A mountain of research has linked loneliness to an increased risk of dementia, depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke and early death.
Loneliness is officially a health emergency in California’s San Mateo County, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and includes part of Silicon Valley.
The county’s Board of Supervisors passed a resolution on Tuesday that declared loneliness a public health crisis and pledged to explore measures that promote social connection in the community.
It’s the first county in the U.S. to make such a declaration.
Quick random tangent. I feel like churches were a great social gathering place. Now so many are leaving religion, or at least churches behind. The sense of community is dying and it’s hard to build a physical social network anymore.
Edit: I guess I should have been more clear, I am not religious and stopped going to church around 14 when my parents stopped forcing me to go so over 20 years ago now. But in my lifetime that was a huge social gathering place. Movie theaters are dead here, there are no roller rinks or anything like that. It’s just sitting in bars or coffee shops but even there many people rightfully like to stick to themselves with headphones on instead of chatting with strangers.
I just used churches as an example as in my life I saw their utility for meeting a community of people.
Get some black friends. That is where the community is at. White folks have a lot to learn.