Particularly young people aren’t doing very well at the moment. They’re lonely. It seems to be a global trend now.

Brits used to be Europe’s loneliest people, according to studies. I figured that they were among the world’s loneliest because each time when I walked down an English street and heard lively animated chatting and some laughter and the clink clonk sounds of glass and cutlery, it always came from foreigners. It also often applied when I sat in Portsmouth’s Le Café Parisien, which was one of my favorite spots for a long time.

I remember reading an article by a young English person about twenty years ago. She was on a business trip, sitting in her hotel room and realized that there was nobody she could call.

Studying how this loneliness disease came about in Britain may contain lessons for how to combat the loneliness epidemic around the world. One of the solutions is surely to stop boxing people in according to age. It does not only isolate the elderly, it also isolates the other age groups and perhaps particularly young people.

There’s also this:

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/19/loneliness-is-on-the-rise-globally-here-are-5-ways-to-combat-it.html

Then again, a big part of the loneliness epidemic is also surely the idea that being on your own is bad. People may be ruminating too much about their perceived loneliness instead of living their lives. Blame social media? More and more young people are now ditching their smart phones because they want to have meaningful interactions in real life again.