Did your social graces suffer a massive setback during the pandemic? Are you only now finding your way back to navigating dinner parties, networking events and conversations involving more than one person at a time?

It’s not a trivial trend because, as we lost our opportunities to socialize, we also lost our comfort in communing with strangers and that’s bad for them and for us.

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Smart people who study these things say loneliness has gripped the planet, leaving more and more people isolated, either by choice or by circumstance, and loneliness is known to be a contributing factor to mental health issues and also physical ailments such as dementia, stroke and cardio-vascular damage. The research on how this happens is relatively new and unfolding but the evolutionary theory makes a tonne of sense. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee recently interviewed the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, on loneliness. In their conversation they rolled back the hands of time to the days when we all began to cluster in caves and socialize around fires. If you were alone in those days, you weren’t so concerned about the long term impacts of loneliness but rather much more aware of being vulnerable to any predator who might have otherwise overlooked you in a crowd. When the brain senses danger, or threat, signals go out to increase heart rate, adrenaline, cortisol and testosterone, to help you run or fight. The problem is, this response is intended to be temporary, not a permanent state of being. When it becomes your status quo, inflammation sets in and we all know by now that inflammation is the devil incarnate.

Compounding the issue is the devil’s henchmen, social media and technology in general. When you can order food and necessities online, to be delivered to the doorstep or mailbox, when you can download books rather than go to the library, when you can “play” sports while sitting in your ergonomically designed gaming chair, you slash the number of real human interactions which serve to curb isolation and loneliness.

No doubt you’ve seen the reams of research and opining about how this kind of truncation of socialization is killing our teenagers but in case you’ve missed it, here’s a great place to start reading. In a bold move, the very same US Surgeon General just came out with a health advisory about the risks and damage done to children by being online.

Some years ago, I worked with a brilliant ER physician, Dr. Alexandra Greenhill, who was then working on using technology to combat the negative impacts of technology. This was long ago, when COVID was just a twinkle in some wet market’s eye, but I vividly remember her stories of the Emergency Department, and her personal Eureka moment that tied the physical toll she saw on humans presenting to Emergency, to their lives of isolation and loneliness. Sometimes that manifested as drinking and driving, or simply drinking or substance use gone amok, but other times it was stroke or heart attack, or other non-accident mishaps. She began to wonder if tracing back to some root causes could divert these people from becoming acute care patients. It was Greenhill who first told me that giving, and accepting, help from others, gave you as much physical benefit as a trip to the gym. Now I see that stress response and inflammation are what she was positing. Clever woman!

“Stop being lonely” is about as useful a piece of advice as telling a child not to spill their milk but the good news is there are small, simple steps everyone can take to up their humanity and downregulate their inflammation.

I’ve written about these small steps before, but more through the lens of improving customer service. Rather than rote asking, “how are those first few bites tasting” or “did you find everything you were looking for today”, add a couple more words and start a mini conversation. It’s not a lifelong commitment to friendship but a measly 3 minutes while your groceries are being tallied and bagged; so much healthier for you than 3 minutes at the self-checkout. If the server/cashier doesn’t make the first move, you can do it. Honestly, you can!

A random observation or question could lead to a longer conversation, could lead to a friendship, could lead to avoiding the heart attack that’s heading your way. If you search for “approaching strangers” you will find hundreds of thousands of results including a vast library of how-to videos. I kid you not. We are at a stage of human history when we require a textbook on how to strike up a conversation. It’s a skillset that’s easy to trivialize until you come to recognize the health impacts on an individual and societal level.

This is not for everyone but I try to find opportunities to compliment complete strangers or otherwise engage them in one or two moments of conversation. Every time I do, my heart lifts and I remember that the world isn’t all dungeons and dictators. Yet.

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