The loneliest people (and places) in America

America’s purported loneliness epidemic, with its fuzzy definitions and clashing claims, is the type of gnarly challenge that’s guaranteed to both attract and destroy data journalists. So we appreciated the simplicity of D.C. reader Omika Suryawanshi’s question on the subject: How many American adults feel lonely? We didn’t have a great answer back in 2022 when Suryawanshi posed this question. But last month, we were rummaging around in the Census Household Pulse survey after the Trump administration briefly took it offline and axed its questions about sexual orientation and gender identity. And we discovered that recent Pulse surveys shed some light on loneliness. Skip to end of carousel Department of Data We here at the Department of Data are dedicated to exploring the weird and wondrous power of the data that defines our world. Read more. End of carousel In 2024, the Pulse asked more than half a million American adults how often they felt lonely. For most of us, the answer was rare ... Read full article.