Only the lonely

Although the U. K. seems to be caught up in an economic death spiral thanks to its ill-informed Brexit vote you’ve got to hand it to the Brits for tackling one of the most insidious public health issues of our time.

Loneliness.

And they’re addressing it with more than a British stiff upper lip. In January, calling loneliness “the sad reality of modern life,” Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Tracey Crouch as Britain’s first Minister for Loneliness. I was skeptical when I found out that Crouch was already Minister of Sports, Minister of Civil Society and Minister of Gambling. With apologies to Winston Churchill, is this a triviality, wrapped in a bureaucracy, inside a Monty Python skit?

The data says otherwise. A survey by health insurer Cigna puts loneliness at epidemic levels in America. A recent study concludes that social isolation is “associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” It has been linked to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. And it is expensive. In the U. K. alone, it costs employers up to $3.5 billion annually. It affects all age groups, not just the elderly. And social media isn’t helping.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues in her book “Alone Together,” that technology has become the architect of our intimacies creating the illusion of companionship as we gather “friends” and confuse tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. Spoiler alert: social media is less than social. 

Movies can paint a particularly uncomfortable picture of chronic isolation and loneliness. I’m not sure which is more disturbing: Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with his computer operating system in “Her” or the over-the-top community support for Ryan Gosling and his life-size plastic girlfriend in “Lars and the Real Girl.”

Regardless of how it is depicted, loneliness is a real social problem that can’t be solved …ALONE.

M.A. Duca is a resident of Twin Lakes narrowly focused on everyday life.