Feeling lonely or isolated? We have a solution

CNN

Text by Madeline Holcombe, and video by Bryce Urbany, CNN

(CNN) — One thing that seems to unite people is how isolated they feel.

As many as 1 in 5 adults in the United States reported feeling loneliness “a lot of the day” in 2024, and the country continues to experience what experts have called “a loneliness epidemic.”

Although it might feel like just your problem, maybe it’s not only you. If so many people are experiencing feeling alone, the problem must be more systemic. The consequences extend beyond our obvious feelings of dissatisfaction.

Loneliness is associated with poor health outcomes, and the lack of social connection could be limiting your success, according to psychologist Dr. Angela Duckworth, the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

In her latest book, “Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best,” she highlights that internal drive is not the only factor that separates successful people –– it is also the resources, environments and people they surround themselves with.

The modern world is not set up to help people easily build those strong social networks and nurture happy lives, said Duckworth, who also wrote the 2018 bestseller “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.” While that might seem daunting, there is plenty we can do to swim against the stream of isolation and create a more connected environment for ourselves.

“’You can’t control the situation,’ the saying goes, ‘but you can control how you respond to the situation.’ And I think that’s not right. I don’t think that is true,” she said. “You can control aspects of the situation, like which situations you choose to walk into.”

Much of the advice for making friends can feel silly or trite, but focusing on three areas may make a significant impact on your social situation.

‘You can’t have intimacy or friendship without vulnerability’

Before you go out into the world and charge into new relationships, it might be time to take a look around your environment and see if you can eliminate obstacles to connection. More specifically, ask yourself how your technology use is helping or hurting your social life.

Screens, social media and AI chatbots have been marketed as a way to close the gap between how connected you want to feel and how lonely you actually are, but the reality is that relying on these devices can make the problem worse, said Dr. Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Screens and online socialization didn’t create a world where we got too used to convenience and not taking risks, but it hasn’t helped, she said.

“Technology was a great enabler of that because it offered the possibility of feeling like friendship without the demands of vulnerability, feeling like intimacy without the demands of the vulnerability,” Turkle said. “But it turns out you can’t have intimacy or friendship without vulnerability.”

Yes, a video call, ongoing chat thread or social media posts can help you keep in regular touch with loved ones, but it isn’t enough to completely fill your social tank, Turkle said. Being a part of a community and having people physically with you in good and bad times is important.

Increasingly, people are turning to AI chatbots for conversation. No matter how human the messages may appear, though, what people experience talking to AI is just a performance of empathy and connection, not the real thing, said Turkle, author of “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.”

To really satisfy your needs for connection, it’s imperative to talk to people who can relate to you, provide empathy, push back when they disagree, and challenge you to practice the social skills that make you part of a community, she added.

A virtual world can lead many people to lose the skills they need to build and sustain connections in real life and then be afraid to get back out there and risk rejection. Reorienting how you think about and use technology can help set you up for a more successful community-building venture.

“That’s your litmus test: ‘Can I use this technology or this virtual experience to increase the quality of my life in the real?’” Turkle said.

Building your social muscle

Where do you go to find your next best friend, mentor or serious partner? I don’t know, and neither do you. True, deep connection takes time, effort and vulnerability.

The reality is, you will likely meet a lot of people who you don’t feel deeply connected to before you meet those who you do, but they are important, too, said Dr. Lynn Bufka, the American Psychological Association’s executive lead psychologist for practice.

Saying “hi” to the barista at your local coffee shop, waiting in line instead of going straight to self-checkout, chitchatting after a pottery class, or joining a run club may not amount to much more outside of those small interactions, Bufka said. But those instances both help to address feelings of loneliness and put you in the position to connect with people who will become important to you, she added.

“Not everyone is going to be our best friend, not everyone’s going to be a friend –– some people just might be friendly people that we can reliably see around us,” she said. “That matters as well, to know that I’m in a community where other people see each other.”

Maybe all you get is a pleasant exchange that lifts your spirits for the rest of the day, maybe a casual “hello” keeps you open to the possibility of meeting someone who you really click with. Maybe neither of those things happen and you move on with your day, but you built a social muscle that will help you next time.

At some point in your life, making connections was likely something that happened quite frequently. Perhaps it was when you were in school and you had to go up to the kids playing soccer to ask if you could play too. Or when you started your career and needed to build your network from the ground up.

Those muscles are still there; they just may have atrophied a bit as you got into the swing of regular life. Time to get back into the social gym.

Get brave and curious

One skill to focus on in your long-term efforts to combat loneliness is tolerating the discomfort that comes from stepping outside your comfort zone, Bufka said.

It can feel scary to be the one who starts a conversation or reaches out first and not know how someone will react — but treating it as an experiment instead of a rejection risk can help make it more doable, she said.

“Part of it will be stepping outside of ourselves and not interpreting the responses we get from others as an indication that connection is not desirable,” Bufka said. You have “just got to find the right person to have that conversation with.”

Another important skill to hone is curiosity, said Scott Shigeoka, the Bridging Differences fellow for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. One major impediment that the online world has put on our lives is that it silos us into groups based on who we agree with and who we don’t –– often vilifying others in the process.

“No two young people are the same, no two Southerners are the same, no two Democrats are the same,” he said. “That curiosity really does help us to see the person that is in front of us and to see who they truly are.”

You don’t need to find people who align with you in every way. You need to learn how to connect –– through both similarities and differences. Keeping curiosity as a well-sharpened tool can help you to do that, said Shigeoka, who is also the author of “Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World.”

It is easy to turn inward when feeling rejected, or if your viewpoint is threatened, but try just continuing to ask questions, he said. Why does someone love a movie that you hate? What does that particular thing that bothers you about them say about how they’ve experienced the world?

Practicing at really getting to know someone can help turn the attention away from your own anxieties and open you up to surprising connections. You don’t have to start by asking about their deepest, darkest secret. Keep it light at first, Shigeoka said.

He has gotten very skilled at starting small and going deeper to connect with people. Shigeoka has spent time in the last few years traveling around the country where he, a progressive California academic, has had meaningful connections with Republican politicians and coal mining communities.

Maybe you, too, will make some unexpected friends with a little more curiosity. Maybe not. But neither of you will find out if you don’t start practicing the conversation.

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