[online] Why People Are Not Social Anymore - Systems Thinking Analysis

Thesis: People are not social anymore

Some Statistics
“More than half of Americans now report feeling lonely or emotionally disconnected.” — recent American Psychological Association polling finds over 50% of U.S. adults report loneliness/emotional disconnection

“U.S. health authorities call loneliness an ‘epidemic’ and a public-health crisis.” — the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory (2023–2024) labels widespread loneliness a major health risk and links low social connection to worse physical and mental health.

“Across wealthy countries, substantial numbers report frequent loneliness — and rates remained high through 2023–24.” — OECD analysis of social connections finds double-digit shares in some countries and documents persistent loneliness in 2023–24.

“The ‘friendship recession’ is real: the share of U.S. adults reporting no close friends has roughly quadrupled since 1990.” — recent analyses (American Perspectives / Harvard commentary, 2024–2025) report the proportion with zero close friends rising to ~12% and large declines in people with many close friends.

“Civic life is fraying: civic participation in England fell from ~41% (2019/20) to ~33% in 2023/24.” — England’s Community Life Survey 2023/24 documents a drop in adults taking part in civic activities since the pre-pandemic period.

To be discussed in the meetings:

• These stats above
• Predictions the situation evolve over time
• Going through possible reasons of current situation
• System analysis: actors, reinforcing feedback loops, society goals and paradigms

Discussion how to (try to) fix the situation (and whether it even make sense) will be done in a separate meeting.