The state of human connection:in Europe and the US

The short version. We are lonelier than ever and it is costing us years of our life.

Lacking social connection carries a risk of early death comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, according to the U.S. Surgeon General. The World Health Organization now links loneliness to around 871,000 deaths a year.

That's roughly 100 people every hour. More than one per Minute!

We often picture loneliness as an old people problem. That is out of date, actually for a while now. Today the loneliest people in Europe and the US are often in their teens and twenties. More than half of Europeans aged 18 to 35 feel at least moderately lonely. In the US, one in four young men feel lonely on any given day.

The fix is not complicated. It just isn't part of our daily infrastructure anymore. Spend more hours with people, in person, on purpose. Maybe the problem is that it is to obvious, who knows.

Picture a Thursday evening

It's 19:05, you shut down your laptop, grab your keys and pull of your coat from the hanger at the front desk. 20 minutes till home. Just enough time to see what complete strangers are doing with their lives on a device that is exactly the same as the one you were sitting in front of the whole day. Just a bit smaller. Quick stop at the supermarket for some dinner, self checkout, of course. Words spoken since the office was left: 0

19:35 you throw some potatoes into your air fryer with a bit of chicken. You have to get your proteins in. Airfryers are so efficient, it takes 5min to throw everything in and then you can leave it alone. That buys you just enough time to scroll for 20 more minutes (yay).

20:15 Dinner is ready, tastest mediocre, but gets your macros in maybe that helps tonight to improve your whoop's sleep score. You put on a youtube video, which's content is forgotton before the clock even shows nine.

20:30 Quick check on Whatsapp, the thought of going out and doing something comes up, but leaves when you realize the 23 open chats you still have to answer and you are kind of tired anyway. At least that is what your whoop is telling you. Should I go to the gym? Maybe later, maybe tomorrow morning when I go to bed early today.

00:30 Still scrolling...

Loneliness got younger

Loneliness, what the hell does that even mean? Is not everyone lonely sometimes?

In simple terms, it is the painful gap between the connection you want and the connection you have. The problem, for years it was filed under an old peoples problem. Studies, policies and campaigns were built around older people living alone. That picture no longer holds. But what about the most connected generation ever?

In Europe. The Bertelsmann Stiftung puts it plainly: in Germany, young adults overtook the elderly as the loneliest group during the pandemic, and they've stayed there since. Across the EU, about 57 in every 100 people aged 18 to 35 feel at least moderately lonely. In France it's almost two in three (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2024).

Loneliness falls as people get older, earn more and study longer. It rises after the big turns of early adult life: leaving home, ending your studies, a first break-up.

In the US. Harvard's Making Caring Common project found that 61 in every 100 people aged 18 to 25 felt seriously lonely, the highest of any adult age group. Its lead researcher said he was surprised: older people's rates are high, but not as high as the young.

In 1990, three in every hundred Americans said they had no close friends. By 2021 it was twelve (Survey Center on American Life).

This isn't only a story about the old anymore. It's a story about the generation that grew up with more connections than any before it.

We talk less, and we meet less

Ok, apparently we are pretty lonely, but why?

For Americans aged 15 to 24, time spent in person with friends fell by 70 per cent between 2003 and 2020. Across all ages, it went from about an hour a day to about 20 minutes, while time alone grew by roughly 24 hours a month (AP via PBS).

Seventy per cent. Aren't you 20s supposed to be the most exciting years of your life?

When we do talk, more of it runs through a screen. A message instead of a call. A call instead of a visit. A funny reel instead of a message.

We have never been easier to reach, or harder to meet.

What changed

There's no single villain. Just a handful of quiet shifts.

We move more. And the young move most. A new city for university. Another for the first job. Another for love. Every move resets your circle to almost zero, at exactly the age when friendships used to form on their own. The EU survey found loneliness rises after these turns: leaving your studies, a separation, a lost job. In the US, researchers point to the same pattern. More moving around. Marrying later. Working more.

We lost the 3rd places. The bar, the club, the square. Places with low barriers and steady hours, holding the same people week after week. Rents, energy prices and a lack of people to take over closed many of them.

The phone got good at filling (and extending) the gaps. One study cited by the Surgeon General found that people on social media for two hours or more a day were about twice as likely to feel socially isolated as those under 30 minutes. The WHO commission singles out heavy screen time among young people as a concern. This is the first generation to grow up with the feed before the local football or ballet club. That's a link, not proof. But you know how an evening of scrolling feels next to a spontaneous dinner party with a table full of friends.

The pandemic made staying in a habit. Lockdowns hit right at the age when friendships are made. The years meant for first flatshares, student parties and new clubs happened at home. Some of those friendships were never made at all.

Something else went quiet too: practice. Small talk with a stranger. Asking for someone's number. Walking into a room where you know nobody. Like any skill, it gets rusty when you don't use it. In a UK survey for the charity stem4, nearly four in ten young people aged 12 to 21 said they'd lost social confidence during the pandemic.

If that sounds familiar, you're far from alone, and it can be trained back. You can look into solutions like fredie a small helper that coaches you through it, with short exercises you try out in real life. Then take what you practise somewhere real.

How it effects your health

This is the not so obvious part, most people don't expect.

In 2010, psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues pooled 148 studies covering more than 300,000 people (PLOS Medicine). People with stronger social relationships had 50 per cent higher odds of survival, over follow-up periods averaging seven and a half years. The finding held regardless of age, sex, initial health status or cause of death.

Holt-Lunstad's research is behind the comparison the US Surgeon General highlighted in his 2023 advisory: lacking social connection can increase the risk of premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Allegedly, that impact is even greater than the one linked to obesity and physical inactivity. The WHO estimates that loneliness is linked to around 871,000 deaths a year.

Sit with that for a second.

Few of us would accept fifteen cigarettes a day as a lifestyle. Many of us accept weeks without seeing a friend.

For young people, the cost shows up early. In a Harvard survey from October 2020, 61 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds reported serious loneliness, and young adults reported high rates of anxiety and depression too. About half of the lonely young adults said no one had taken more than a few minutes in recent weeks to ask how they were in a way that made them feel the person genuinely cared. Loneliness that starts at 20 has a lot of years to add up.

Being alone isn't the problem

None of this says solitude is bad. Not at all.

An evening alone with a book can be the best evening of the week. Plenty of people with a small circle are perfectly happy. The research is about loneliness, the gap between what you want and what you have, not about how many names are in your phone. Like Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, recently said, perception can be more real than reality

Young people aren't short of contacts. They're short of real connections.

The 15 cigarettes figure is a comparison, not a measurement. It translates a statistical risk into something we already understand. One quiet weekend doesn't do what a pack does to your body. Years without true connection around you add up.

And the old days weren't perfect. We are not nostalgic about it. Not at all. Those circles were small because the world was small, and many people were left out of scope.

Just go play outside again.

What actually helps

The good thing connection is built, not found. Here's what that looks like in a normal week.

1. Name a day and a place. "We should catch up" rarely happens. "Thursday, 19:30, the place on the corner" does. Try Treehouze to make sure it is actually scheduled.
2. Keep a standing date. Same people, same time, every week or month. A run, a dinner, a game night. Repetition is key.
3. Put the phone away at the table. Be present when you're with people.
4. Say yes to the friend of a friend. You know someone who knows someone... It's how people have always found each other.
5. Join something with a reason to meet. A club, a choir, a volunteer shift. A shared activity makes the first conversation easy.
6. Reach out, do not wait on anyone. If you do not know the person you want to get in contact with, ask someone that does. People love to give intros and connect.
7. Count hours, not contacts. How many hours did you spend with people in person this week? Add one every week. True friendship needs 200+ hours, do not rush it.