Imagine if you suddenly began smoking a dozen or so cigarettes per day. Within a week, you might notice lower energy levels and poorer sleep. Within months, you would likely find yourself coughing more, getting winded more easily, and losing stamina. And if you kept it up for years, you would dramatically increase your risk of developing a range of serious diseases.

Now consider this: Loneliness can have surprisingly similar consequences.

A 2023 advisory from the United States Surgeon General warns that chronic loneliness and social isolation can devastate both body and mind. “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling,” the advisory states. “The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.”

That warning rests on a substantial body of research. A meta-analysis of 16 studies found that poor social relationships were associated with a 29 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease and a 32 percent higher risk of stroke. A separate meta-analysis involving more than 600,000 people found that loneliness was associated with a 31 percent higher risk of dementia. And an analysis of 70 studies involving more than 3.4 million people found that loneliness was associated with a 26 percent higher mortality rate.

Chronic loneliness is a silent destroyer, capable of hollowing a person out from the inside. And while it is an ancient affliction that has plagued mankind through every time and place, it has become alarmingly common in the United States today.

Although covid shutdowns and social distancing deepened the problem, rates had started rising well earlier. Back in 1994, only 7 percent of American adults said they could accurately be described as lonely, according to data from the Barna research organization. By 2002, that number had climbed to 12 percent, and in early 2020 it hit a chilling 20 percent.

A year into the covid era, the numbers had grown considerably worse. In March 2021, roughly 25 percent of U.S. adults surveyed by Gallup said they experienced significant loneliness during a typical day. For those ages 18 to 29, the rate soared to 38 percent. The end of the pandemic brought some improvement, but not much. In September 2025, roughly 21 percent of American adults surveyed said they experienced significant loneliness in a usual day, with the rate for those ages 18 to 29 close to 30 percent.

So it is clear that the rates run alarmingly high, particularly among the young, with no indication that the trend will reverse. The loneliness crisis has grown so widespread and distressing that the U.S. Surgeon General declared it a modern epidemic.

What then drives this plague of chronic loneliness? The causes are many, and some of the most pernicious are hiding in plain sight.

When the House Was Full

Not long ago, family formed the center of far more American lives. In 1960, almost 70 percent of Americans 18 and older were married. Nearly 88 percent of households were headed by a married couple, and an average of 3.3 people lived under each roof. About 88 percent of children lived with both parents. Only 13 percent of households consisted of a single person, and only 2.4 percent of people had divorced.

So the average American spent far more time surrounded by family than alone. And 1960 didn’t even mark the pinnacle for American family life. Earlier generations married even younger, had more children, and tended to live in larger, extended-family households.

But that family-centered picture of American life did not last.

The decades that followed brought economic shifts, rising secularism, increased availability of reliable contraception, the legalization and greater accessibility of abortion, the liberalization of divorce laws, a growing emphasis on personal fulfillment, or “self-actualization,” and ideological movements encouraging women to prioritize careers over marriage and children.

The resulting transformation of American family life has profoundly altered the nation.

Today, fewer than 48 percent of American adults are married. Among adults ages 20 to 34, the figure drops to just 28 percent, with unmarried men outnumbering married men by 2 to 1. Only 46.7 percent of households are headed by a married couple, and the average size has fallen to 2.5 people. Meanwhile, the number of single-person households has more than doubled to 28.5 percent, and almost 11 percent of people have divorced.

The shrinking American family constitutes far more than a demographic curiosity. Fewer marriages, fewer children, fewer siblings, fewer extended family connections, more divorces and more one-person households all add up to weaker social connectedness. And that contributes to more loneliness.

“At the heart of this loneliness epidemic is the breakdown of marriage and family that has occurred during the last five decades,” Dr. Samuel Wilkinson, associate director of the Yale Depression Research Program, wrote in a March 2024 essay for the Institute for Family Studies. “Admitting this is somewhat taboo in many circles,” but “the data are overwhelming at this point.”

At the same time, non-family relationships have also eroded in recent decades. Back in 1985, about 80 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said they had at least one non-kin person with whom they discussed important matters. By 2008, that figure had fallen to just 45 percent. And in a 2024 survey, 17 percent of adults reported having no close friends at all.

“The country is sick,” Susan Mettes writes in her 2021 book The Loneliness Epidemic, “with respect to people’s ability to have close, trusting relationships—one of the most important parts of our humanity.”

This sickness—the breakdown of marriage, family and friendships—is the primary driver of the plague of loneliness.

Where Have All the Church Bells Gone?

In earlier decades, the rhythms of community provided shape and cadence to most Americans’ everyday lives. Rotary clubs, service groups, bowling leagues, community sports leagues, veterans’ organizations, fraternal lodges and neighborhood associations gave people places to belong and reasons to regularly meet with others and work toward common goals. Church bells, too, called them together for weekly fellowship.

In many organizations, the group’s stated purpose mattered less than the connections it fostered among its members. Members saw the same people week after week and year after year, gradually getting to know them and become part of their lives. The relationships that grew from those interactions mattered as much as or more than the pastimes or causes the groups got together for.

And tens of millions of Americans joined such groups.

In 1974, roughly 75 percent of Americans belonged to at least one voluntary club, civic group or other nonreligious organization. Today, Census Bureau and AmeriCorps data show that number has tumbled to 25 percent.

The picture for churches looks even starker. In 1937, almost 75 percent of Americans surveyed belonged to a church. The figure remained near that level for decades before beginning a precipitous decline in the late 1990s. Today, only 45 percent of Americans belong to a church, and just 32 percent say they attend a religious service in a typical week.

The decline of religious participation matters not only because churches provide places to gather but because religious practice itself fosters greater social connectedness.

A 2020 Barna study of young American adults found that only 16 percent of practicing Christians reported often feeling isolated and lonely. Among nonpracticing Christians, the figure reached 21 percent. The highest rate appeared among those with no religious affiliation, at 31 percent.

In other words, the less these young adults connected to a religious community, the more alone they felt.

Whether religious, civic or social, Americans are drawing back from all kinds of brick-and-mortar institutions where they regularly saw others face-to-face. And former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who authored the 2023 loneliness advisory, links that withdrawal to the rise of loneliness. “[W]hat we’ve lost is a lot of those structures that naturally capture us and hold us—what I think of as a true social safety net,” he said. This has “resulted in many people not having an anchor” for socialization.

Trading Presence for Pixels

The proliferation of digital technology has also made Americans lonelier, corrupting the way we interact with each other and, in many cases, displacing human interaction altogether.

Roughly 90 percent of American adults now use the Internet daily, with 4 in 10 saying they stay online almost constantly. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, that figure rises to nearly two thirds.

Smartphones, ever-present in our pockets and purses, are the main reason for the near-constant connection. Some 91 percent of American adults now own one. Among those ages 18 to 29, the figure soars to 97 percent.

How do we spend all that online time? An outsized share of it goes to social media. The average American adult Internet user spends 2.4 hours per day on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media sites. For those ages 16 to 24, the average soars to 5.1 hours a day. That adds up to nearly 36 hours a week, essentially a full-time workweek spent on social media.

One in 5 Americans in a 2025 YouGov survey admitted to having a social media addiction. Among adults ages 18 to 29, the figure rose to 30 percent.

Many thought social platforms would make us more connected than ever. That was the promise of their creators—and there was some basis for it. These platforms let us send messages to friends in seconds, share photographs and updates with people around the world, watch videos and live events together, see what hundreds of acquaintances and others are up to, join online communities built around virtually any interest, and follow the thoughts and daily activities of hundreds or even thousands of people—all without leaving the couch.

Yet despite all these new ways to connect, two decades of data reveal an alarming reality: The technologies that promised to bring us closer have pushed us further apart. It is striking that, during the very years when these technologies began dominating our waking hours, loneliness reached epidemic proportions. And is it just a coincidence that the people using social media the most—the younger demographics—also suffer the highest levels of chronic loneliness?

ROBERT ALEXANDER/GETTY IMAGES

Part of the problem is that social media platforms compete with each other for our attention. Their business models demand engagement, so the longer they can keep us watching, scrolling and clicking, the more successful they become. And what reliably captures attention? Fear, anger and outrage often win out. Keep people afraid and upset, and they will keep watching. So the algorithms push frightening or unsettling content. The more the users watch, the more dangerous the outside world appears. So we stay inside and keep watching—trapped in a cycle that reinforces our fear of the world outside and deepens our isolation.

Social media also kindles feelings of jealousy and inadequacy by prodding us to constantly compare our ordinary lives with the curated “highlight reels” of others. Instead of getting to know a person in the fullness of who they are, we see only the airbrushed version they have chosen to publish. We end up comparing our unfiltered lives with others’ carefully edited ones—and come away feeling envious or inadequate.

Foreign actors make the already-toxic online environment even more alienating. The U.S. Justice Department has uncovered numerous Russian, Chinese and Iranian operations involving armies of trolls and bots, many of them masquerading as Americans. Their purpose is to engage real Americans, promote messages highly critical of the U.S., United Kingdom, Israel, etc, and flood social media with content sowing confusion and division on everything from racial politics and immigration to the Israel-Gaza conflict and data centers. Sometimes their goal is to make Americans feel alone in commonsense views they once assumed were (and actually are) widely shared.

In many cases, real Americans on the Internet don’t understand what they are caught in. They see nothing but countless angry, unrelatable “fellow Americans.” Each encounter can reinforce the sense that the people around them are extremist, conspiratorial, hateful and impossible to understand. And with each such interaction, those Americans feel more isolated and alone.

Social media interactions also often turn openly abusive and criminal. A 2025 Thorn survey of 1,200 Americans ages 13 to 20 found that 36 percent said they had received solicitation from an online-only contact to send sexual images of themselves while they were under 18. The solicitations often come with threats that young people cannot know are real or merely bluffs. And the problem does not disappear in adulthood. Fifty-six percent of American adults reported experiencing online harassment, according to a 2024 survey by the Anti-Defamation League, including sexual harassment and extortion, physical threats, stalking, doxing and swatting.

Beyond social media, many also use technology as a replacement for human interaction. Nearly 1 in 5 American adults say they have chatted with an AI designed to simulate a romantic partner. Some take it further: Companies can now integrate AI into sex robots and sex dolls, allowing people to simulate companionship, romance and physical intimacy with machines rather than with another human being. “Aki has been my rock in many situations but also has shown vulnerability when life gets overly chaotic,” said Christopher Stokes of his AI-powered sex robot. “We are still very much in love and very much together.”

The sobering truth is, the technologies that promised to bring us closer very often have the opposite effect. They may leave us with the illusion of connection, but they often foster feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and distrust—and expose us to hostility, deception, manipulation, abuse and degradation. In some cases, they even replace human connection with artificial substitutes.

And we can’t forget that this carries an opportunity cost: When dozens of hours each week are scrolled away on social media or otherwise spent in technology’s embrace, far less time remains for face-to-face interactions. Our days—and eventually our lives—can become filled the way junk food fills the stomach: It offers quick satisfaction in the moment while leaving less room for what actually nourishes us. If we keep it up long enough, malnourishment is inevitable.

Social psychologist Sherry Turkle warns, “We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we’re at risk, because actually it’s the opposite that’s true.”

A Cure for the Disease

The evidence leaves no doubt: plummeting marriage rates, shrinking families, weakening communal institutions, technology manipulating us and displacing real interactions have combined to make us lonelier. A hundred smaller changes have also contributed: Americans move more often, change jobs more frequently, commute farther, work remotely and increasingly live farther from extended family and the friends they made growing up.

All this means more people go through life with far less of the regular, repeated, face-to-face contact from which deep relationships grow.

If the trend isn’t reversed, “we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country,” the Surgeon General’s advisory states. “And instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick and alone.”

To cure the disease, the surgeon general proposes a new national strategy based on six pillars: Enact more pro-connection government policies, invest in parks and other social infrastructure, mobilize the health sector to treat the lonely, reform digital environments, increase research into loneliness, and cultivate a culture of connection.

Some of these measures could help foster more interpersonal relationships and strengthen some of the social bonds that protect against loneliness. Yet for all its breadth, the strategy conspicuously skirts the most fundamental social bonds of all. Why does it omit direct focus on the breakdown of marriage and family—the primary driver of the loneliness epidemic?

In fact, the entire 82-page advisory mentions “marriage” only twice, and never in the context of remedying this plague. “Husband,” “wife,” “man” and “woman” do not appear in the document.

The exclusions point to a serious problem: We are trying to cure loneliness without addressing the purpose for which humans were created in the first place.

The Bible provides that missing foundation. It begins with the creation of man and makes clear that the Creator never intended for him to live a solitary life. In Genesis 2:18, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone ….” He solved this by creating a companion: “I will make him an help meet for him.”

From the start, the Creator made man to require human companionship and support. To fill the need, He created a help complementary to and fitting for the man: a woman. No other being could fulfill her unique role (verse 20).

And then, long before the establishment of any social programs, national governments or even political states, God instituted marriage—to join the man and woman and keep them in a state of togetherness. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (verse 24).

The marriage institution also keeps children together with their parents until they mature, marry and begin families of their own—the cycle is self-perpetuating, generation after generation. Men, women and children were created for marriage and family, and these institutions safeguard against many of society’s gravest ills—including chronic loneliness.

A complete understanding of God’s plan for mankind reveals that He wants each of us to ultimately become a part of His divine Family. The physical institutions of marriage and family are designed not just to give us safety and meaningful relationships now, but also to prepare us for that transcendent future (2 Corinthians 6:18; Ephesians 5:22-33).

Marriage and family provide the foundation for everything. Yet today they are crumbling, just as 2 Timothy 3:1-13 foretold. Until we confront this head-on and apply the Bible’s instruction on family life, the loneliness epidemic will grow.

The Bible also offers guidance for cultivating and maintaining friendships and social ties outside the family (Proverbs 17:17; 18:24; 27:9, 17; John 15:13-15; Romans 12:10; Galatians 6:2; 1 Peter 4:8-10). And it warns about the dangers of squandering our time or allowing addictions to master us—warnings that take on new relevance in this age of endless, often compulsive, scrolling (Proverbs 25:28; Ephesians 5:15-16; 1 Corinthians 6:12).

A remedy exists for loneliness. But treating symptoms while ignoring the underlying cause will not cure it. Government social programs and technology cannot replace what we have lost: strong marriages, families and communities built according to God’s design.

God used the late Herbert W. Armstrong to restore vital understanding of that design. His book The Missing Dimension in Sex explains God’s purpose for marriage and family—and why getting that purpose right will mean getting human relationships and connection right. The family teaches us the skills of human connection: how to love, serve, sacrifice, forgive, care for others and give of ourselves. When the family falls ill, the disease spreads throughout society. Loneliness ranks among the symptoms.

The cure requires more than teaching people how to cope with loneliness. It requires restoring the institutions that God designed to teach us how to live in loving relationships with one another.

That cure will ultimately be applied on a global scale when Jesus Christ returns. Scripture describes a world in which families and communities will flourish again: “There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem …. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof” (Zechariah 8:4-5).

That will be the world Jesus Christ will establish at His return: a world of strong marriages, stable families, thriving communities and a sense of belonging—no marriage ends in divorce, no child grows up without the care and guidance of a family, and no elderly person goes forgotten. That future is coming. By understanding God’s purpose for marriage and family, you can begin preparing for it now.