A mountain of research has linked loneliness to an increased risk of dementia, depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke and early death.
Loneliness is officially a health emergency in California’s San Mateo County, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and includes part of Silicon Valley.
The county’s Board of Supervisors passed a resolution on Tuesday that declared loneliness a public health crisis and pledged to explore measures that promote social connection in the community.
It’s the first county in the U.S. to make such a declaration.
That’s very true. I get basically all that from my local kink community but I think less niche hobbies could really use our model of “let’s all go grab dinner one Saturday a month and just chat”. It could easily be applied to shit like people who like a genre of book or something like that. I think you definitely do need something to fall back on that you share in common and enjoy enough to leave the house though.
Really what we need are dedicated community centers. Libraries are trying but that’s not what they’re there for