Causes of Loneliness, and How to Overcome It
I was recommended a podcast by our user in Utah on Bubblic. It is a conversation with US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on loneliness.
Observations from Vivek Murthy
Vivek gets to travel around the US and talk to many people as a Surgeon General of the United States. And he says that he senses a lot of anxiety and pessimism about the future from the people that he talked to. And he said that it can be attributed to four things:
Factors Contributing to Anxiety and Pessimism
- The world is moving too fast that it's making people anxious.
- People are surrounded by social media that tend to amplify negative emotion, which stokes fear and anxiety and makes us feel that everything is broken.
- Lack of dialogue. People these days care too much about how they'll be perceived by the things they post on social media.
- Loneliness
The Importance of Dialogue
Instead of having a dialogue, it's more about caring about what people will think about them. This is a very big problem because dialogue is usually how we work through things, work through our differences, work through our confusions. If people are not allowed to have this, then you can never solve these problems.
Implications of Loneliness
The reason for anxiety and pessimism is because people are feeling more lonely. More than half the people in America feel lonely, and the numbers are actually the greatest among the young people, young boys and girls. And this not only has implications in mental health, but it also has implications in physical health. It increases the risk for heart disease and premature death. Vivek also mentions that loneliness is a mental health issue. We should not only categorize it as a severe sickness or wait until it becomes a severe sickness because mental health should be treated more like a fuel. It's like a tank of energy that we have.
The Concept of the Mental Health "Fuel Tank"
If your tank is empty, it really doesn't allow us to do what we are supposed to do or what we want to do. For example, to show up for our family, our friends, our workplaces, and our communities. If our tank is empty, we may not have diagnosable mental illness, but we won't be functioning anywhere near our full capacity. We will lapse into sadness, despair, and anger, which results in just a suboptimal interaction between people, which is not good for society as a whole.
Solution: Social Interaction
Vivek thinks that the solution to loneliness, the way to fill our tank of energy, is social interaction. He makes a funny analogy. He says, "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. We just have to make that a priority.
Building Social Infrastructure
We need to build and rebuild the social infrastructure of our country for us to be a highly functioning society as a whole. Because it is the foundation on which we build everything else. For example, if you want an effective policy to address climate change, to ensure that we have support for vulnerable people, to strengthen education, etc., you do need social connection. Because it is only when people care about and are vested in one another that they advocate together, that they move together in the same direction. Recognize that solutions to someone's problem, even if it's not my problem, is a solution that we all need because we're one people. We are united.
What's Next?
In this post, we discussed why loneliness is such an important issue, why building a social fabric is so important for our society's well-being. In a following blog post, I will share with you the simple steps that he shared on how we could work towards building the social connections that we need.