Loneliness and social connection

The Commission’s figures

The figures are from the WHO Commission on Social Connection’s flagship report, “From loneliness to social connection — charting a path to healthier societies”, published 30 June 2025, as reported in WHO’s news release of the same day. An estimated 16% of people worldwide — 1 in 6 — experienced loneliness between 2014 and 2023. The Commission estimates that the global number of deaths associated with loneliness was 871,000 per year during 2014–19 — about 100 deaths every hour. The deaths figure is an estimate of a pattern across large populations, not a precise body count, and a population-level pattern says nothing certain about any one person’s life. The report followed the first resolution on social connection, adopted by the World Health Assembly in May 2025.

Loneliness and isolation in older people

Up to 1 in 3 older adults is socially isolated, and about 1 in 10 older people experiences loneliness (WHO). The WHO Commission on Social Connection’s report (30 June 2025) puts loneliness among older adults (aged 60 and over) at about 11.8%. WHO’s mental health of older adults fact sheet (20 July 2026) says social isolation and loneliness together affect about a quarter of older people, and names loneliness and social isolation as key risk factors for mental-health conditions in later life. About 15% of adults aged 70 and over lived with a mental disorder in 2023, most commonly anxiety or depression. The connection runs both ways: loneliness and isolation raise the risk of mental-health conditions, and mental-health conditions can deepen isolation. The companion guides on healthy ageing and on depression and anxiety awareness cover the two sides of that circle.

Adult loneliness and social connection

This section is the home for the gap the research found: adult loneliness and social connection, not only older-age loneliness. Loneliness is highest among the young: between 17% and 21% of people aged 13–29 reported feeling lonely, with the highest rates among teenagers (20.9% of 13–17-year-olds, 17.4% of 18–29-year-olds). It is also highest where incomes are lowest: about 24% of people in low-income countries reported feeling lonely — twice the rate in high-income countries (about 11%). Lonely people are twice as likely to become depressed, and loneliness and social isolation increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline and premature death (WHO, 30 June 2025). The adult picture matters because the older-age picture is its continuation: the isolation of an older person often began decades earlier, and the Commission’s own framing is a life-course one.

What is known, and what is not

The Commission’s report lays out a five-area roadmap: policy, research, interventions, improved measurement (including a global Social Connection Index), and public engagement. Solutions exist at national, community and individual levels — from raising awareness and changing national policies to strengthening social infrastructure such as parks, libraries and cafés, and providing psychological interventions. The honest framing, which no competitor guide in the research offered, is that the evidence on which interventions work best is still thin: the roadmap calls for more research and better measurement precisely because the existing evidence is limited. This page does not recommend any intervention, and it does not list activities for lonely people to try — that would be personal advice dressed as awareness. What it states is the Commission’s own position: social connection should be treated as a public-health priority, alongside physical and mental health.

Frequently asked questions