5:59 v originále: Harvard academic on loneliness and isolation

America is dealing with a new epidemic - more and more people feel lonely. It got so serious that the U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness a national health crisis last year. At Harvard University, team of researchers have been focusing on teens and young adults and found out that these two age groups also suffer from lack of companion and isolation. Podcast 5:59 spoke with Milena Batanova, the director of Research and Evaluation at Making Caring Common at Harvard.

„We see these issues playing out in young adults a little more so than in teens. Whereas here - in America at least - a lot of the rhetoric, the narrative, is that teens are in crisis. And we're simply not talking enough about young adults,“ says Milena Batanova.

In their first seminal report on loneliness in 2020 at Harvard's Graduate School of Education Research she and her team measured high rates especially among young adults (age 18 to 25). Up to 61 percent of those participating in the research told experts that they had suffered from „serious loneliness“, a term that is ascribed to those who felt lonely „frequently“ or „almost all the time“ or „all the time“ in the period of thirty days.

Listen to the full interview with Milena Batanova for the 5:59 podcast in the English version:

Those alarming findings encouraged Batanova to dig deeper. She combed through literature, talked to experts and conducted other research, this time in collaboration with University of Chicago, which provided her with nationwide data confirming her previous research and surveys. „We actually see the highest rates amongst the younger adults - young to mid-age,“ asserts Batanova countering a popular belief that it is old people who feel mostly lonely.

According to her, there are a slew of reasons why young adults feel lonely and isolated. Based on her recent research, at least 50 percent of young Americans are affected by challenges like achievement pressure, lack of skills or financial worries.

All of this comes naturally with the process of growing up but Batanova notes that nowadays it takes more time for a young adult to grow up and start his or her own life, effectively dodging those pressing challenges. „It’s (the adulthood) no longer right at the age of 18 or 20. It takes well into the 20s, even early 30s, to really grow into adulthood,“ she points out.

Surgeon general Murthy warned public in his last year's report that insufficient social connection increases risk of heart disease, stroke and can even accelerate development of dementia. Milena Batanova agrees. She adds that the state of loneliness can have a dire impact on human brain that could make us defensive, less attentive or cynical.

„Our brains have evolved to respond to the feeling of being pushed out of social life by going into self-preservation mode. And so when we feel isolated or disconnected or lonely, we try to protect ourselves. In that mode, we want to connect, but our brain is literally attempting to override that connection and telling us to protect ourselves,“ the researcher explains.

And how does this self-protection mode work? Batanova says that the brain of such a person exaggerates or muddles the narratives that we tell ourselves, it creates false stories or projects our insecurities. „And so when all that goes unchecked, it just continues to fuel more and more loneliness, which then keeps us afraid or cynical of others,“ she concludes, calling this a „vicious circle“.

What role play new technologies and social media in feelings of isolation? How can society help lonely people to overcome their psychological problems? Listen to the whole interview via the audio player at the top of the article.