PROBLEM: Loneliness

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