TED Talks Daily
Sunday Pick: Interview: What happens to your brain without any social contact? with Dr. Vivek Murthy
18 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm Elise Hugh. Today we have an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. Everyone needs some time to themselves and peaceful solitude has stress-relieving benefits. But when being alone is forced upon you, the negative effects can be extensive and surprisingly pervasive in all areas of your life.
In this episode from TED Health, host Shoshana Ungerleider interviews Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former Surgeon General of the United States, on the loneliness epidemic and what happens to our brains when we lack social contact. After the conversation, she shares a TED-Ed lesson from educator Terry Coopers, who investigates the question, how exactly does isolation affect your body and brain?
You can listen to more of this special series on TED Health wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com. Now on to the episode. Enjoy.
This is TED Health, a podcast from TED, and I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider. I've been thinking a lot lately about how easy it is to go through an entire day without a real conversation. You know the kind I mean, not just a quick text or a passing like, hey, how are you? I mean an actual moment of connection where someone really sees you.
We're recording this episode in January and I see this trend happen more and more in the wintertime. Many of us are spending more time indoors as the weather gets colder. And sometimes the holiday season can leave us with amplified feelings of loneliness for those who are far from family or going through a difficult time. If that's you, know that you're not alone.
Because according to experts, it turns out many of us are missing this kind of deeper connection a lot more than we'd like to admit. And from a health perspective, social isolation really, really isn't good for us. In this week's episode, I'm excited to bring you a conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy, the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States.
Dr. Murthy is a physician and public health leader. He's also been sounding the alarm about what he calls the loneliness epidemic in the U.S. for years now. He sees social isolation as a public health crisis that can be just as deadly as heavy tobacco use. And we're going to talk about how we got here.
Dr. Murthy and I are going to talk about social media and how our digital lives are reshaping our relationships offline. We'll also explore some small and practical tips we can all take to rebuild connection and strengthen our well-being this new year, starting today. Then after the interview, stick around for a TED-Ed lesson on what happens to your brain without any social contact.
But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.
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Chapter 2: What is the loneliness epidemic and why is it a public health crisis?
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Dr. Murthy, thank you so much for being here with us on TED Health.
Thanks so much for inviting me, Shoshana.
So today we are digging into a topic that I know that you know well, social connection and loneliness. We use the word lonely pretty casually now, but from a public health standpoint, what does loneliness actually mean? And how is it different from simply being alone?
Most of us have felt lonely at some point in our lives. Maybe that's when we moved away to college. Maybe it's when we moved to a new job and left old colleagues behind. Or maybe it's when we were kids and we moved because of our parents' job and had to just start all over in a new town.
When you think about going beyond that, then we can get into definitions, which is that loneliness itself is a subjective term. It describes the experience of feeling like the connections I need in life are more than the connections that I actually have. And in that gap, I experience loneliness.
But it is distinct from the objective term isolation, which is more a descriptor of the number of people you have around you. And the reason this is important is because it turns out that you can be not isolated at all. You can be surrounded by hundreds or thousands of other people the way college students are on campuses.
But you can feel very lonely if you don't feel connected to those other people, if you don't feel you can be yourself or don't feel like there's anybody you can reach out to in a crisis. And this, turns out, is the common experience that people have in the world today.
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Chapter 3: How does social media impact our offline relationships?
And for those of us who have others we care about to think about it in their lives, and for those of us who are in healthcare to think about it in the lives of our patients. Like I was never really taught about how to assess social health when I went through medical training.
But what I do know is that simply by opening up a conversation with a patient and saying, how do you feel about your friendships? Do you have people you can lean on? Or do you have times where you feel lonely in your life? Can you tell me about that? This can be incredibly liberating for many patients, for many individuals who carry the weight of loneliness, often with a sense of shame.
And that's a heavy burden to bear.
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Chapter 4: What practical tips can we use to rebuild social connections?
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Gosh, that feels especially relevant right now. Social media connects millions and millions of us around the world. And at the same time, it's, of course, linked to rising loneliness, especially among young people, teenagers, the loneliest generation. What do you think is happening there?
I think social media began with the promise of creating connection and community. And somewhere along the way, it went off the rails. And I think that was driven by a business model that at its heart was about advertising. It's about third-party ad revenue, which meant that engagement became a critical driver of revenue.
And if your goal is to keep people on your platform and keep them engaged, then you can employ all kinds of tools and tactics to keep them on, even if it's not good for their mental and physical health and well-being. And I think sadly, that's what we have seen. And I heard this all the time when I was traveling the country and the world as Surgeon General.
So many people have actually said that they have tried to detox or quit social media. A lot of them have not succeeded. But I think it's because we have, think about this, some of the best resource companies in the world with some of the most talented product engineers in the world using cutting edge neuroscience to figure out how to get you to stay on for longer and longer.
And especially when you think about young people, 13-year-old who might be using social media and struggling to limit their usage. And we say to them, hey, you just got to find more willpower, be more disciplined. In the face of that, that is the definition of an unfair fight. So I don't doubt that many people who built these platforms began many years ago with the desire to create community.
But what the data is actually telling us very clearly now is that for many people, that experience is not translating to community. In fact, young people tell me all the time about how social media would make them feel worse about themselves. And there are a number of studies that have backed this up over the years.
Some of them I included in my own Surgeon General's Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. But young people tell us that using social media makes them feel worse about their body image as well. Many adolescents say they feel addicted to social media. It's impacting their sleep as well.
And so you put all of this together and you have to ask yourself the same question, I think, in medicine we ask ourselves all the time, which is how do you balance risk and benefit? And I think what we're seeing is that the risks of social media have been dramatically underplayed and they're far more significant for young people, and I would say even for adults, than we have recognized.
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Chapter 5: What are the mental and physical health effects of social isolation?
The people they loved, the people they served, the people who gave meaning to their lives. And my hope is that all of our children don't have to wait until the end of their lives to realize that our purpose is most readily found in each other.
Oh, my goodness. I was not expecting to be so moved during this conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vivek. You're amazing. I so appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective and your heart with us.
Thank you, Shoshana. Thank you for the chance to have this conversation. And this means this is very personal for me, too, because like a lot of people in the world, like I'm worried about what's happening in the world. I'm worried about the future for my kids. But I also know that there is a better world we can create. And we have not just the ability, but the instincts to actually do it.
Because I think the world we're talking about, where we're anchored and rooted in each other, this is actually the kind of world that We have evolved to live in over thousands of years. We evolved to be together as social creatures, to collaborate, to help each other, to find purpose in lifting each other up.
And so the world I'm talking about is not so much a radical new world that's foreign to the human experience. It's a return to who we always have been at some level.
Beautiful. Thank you.
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Thank you.
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