“The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.”

When I moved to the edges of NOVA in September 2022, I was shocked by the difficulty of finding social groups and gatherings in my area, even with a substantial population. I later then discovered the data of what is now being called an impending "Loneliness Epidemic". 

The following are sources showing the insane extent of this looming crisis:

• Hours per day spent alone - Washington Post / American Time Use Survey
• General loneliness metrics - Edward Conard
• Social media not fufilling social needs - National Library of Medicine
• 2024 Rising loneliness and causes - Harvard 

I then came to the conclusion that I was not alone in feeling like others did not socialize as regurlaly as even just a few years prior, with countless people expressing the same problems to me. Though I cannot tackle the entirety of lonliness, I suspect that a chunk could be fought with an app-based approach that fights many casues listed on Harvards page that may replace hours on anti-social social media, and engage people in meaningful, inperson interactions.

Pillars of our app based solution will include:

• Forming and finding common interest groups for individuals
• Increasing the ease of finding casual non-formal happenings around the area
• Catalyzing interactions of new group members with existing ones through innovative procedural approaches