Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'
It&#x27;s known since the humanity exists that humans are social creatures, yet we as a society don&#x27;t do anything to promote social interaction between people. Actually, we are actively suppressing real social contact due to the way our society is set up.<p>- &quot;State &#x2F; faceless institution&quot; organized social security, reducing the need of social network &#x2F; safety net.<p>- The rise of &quot;social media&quot; leading to less social interaction.<p>- Push for long working hours that leaves not much time for socialization<p>- Spreading fear through the media. Many people are lonely, yet are afraid to talk to a stranger because &quot;who knows what&#x27;s on his mind&quot;.<p>- Economic improvements leading to the decreasing necessity and dependence on the extended family.<p>- Instead of tackling the actual social isolation problems, the trend of virtualization and automation of tasks that previously required social interaction is making it even worse.<p>- Covid-19 fearmongering and voluntary&#x2F;enforced (self) isolation didn&#x27;t help either.<p>It&#x27;s almost like we are going to end like in the book &quot;1994&quot; from Borislav Pekic, isolated and afraid of humans, surrounded with robots, unhappy but not able to change anything until the humanity is doomed.<p>EDIT: Since some misunderstood me, I don&#x27;t judge if the &quot;state provided&quot; social network is good or bad, or if it should be kept or dismissed, just state the fact that it significantly reduces the need for social interaction between people, leading to more loneliness.<p>I also observed that in poorer countries with less state provided social safety net, people are much more social and dependent on each other.<p>The same can be said to other points too.<p>EDIT 2: Covid-19 is a hot topic. Again, I prefer not to put judgement about all societal effect of it here. By &quot;fearmongering&quot; here, I don&#x27;t consider only fear from virus. There&#x27;s also fear from economical doom and fear from the loss of liberties.<p>All three types of fear are legitimate and present in different social circles and pushed (&quot;mongered&quot;?) by different media.<p>Which fear is dominant depends on the circumstances of each individual. Person that can isolate himself and has a safe job will be more afraid of loss of liberties than the virus. A person who lost his job due to lockdown fear hunger more that virus, and a supermarket cashier is horrified if he will get infected. Unfortunately, hardly any people can understand that different people can have different fears, and a quick to dismiss ones with different fear.<p>Anyway, it&#x27;s again fact that Covid-19 was for many people the final stroke that push them to loneliness.