Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

by Johann Hari

I assumed, at first, when I hadn’t thought about it much, it meant just being physically alone—being deprived of contact with other people. I pictured an elderly woman who’s too frail to leave the house and who nobody comes to see. But John was discovering this wasn’t true. In his studies, it turned out that feeling lonely was different from simply being alone. Surprisingly, the sensation of loneliness didn’t have much to do with how many people you spoke to every day, or every week. Some of the people in his study who felt most lonely actually talked to lots of people every day. “There’s a relatively low correlation between the objective connections and perceived connections,” he says.