America’s loneliness problem has a cure: Leave your house, put down your phone : NPR

It’s the Friday evening of a long work week. Maybe you sit down on the couch and start to scroll on social media.

A friend texts you to cancel the dinner you planned, and a part of you is relieved, happy even. Now you can stay home and order in.

Journalist Derek Thompson says this turn toward isolation can’t entirely be blamed on COVID-19.

“We are now in the midst of an anti-social century,” he says.In his most recent article for The Atlantic, Thompson writes that the trend toward isolation has been driven by technology.

Cars, he says, “privatized people’s lives” in the second half of the 20th century, by allowing them to move from dense cities into more sprawling suburbs. Televisions, meanwhile, “privatized our leisure” by keeping us indoors.

More recently, Thompson says, smartphones came along, to further silo us.America has a loneliness epidemic.

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