Lonely? There's an app for that... but should there be?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're back with "All the Lonely People," a series diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives.

This week: can tech cure our loneliness? Companies like Meeno (an AI relationship coaching app), Peoplehood (a platform that organizes guided group conversations), Timeleft (an app which matches strangers for dinner), and Bumble for Friends all say they want to help people make more and better connections. But do we need tech solutions to what may partially be a tech problem? Brittany sits down with Sam Pressler, who studies community and social connection at the University of Virginia's Karsh Institute of Democracy, and Vauhini Vara, veteran tech reporter and author of the upcoming book Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, to break it all down.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On the ThruLine podcast, the myth linking autism and vaccines was decades in the making
0:05.8	and was a major moment for vaccine hesitancy in America, tapping into fears involving the
0:11.7	pharmaceutical industry and the federal government.
0:14.3	No matter how many studies you do showing that this is not a problem, it's very hard to unring
0:19.5	the bell.
0:20.2	Listen to ThruLine from NPR, wherever you get your podcast.
0:24.8	Okay, I'm asking chat GPT, can you help me get less lonely?
0:35.6	Enter.
0:37.1	I'm really sorry you're feeling lonely.
0:39.3	I can definitely help with that.
0:44.3	Hello, hello.
0:45.8	I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:49.5	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
1:08.2	Do you relate? Well, you may be lonely, but you're not alone. One third of Americans
1:14.0	report feeling lonely at least once a week. And 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most
1:21.0	of the time. Welcome back to our three-part series, All the Lonely People.
1:30.1	We're diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it.
1:36.1	So we've heard a lot of theories about why we're lonely, but one of the things that kept
1:40.3	popping up was technology, how our reliance on our phones and the internet could be
1:45.3	pushing us apart. New York Times reporter Brian Chen looked into the studies on this and he found a
1:51.6	consensus of researchers agree. There's a very strong correlation between tech use and loneliness.
1:58.6	So tech might be part of the problem, but could it also be the solution?
	...

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