A data-driven look at loneliness in America

An estimated 44 million US adults report feeling loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday,” according to new Gallup polling data from over 100,000 Americans.

That figure, which equates to 17% of the US adult population, is actually down from a high of 65 million lonely adults in March 2021 – a trend Gallup attributes to the nationwide lifting of Covid restrictions.

Some other key insights:

• In the US, loneliness is inversely related to population density (aka more people = more loneliness). Americans who live in big cities are the most likely population to report feelings of loneliness (20%), while those in rural areas are the least likely (12%).
• Residents of New England (20%) report the highest levels of loneliness across all nine US sub-regions, while Americans living in the Mountain region – AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, and WY – have the lowest levels of loneliness (14%).
• Adults under the age of 30 and those earning less than $24,000 per year report higher levels of loneliness than their older and higher-income counterparts.

💥 The impact: Like Inside Out showed us, emotions play a huge role in humans’ daily lives – and in this story, Anger and Sadness are the main characters. Lonely US adults are nearly 6x more likely to report feelings of significant anger or sadness than Americans who aren’t lonely.