Giving Compass' Take:

• Research shows that many people who live alone excel at creating and nurturing personal relationships. Rather than forgoing relationships, they are redefining them in more expansive ways, reports The Atlantic.

• What can nonprofit organizations in the mental health sector do in terms of outreach for those living in social isolation, whether they are young adults or part of the older generation?

• Here is another look into the issue of loneliness.

Americans have long worried that their countrymen are lonely, but recently, mild concern has given way to outright panic. In 2017, the former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned that loneliness in the United States had reached epidemic proportions. And it’s not just Americans who are anxious—in January, British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed the country’s first minister for loneliness.

While apprehensiveness about elders is particularly intense — the aging grandparent who lives alone and hasn’t talked to a soul for days has become a recurring motif in stories about the crisis ­­— no group is exempt from concern: A recent study suggests the unnerving possibility that young adults may be the loneliest Americans of all.

Explanations for this plague of loneliness abound, ranging from decliningparticipation in organized social activities and religious organizations to the ubiquity of technology such as social media and cell phones that suck up people’s attention. Often, though, policy makers and pundits single out two culprits: sagging marriage rates and the increasing number of Americans living alone.

Read the full article on the loneliness epidemic by Bella DePaulo at The Atlantic.