Loneliness Is a Global Problem

Co-written with Prakhar Srivastava

Loneliness is increasingly recognized as one of the most serious global public health challenges of our time. From Japan’s Ministry of Loneliness to the U.S. Surgeon General’s call for social connection, governments are waking up to the toll that disconnection takes on our bodies, our minds, and our societies. The World Health Organization now reports that 1 in 4 older adults is socially isolated, and among adolescents, 5 to 15 percent experience persistent loneliness.

Overview of number of interviews per country

Source: Annecy Behavioral Science Lab

But here’s the problem: Our science hasn’t caught up.

Most of what we know about loneliness is based on research from just a few countries, mostly in the Global North. Definitions, surveys, and interventions have often been built on narrow cultural assumptions—yet they are applied globally. If connection looks different everywhere, why do we keep trying to measure it the same way?

That’s the question that launched our project.

Rethinking the Science of Human Connection

In 2023, with support from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, we began a global research initiative. Our goal for this project was to better understand how people across the world experience connection, isolation, and belonging—and to ground this understanding in their own words. As far as we are aware, it may be one of the most comprehensive qualitative projects on social connection ever attempted.

Interview sampling scheme

Source: Annecy Behavioral Science Lab

In our first phase, we conducted 357 in-depth interviews in eight countries: Brazil, Zimbabwe, India, the Philippines, Morocco, Turkey, China, and the United States. These interviews were designed to listen to understand what social connection means across and within these countries.

Each session lasted 60 to 150 minutes and was conducted in participants’ preferred languages. Local researchers co-developed the questions and sampling strategies, ensuring the cultural relevance and scientific rigor of every step.

Interview contents

Source: Annecy Behavioral Science Lab

We used an innovative method called drift sampling, a type of targeted chain-referral, to reach a diverse sample across income levels, gender identities, relationship status, urban and rural locations, and self-reported loneliness levels. Rather than asking people to fit their experiences into categories we’d predefined, we invited them to describe how connection—and disconnection—felt, looked, and changed across their lives.

What We Heard

This post aims to share some initial and remarkable insights from our interviews, rather than presenting comprehensive findings. Here are some of the things we heard:

• “You’ll be having no one to confide in—your fears, your worries, your happiness.” — Participant, Zimbabwe, about isolation’s impact on family relationships.

• “Moping has to stop and coping has to begin” — Participant, India, highlighting the disconnection between authentic experience and others’ expectations.

• “Sometimes I would also feel disconnected from myself” — Participant, Zimbabwe, indicating that loneliness isn’t just being alone.

We believe that these stories deserve to be heard in participants’ own words. That’s why we’re releasing a series of short videos featuring voices from across our research sites.

Each video offers a glimpse into the rich and sometimes surprising ways that people navigate social connection:

• Video 1: Indian research lead Prakhar Srivastava introduces the project and its goals
• Video 2: A participant from Zimbabwe reflects on grief, silence, and the erosion of communal bonds.
• Video 3: A young person shares what it’s like to feel disconnected from yourself, even when surrounded by others.
• Video 4: An Indian participant describes the tension between being “yourself” and living up to others’ expectations.
• Video 5: A Zimbabwean caregiver speaks on the emotional cost of having “no one to confide in.”
• Video 6: A moment of strength: “Moping has to stop, and coping has to begin.”
• Video 7: Moroccan research lead Mohammed Zouiri explains how being heard became a form of healing for many participants.

These stories are shaping the way we think about loneliness and connection in our science and will become essential to developing new ways to measure social connection and loneliness.

Where This Leads

So what’s next?

Our answer: We keep listening. While this first phase has provided an unprecedented qualitative foundation, we’re only beginning to unpack the insights. Already, our team is coding and analyzing the interviews to map cross-cultural patterns and differences—exploring, for example, how economic roles, religious norms, and gender expectations shape experiences of connection. This will be, without a doubt, a topic of the next phase.

All data, methods, and findings will be made openly available, in line with our commitment to open science. So if you are a researcher, keep an eye on this space, as there will be many different use cases of our data beyond ours. And while future phases will explore the development of culturally sensitive tools for measuring social connection, we believe that this step must come only after deep, grounded, and ethical listening.

Loneliness Essential Reads

Our Hidden Crisis: Too Many of Us Feel Like We Don’t Matter

Why Daily Connection Matters More Than You Think

A More Human Science

We live in a world that is more connected than ever—but not less lonely. If we want to understand and address this paradox, we need a science that reflects the full range of human experience.

That starts with humility. It starts with listening. And it starts with remembering that the most important data point is always the person in front of us.