but I think he's ten minutes late right now

and I don't see him, so I hope I didn't get ghosted.

( ringing )

Operator: Your call has been forwarded

to an automated voice messaging system.

Alex: Almost everyone knows what it feels like to be lonely.

( groans )

And in 2018, nearly half

the U.S. population reported

feeling lonely regularly...

Woman: Loneliness is a major threat

to Americans' well-being.

...leading some experts to say that we're actually

in the middle of a loneliness epidemic.

Woman: This rises to the level of true public health concern.

And we often make assumptions about the things that make us lonely.

But research has shown that the amount of time that we spend with other people...

Did this make you less lonely?

...and the quality of our social skills

don't really make a difference.

Loneliness may be a greater fear than death.

So why do so many of us feel lonely?

And what should we do about it?

( music playing )

So, how many friends do you have? Like, close friends.

Probably, like, 10 or 15 really close friends,

- who I talk to weekly, at least. - Wow.

Christophe: But I do feel that changing.

- Got out of college pretty recently... - Ahh, I see.

...and a lot of these people

I'm starting to not see that much anymore.

Alex: When I got out of college, I would say I had

- eight to nine good friends. - Yeah.

And out of those eight to nine, only one is left.

As a guy myself, I'm more reluctant to reach out

- and put myself out there. - Yeah.

Christophe: From the studies that I've read,

there isn't a conclusive difference

in loneliness rates between men and women.

But there is some evidence that women are more comfortable

admitting that they're lonely.

Alex: And loneliness is something I've dealt with

- all my life. - Yeah.

So I'm gonna take it on. I'm gonna go online,

see if I can make new friends using an app,

and maybe that's gonna help out with the loneliness.

I swiped through, like, 200 dudes.

- Really? And he was the one? - And he was the one.

So I'm going to a restaurant to meet with Maximilian.

- I'm a little nervous. - What are you nervous about?

- Will we click? - Right.

Just be yourself.

Smile.

Not like that. That's--

- See you, dude. - Stay dry.

Hey. You're Alex, right?

- Are you Maximilian? - Yes.

- Good to meet you, man. - Good to meet you, man.

- After you. - Thanks, brother.

Yeah, dating is normal using the app.

But making friends using the app is kind of--

people see it as weird, I guess.

Everything about what we're doing is weird.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What do you do when you're feeling lonely?

I don't know. I can't answer that, dude. I don't know.

I just feel that, to be totally honest.

A couple weeks ago, I was really vibing with this guy

'cause we shared so much in common.

I was just like, "Hey, we should hang out,"

like in the middle of a conversation.

And he was kind of taken back by it, I could tell.

Like, he wasn't disgusted, but I just feel like he'd never been--

- nobody's ever said that to him. - Oh, no!

Like, "I've never heard somebody say that before."

And it takes a bit of time to break down those barriers, you know?

It is a little more difficult

because it's, like, are you gonna give up that masculinity

by becoming friends with this person?

That's the weird thing,

is I have no trouble making friends.

I'm a very open person.

I really just want a tight-knit group of friends.

It takes a lot of time to get out and build those relationships.

All right, good meeting you.

- It was good meeting you, Alex. - I'll be in touch.

The term "loneliness epidemic"

suggests that this is some modern crisis

that is just starting to effect us right now.

But the roots of this problem

actually go back much further than you might think.

In the late 1700s

at the start of the Industrial Revolution

in Europe and the United States,

people started to move out of small communities

and into cities to work in factories.

It's around then that you first start to see

the use of the word loneliness in English printed works.

Loneliness became the first word

to describe the experience of being alone.

Before that, the closest thing that we had was "oneliness."

But that just referred to the physical state of being alone.

It wasn't until the 1970s

that experts started to describe loneliness

as a public health crisis,

like in these American newspaper clippings

where they describe a "Loneliness Epidemic In Our Time."

All these headlines are talking about this loneliness epidemic

in the same way that you would see

media coverage talk about this today.

So, for example, this one says,

"There is an epidemic of loneliness

in America today that drives people

to seek companionship

in laundromats, shopping centers,

Weight Watchers and bars."

That's from 1973.

Articles like these were reacting to the start

of some major societal shifts.

Like, when we get married in the U.S.,

people have been getting married

later and later since the 1950s.

And young unmarried people report feeling more lonely

than their married peers.

And organized community groups like church

have become less prominent than ever.

Today, a quarter of the U.S. population

is unaffiliated with organized religion

versus just five percent in 1972.

And those who attend religious services less frequently tend to be lonelier.

So we can't say that we're lonelier than ever,

because we haven't really had a consistent way

to measure loneliness over time.

And we can't say whether those social changes

have caused higher rates of loneliness today.

But we do know that more people

are spending big chunks of their lives

isolated from close-knit communities.

That's important because our brains are wired

to want those social circles.

There's one theory that could help us understand the impact

that has on loneliness.

There's this idea that there is a cognitive limit

on the number of people that humans can have,

basically, a meaningful, social relationship with.

That idea is known as Dunbar's number.

The guy who came up with this, his name is Robin Dunbar.

What he did to find that number is he basically looked

at average brain size of different primates

and average social group size.

And he made sort of trend line based off of that

and extrapolated that humans probably are meant to be

in a group of about 150.

And when he double-checked that with modern

hunter-gatherer societies at the time,

it totally checked out. The average number was about 148.

- Hunter-gatherer societies were usually 150 people? - Small.

- Yeah. - Huh.

But Dunbar's number is really a set of numbers,

so there are a whole bunch of subgroups within this.

The first number is five.

This is kind of like the family and friends

that you were absolutely closest with.

You tend spend about 40% of your social time

with these five people.

I wanna know who these people are...

- Really? - ...for you. Yeah.

You're gonna make me namecheck them?

So then, moving up from this level

is what Dunbar calls

sort of your sympathy group of 15 people.

These are the people I would allow to see me cry.

One level up from that is what Dunbar calls the close network.

So these are people that you would probably invite to a big dinner party.

It's interesting. I would put in this category people I see every day.

- So I fit in this one. Is that what you're saying? - Yeah.

- Yeah, you go here. - Cool, cool, cool, cool.

And in the last level, coming back to 150,

it's sort of the max number of meaningful relationships that you have.

- These are my casual friends. - Mm.

For most of human history,

you would've lived with these people

for almost your entire life.

If I didn't live with my boyfriend

- or if this person lived out of town... - Mm-hmm.

I would not in my daily life see any of the people that I was closest to.

Yeah, which is crazy.

- Which is crazy. - It's important to note

that you can feel lonely at any one of these levels.

And the fact that we're not interacting with a lot

of these people face-to-face every day

does have an actual impact on those relationships.

Dunbar said that emotional proximity decreases by 15% every year

that you don't see someone face-to-face.

Which means that it just takes a few years

for someone who might've been in your top five,

say, in college, to go all the way

to sort of the outer limits of your 150 people.

I'm gonna leave this shoot and just book a flight

- to see my best friend. - Exactly.

So, if these all represent different flavors of loneliness,

how do people deal with each of them today?

That's what we want to figure out.

We're here in Branford, Connecticut

talking to a group of people called Romeos.

That stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out.

There's a really strong appeal to groups like this.

Research shows older men are more at risk

of social isolation when compared to older women.

A lot of these guys miss the connections that they had

either growing up or in school or in their working life.

And they want to find a way

to maintain those kinds of friendships in retirement.

When I retired, I tried to get in a few things,

but nothing seemed to click.

Most of the wives have book clubs,

- bridge clubs... - Yes. Yes.

- ...and garden clubs. - Garden clubs.

And this group was just perfect.

We just get together and we shoot the breeze,

and it's a bunch of very nice people.

Are there moments for all of you that stand out

that kind of brought you here?

Sometimes, it's a relative will say,

"I'm concerned about so and so being lonely."

We get those kinds of contacts

all the time through our website.

I became involved with the Romeo group

through my granddaughter

who did research and contacted Frank.

Because of my loneliness,

she convinced me to join the group,

and I'm glad I did.

And you weren't sure at first.

- You came very reluctantly to the first group. - Exactly.

Loneliness may be a greater fear than death.

During the day, even if you're a widowed guy,

you'll find things to do.

But when you're home at night all by yourself

and you close that door,

no matter how much family you have,

there's some point in time when you are all by yourself,

and you won't know that sense of loneliness till you're there.

It's just-- there's a void.

There's a part of you that's been taken from you

and there's no way to replace it.

So, you know, a place like this takes the edge off of it.