Professor Melody Ding

Professor Melody Ding is an epidemiologist from the University of Sydney. She's done loads of studies on this subject, one of which analysed loneliness in older adults in the US using more rigorously controlled survey data. So we use the data called Health and Retirement Study. It's from the US, particularly on the middle-aged and older population, generally 50 plus. And looking at this particular group from 1996 to 2018,

We actually didn't observe an increase. In fact we saw a small decrease in loneliness in this age group alone. Melody has also looked at the data from Europe. The picture is really quite noisy. It really depends on the measure, depends on the population, depends on the country. Some studies suggest increase, others suggest stable, and others suggest decrease. So that's why I hesitate to

and consistent increasing trends in young people in the last 20 years. And that's been quite consistent across different continents and countries.

The term social epidemic is sometimes used by scientists to describe loneliness, to draw a distinction with an infectious disease. But even then, Melody isn't sure it's a good strategy. So I can see the point of using the word epidemic because we really want to call for action and then that really highlights the urgency. But it also pathologizes loneliness in a way, which is actually quite a common thing.