The Public Health Crisis Nobody is Talking About

5 Ways to Fix Your Relationships

Photo by Jimmy Woo on Unsplash

Editor’s note: We believe this topic is important and have made a few improvements to this essay for deeper clarity and usefulness, so are reposting this updated version today.

The day after Christmas, I walked into a Barnes & Noble and it was absolutely packed with people. Teenagers, middle-aged couples, grandparents, and a genuinely diverse mix of backgrounds, people weren’t just passing time either... they were browsing, talking, lingering, and it felt like a return to the tactile and the real, even if we can’t fully explain why.

I don’t believe this shift is just nostalgia, it’s a reaction against one of the biggest public health crises of our time: loneliness, and I want to show you why loneliness hides in plain sight, and five practices that fight back to fix your relationships.

The Tension of Our Moment

I’ve noticed a trend lately... people want authenticity again. They’re tired of overly curated everything and they want real, tangible, and sometimes even old-school.

I’ve had multiple conversations with my college-age daughters about this, and they’ve said the same thing. My youngest even asked for a Sony Walkman for Christmas... cassette tapes... and I’ll admit I was kind of impressed.

But underneath there is a deeper tension. We are more connected digitally than ever, and more disconnected relationally than we want to admit, because we can keep up with dozens of people without actually being known by a single person, we can scroll through someone’s life for years and still not have the kind of friendship that survives a hard season, and we end up with access to everyone but intimacy with almost no one.

That may sound a bit dramatic… until you realize it’s measurable.

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People Look Fine and Feel Alone

The World Health Organization has linked loneliness to an estimated 100 deaths every hour worldwide... more than 871,000 deaths each year.

Read that again. Nearly a million people a year die of loneliness.

And in the U.S., the Surgeon General has reported that about half of adults say they experience loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults. Half.

That means when you walk into a workplace, a church lobby, a youth sports field, or a coffee shop, you’re surrounded by people who look fine and feel alone.

Loneliness is tricky like that. It doesn’t always show up as sadness, sometimes it shows up as irritability, distraction, cynicism, overwork, escapism, or the quiet belief that nobody really cares what you’re carrying, and it can even look like independence and competence... right up until it doesn’t.

There’s also a layer we don’t talk about enough, especially for people responsible for others. You can be surrounded all day and still be alone at night, you can be parenting kids and still feel alone, you can be married and still feel alone, you can be managing people all day long, making decisions, carrying pressure, being needed... and still not have one relationship where you are fully known.

This is a trap brought to us by the deconstruction of families and communities.

And the structure of modern life is quietly feeding it. Pew reports that in 2023, 42% of U.S. adults were not living with a spouse or partner, which means more people are doing daily life without built-in relational cover, without someone in the same house who knows what their face looks like when they’re not okay... and even if you are partnered, you can still drift into parallel living, same house, same calendar, same responsibilities, but not the same inner life, so you become functional, competent, helpful, and useful... and slowly, invisibly, isolated.

Scripture takes relationships seriously because God knows what isolation does to a human soul, and because He never designed you to carry everything alone.

“Carry each other’s burdens…” (Galatians 6:2, NIV) is instruction for real life.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” (Romans 12:15, NIV) is a call to presence, not performance.

My point isn’t to sound spiritual, but instead call us back to foundational wisdom to live differently... and to refuse the modern lie that you’re supposed to carry everything alone.

The Next Right Step

Since this is a public health crisis, we need something better than good intentions. Here are five practices that fight back.

1) Build a “One Person” Rule

Pick one person. Not ten. One. A friend you miss, a sibling you drifted from, someone at church who always seems fine, someone on your team who has been quieter than usual, and then do one simple act in the next 24 hours: call, text, or invite. “I’ve been thinking about you. How are you really doing?” works.

2) Put Relationships on a Rhythm

Most relationships don’t collapse from one explosion, they erode from no cadence, so pick a rhythm that fits real life: a weekly walk, a monthly breakfast, a standing call, a Sunday meal.

If it’s not scheduled, it becomes optional, and optional is where drift lives.

3) Ask One Honest Question

Most people don’t need advice first... they need the safety and invitation to be themselves. Try one of these: “How are you… really?” “What’s been heavier than you’ve admitted?” “Do you want solutions… or presence?”

4) Practice Tiny Touches of Care

Don’t wait until you feel loving. Act as if you do, the feeling often follows. Unload the dishwasher. Put the phone down first. Send the message that isn’t performance-based. Learn someone’s name and remember it. Follow up.

Small actions are not small when they are repeated.

And the more you purposefully cultivate relationships with love, the less you will take them for granted in the long run.

5) Become the One Who Goes First

Most people are waiting, so someone has to go first. Make the call. Send the invite. Start the rhythm. Show up even if it’s awkward, because the opposite of loneliness isn’t a larger social circle, it’s the experience of being known.

A Simple Invitation

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