Conventional wisdom holds that loneliness is a serious problem in America today. The word “epidemic” has been used frequently to describe the prevalence of loneliness, especially among young people. Yet survey data from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey on Community and Society (SCS) and a review of related survey literature suggest that such characterizations of loneliness are overblown and possibly wrong.
Looked at comprehensively, the evidence suggests that young people have always been the loneliest generational cohort, going back to the earliest survey data on the topic. Millennials are likely to be lonelier than, say, baby boomers simply because they are younger, and as the boomers before them, they will likely be less lonely in surveys taken 10 and 20 years from now.
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