energy to do) and massive political will as well. Holding my breath in anticipation of that one...
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:27 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Not an expert, but I am willing to bet it's not just loneliness. A significant part of the US population is facing an existential crisis that threatens to erase them from society. That's more than enough to put a dent in someone's optimism.
posted by tommasz at 11:27 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Physical infrastructure IS social infrastructure and building everything to be dependent on cars has been incredibly isolating. Even when you’re a pedestrian in a “walkable” north american city, it’s often hard or impossible to hear the person you’re walking with or a hello from a stranger without shouting - because of traffic noise.
posted by congen at 11:32 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

I do love hybrids, mashups, chocolate and peanut butter, etc., but I'm not sure bringing broad lack of reading comprehension into the loneliness post was a good idea.
posted by cupcakeninja at 11:35 AM on December 5, 2024

> No, thanks. I live a solitary life by choice

I mean, it's understandable... The fact that you find face-to-face interactions draining is perfectly valid and legitimate, and I believe you. But I find it quite draining to clean my bathroom, yet it would be extremely unhealthy for me to stop doing it or do it less than it needs doing.

Nobody's saying you need to turn into a total extrovert who always hangs around people to be considered healthy. But yeah: a little respect for the fellow human beings in your community who make your life possible would be good. And human connection is how one shows that respect.

I genuinely think that phones and the internet have caused an epidemic of social anxiety among people, and anxiety is what causes us to interpret these situations as threatening or obliterating or whatever when all they do is take a little bit of our energy (like, you know, life is supposed to?). The surgeon general is right, this is a problem.

And yes, maybe there are some people who have serious health conditions which prevent them from being capable of interacting with other humans face-to-face. But those are, by definition, health conditions in need of treatment, not actually a healthy way to live.

There have been cultural practices in the world - there still are - where eschewing all human interactions IRL is held out to practitioners as an honest ideal. These are the people who advocate hermit lives for real: cave dwelling and foraging and meditating one's life away, resigning one's body to nature and wilderness utterly. I can respect that because it's authentic solitude, the kind of solitude a person earns honestly.

I absolutely cannot respect anyone who uses "technology" (in reality: the hellscape version of capitalism) to avoid human contact while still living in the modern world, by choice, and calls it a healthy life choice. That is false, inauthentic, a twisted affectation of the highly privileged. It's literally dehumanizing to try to eliminate all in-person interactions with all the people in our lives that we depend on to keep our lives going. We don't seem to have a problem understanding that it's dehumanizing for billionaire CEOs to treat workers like numbers on a spreadsheet. How is this any different?
posted by MiraK at 11:38 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

I remember back in grade school clearly thinking "If there was a pill that I could take that would make me a conformist and just get along with most people most of the time, I would take it." But hey, I didn't really have a choice.
posted by ovvl at 11:42 AM on December 5, 2024

500 words written for the 6th grade level
If I were trying to communicate with the general public this is how I would do it too. Have you met those people?
posted by Vatnesine at 11:48 AM on December 5, 2024

I thought this was going to be some kind of actual study or an interview but appears to be roughly 500 words written for the 6th grade level that amounts to "the cure for loneliness? Social interaction"

OK so that means it's too difficult for roughly 54% of the US population to read actually, so maybe it in fact needs to get a little simpler.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:50 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

So, before I became chronically ill and started using a wheelchair, I used to LOVE going out to parties and socialising.

But once I got a wheelchair, I encountered SO MUCH harassment and bullshit from strangers every time I left the house - not to mention the people at parties who couldn't understand what it was like to be too disabled to work or study -

that when I stopped leaving my house in April 2020 because COVID had arrived in Australia and I didn't want to catch COVID, my mental health went WAY WAY WAY UP.

It turns out that being treated with aggression, hostility, condescension, disbelief, judgement etc for being visibly disabled in public is bad for your mental health. Who knew?

It was such a relief to no longer have people talking to me in a sing-song voice like I was four years old

or saying "You're VERY well spoken for a wheelchair user, what's your disability?"

or asking "what happened?"

or total strangers telling me to take tumeric or krill oil or fish oil or put a comfrey poultice on my knees

or other total strangers treating my wheelchair like furniture and hanging off it on the train or hanging their handbags on it!

I do wish there were more opportunities for online or zoom or telephone socialising though.

I'm on a great discord and also some great dreamwidth accounts,

but every time there's a "meeting people" group it's in person and

1. COVID risk is still too high for me, even with vaccination (this is not Anxiety, this is a considered opinion after much discussion on the subject with my doctors);

2. just getting out of the house is too stressful and exhausting because of
a) physical barriers like broken lifts and lack of kerb cuts and blocked footpaths and too-narrow aisles in cafes;

b) all the harassment to catch a train/taxi, even if the people at the event are lovely.

There should be more remote socialising opportunities!

Not only would it be good for chronically ill/Disabled people or people at high risk from COVID, it would also be great for people at home caring for kids or elderly parents, or people who live in areas with no decent public transport who can't drive.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:52 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

I absolutely cannot respect anyone who uses "technology" (in reality: the hellscape version of capitalism) to avoid human contact while still living in the modern world, by choice, and calls it a healthy life choice. That is false, inauthentic, a twisted affectation of the highly privileged. It's literally dehumanizing to try to eliminate all in-person interactions with all the people in our lives that we depend on to keep our lives going. We don't seem to have a problem understanding that it's dehumanizing for billionaire CEOs to treat workers like numbers on a spreadsheet. How is this any different?

You may not have intended this, but this comment sounds like you have contempt for people who use the internet and contactless delivery (with no face to face contact) due to being eg chronically ill/Disabled/immunocompromised and high risk of COVID.

Or those of us who because of chronic illness/Disability/COVID risk do most of our socialising online or over the telephone.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:55 AM on December 5, 2024