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Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast, with a program that looks at the numbers in the news and in life, and in mysterious epidemics.

I'm Tim Harford.

What does it mean if you say that something's an epidemic? In the case of a virus, it usually means that it's spreading rapidly and that more and more people are getting infected. When a disease isn't on the rise, but is there in a population at a reasonably steady level, we tend to say that the disease is endemic.

But what if the thing you're talking about is not a virus,

but a feeling?

In 2023, the US Surgeon General launched a report called

Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,

warning of the health harms of being lonely and

socially isolated. The idea that there's an epidemic of loneliness didn't start there. The term was

already in use in the US in the 2010s. And it's a phrase that's still going strong, popping up in

news stories on a regular basis.

After that warning from the US Surgeon General, the World Health Organisation launched the Commission on Social Connection,

with their Director-General warning that more and more people are finding themselves isolated and lonely.

But is it true that loneliness rates are increasing?

Is it right to say we're in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness?

Tom Coles has been looking into this one. Hello Tom. Hi, Tim. So what is the evidence that we've got a loneliness

epidemic on our hands? You know the kind of thing, sharply rising line on a graph, clear long-term

trend of significant increase, evidence that more and more people are lonely? Well, okay, look,

I haven't been able to find any graphs like that.

Oh.

Yeah.

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