Shamabil Yacob

So when we looked through our data, what we found was the biggest predictor of low social cohesion was poverty.

We are.

I was talking to somebody the other day, and he was saying, the question I ask is, do you know your neighbor's five doors down?

And I thought that was a really good question.

And I think for a lot of us, that would be the case now.

But think back to your childhood, and the answer would have been, of course I know who lives five doors down.

Right?

And I thought that was such a great question because that loneliness happens in these kind of concentric circles.

That loneliness happens in your community.

It happens in your workplace.

It happens with the wider institutions like sporting clubs, churches, whatever, or even voting.

So it's all these layers of society when you're lonely and you don't have a sense of belonging.

You're just not participating in so many things.

But it's not always a one-way thing.

And there was, again, a surprising thing that we saw in the data was some people who felt isolated and lonely also engaged in what I'd call oppositional behavior, very active in terms of online presence, very active on politics, very active in terms of protest and other things.

So it wasn't like they were completely isolated and in the corner, like being lonely had different faces.

No, the same.

Unfortunately, we've become less cohesive and so have they.

So the gap remains.

But I think the wider story for us last year was that we needed a benchmark to ask ourselves, how do we stand?