Evidence base
Harvard Graduate School of Education, Making Caring Common
Loneliness in America: How the Pandemic Has Deepened an Epidemic of Loneliness
What it found
This 2021 survey from Harvard's Making Caring Common project found 36% of Americans reported serious loneliness, rising to 61% of young adults aged 18-25 and 51% of mothers with young children. 43% of young adults said their loneliness had increased since the pandemic began. About half of lonely young adults said no one had spent more than a few minutes recently asking how they were doing in a way that felt genuine.
Why it matters for practice
The finding on genuine check-ins points past prevalence statistics toward a specific, actionable gap: the quality of everyday contact, not just its frequency. Programme designers targeting young adults and new mothers should treat this as evidence for where to intervene, not as a measure of intervention effectiveness, since the data are self-reported and pandemic-specific.