Top Highlights

• A key difference between my definition of loneliness (the one that will be used throughout this book) and the traditional one is that I define loneliness not only as feeling bereft of love, company or intimacy. Nor is it just about feeling ignored, unseen or uncared for by those with whom we interact on a regular basis: our partner, family, friends...
• I define loneliness as both an internal state and an existential one – personal, societal, economic and political.
• Our smartphones and social media are just two pieces of the puzzle though. The causes of today’s loneliness crisis are numerous and diverse.
• right-wing populism are, as we will see, close bedfellows.
• There is a backdrop, a fusion of causes and events which explain why we have become so lonely and atomised, both personally and as a society. As you might have suspected, our smartphones and in particular social media have played an integral role: stealing our attention away from those around us, fuelling the worst within us so that we become ever ...