The world where staying connected with family and friends can be as simple as pressing a button

on your phone.

Many are finding themselves lonelier than ever.

As Isabella Gibillion of Rhode Island PBS Weekly reports, it's especially prevalent among

young adults.

I was like so nervous to go.

At 17, Tabitha Grandolfo moved from Hong Kong to Providence, Rhode Island to study at Brown University.

It was 2021, and there were COVID restrictions meant that if I wanted to go home,

I would have to spend three weeks in a hotel and quarantine before I was able to like go back and see my family.

Living far from home, she began feeling depressed and lonely, and she was having trouble

making friends.

I was in the play and I was really excited.

It was my first like play that I did on campus.

A roommate and a friend came to see it and I came came back after the show, and, like, they didn't talk about

it at all. And then the two of them went to some, like, party or after party and left me in the

dorm alone. I was just sitting there in my room alone folding laundry. By the time she returned to Hong Kong at the end of freshman year,

her depression had become overwhelming.

I remember like not being able to get out of bed,

and my mom was like, do you think you can go back?

Stories like Grand Olvos are all too familiar to psychologist

and Harvard lecturer Richard Weisbord.

When people think of loneliness, they often think of senior citizens. But in our data, the people

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