PROBLEM: Loneliness

What is loneliness?
Loneliness is defined as the discrepancy between a person’s desired and actual social relationships (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980)
Humans require not just the physical presence of others but the presence of others who value them, whom they can trust and with they can communicate with (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008), which means you can feel lonely in a crowd or socially content while alone
Who is lonely?
TEENAGERS
70% of adolescents experience recurring loneliness (Heinrich and Gullone 2006; Parlee 1979; Savikko et al. 2005)
Lonely adolescents report higher rates of depression and anxiety (Koenig and Abrams, 1999), social withdrawal (Crick and Ladd, 1993) and suicide ideation and attempts (Heinrich and Gullone, 2006)
COLLEGE STUDENTS
60% of college students report feeling “very lonely” within 1 year prior to a study and 30% felt “very lonely” two weeks prior to the study (American College Health Association)
ADULTS
46% of Americans report “sometimes” or “always” “feeling lonely” or 43% “that their relationships are not meaningful” (CIGNA, 2018)
WORK FORCE
Only 30% of employees have a close friend at work (Rath & Harter, 2010)
50% of CEOs report feeling lonely in their role & 60% believe loneliness hindered their performance from Harvard Business Review (Saporito, 2012)
MILITARY VETERANS
Increased rates of suicide (20 suicides/day) relates to high levels of loneliness (Stein et al., 2012)
OLDER PEOPLE
39% of people older than sixty years old suffer from loneliness (Savikko et al., 2005)
negatives of loneliness
Less Productive Workforce
Being lonely is associated with lower job performance (Rath & Harter, 2010)
Less Healthy
Worse health impact than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, high blood pressure or obesity (Flegal et al., 2013, Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton, 2010)
Loneliness increases an early death by 26% in a meta-analysis of over 3 million people (Flegal et al., 2013)
Earlier Death
Many factors contribute to high or low risk for suicide, many of which are related to the concept of connectedness: the degree to which an individual or group is socially close, interrelated or shares resources (Center for Disease Control, 2011)
SOLUTION: Heart-to-Heart Events
What is connection?

Connection is a person’s subjective sense of having close and positively experienced relationships with others in the social world (Seppala, Rossomando & Doty, 2013)
The formation of meaningful connections is an integral part of human nature (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008)
Connections must be meaningful:
1997 experiment where students were paired and given questions (first group: factual and superficial and second group: questions that involved gradual sharing of interpersonal details)—participants in the second group showed notably stronger bonds (Aron et al., 1997)
Social penetration theory: describes the process of bonding that moves a relationship from superficial to more intimate by inspiring conversations that require vulnerability (Altman & Taylor, 1973)
Benefits of connection

Higher ability to regulate emotions (Seppala, Rossomando and Doty, 2015)
Live a longer, healthier life
Decreased risk for all-cause mortality as well as a range of disease morbidities (Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton, 2010)
Increased overall happiness & well-being
Above-average levels of happiness and lower levels of depression & anxiety (Diener and Seligman 2004; Myers 2000; Putnam 2001)
Social connection is strongly correlated with subjective well-being (Kimweli and Stilwell 2002; Lee and Robbins 1998)
Those who have daily meaningful in-person interactions have an average loneliness score that is 20 points lower than those who never have in-person interactions (39.6 versus 59.6). (CIGNA, 2018)
More empathetic (Seppala, Rossomando and Doty, 2015)
Increased work productivity (Rath & Harter, 2010)
VIDEOS: Connection
Celeste Headlee: 10 ways to have a better conversation
Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability
Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness
Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone
Sebastian Junger: Our lonely society makes it hard to come home from war