Loneliness, Technology and the Search for Real Connection Featuring Dr. Jean Twenge
In a report on the epidemic of loneliness released a few years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General described meeting Americans who felt profoundly isolated. On Cornerstone University’s Wisdom & Influence Podcast, host President Gerson Moreno-Riaño recalled that a person told the Surgeon General, “I’m convinced that if I died, no one would even know I ceased to exist.”
“That broke my heart,” President Moreno-Riaño said. “This shouldn’t be happening in our country.”
That sobering reality framed a conversation with Dr. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and leading researcher on generational change, mental health, and social behavior. A professor of psychology at San Diego State University, she joined President Moreno-Riaño to explore why loneliness is widespread—and how to restore meaningful human connection.
Dr. Twenge explained that loneliness carries a stigma. “People who feel lonely sometimes feel ashamed,” she said. “Maybe I’m lonely because I did something wrong, or maybe I should have all these relationships around me… But so many people these days are lonely. It’s just the way our culture has shifted.”
Much of that shift, she notes, is technology’s influence. “We think of our digital age as being one of connection,” and that while technology can help people reach out, she asserts, “if you just have those connections online, often it just isn’t enough to keep you from being lonely.”
Research points to a clear turning point for younger generations. “Teen loneliness really started spiking about 2012 with the phone,” she said, describing how smartphones correlate to a marked decline in how often young people and also adults spend time together face-to-face.
A key distinction was made between solitude and loneliness. “You can be alone, but not lonely,” she explained. However, loneliness is about belonging—“that achy feeling… wait, where did everybody go? And I don’t feel like I belong here.”
Dr. Twenge describes loneliness as deeply human and rooted in humanity’s survival instincts. “Loneliness is like an alarm system,” she said. “It tells you when you need to go and seek social connection.” Throughout history, “If you were alone, then you were probably dead… We had to work together to survive.”
Responding to that alarm requires courage. She recommends that “we should be willing to take that small social risk.” Even brief conversations with strangers often leave people feeling “happier” and “less lonely.”
Institutions also play a role. A high school student once shared with her that lunchtime was his one chance to talk face-to-face with friends—but instead, they were absorbed in their phones. “If his school said, no phones from the beginning of the school day to the end, that problem would go away,” she said.
Faith communities face similar choices. Gathering together matters because “the fellowship is going to be one of the best parts of it,” in her view.
Despite sobering trends, she expressed hope. “Gen Z is more empathic,” and wants to help, she offers. However, she cautioned that required or “volunTOLD” service can undermine genuine engagement, noting that meaningful connection is strongest when chosen.
Today’s timely conversation made clear that resolving loneliness will require shared responsibility—choosing presence over technology’s convenience and courage over comfort.
About the Wisdom & Influence Podcast
Wisdom & Influence, the official podcast of Cornerstone University, explores how Biblical wisdom shapes culture, leadership, industry, ministry, and everyday life. Hosted by President Gerson Moreno-Riaño, each episode features thought-provoking conversations with Christian influencers: national thought leaders, professors, students, alumni, and more — sharing actionable insights and inspiring stories to help you spread Biblical truth in our world.
About Dr. Jean Twenge
Dr. Jean Twenge is a psychologist and professor of psychology at San Diego State University. She has authored more than 190 scientific publications and seven books, including Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents—and What They Mean for America’s Future.
Her research has been widely covered in national media, including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Today, Good Morning America, and National Public Radio and others.
Wisdom & Influence Podcast | Episode 9 | Full Transcript
President Moreno-Riaño
I’m here with Dr. Jean Twenge. She is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, author of seven books, over 120 publications, and an expert on generational changes and differences. Thank you for being here with us today.
President Moreno-Riaño
Thank you for being here today with us at Cornerstone University.
Dr. Twenge
Thank you so much.
President Moreno-Riaño
I wanted to talk with you about loneliness and the epidemic of loneliness. There’s such a stigma around it. On the one hand, there are people who don’t want to talk about it. Others say it’s too negative to talk about. Share with us why you think there’s such a stigma around the topic of loneliness and the effects of loneliness.
Dr. Twenge
I think that people who feel lonely sometimes feel ashamed. Maybe I’m lonely because I did something wrong, or I should have these relationships around me. But so many people these days are lonely. It’s just the way our culture has shifted. It makes it tough for people to truly connect to each other. We think of our digital age as being one of connection.
But that’s not really the emotional true connection. Every once in a while it can be great to use technology to reach out, and you can do that. But if you don’t also have those in-person times with people, those close relationships, it’s kind of empty. If you just have those connections online, often it just isn’t enough to keep you from being lonely.
President Moreno-Riaño
I read something recently. It was entitled The Antisocial Century and how there are individuals who are actually choosing to be alone. For a host of reasons. Now the trend is to walk into a restaurant and it’s empty, but lots of takeout orders. People just come, pick it up, and go home. Share with us what’s happening there as well–people who are choosing to be alone. I’m not saying they’re lonely, but they are choosing to just say “no human interaction for me.”
Dr. Twenge
We do have to acknowledge there’s a difference between those two things because there are times it’s great to be alone and have quiet time. And there are some people who don’t want as much social interaction around them. I think the difficulty is that we have people who make that choice, but there are a lot more people who would like to have those closer connections, and they’re not there and are lonely.
President Moreno-Riaño
Help us with a definition of loneliness. When I read The Surgeon General’s report from a couple of years ago, it was hard to truly pin down a definition. There’s isolation, alienation, social disconnection, disconnectedness, and loneliness. Help our audience to get a sense of this word: lonely or loneliness. What are we really talking about here?
Dr. Twenge
The most important distinction to make as we were just discussing is that you can be alone, but not lonely. There are a bunch of issues here that we have in terms of the trends in society. Both of them are important. People are less connected to each other. They’re spending a lot less time with each other face-to-face.
So they don’t have that true social connection like they used to. But if everybody was like, hey, that’s cool, I’m fine, then we wouldn’t have a problem. But we do because we have that, and we have more people saying that they’re lonely, particularly young people. We have the strongest evidence of that from this study that I’ve been working on, looking at trends in loneliness among teens.
It asks questions like: Do you often feel left out? Do you often feel lonely? Do you feel like you have people you can rely on? Are they usually friends who are there for you? Those are some things on a loneliness scale. And as a research psychologist, often we define things by how we measure it. And we measure it by how we define it.
So that captures loneliness pretty well, that it’s not just being alone. It’s that feeling…that kind of achy feeling of …wait, where did everybody go? And I don’t feel like I belong here.
President Moreno-Riaño
I think one of the most heartbreaking parts of that report was the initial letter to our Surgeon General. He said that he’d been traveling throughout America, and he met people who would tell him how lonely they were. And one in particular said, I’m convinced that if I died, no one would even know I ceased to exist. And it broke my heart. I don’t know the person, but I thought, this is terrible. This shouldn’t be happening in our country, but it is happening everywhere, it seems.
One of the things I want to ask you about is the kinds of things we need to do. Driving on the highway, you see bumper stickers. And one that was particularly troubling for me was the more people I meet, the more I like my dog. You put a cat or whatever pet you want in there.
But to address this, you have to get involved. You have to be willing to walk into somebody else’s life. And there seems to be a hesitancy to do that over the last 3 or 4 years. So what gives us a sense of what to do there?
Dr. Twenge
Right. We should have a little courage. We should be willing to take that small social risk. There are a number of ways. There is some really cool social psychology research that says that people usually really don’t like the idea of striking up a conversation with someone they don’t know on a train, on a plane, in a line, at a grocery store.
But when they do it, when they are encouraged to do it, like in an experiment, they see the outcomes. They’re happier, they’re less lonely. Even those little connections really seem to help people out. You may think that that’s going to be awkward or cringe, as the kids call it, but it’s not.
And most people are good and most people are friendly. It’s probably going to go well and help you feel better. The other that’s really hard these days is social media has social in it, but it’s not really, truly social connection. It’s made out to be. But putting that phone down and seeing people in person, having fellowship. That’s what we need.
President Moreno-Riaño
I’m thinking about social media reels. The entire phenomenon of reel culture and all those things. And the effect it is having on people, young or old. And I’m wondering if that is part of the stigma. Everyone looks funny, great, all put together. And you feel this angst piece.
How much of this also structural. There’s a lot of work being done on architecture and cities being built in townsquares. How much of it is the way we set up modern life, if I can put it that way? I read a report that TV and the automobile were two of the inventions that really isolated us. And now you have the phone. How much of it is the structures of life? And how much of that can really be changed?
Dr. Twenge
Right. I think the automobile, it’s true. Now, look, I’m a suburban girl and I like my car. I live out in the middle of the country. You’re not going to say you’re not going to have it. You’re going to have a hard time convincing me we should all live in the city. And, or that absolutely all of us have to be in a walkable place where it’s loud, for example. The people part is fine. It’s just that there’s some downsides.
But, we’ve had suburbs since the 1950s. And definitely in the 80s and 90s. And teen loneliness really start spiking about 2012 with the phone. That’s a really key piece for teens and young adults. And for prime-age adults, TV does seem to play somewhat of a role.
Robert Putnam wrote this book called Bowling Alone. It’s got lots of charts. I love charts myself and have 200 of them in my latest book, Generations. So (his) book came out around 2000. It’s about 600 or 800 pages long. At the end of all of those pages, that is the conclusion comes to. That the Elks Club and Kiwanis clubs and the bowling clubs and so on, that it was TV that seems to have broken them.
President Moreno-Riaño
I remember several years ago, before I came to Michigan in 2020, we signed up for a bowling league. All my kids were really reticent too. I said, why don’t you want to bowl? These people are not like us.
And I remembered Robert Putnam’s book right away on Bowling Alone. And I remember saying to them — this is good for us.
Dr. Twenge
Absolutely. It is okay to be with people who are not like you.
President Moreno-Riaño
It’s part of the courage piece you mentioned, but also the humility piece. And I was wondering not just structurally, but in our society with politics, the intensity of political life and the intensity of civic life now, where I’m right, you’re wrong, or I think I’m right, but I really don’t need to listen to you.
What do we do with that part in cultivating what I call civic humility? Yeah. How can that help us bridge, to have the courage, as you mentioned, to overcome the lonely part.
Dr. Twenge
I think we just have to keep in mind that we can talk to people who we may not agree with politically. I mean, first of all, we don’t always have to talk about politics. It is true that it’s very pervasive these days. It seems like it’s hard to avoid. But there are lots of other things to talk about.
Isn’t the old advice always Don’t talk about politics or religion? You can have a perfectly nice conversation with someone and, usually you can keep the politics out even if it goes to that. That is what we have to come back to. It’s that civil discourse, talking to someone we might disagree with. And have that conversation to try to understand their point of view.
You may not agree with it and you may not agree with it at the end of that conversation. And that’s okay.
President Moreno-Riaño
I want to ask you a question about your research. It would be unfair for us to think that we can get rid of loneliness perfectly. That raises the question about loneliness as part of the human condition, what it means to be a human being. In your research, what is the balance? On the one hand, can’t ever get rid of it. It’s a facet of the human condition and there’s the contextual stuff that exacerbates it.
Dr. Twenge
Loneliness is like an alarm system. It tells you when you need to go and seek social connection. So the hard part is these days, it’s sometimes harder to do. It’s easy to do it online relatively, but it’s harder to do it in real life. But I think that’s the challenge that we’re facing.
We’re not going to eliminate loneliness. It is part of the human condition. Why is it part of the human condition? Why is it that part of our brain’s alarm clock is telling us to go seek people out? Because back in the hunter-gatherer times, if you were alone, then you were probably dead. We had to work together to survive. That’s still hardwired into us.
President Moreno-Riaño
I want to talk with you about the policy piece. What are the kinds of things you think are great policy things that towns and cities can do to foster more of its civic life?
Dr. Twenge
This is a tough question. I’ve been kind of thinking in terms of policy. Given my research and also partially as the mother of three teenage children are front of mind. One of which is a no phones during the school day policy at schools.
Some of the best data we’ve got on loneliness around the world are actually about feeling lonely at school. And that has skyrocketed in almost every country where we have data. And I think that that’s got to be one of the reasons. Maybe you want to talk to your friends at lunch, but they’re looking at their phones.
I spoke to a group of high school students in Texas. A young man came up to me and said, I really want my friends to talk to my friends at lunch. That’s my time during the day to really talk to them face-to-face. But they want to play games. What can I do? And my heart broke a little bit because what can I tell him to do? He could yell at his friends, but that’s not going to do any good. But if his school said, no phones from the beginning of the school day to the end, that problem would go away.
President Moreno-Riaño
Tell me about churches. The Surgeon General in the report called it faith communities. As a Christian university, we think about local churches. Those are gathering places for people to come and worship together, pray together, sing together, cry together, serve together. We’ve seen a decline in the last few decades of church attendance.
What can churches do differently to shift some of this? Even in my own local church it is interesting for me. In the mornings, the pastor will say, Welcome, everyone. And to those of you watching online, there’s a camera. Welcome to you too. And I think, why are we doing this? It’s not as if we’re in the pandemic days anymore. What do you think churches could do differently to foster more of that togetherness and the social connectedness?
Dr. Twenge
It reminds me a little bit of the college class that I teach. It’s hybrid. Half of it is online, but then one day a week we are in person together. And so I get the question every semester, are you going to post the slides online, the video of the in-person lecture online.
And the answer is no and no. I’m not. If I do that, then they are not going to come in person.
We are there in person once a week for an hour and 15 minutes. That’s our time. We can do interactive stuff. I know from some colleagues it’s somewhat accurate from what they tell me. If you post everything online, they won’t come. So I do wonder about that with the churches if having it online.
And I totally understand where we want to do it, because if you’re sick or if you’re elderly and you can’t make it physically, that you have that there as a resource. But I wonder if it’s also that I don’t have to go to the trouble to get dressed in my nice clothes, get in the car. The fellowship is going to be one of the best parts of it and being with them.
President Moreno-Riaño
Several years back, Time Magazine had a cover, Volunteerism Will Save America, or something along those lines. They spoke about the young generation, I think it was a decade ago, has been that the generation has volunteered the most in America.
Dr. Twenge
Do you know what they left out of that story? That it’s required to graduate from high school. It’s not volunteerism, it’s being told to volunTold. It’s involuntary volunteerism.
President Moreno-Riaño
So it was a fake social effect?
Dr. Twenge
As far as I can tell. I work with a lot of data sets on high school students. And I remember that cover story. I remember people talking about it at the time. And I went and looked at every measure of community and civic involvement, and everything had gone down except for volunteering. And it’s because it’s required.
President Moreno-Riaño
I want to ask about the family in all of that. The fall Wisdom Conversations is about the family. What can the family do to cultivate and nurture social connectedness and to nurture volunteering, nurture “love of the other”, love for your neighbor? What is the role of the family that is undergoing significant challenges, perhaps being stretched beyond what it should be?
Dr. Twenge
That’s the challenge. Marriage and the family unit are under a lot of pressure because they often have to play a lot of roles that used to be lifted more by the community or the church or people around. It’s like the it takes a village to raise a child idea.
It’s expected to do so much. And it’s very tough for families to do all of those things and fulfill all of those needs. I think that’s one big challenge. Anything that the community or church or society can do to help out with not just child care or even mothers getting a break or fathers getting a break from time to time will be helpful.
The other big challenge now is that the fertility rate keeps going down. We are well below replacement. I just saw an economist give a great talk about the fertility rate and how if we think it’s going to change, we’re probably deluding ourselves. And economic incentives don’t seem to work. And that it’s based probably on what she calls shifting priorities.
I talked right after her and it was perfect because that’s exactly what the data that I’ve been able to collect has shown too. When you look at the polls, it’s why people don’t want to have children. They will say, I just don’t want to or I want to travel instead, or I want to do what I want to do.
We see among 18-year-olds a huge decline in the number who want to have children. That’s really striking because the number who wanted to have kids was very high and very steady, all the way from boomers, Gen Xers to millennials. And with millennials, that totally fall, but at 18, they wanted to have kids. Gen Z, the generation after them, the young adults, now even at 18, they don’t think they want to have kids. I don’t think that fertility rate is coming back up unless something drastically changes.
President Moreno-Riaño
In the data. What gives you hope?
Dr. Twenge
Gen Z is more empathic. Empathy has gone up for more young adults in the last 10 to 15 years. They’re more likely to say they want a job that will be helpful to other people. So we see that in the national surveys. And anecdotally, I see that in my students too. They’re really nice and they want to help.
President Moreno-Riaño
So it will be up to leaders, organizations, communities to really leverage that. The empathy piece. And that’s always hard to do. We talk about being “voluntold.” And policy is always a challenge. It seems to me that younger generations resent the “voluntold” part. Based on data how can families, churches, communities leverage or foster that so it addresses the loneliness piece?
Dr. Twenge
I think the idea of high school students volunteering was to have them have that experience, and then maybe they’ll like it and continue to do that. I think some do, but it’s often not timed very well. It’s often a requirement during your senior year of high school right before they may go off to college or move away.
Maybe shifting that a little bit earlier might be good, or get them involved when they’re a little bit younger. And just generally try to recognize that the stereotype of young people now being really, really selfish actually isn’t true. And they really do want to give back and make a difference.
President Moreno-Riaño
Thank you for being with us at Cornerstone and for being with the podcast. It’s great to have you here.
