These headlines caught my consideration this week: “Loneliness Surges Amongst Key Teams of People”; “’Lonely, terrifying and scary’: 70% of scholars in UK college Halls really feel remoted, ballot exhibits”; “Tech Corporations Have Created a Loneliness Doom Loop.”
Cinzia DuBois
It’s usually mentioned that loneliness involves a head round vacation occasions, so this matter appears applicable for meditation in a time of Introduction, Hanukkah, and Christmas.
In response to the primary article*, current research have discovered that the loneliest folks in America at this time are middle-aged folks between the ages of 45 and 49, of whom 49 % report loneliness. Individuals who by no means married report a degree of 62 % being lonely. “Total, 42 % of males and 37 % of girls have been lonely.”
A coverage officer at AARP, who performed the survey, experiences that folks of their 40s and 50s are so busy with work, elevating youngsters, and being a part of the sandwich technology, that we’re not in a position to actually put money into the relationships that may assist maintain us and make us joyful.
Within the research of college college students within the UK**, two-thirds of these residing in halls or dorms “really feel lonely or remoted, blaming lodging prices and over-reliance on telephones” for limiting their social life.
A 20-year-old pupil proposed that know-how could play an necessary position in her loneliness. The cellphone permits her “to simply attain all my pals again dwelling,” and keep away from making new pals the place she now lives.
Throughout her first yr in school, I used to be terrified to make new pals, so I simply relied on the truth that I had already had some and I didn’t actually hassle reaching out a lot …I didn’t understand residing so far-off from them (my outdated pals) could be such a problem.
One proposal supplied by college students is that college dorms have a minimum of one workers member out there 24/7 so college students at all times have somebody to speak to.
It’s a fable that the majority college students make pals immediately in school, says a pupil chief: “Most college students expertise some degree of loneliness or isolation.” Colleges can do a greater job of encouraging college students to “be the most effective model of themselves throughout this key stage of their lives,” he proposes.
Samantha Rose Hill, who’s writing a guide on loneliness, supplied a visitor essay*** for the New York Instances in July, warning how tech corporations are “promising reduction by way of connection, however this type of connection isn’t the answer; it’s the issue.” She talks of a “loneliness financial system” and the way loneliness isn’t a “pathology to be cured” or a “market alternative to fabricate, promote and purchase remedy.” As an alternative, it’s a “common human expertise” that wants our consideration. She warns that declaring a “nationwide epidemic” can lead to loneliness turning into an trade.
AI offers you “what you need, the way you need it, once you need it,” and skirts the fact of human-to-human contact. It ignores our want “to apologize, make an apology, endure an uncomfortable silence or marvel what one other individual is considering.” In actual fact, there isn’t a different—only a reflection of your self. Narcissism reigns. Opposite to Zuckerberg’s language of a “personalization loop,” Hill proposes that the AI path offers a “loneliness loop….The products being offered as cures preserve us caught in a loneliness loop.”
In Monday’s DM, we are going to contemplate some medication for loneliness that spirituality gives. How anthropomorphism itself feeds acedia, which is “an absence of power to start new issues” (Aquinas), comparable to making new pals, creating the artwork of friendship, and ritual that births group.
To be continued.
Shannon Najmabadi, “The Loneliest People, In response to a Survey of three,000 Adults,” The Washington Put up, December 3, 2025
Jamie Grierson, “‘Lonely, terrifying and scary’: 70% of scholars in UK college halls really feel remoted, ballot exhibits,” The Guardian, December 17, 2025.
Samantha Rose Hill, “Tech Corporations Have Created a Loneliness Doom Loop,” The New York Instances, July 7, 2025.
Banner Picture: “Loneliness.” Picture by Gabriel on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you sense loneliness is enjoying a much bigger position in society right now? How do you go about combatting loneliness?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, p. 38.
“The Cosmic Mass: Reinventing Worship and Faith,” in Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, pp. 363-383.
“Acedia Invitations a Cosmic Loneliness,” in Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 197f.
