All Alone? 10 Science-Backed Ways to Deal With Loneliness

Knowing how to deal with loneliness is one of the hardest parts of being human. But you are not alone. This is the article I wish I had when I was lonely.

About one in five American adults feels lonely. The U.S. Surgeon General has called it an epidemic, and the World Health Organization links loneliness to more than 871,000 deaths a year worldwide.

If you’re here, chances are you’re feeling a little lonely, want to know how to deal with loneliness, and DON’T want to resort to making up imaginary friends to cope.

I’m here to help you!

That’s because I’ve been there. When I was first starting my business, I felt the most alone I had ever felt in my life. I had very few friends and felt very socially isolated. I also felt ashamed of my loneliness. I didn’t feel I could trust anyone enough to open up, so I was coping with the loneliness all by myself… and I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

When I was at my all-time-low, I barely recognized myself.

That’s because loneliness literally makes you a different person:

• You pretend to be happy around people even though you’re in pain inside.
• You feel your relationships are shallow.
• Seeing loving couples makes you angry.
• You get overly-attached to people when you’ve just met them.
• You constantly worry people won’t like you—at least if you are your authentic self.
• You rarely feel like getting out of bed, no matter how much sleep you get.

You are not alone.

This is the post I wish had been written for me all those years ago. So instead of giving you some “anti-loneliness” knowledge to fill your head, I’m going to give you actionable steps you can take.

What Is Loneliness?

Loneliness is the subjective feeling of a gap between the social connections you want and the ones you actually have. It isn’t the same as being alone. You can feel lonely in a crowded room, and you can be perfectly content in solitude. Psychologists describe loneliness as an emotional alarm signal, similar to hunger or thirst, that evolved to motivate humans to seek social connection.

To loneliness researchers at the University of Chicago, it’s the brain’s way of telling you that your social needs aren’t being met, just like physical pain tells you something is wrong with your body.

In brain scans, lonely people’s reward center (the ventral striatum) showed weaker activation to pleasant pictures of people than to pictures of objects. In people who weren’t lonely, it was the other way around.¹ For a lonely brain, a friendly face may simply feel less rewarding.

Meanwhile, loneliness puts the brain on watch for social threat. Lonely brains tend to notice the negative first and read neutral or ambiguous signals as negative.² A coworker’s flat “hey” starts to sound like a verdict.

This creates a vicious cycle. Loneliness makes socializing feel less rewarding and more threatening, which leads to more isolation, which deepens the loneliness.

People who are lonely experience different brain activity than people who aren’t.

Avoid the Loneliness Slump

When loneliness takes hold, it creates a state that makes everything harder. Call it the Loneliness Slump:

• Talking to people feels like a chore.
• You can’t seem to relax.
• Negative feelings overwhelm you when you’re trying to be productive.
• You’re overthinking every social interaction.

The Loneliness Slump is why “just go socialize” is terrible advice. Making friends is harder, conversations feel more awkward, and everything takes more energy. You can’t just “snap out” of loneliness because it literally changes your brain chemistry.

The good news is that research across 280 studies of loneliness programs found the psychological ones came out ahead. Those are the programs that work on the negative thinking patterns loneliness creates³. And I’m going to help you every step of the way.

Every tip below goes after the Loneliness Slump at a specific point: your brain chemistry, your thought patterns, or your daily habits.

Taking action (even the smallest of small actions) is the hardest part of dealing with loneliness, but it’s the best remedy.

If you are struggling, please note that this content is not professional medical advice. Consult a doctor or licensed therapist for questions about your physical or mental health. For a good resource for therapists, you can check out Mental Health America’s helpful list.

1. Don’t Ignore It — Understand the Chemistry

Loneliness is not made up. You cannot just “get over it.” Your body feels it too. Here are the three chemicals to know:

Oxytocin is nicknamed “the cuddle hormone.” It’s released during close physical contact, meaningful conversation, and moments of trust with other people. It’s essential for making strong social bonds and feeling connected. When those close moments are missing, you feel the lack of connection.

Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone and built-in alarm system. Loneliness is tied to higher cortisol. When older adults went to bed feeling lonely, they had a bigger cortisol spike after waking the next morning.⁴ When you have too much cortisol, you feel panicky and filled with anxiety.

Adrenaline is a hormone your body makes in moments of crisis. It increases heart rate and blood flow. When you have too much adrenaline, you feel constantly on edge and find it difficult to sleep, relax, or laugh.

Here’s my goal with this article: I want to give you tools to slowly regulate all three of these chemicals. The small activities below are actually the key to setting your chemistry right.

Action Step: Acknowledge that your loneliness is a real, biological signal. Write down: “My loneliness is telling me my social needs aren’t being met. That’s a signal I can act on.”

2. Cut to Add: Clear Out the Social Distractors

Sometimes we think we’re missing something in our lives when we get lonely. Most of the time, we’ve just got too much:

• Endless social media scrolling
• Binge-watching TV alone
• Video games as a primary pastime
• Phone addiction
• Constant news consumption
• Overwork

Activities like passive social media scrolling and excessive TV watching can crowd out the face-to-face interactions and physical touch that naturally boost oxytocin. In a University of Pennsylvania experiment, students who cut social media to about 30 minutes a day (10 minutes per app) felt less lonely and less depressed three weeks later.⁵

Which app you open is linked to loneliness too. Among young adults followed by King’s College London, using Reddit and dating apps went with more loneliness, while using WhatsApp, a plain messaging app, went with less. People who said they used tech compulsively were lonelier on average.⁶

When you get rid of social blockers, you have more room for social bonds.

As human beings, we’re heavily biased toward short-term rewards and bad at seeing the long-term. When we try to replace interpersonal relationships with digital distractions, we tend to get deeper into our habits. As a result, we neglect our long-term social needs and spiral deeper into loneliness.

Notice how many of these crowd out the close moments we talked about with oxytocin. Too much time in front of screens means too little time in front of people. And stress from overindulging can keep you on edge.

Sound familiar? We are ALL guilty of giving in to our vices.

Loneliness should be your signal that it’s time to cut.

Let’s fill in the blank:

• What do you overindulge in? _________________________
• What is a casual addiction? _________________________
• What takes up too much of your time? _____________________
• What is standing in the way of your relationships? _________________
• What do you do instead of calling or texting someone you care about? _______________

Common answers include: social media, news, food, sugar, shopping, alcohol, buying new things, television, phone use, and video games.

Action Step: Pick your biggest time-sink and set a hard limit. “I will only scroll social media for 30 minutes a day” or “I’m only going to watch TV when I’m exercising.” Use your phone’s built-in screen time limits to enforce it. Remember, you can take small steps. This will lead to bigger steps in the long term.

3. Level Your Social Gauge

Everyone has different social needs. Ever wonder why some people can shut themselves inside all day and feel perfectly content, while others need constant outings to feel satisfied?

Think of your social needs as a rechargeable battery—I call it the Social Gauge.

One underlying cause of loneliness is that it’s hard to gauge how much social interaction you really need until it’s too late. Which sounds more like you?

• I am drawn to people; I get energy from social gatherings and am fairly outgoing. (Extrovert)
• It’s draining to be around lots of people. I prefer peace, solitude, and quiet time. I usually crave alone time in my free time. (Introvert)
• It depends. (Ambivert)

Now figure out your personal baseline. Fill in the blanks:

• When I was my happiest I had ___ closest friends.
• When I was my happiest I spent ___ hours per day with others.
• When I was my happiest I texted (all the time, frequently, rarely, never) with the people in my life I care about.
• When I was my happiest I called (all the time, frequently, rarely, never) the people in my life I care about.
• When I was my happiest I saw people in my life I care about (daily, bi-weekly, weekly, monthly, rarely).

This exercise is incredibly important because it is your social goal sheet! If you saw people weekly when you were at your happiest, we need to work you back up to that.

Action Step: Write down your answers. Compare them to your current situation. The gap between “happiest” and “now” is the specific problem to solve.

4. Map Your Relationship Circles

Next I’d like to help you through an exercise for taking stock of your relationships. Take out a piece of paper and draw three concentric circles:

Inner Circle: Write the initials of people you are closest with, the people who truly know you. This is usually 1 to 3 people at most. If you feel no one truly knows you, that’s OK. Leave this circle blank.

Middle Circle: People who know you fairly well and you enjoy being with. These are the folks you would celebrate your birthday with or enjoy following on social media.

Outer Circle: People you like seeing but are not very close with. They can be people you know through other friends or colleagues you enjoy working with. You can also include old friends you’d like to get back in touch with.

Outside all circles: People you would like to know but do not know yet. This can even be a type of person: a hiking partner, someone to play board games with, or an unmet romantic partner.

Here is a student named Skylar I worked with who allowed me to share her circle:

• She decided to put all personal people on the left and all work people on the right. Her Mom is in the middle.
• She plays ping pong occasionally and would like to make friends with some of the folks she plays with.
• She would like a mentor at work as well as more colleagues to attend happy hour with.
• She would like to find a soulmate.
• A woman who lives in her building named Jessica seems nice. Maybe they could be friends?

Fill yours out as completely as you can. Then move to the next step.

5. Set Relationship Goals (Start Ridiculously Small)

This is the most important part of how to deal with loneliness. I want you to hone your relationship goals based on your relationship circles. Make a list of all the goals from the circles, and start with the easiest ones first.

For Skylar, they looked like this:

1. Goal #1: Text Lara, Tia, and Jon to check in. It’s been way too long.
2. Goal #2: Join the mentor program at work.
3. Goal #3: When I see Jessica, say hi. Join for her dog walks?
4. Goal #4: Sign up for a dating app I’m comfortable with.
5. Goal #5: Ask colleagues to join in on happy hour next. Or set up a virtual happy hour.

Your goals should match your social energy needs from the Social Gauge exercise above. Make as many goals as you can; the ones farther out can be harder.

Start small. A text is a great goal. Simply reaching out to someone with a check-in is a great way to start. If you were texting with a lot of people when you were at your happiest, then this should be a longer list of people to text. If you only saw people once a week, then make your goal simply to set something up once per week.

This is how we begin to work on all three of those chemicals. We just need many small positive interactions.

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General suggested taking just 15 minutes a day to reach out to someone you care about.⁷ That could be one text conversation or a phone call on your commute.

Action Step: Do one goal at a time and work your way down the list. Then add more as you begin to spark new (and old) relationships.

6. Warm Up with the Passing People Technique

If you’re lonely, then your gauge is running on empty. And here’s the advice you always get: “Just go out and socialize!”

This is OLD ADVICE. I know that when you’re lonely, socializing can even seem like a chore. That’s why it’s important to start somewhere not so big… remember, small steps work.

Psychologists at the University of British Columbia tracked students’ daily chats. Students felt happier, and more like they belonged, on days they talked with more classmates than usual.⁸

I was pleasantly surprised to read this one. People asked to smile and chat briefly with their barista reported better mood and a stronger sense of belonging than those who got their coffee efficiently and left.⁹ The tiny interaction made them feel like part of something.

These are your Passing People, the folks in your life that you pass by and don’t expect to become good friends with:

• A passing classmate
• The grocery store clerk
• Your neighbor you wave hello to
• The barista at the coffee counter
• A smiling stranger at the park
• Your mail carrier

When your Social Gauge is totally empty, a simple conversation with a Passing Person fills it just a little. Any social interaction, no matter how small, helps with loneliness. Even eye contact and a nod count. So don’t neglect the Passing People in your life. Small conversations can always lead to bigger ones with the right people skills.

Loneliness can also spread through social networks like a cold. In one large social network, people were 52% more likely to be lonely when someone they were directly connected to was lonely.¹⁰ Feeling connected spreads through networks too, just less strongly.

Action Step: Strike up one small conversation with a Passing Person today. Use the Comment + Question method: make an observation about your shared environment (“This line is moving slowly today”) and follow with an open-ended question.

Once you’ve practiced with some small talk, step it up. Try these deeper conversation starters with people in your inner two circles:

• “What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to try but never have? Why haven’t you done it yet?” I LOVE this question. It always surprises me, and I ask it over and over to the people I love because their answers change.
• “What has been the highlight of your year so far?” This gets people thinking and reminiscing about what’s good.
• “What book, TV, or movie character do you most relate to?” This one asks who you think you’re most similar to right now (aspirations don’t count!). It often turns into a fun group discussion.

If you really want to create social ties and fight loneliness in a big way, I recommend doing 36 deep questions with someone you care about. These are specifically designed to deepen relationships. I like to do one a day or one a week.

7. Find Your Hachi (Get a Canine Companion)

There’s a scene in the movie Hachi: A Dog’s Tale that shows just how loyal dogs can be. A man named Parker finds a dog named Hachi and takes him home. After forming a deep bond, Hachi loves Parker so much that he waits for him at the train station every day after work.

Don’t love conversation? I have another tip for you. Get a dog.

It may seem obvious if you already own a dog, but dogs are literally one of the best ways to deal with loneliness:

• Dogs are emotional responders; they’re even used to help people with PTSD.
• Dogs are (usually) happy to see you.
• They can understand many words we use.
• They provide warmth and physical comfort.
• You can rattle off all your problems to your dog, and their tail will still be wagging.

Not convinced? Here’s some paw-some science!

Among 830 older adults, pet owners were 36% less likely than non-owners to report loneliness, even after accounting for age, living situation, and mood. The biggest risk of all belonged to people who lived alone with no pet.¹¹ And in a survey published in 2019 by the Human Animal Bond Research Institute, 80% of pet owners said their pet makes them feel less lonely. And 54% said their pet helps them connect with other people.

Getting a canine companion is especially valuable if you live alone, which is more common than ever. Dogs also give you a reason to get outside, walk around your neighborhood, and interact with other dog owners (natural Passing People encounters).

Action Step: If you already have a dog, great! Spend some more intentional time with them. Walks are a natural way to meet Passing People. If not, consider fostering first to see if a canine companion is right for you. Even a cat provides meaningful companionship.

You can rattle off all your problems to your dog, and their tail will still be wagging.

8. Change Your Environment (The Small Nudge Method)

Lonely people often feel trapped in their environment. Their room, house, or apartment becomes a safe haven, the place where they’re free from the dangers of the outside world.

But staying in the same space reinforces the Loneliness Slump. Living alone is on the CDC’s list of risk factors for loneliness, and a home you rarely leave puts nobody new in your path.

It doesn’t take a dramatic change. The concept of choice architecture (designing your surroundings to make good behaviors easier) applies directly to loneliness. Small environmental nudges shift behavior without requiring willpower:

• Find a cafe to work from instead of staying home (built-in Passing People).
• Walk or cycle to work instead of driving (more opportunities for casual interactions).
• Rearrange your living space to feel fresh and energizing.
• Hang up your favorite posters and artwork throughout your environment.
• Spend more time in a different part of your house than your usual spot.
• Join a coworking space even one day a week.

For bigger moves when you’re deep in a Loneliness Slump:

• Travel somewhere new.
• Explore an unfamiliar neighborhood in your city.
• Attend a local event or MeetUp.
• Move to a new city or country.

Again, you can do something super simple, or if you’re really deep in a Loneliness Slump, it might be best to go big.

Pro Tip: If you can’t change your environment, make your background noise social. Background noise with active human chatter can make a quiet room feel a little less empty:

• Set your TV to a stand-up comedy special.
• Play a talk show on YouTube.
• Listen to a podcast.

Action Step: Pick one small environmental change from the list above and do it this week. The “Same Place, Same Time” rule is especially powerful. Go to the same coffee shop, gym, or class at the same time each week.

Special Tip: Embrace the Warmth

One aspect of your environment you might not have considered… temperature! If you’ve been feeling lonely, you may literally have a cold shoulder.

Physical warmth and social warmth overlap more than you’d think. When people held a warm pack, they felt more connected to others than when they held a room-temperature ball. Brain scans found overlapping activity for the two kinds of warmth.¹² (Which may be why a room full of friends feels warm in both senses.)

Being physically warm can actually fill your Social Gauge!

So rev up your warm engines:

• Take a warm bath.
• Turn up the thermostat.
• Drink hot coffee or tea.
• Wrap yourself in a warm blanket.
• Double or even triple layer your clothes.
• Always wear socks, even in the house.
• Turn on the portable heater.

Action step: Pick one thing on that list and embrace the warmth.

Special Tip: Volunteer Where Someone Expects You

Suppose it’s Tuesday at 5:55 p.m., and you’re signing in at the food bank for the same two-hour sorting shift you’ve worked for a month. The coordinator waves before you’ve found a pen. The retiree at the next table has already saved you a box cutter.

That’s the Same Place, Same Time rule with a bonus. Someone is counting on you to show up.

Adults over 50 who lost a spouse were, unsurprisingly, lonelier than people who stayed married. But the widowed adults who started volunteering at least two hours a week ended up about as lonely as married people who volunteered just as much.¹³

A volunteer shift solves three Loneliness Slump problems at once:

• It’s on the calendar. You don’t have to decide to go out each week; you already said yes.
• It hands you a script. “Where do these cans go?” is an easy first sentence when small talk feels impossible.
• It’s the same people. A weekly shift gives you the repeat faces that turn Passing People into friends.

Action Step: Look up one recurring volunteer role near you (a food bank, animal shelter, library, or tutoring program) and sign up for a weekly shift of at least two hours.

9. Become Your Own Best Friend

A lot of this post is about your relationships with others, but I also have to address your relationship with yourself.

We need to make our alone time as beneficial as possible before we can benefit from relationships with others.

A set of consumer studies found that people often skip things they’d enjoy, like a movie or an art gallery, simply because they don’t have someone to go with.¹⁴ They worried that strangers would assume they had no friends.

If you’ve ever eaten alone at a restaurant, you know the questions. Am I being judged? Do I look silly? Is it wrong to have fun by myself?

But the same research found that people expect company to matter more for their enjoyment than it actually does.

And who says it’s not cool to be your own best friend?

In solitude research at the University of Rochester, just 15 minutes of sitting alone without a phone created a “deactivation effect.”¹⁵ High-intensity emotions (both positive and negative) calm down, leaving you feeling more centered and relaxed.

Being alone does not mean you are lonely.

If you’re afraid of being alone, there’s a word for it: monophobia, a dread of being alone. It made sense in the days of cavemen and cavewomen, when a large group meant safer babies, more resources, and enemies you could fend off. Today most of us can eat, sleep, and be in perfectly good shape by ourselves. Most of us still aren’t fine with it.

The bigger fear than monophobia is fearing ourselves.

So find out what you’re most afraid of. Write down what makes you feel lonely when you’re by yourself. Is it that you crave social interaction? That you want more friends? Write it down:

Being alone makes me feel lonely because ___.

When you’re done, know that feeling lonely is perfectly okay and healthy. Everyone is alone sometimes, and however negative you feel about it right now, it can change.

Then make dates with yourself. Especially if you’re spending a lot of time at home, designate time you look forward to:

• Learning Hour: What have you always wanted to learn? Make a learning bucket list and tackle one at a time.
• Creative Hour: Try a project, build something, paint something, take a virtual museum tour.
• Reading Hour: Start, finish, or get recommendations for a great new book.
• Meditation Hour: Meditation is a simple way to wind down when you’re stressed.
• Laughter Lunch: Instead of working through lunch, watch stand-up comedy or a funny podcast while you eat.

When you’re ready, try going out at least once a day and doing something by yourself. Learn to love going out solo:

• City adventure: pick an area of your city and just explore.
• Go to your local library or museums in your area.
• Try a new restaurant (remember, you’ll enjoy it more than you expect).
• Join a MeetUp.
• Go to a concert or sporting event.
• Watch a movie at the cinema.

Bonus: Take a nature walk. Stanford researchers found that participants who walked for 90 minutes in a natural area showed decreased activity in the brain region associated with rumination (repetitive negative thinking) compared to people who walked in urban areas.¹⁶ Short on time? City dwellers who spent 20 to 30 minutes somewhere green got the biggest drop in cortisol for the time they put in.¹⁷

A survey by the Royal Horticultural Society found that 39% of people garden or grow plants when they feel lonely. (And a tomato plant in the front yard can be a conversation starter with Passing People.) Who knew gardening could be so social?

Action Step: Schedule one “date with yourself” this week. Put it on your calendar like a real appointment. Start with something low-pressure, like a solo coffee shop visit or a walk in a park. Meditate or journal for at least 15 minutes a day, focusing on being comfortable with yourself.

10. Reframe Your Thinking

I saved this one for last because it takes the most practice.

In that review of 280 studies, the psychological programs did best. Those are the ones that work on how you interpret social situations, and they beat social skills training, social-network programs, and social-support programs³.

Loneliness builds a threat filter in your brain, and you start reading ambiguous social signals as rejection:

• A friend doesn’t text back → “They don’t like me.”
• A colleague doesn’t say hi in the hallway → “They’re avoiding me.”
• A conversation feels awkward → “I’m terrible at this.”

These automatic thoughts feel like facts, but they’re distortions created by the lonely brain’s hyperactive threat detection system.

Cognitive reframing means catching these thoughts and questioning them:

1. Notice the thought: “My friend didn’t respond to my text. They must not care about me.”
2. Question it: “Is there another explanation? Could they be busy? Did they forget?”
3. Replace it: “They haven’t responded yet. That doesn’t mean anything about how they feel about me.”
4. Test it: Send a follow-up. Most of the time, you’ll find the story your brain told you was wrong.

Also recognize the difference between temporary and chronic loneliness. Temporary loneliness, triggered by a move, a breakup, or a life transition, often resolves naturally and can actually motivate you to reconnect. Think of it like hunger: uncomfortable, but useful. Chronic loneliness (lasting months or years) is self-reinforcing and may require more structured intervention, including professional support.

Loneliness can ease. It just takes small steps at first.

Action Step: For one week, keep a “thought log.” Every time you feel a pang of loneliness, write down: (1) What happened, (2) What your brain told you it meant, and (3) An alternative explanation. After seven days, you’ll start to see patterns, and the automatic negative thoughts will lose their power.

Here’s what two lines of a thought log might look like:

What happened	What my brain told me	Another explanation
The group chat went quiet after my joke.	“They thought it was dumb.”	It was 11:40 p.m. Everyone was asleep.
A coworker did a coffee run and didn’t ask me.	“I’m not really part of the team.”	She asked the two people sitting next to the elevator.

Lonely at Work? Start With One Coworker

Loneliness doesn’t clock out when you badge in. It’s common to sit in meetings all day and still eat lunch alone at your desk.

What coworkers notice is the headphones, the laptop open at lunch, the quick “fine, you?” in the elevator. To them, it can look like busy, don’t interrupt.

Across two organizations, lonelier employees came across as less approachable, and their job performance was lower.¹⁸

So start small and visible:

1. Look open. Take your headphones off for the first 20 minutes of the day, and eat lunch away from your desk twice this week.
2. Pick one person. Choose the coworker you already nod at in the kitchen. The office social butterfly can wait.
3. Make one small, specific ask. A time, a place, and an easy out.

Here’s that ask, written out:

“Hey, I’m grabbing a coffee downstairs at 3. Want to come? I could use a break from this spreadsheet. Totally fine if you’re slammed.”

If they say no, try “No worries, another day!” and ask again next week.

Action Step: Send that coffee invite to one coworker before Friday. For more openers, here’s how to start a conversation with coworkers, plus a few ways to become more approachable.

What Loneliness Does to Your Health

Loneliness affects your body too. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory called loneliness and isolation an epidemic. It found that being socially disconnected is tied to a risk of early death similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.¹⁹ Key findings:

• Heart health: Poor social relationships, loneliness included, are tied to a 29% higher risk of heart disease
• Stroke: A 32% higher risk, according to the same advisory
• Cognitive decline: About a 50% higher risk of dementia in older adults who are lonely or isolated. In the Framingham Heart Study, lonely adults had a 54% higher 10-year dementia risk. Lonely adults under 80 without the main genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s had three times the risk²⁰
• Immunity: Loneliness and isolation are linked to wear on the immune, heart, and hormone systems
• Premature death: Loneliness is tied to a 26% higher risk (29% for social isolation)¹⁹
• Mental health: Lonely people have about twice the odds of depression²¹, and 81% of lonely adults also report anxiety or depression

The relationship between loneliness and depression goes both ways. Feeling depressed makes people withdraw socially, which deepens loneliness, which worsens depression.

Loneliness also erodes self-esteem. Sociometer theory explains that self-esteem functions as an internal gauge of how valued you feel by others. When you feel isolated, that gauge drops, making social interactions feel more threatening and leading to further withdrawal.

The Loneliness Epidemic: You Are Not Alone

If loneliness feels like a personal failing, consider the numbers:

• Cigna’s national survey scored 54% of Americans as lonely in 2018, and that figure rose to 61% in 2019
• Harvard’s 2024 survey found that 21% of U.S. adults feel lonely
• The loneliest age group is 30-to-44 year olds: 29% said they were frequently or always lonely
• Cigna found Gen Z to be the loneliest generation, and 79% of Gen Z adults reported feeling lonely in 2019
• In 2021, about 15% of men said they had no close friends at all, a fivefold increase since 1990
• In-person time with friends dropped from about 60 minutes a day in 2003 to 20 minutes in 2020, according to the Surgeon General’s advisory
• 75% of lonely adults report having little or no sense of meaning or purpose. Loneliness is often about missing meaning as much as missing people

The WHO reported in 2025 that loneliness affects 1 in 6 people worldwide and is linked to more than 871,000 deaths a year.²² (For the full breakdown by age, gender, and state, see our loneliness statistics.)

So if you’re lonely right now, you’re in very large company.

How to Deal with Loneliness Takeaway

Loneliness changes your brain chemistry, distorts your thinking, and affects your physical health. But every strategy in this article is designed to break that cycle at a specific point. Here are your next steps:

1. Acknowledge it. Loneliness is a biological signal. Name it without shame.
2. Cut one social distractor. Limit social media to 30 minutes a day and use the freed time for real connection.
3. Map your circles. Draw your relationship circles and identify one person to reach out to today.
4. Start absurdly small. Send one text. Say hi to one Passing Person. The Surgeon General suggested 15 minutes of outreach a day.
5. Use the Same Place, Same Time rule. Pick one recurring activity (a gym class, a coffee shop, a two-hour weekly volunteer shift) and show up consistently.
6. Reframe your thoughts. Keep a thought log for one week. Catch the automatic negative interpretations that loneliness creates.
7. Be your own best friend. Schedule solo activities you enjoy. You’ll probably have more fun than you expect.
8. Invite one coworker. Send a specific coffee invite this week, with a time, a place, and an easy out.

Your loneliness is telling you something…

So believe in yourself and take action!

If being by yourself is the part that scares you most, try these steps to overcome the fear of being alone next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can loneliness kill you?

Loneliness is tied to a 26% higher risk of early death, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory. The same advisory compared the mortality risk of being socially disconnected to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. The WHO links loneliness to more than 871,000 deaths a year worldwide. The health risks include heart disease, stroke, wear on the immune system, and cognitive decline.

What is the difference between being alone and being lonely?

Being alone is a physical state: you’re by yourself. Loneliness is an emotional state: the feeling that your social connections don’t match what you need. In one study, 15 minutes alone without a phone calmed people’s most intense emotions. The key difference is whether the solitude is voluntary or unwanted.

Can loneliness cause depression and anxiety?

Yes, and the relationship goes both ways. Lonely people have about twice the odds of depression. Harvard research found that 81% of lonely adults also report anxiety or depression. Loneliness erodes self-esteem, disrupts sleep, and amplifies negative thinking, all of which feed into low mood. At the same time, depression causes social withdrawal, which deepens loneliness.

Can loneliness cause dementia?

Research from the Framingham Heart Study found that lonely adults had a 54% higher 10-year risk of dementia. Lonely adults under 80 without the main genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s had three times the risk. In people without dementia, loneliness also went with weaker planning and focus skills and smaller overall brain volume.

Is loneliness ever good for you?

Temporary loneliness can be useful. It’s an alarm signal that motivates you to reconnect, similar to how hunger motivates you to eat. Chosen solitude (being alone on purpose) can calm intense emotions and help you relax. The problem is chronic loneliness, the persistent, unwanted kind that lasts months or years and rewires the brain toward threat detection.

How do I deal with loneliness when living alone?

Living alone is a known risk factor for loneliness, so intentional effort makes a big difference. In one study of older adults, people who lived alone with no pet had the highest odds of loneliness. Key strategies include getting a pet, maintaining daily voice or video contact with friends or family, and booking a weekly volunteer shift. The Same Place Same Time rule helps you build community through routine, and alone time you actually look forward to helps too.

What does loneliness do to the brain?

Loneliness is tied to a weaker reward response to people and sharper vigilance for social threat. In lonely people, the brain’s reward center responded more weakly to pleasant pictures of people. In the Framingham Heart Study, loneliness also went with smaller overall brain volume. The brain essentially becomes hyper-alert to social threats while finding less reward in social connection.

Where does loneliness come from?

Loneliness can stem from life transitions (moving, divorce, retirement), a mismatch between desired and actual social connection, loss of a close relationship, social anxiety, or environmental factors like remote work and excessive screen time. Psychologists distinguish between emotional loneliness (missing a close intimate bond) and social loneliness (missing a broader sense of belonging to a group or community). One type doesn’t compensate for the other.