The Connection Economy: Why Loneliness Is One of the Defining Markets of the Decade

A health crisis hiding in plain sight

For most of history, connection was a by-product of daily life. People lived near family, worked alongside neighbours and met friends through shared places: the workplace, the market, the place of worship, the local club. Relationships weren't something anyone had to go looking for.

That's no longer true for a large share of the world's population, and the scale of the change is only now being measured properly.

In June 2025 the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Connection published its flagship report, From loneliness to social connection: charting a path to healthier societies. Its central findings are stark [1][2]:

• 1 in 6 people worldwide is affected by loneliness.
• Loneliness is linked to around 871,000 deaths a year, roughly 100 deaths every hour.
• Social isolation affects up to 1 in 3 older adults and 1 in 4 adolescents.

The WHO also found that lonely people are about twice as likely to experience depression, and that lonely teenagers are 22% more likely to get lower grades or qualifications than their peers [1].

Not just an older person's problem

Loneliness is often assumed to be mainly a problem of old age. The data doesn't support that assumption.

According to the WHO, between 17% and 21% of people aged 13 to 29 report feeling lonely, with the highest rates among teenagers [1]. Gallup's global research with Meta, covering 142 countries and territories, found that 24% of people worldwide feel very or fairly lonely, more than a billion people, with rates highest among the youngest adults surveyed (27%) and lowest among those aged 65 and over (17%) [3].

Loneliness also isn't only a problem for wealthy countries. The WHO found that about 24% of people in low-income countries report feeling lonely, roughly double the rate in high-income countries, about 11% [1].

In other words, the people most likely to feel disconnected are young, and they're often in the fastest-growing, most digitally connected markets in the world.

The United States as a warning sign

The United States offers some of the most detailed data on how social life is changing.

In 2023 the US Surgeon General issued an advisory, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. It reported that around half of US adults experience loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults [4]. It also stated that lacking social connection can raise the risk of premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day [4].

The most striking evidence concerns time. Drawing on the American Time Use Survey, the advisory found that time spent in person with friends fell from about 60 minutes a day in 2003 to 20 minutes a day in 2020 [4]. For people aged 15 to 24, the drop was nearly 70%, from roughly 150 minutes a day to 40 [4].

The trend hasn't reversed since the pandemic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest time use release shows that in 2025, 30% of Americans socialised or communicated on an average day, down from 38% in 2015, and spent 35 minutes doing so, down from 41 [5].

Gallup's US tracking offers a little good news. The share of adults who said they felt loneliness "a lot of the day yesterday" fell to 17% in early 2023 from a pandemic high of 25% [6]. But that still represents tens of millions of people, and the long-term decline in time spent together continues.

Why connection got harder

No single cause explains the trend, but several forces point the same way.

• Fewer shared places. Many of the everyday settings where people used to meet repeatedly, including offices, clubs and neighbourhood institutions, play a smaller role in daily life than they once did.
• More mobility. People move for education and work more often, leaving family and school friends behind and having to rebuild social circles from scratch.
• Screens that connect and isolate. Digital platforms make it easy to stay in touch with people we already know, but they're less good at helping us form new, deep relationships. Time online often replaces time together rather than adding to it.
• Smaller households. More people live alone or in small households, reducing everyday contact.

The result is a gap between the number of people we're connected to online and the number we can call on when it matters.

From health problem to consumer market

The WHO frames loneliness mainly as a public health issue, and rightly so. It notes that the economic costs are significant but are "only beginning to be estimated" [2]. Rather than quote uncertain cost estimates, it's more useful to look at what people already do to address the problem.

They pay for connection in many forms:

• Dating and relationship apps. Pew Research found that 30% of US adults have used an online dating site or app, rising to 53% of those under 30 [7].
• Social and community platforms. Social apps are among the most used categories on phones. Sensor Tower reports that people spent about 3.6 hours a day on mobile apps in 2025 [8].
• AI conversation and companion apps. A fast-growing new category we examine in a separate article.

Together these form what can be called the connection economy: products and services whose core promise is to help people meet, belong and feel understood.

What the connection economy gets wrong today

If demand is so strong, why is loneliness still rising? One answer is that many products are designed to capture attention rather than create relationships.

Engagement isn't connection. A feed can keep someone scrolling for hours without them talking to anyone. Metrics such as time spent and daily active users reward attention, not the depth or durability of relationships.

Swiping isn't meeting. Dating apps have brought huge numbers of people together; Pew found that one in ten partnered US adults met their partner online [7]. But many users describe exhausting experiences that produce matches without conversations and conversations without meetings.

Friendship is underserved. Most digital products focus on romance or on broadcasting to an audience. Far fewer focus on helping adults make friends, even though friendship is at the heart of the loneliness problem.

What the next generation of connection products needs to do

The evidence suggests a clear design brief for anyone building in this space:

1. Measure relationships, not sessions. Success should mean conversations started, meetings held and connections that last, not only minutes spent in the app.
2. Serve friendship and community, not just dating. The largest unmet need is for everyday belonging.
3. Design for the young and for fast-growing markets. Loneliness is highest among young people and in lower-income countries [1][3].
4. Move people from online to offline. The best connection products end with people spending time together in person.
5. Build safety in from the start. Trust is a precondition for connection, especially for women and younger users.

The takeaway

The world has more ways to communicate than ever, and more people feeling alone. With one in six people affected by loneliness and hundreds of thousands of deaths a year linked to it [1][2], connection is no longer just a personal matter. It's a public health priority and one of the largest consumer opportunities of the decade.

The businesses that win won't be the ones that capture the most attention. They'll be the ones that help people build relationships that last.

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References

[1] World Health Organization. Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death (news release on the Commission on Social Connection flagship report). 30 June 2025. https://www.who.int/news/item/30-06-2025-social-connection-linked-to-improved-heath-and-reduced-risk-of-early-death

[2] World Health Organization. Commission on Social Connection. https://www.who.int/groups/commission-on-social-connection

[3] Gallup. Almost a Quarter of the World Feels Lonely. Ellyn Maese, 24 October 2023. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/512618/almost-quarter-world-feels-lonely.aspx

[4] US Department of Health and Human Services. Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. May 2023. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

[5] US Bureau of Labor Statistics. American Time Use Survey: 2025 results. 25 June 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

[6] Gallup. Loneliness in U.S. Subsides From Pandemic High. 4 April 2023. https://news.gallup.com/poll/473057/loneliness-subsides-pandemic-high.aspx

[7] Pew Research Center. Key findings about online dating in the U.S. 2 February 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/

[8] Sensor Tower. State of Mobile 2026. January 2026. https://sensortower.com/blog/state-of-mobile-2026