Loneliness is a serious public health problem

A 2018 survey from the Economist concluded that more than 20% of adults in both the United States and the United Kingdom say they "always or often feel lonely, lack companionship, or feel left out or isolated." While it might be expected that loneliness has mental health implications such as anxiety and depression, yet, the extent of the damage can reach much further. In 2015 UCLA researchers discovered that social isolation can lead to chronic inflammation and ultimately heart disease, stroke, alzheimer's and metastatic cancer. 

When peeling back the statistics on loneliness it becomes clear that younger people are increasingly more lonely than their adult counterparts. A key reason for this is the time teens and adolescents are spending on social media. Text messages are taking preference over phone calls. FaceTime is taking preference to in-person interactions. People are spending more and more time as incognito "viewers" from behind screens as opposed to in-person participants, and the results are starting to show.