Reconnecting our communities: Social flourishing on the far side of “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation”

Abstract

In 2023, then-US Surgeon General (SG) Vivek Murthy published a public health advisory, which describes “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” details the public health burden posed by these trends, and highlights some strategies for ameliorating it. SG Murthy’s report offers a thorough symptomology of the current crisis, and proposes six “pillars” to structure public-health responses to it, each of which is reasonable and important in its own right. As helpful as these are, there are arguably additional key causes of loneliness and social isolation that merit further attention, including median wage stagnation; the decline of childhood free play and independence; and the growing isolation of America’s elderly as households shrink. Moreover, some of the epidemic’s most damaging aspects, such as the decline of marriage and religious participation, likewise merit more detailed attention than they receive in the Advisory. The report’s six pillars could thus also be supplemented with several other urgently needed approaches as well, including reviving widely shared economic prosperity; restoring some of children’s lost independence; encouraging multi-generational households; and exploring public policy levers for promoting marriage and religious participation. Our aim in this review is to call attention to some of what is underemphasized in the SG’s report, in the hope of building on his important Advisory to develop a yet more comprehensive account of the drivers of the decline of belonging in contemporary America, and of a path back toward a richly connected society.