Issue 543 of New Internationalist

May-June 2023

The crisis of loneliness

The world began to notice something was awry when ‘ministries of loneliness’ cropped up in Japan and the United Kingdom following the Covid-19 pandemic. But prolonged social isolation and emotional alienation have been decades in the making.

While the problem of loneliness is finally getting some attention, the solutions being touted to ostensibly help us reconnect, feel lackluster at best, and potentially harmful at worst.

This magazine explores how we are being robbed of meaningful social interaction – through the lens of work, love, digital cultures and social marginalization. But, there is hope too. As labour reporter Eve Livingston argues, loneliness can also be a catalyst for thinking about the social structures we desperately need to meaningfully connect once more.

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