Loneliness is increasingly recognized as one of the most serious global public health challenges of our time. From Japan's Ministry of Loneliness to the U.S. Surgeon General's call for social connection, governments are waking up to the toll that disconnection takes on our bodies, our minds and our societies. The World Health Organization (WHO) now reports that 1 in 4 older adults is socially isolated; among adolescents, 5 to 15 percent experience persistent loneliness.
But here is the problem: Our science has not caught up.
Most of what we know about loneliness is based on research from just a few countries, mostly in the Global North. Definitions, surveys, and interventions have often been built on narrow cultural assumptions—yet they are applied globally. If connection looks different everywhere, why do we keep trying to measure it the same way? That is the question that launched our project.
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