Loneliness: People do need people

Ashley, North Dakota, is a small farming town where the local diet leans hard on sausage, deep-fried chicken and strudel. It has something of a medical center, but the nearest trauma hospital able to handle the most serious injuries is almost four hours away in Fargo. Yet the elders in McIntosh County, with Ashley as its county seat, frequently live into their 90s, and sometimes beyond. It had the highest proportion of people 85 and older in the country. Doesn't make sense until you see why it does. Stress levels are low. The farmers pursue a lifetime of physical exercise. When they retire in town, they still mow their small lawns and grow vegetables in the backyard. The numbers may be skewed by the many young people who leave town for economic opportunity in bigger places, but they're hard to dismiss. A big factor in this longevity, researchers found, was social connection. Every morning the old men would gather at the Dakota Family Restaurant for coffee and breeze-shooting. The women had their own table. "The cafe is where the networking takes place," the county's director of social services said. "If somebody doesn't show up for coffee, it would cause a lot of chatter, and someone will check on them." The pattern repeats itself across the Northern Plains. The most recent National Vital Statistics report lists the states for the highest life expectancy at birth: No. 1 is Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Utah and New Hampshire. What these very diverse places have in common are relatively strong social infrastructures. A New York psychiatrist known for running group sessions would tell his patients: "You don't need me. You need friends." He'd put together people with little in common by age, ethnicity and income level. Forced at first to air their angst before absolute strangers happy to be critical, the group members developed fast friendships that flourished decades after official therapy stopped. Loneliness has been declared an epidemic leading to sickness and self-harm, and rightly so. The pandemic deepened isolation, but the shrinking personal ties began well before. Robert Putnam's 2000 book, "Bowling Alone," documented an ongoing collapse of American community. Recent research found that from 2003 to 2022, face-to-face socializing among American men fell by about 30%. But for teenagers, it shrunk 45%. (Reporters covering youth sports have long bemoaned driving past beautiful baseball fields with no one on them.) Email, texting and posting have not replaced in-person socializing. And the result appears to be increased depression, especially among teenagers. And if their communication swims in anger-provoking social media feeds, small wonder so many are drowning in despair. Are there remedies? Some are being tried. Several cities run activities fairs, where attendees can look over groups to join. Interests can be books, oil painting, choral singing, cooking, whatever. We now read of adult sleep-away camps designed to spark new friendships. Attendees piled into a room of bunk beds have little alternative at night to yakking with new acquaintances. It's bit of a shame that these encounters seem more mechanical than the simple act of saying hi to the neighbor taking out garbage at the same time. But let's give them a try. The early 19th-century French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville noted Americans' fondness for joining associations: political, neighborhood, labor. He famously wrote, "Nothing in my view deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America." And in many ways, they were superior to the social groups in old Europe, largely rooted in fossilized class distinctions. Americans, unplug your monitors, open the door to the fresh spring air and strike up a conversation. People need people. You, too. Follow Froma Harrop on X @FromaHarrop.