The second annual Social Connection in America survey, run by RAND and The Connection Institute with Julianne Holt-Lunstad — the author of the 148-study meta-analysis this site cites more than any other — as its scientific lead, was released this morning. Forty percent of adults report moderate to severe loneliness. About seven in ten get together with the people they care about no more than once or twice a month, and one in five only a few times a year. Fifty-seven percent belong to no club or organization; 58% did no volunteering in the past year; 62% have never gotten together with neighbors to do something for their community. Asked what gets in the way, the top answer was time, at 31%, well ahead of distance, effort and social anxiety. The survey will run every year through 2050. It is a nationally representative sample; the sample size was not in the release.
Read it next to April's number. Gallup's measure — lonely a lot of the day yesterday — sits around 20%; this survey's broader scale puts moderate-to-severe loneliness at twice that. They are different questions, and both describe the same country: one where the fundamental with the strongest mortality evidence is practiced by fewer people each year. The detail that matters most for this site is the barrier. Not money, not distance, not fear — time. The hours exist; they are going somewhere else. Among the places they go, for the readers of this site, are the tracking, the researching, the protocol and the optimizing. Holt-Lunstad's own summary was that the pattern across the data, not any single figure, is what concerns her.
Loree’s takeWhen a patient tells me they do not have time to see people, I ask them to show me a week. The time is there. It is in the hour of sleep data reviewed each morning, the supplement research, the second workout. I am not against any of those. I am against them crowding out the one input that this survey says 40% of us are short on. Connection is not a reward for finishing the protocol. It is the protocol.
Ben’s takeThirty-one percent say time, and the longevity industry's product is, precisely, time — yours, converted into attention to yourself, billed monthly. The survey also found that most people do not think virtual interaction substitutes for the real thing and that 85% rarely or never use an AI companion. Good. The market will keep trying to sell connection as a feature. The data say it is a calendar entry.
Why it matters to a recovering optimizer. There is now an annual national instrument for the fundamental the rings leave out, and its first two readings point down. If you are optimizing, the one lever the survey hands you is the one you control entirely: the hour. Take it from the dashboard and give it to a person.
The barrier is time. Take one hour a week from tracking yourself and give it to someone in a room.