connection. A 2015 meta-analysis, encompassing seventy different studies and over three million research participants from around the globe, found that social isolation and loneliness increased a person’s odds of an early death by 25 to 30 percent.3 In describing the results of a 2018 study on the health impact of loneliness, a chief medical officer for an insurance company described loneliness as having “the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.”4 Also in 2018, the United Kingdom’s government created a Commission on Loneliness, framing it as a public health issue with
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