Noreena Hertz || How to Restore Human Connection

Financial Times. She has hosted her own show on SiriusXM and spoken at TED, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Google Zeitgeist. Her latest book is called The Lonely Century, How to Restore Human Connection in a world that's pulling apart. Ara, I'm really excited to chat with you today. Oh I'm so happy to be on your show. Really, I was looking forward, really haven't looking forward to this talk for a long time. Was such a timely and important book, as you know, I mean, why did you will we

ask you why did you write this book? So it was three separate things happening at roughly the same time about four years ago. First it was my students. More and more students were coming into my office in office hours and confiding in me that they were feeling lonely and isolated. And I've been teaching at university for about twenty years on and off. I hadn't seen you know, I hadn't seen this phenomenon, and definitely not in the numbers that were coming into my office. So I thought, Okay,

that's interesting. Something's going on here, something concerning. And then at the same time, in my research, I was investigating the rise of right wing populism across the globe, the rise of leaders like Trump in the United States or La Penn in France, Salveni and Italy. I wanted to understand why people were voting for these politicians, and I started interviewing right wing populist voters across the globe, and one thing that came out time and time again from

their stories was how lonely and isolated they felt. So here was loneliness again popping up in a very different realm. And then I had bought an Alexa, an Amazon Alexa, and I noted that I was becoming increasingly attached to my Alexa, and you know, feeling increasingly close to this device in my kitchen, which got me thinking about what it came to call the loneliness economy, an entire market for goods and services designed really to alleviate loneliness, deliver connection,

or at best, deliver community. And I thought, well, this is a growing market. The market speaking I, there's increasing numbers of people who are looking for connection, looking for connection with their alexas, looking for connection via populist political parties, or looking for connection when they were young and not

finding it like my students. And I started really digging into the subject loneliness and was struck very quickly at just how significant and extensive a problem it was, with one in five Americans often not always feeling lonely, one in five millennials saying that they didn't have a single friend, forty percent of office workers saying that they were lonely at work, and I realized this was something very significant that merited spending the next two years really digging into

in depth. I'm glad you did, and I can really resonate with the Alectra thing. She I guess it's a female has been uh my source of sunshine every morning. Good morning, Scott, here's the here's the new news of the day, and then she has her favorite joke of the day. No, I know, I know, I mean me too.

It's she's a definite addition to our household. And in fact, I have a two year old niece, and my sister in law tell me that last week they were making cards in activity with the with the kid, they were making Greek greeting gods for friends and family, and the mother said, oh, who should we make a card for next? And the kids said, Alexa, I love it. I love it. So in your book, you makes an interesting argument. You say that onliness is not an only ish, It's not

only an issue of mental health. There's also economics and politics involved in this. You know, what do you estimate is the full extent of this problem, even beyond the mental health issue. So we know, you know, as you know all too well, that loneliness is bad for our mental health, and that there is a link between loneliness and anxiety, and loneliness and depression, and even loneliness and suicide.

We also know that loneliness is bad for our physical health, manifesting in higher blood pressure, higher levels of corticel stress, hormones in our body, higher pulse rates, all of these essentially not good for our body to be in a statu for protracted periods, as loneliness often is for many, which is why loneliness can even reduce our life expectancy by as much as make our risk of dying prematurely be as much as thirty percent higher than if you're

not lonely. So but as you say, it's not just health the data effects, loneliness is also bad for our wealth, bad for our wealth collectively, in part because of the cost the healthcare burden, a healthcare burden that loneliness puts on our public health systems, but also because loneliness is bad for the workplace. Lonely workers are less efficient, less motivated, less productive, and more likely to quit a company than

workers who aren't. In fact, the single biggest determinant for whether somebody will remain at a company or not is whether they have a friend at work. So loneliness is a really significant business problem as well, and also, as I found in my research, inexorably linked to the rise of right wing populism in recent years. I'm not saying, of course, that everyone who's lonely votes for populists of the right. Of course they don't, but a significant countery

of those who do are lonely. Lonely in the sense of have more limited social networks, much weaker support systems, so weaker ties with friends, fewer acquaintances, even fewer people to rely upon in times of need, but also lonely in the sense of feeling invisible, feeling unseen, feeling unheard, feeling disconnected not only from their friends and family, but

also from their fellow citizens and from mainstream politicians. And of course, right wing populists like Trump played incredibly effectively to this, speaking to this craving for community with their rallies and their spectacles, their theaters of community that they put on, but also speaking directly to this sense of forsakenness that so many people felt. You the forgotten people I am seeing and hearing you was rhetoric you would hear from Trump, but also from Lipen in France and

from Salvenia and Italy. I thought that was really an interesting point in your book, about how a lot of only people might be more attractive to populism. Could you just could you see it being the case that people who are onely, are just craving the need for belonging in lots of different ways. I mean, couldn't one make the case that people who are want to be part of Antifa on the extreme far left as well also

are extremely lonely. I mean, not to just single out I don't want to just single out yes, Trump supporters, but I mean on any of the extremes, even the extreme left. Couldn't one argue that extreme loneliness is causing people to be more extreme than maybe they would have been in the past. Definitely, And I think right wing populists have been particularly good at speaking to that, which is why we see this stronger link with right wing populists.

But there's no reason why necessarily so. And there are groups of people who are seeking belonging, and they will go to wherever they find it, whether it is on the right or the left, whether it's on Reddit, the game the game stoppers who congregated on Reddit, or whether it was the group who stormed the Capital. I mean, you know, what these groups have in common or the

in cells who are finding community. What these groups have in commonies that they're populated with lonely people who are looking for belonging and looking for a sense of identity and looking to be seen and heard, and they're finding it there. And that's, you know, the challenge centrist people of the center have. How do how do we deliver

a sense of community and belonging. Well, ironically, I am I am a centrist, and I feel like, ironically centrists are feeling more and more lonely because because everyone's moving to the extremes, so so the people in the center are the onliest of them all. Now, well, maybe that's maybe that's a good, a good state of affairs, because maybe that's when we'll see real change, and change that

will be positively impactful for many. Well, I sure hope so. Well, you know, and that's what we really do care about, you know, how can we make sure that everyone is able to give and receive care? You talk about that a little bit in your book. I'd love to hear some of your your thoughts and some practical things, and also which dimensions are under our control? Yes, so so

so the question of care. I think it's an important one to spend a little bit of time on because what we've really seen over the past few decades has been a steady devaluing of qualities like compassion and care, and they'd a hypervalorization of qualities like competitiveness and determination. And we see this in terms of what jobs are valued in society. People who care for others are typically actually paid below market rates as compared to people who

are delivering efficiency and those sorts of qualities. We see it in terms of how people are rewarded at work. You know, in most companies, qualities like kindness and care are not explicitly rewarded. And we see it in how we treat each other and what we value in each other, because what I argue is that over the past few decades,

we've essentially become increasingly individualistic. Increasingly we cast ourselves from citizens to consumers, from collaborators to competitors, from really from helpers to hustlers, increasingly seen ourselves in those ways and being increasingly I focused, ME focused, which of course inevitably

was going to make us lonelier. So when we're thinking about the solutions and how to come together again, part of it is about revaluing as a society qualities like care and compassion and acknowledging the importance of community as well. Of course, and some companies are actually making some inroads

on that front. I was inspired in conversations with Cisco, the global technology company, to discover that they actually have a scheme in their company whereby anyone up and down the organization, from cleaner to CEO can nominate anyone else in the company for a cash ward between one hundred and ten thousand dollars for doing something particularly kind or helpful or nice. This is a company really saying, you know, we value it and we're putting our money where our

mouth is. And Cisco has considerably lower turnover than the industry average, interestingly, and also was voted the best company in the world to work for by its employees for two years running. So if we think of these qualities, sometimes we mistakenly can think of these qualities as being inimicable to success, and yet they actually can help drive success. Agreed,

just kind of on community. I think one thing. I'm sure we've got so much more we can talk about, but just on community, because I think one of the things that really struck me as I thought about it and as I looked at the research was the extent to which really since the financial crisis, and this is true across the globe, but in the United States as well, we've really seen a defunding of what we might think of as the infrastructure of community, of public libraries, of

public parks, of youth clubs, of elderly daycare centers. And yet people need physical spaces to be together, to do things together, if we are to feel not only less alone, but to come together as societies. In the United States, public libraries have seen a forty percent decrease in public funding in federal funding since two thousand and eight, forty percent.

And so again it's as we think about how to reconnect, how to feel less lonely, and importantly, how to come together again, there are clearly elements of this which will need government attention, including as a matter of urgency, refunding this infrastructure of community that has been so badly eroded over the past few decades. It's such a good point, I mean, the community part is such a good point, and and the fact that we should be putting more

economic resources towards taking this issue seriously. But you know, I also asked, you know, what's under our control, because it's not. I don't think that we're completely helpless victims. So what do you think we can do, you know, to to try to get get change our well, increase our connection with others. Yes, I totally agree. We are not helpless victims, and there is so much we can do, and my book's full of ideas. Just my point, maybe

just appointed just a few. You know, one thing obviously we can do is we can We're also responsible for the communities in which we live in. This isn't only about state funding or federal funding of communities. We need to actively nurture our own communities and buy in our local shops, support our local independence stores, go to our local cafes. Don't be careful not to trade off the convenience of a contactless existence where we order our food on grub hub and order our groceries online and do

our yoga with adrin. Be careful not to trade that off for community. And of course, during the pandemic, you know, we were very grateful we could live that way. But moving forward, as we come out of it really important to do that, to commit to those in person, face

to face interactions in our neighborhoods. Partly because even a thirty second exchange with a barista in our local cafe will make us feel happier as well as more connected and less lonely, but partly because it's through those exchanges. It's through figuring out where to put your mat in the yoga class and making sure not to downward dog

in front of someone's face. It's through those moments in the grocery store when you're wheeling your trolley and you're being careful not to bump into someone that we're practicing the skills that underpin community and indeed inclusive democracy, skills of reciprocity, civility, thinking about others and not only ourselves. So that's something we really can do. And also maybe there are events that your local community is putting on,

show up at them, initiate your own events yourself. You know, I was someone Scott who before the pandemic, and before I started writing my book, I didn't appreciate enough the importance of my local community. You know, I was go go go, traveling around the world the whole time, spending endless time in hotels on airplanes. I didn't. I didn't do these things that as I was writing my book I realized were actually negative for myself as well as

for the environment. In which I live in. You know, I didn't stop and exchange ten words with the postman as I saw him. I didn't stop and say hello to my neighbor as I walked by. I just, you know, kind of blindly went on with my own life as many of us do, and writing my book and researching it and really thinking about how important these small interactions

are made me change how I behaved. And of course in the pandemic and when we were locked down, I think many of us became extremely appreciative of our local environments, our local neighbors, our local cafes, you know, many of these, many of our local stores were heroes during the pandemic, really kept us going. So's that's one thing we can do. Another thing that we can do, although I do think there's a role for government here as well, is try and put our phones down more and be more present

with each other. It's really hard to do because these our devices, social media designed to be addictive, and it sure is, so it's hard to do. But what I found in my research was that even in this fascinating study, even when a couple have a smartphone on a table in front of them, even when the smartphones turned off, and even when neither of them are touching it, the couple feel less connected to each other and less sympathetic.

And you know, add layer upon that social media and how distracting that is and absorbing, and you know, it's no wonder that you can often feel quite alone despite being in a room full of people when you're heads in your phone. So I try and put my phone in a basket in the evening so that it's literally not in arms reach, because if it is in arms reach, I will reach out for it. But I and I try and to spend one day a week where I

stay offul all my devices. But I do think the addiction is such that I do think there's a role for government here too, and that in many ways social media companies are the tobacco companies of the twenty first century and should be regulated as such, and that that's something I call for so much more that we can do and we can talk about as individuals for sure, and we can talk about more more. Scoletle Well, let me let me pick up this particular thread you were

talking about. You use the word civility is I think in a lot of ways these technologies is designed to to bring out more divisiveness as opposed to the connection. Kind of the way the algorithms work, they kind of like want to fuel the controversy. So not just in the social media realm, but also like you talk about how more densely populated cities tend to be less civil, you know, like I mean, it's amazing we don't even think about, you know, how structures can be designed or

can influence us in being more or less civil. Could you talk a little bit about why even the population of a city and how densely populated is can it can impact something like that? Yes, what's a bit like it's a bit like when you go to a supermarket and you see a row of jam jars on a shelf.

You know, if you see fifty jam jars on a shelf, you actually your brain just thinks I can't really cope, and it becomes the thought of which one to pick becomes Actually it can actually become quite stressful, and you might easily decide, you know, I'm not going to buy a jam that you go to your local corner store and there's only six to choose from, it's much easier to go and pick one well, that's a bit what living in densely populated environments can feel like, where you're

just overwhelmed with the amount of people around you that actually it can just feel easier to put your noise canceling headphones on, keep your head down, don't really look

anyone in the eye, and walk by. So it's partly a matter of scale, but there's also research that shows that the richer a country is the faster it's citizens, and that's another challenge because of course, walking fast, you don't take that time that beat to have those conversations I talked about that really actually make a difference to how connected we feel, those micro exchanges that actually matter.

More generally, the way we've designed our cities is all too frequently designed for cars rather than for people, and that comes at a cost as well. There's actually a scheme going on in Barcelona in Spain where they've designated these superblocks. This was even before the pandemic, so these big areas which have been pedestrianized, no cars were allowed to drive in, and what they found was just a massive uptick in how connected people felt to other people

in the neighborhood. Kids could play on the streets, people were able to hang out, they weren't worried about getting run over by cars, and researchers have found that streets with less less car flow have as much as three times stronger relationships between people on those streets than cars which have than streets which have a lot of cars driving by them. I mean, people don't think about this kind of stuff. I'm so glad you're pointing this out.

It's it's incredible. But there are these brui zones where there's uh, you know, we can we can design things to alleviate loneliness as well. We can have societies that do it right. So let's let's talk a little bit bit. I'm feeling depressed. Let's let's talk about good Let's let's talk about some positive Let's talk with the zones. Let's

talk about the zones. Don't be depressed, because this is actually a really optimistic bit, because there's so much hope in it, because examples of there's so many examples of things that actually can that we can do as individuals,

as businesses, and as governments. So one of the fascinating things I found in my research was that there are some communities who are not only significantly less lonely than others, but whose his members live considerably longer than others and in geographic Other people who've who've looked at similar phenomenons have coined a term blue zones for some of these areas.

There are areas like in California where Seven Day Adventists live, in Japan where they Okay, now I live, but I found I looked at my re search at a group that is less researched, and this is the Haridim that has ultra religious Orthodox Jews in Israel. So you may be familiar with this group of people. They are the group who the men typically wear black hats and kind of black coats and the women are very modestly dressed.

Are And what was fascinating about this group is that on all conventional measures of health and kind of how people should live their lives health wise, this group was not doing great. I mean they eat fatty fried, very tasty food, but you know, not not kind of dietetic food. This is a group that exercises less than the average is rarely. They're actually very they're significantly deprived of vitamin D because they're so well covered. Even though they're living

in Israel. They don't get sunlight, so you eat less healthily, more likely to be obese, don't get vitamin D, don't exercise as much. You'd think that this group would live shorter lives than the averages rarely, but actually they live longer lives. They have considerably longer life, which is what a curveball. What a curveball. That was fascinating, And the researchers who've studied this really believe that it's the community, it's the bonds between them which is giving them longer lives.

This is a group who they do a lot together. They go to bermetzvahs and passover Zadars and celebrate Huneker and pull him together. So they're off Friday nights with big groups of people gathered around tables. So they do a lot with other people. And they're also there for each other in times of need, provided of course, that you're somebody who conforms to the norms of the community. If you don't, you're excluded pretty fast. But for those who do conform, you know, they really are there for

each other in times of need. If someone's sick, that they know that they can call on others if someone's in financial distress, they know that there are people to go to, and it's these bonds, it's these ties, it's the sense that they're looking out for each other, which

is thought to deliver this health dividend. And there have been other researchers who've looked at the role religion plays in health and they've also found interestingly, people who are looking at Catholics and health also found that there were particular groups of Catholics who lived longer lives. But interestingly, it wasn't people who just believed in God or the doctrines. It was people who regularly went to church. So it

was again, it was about the community. It was about being part of the community that that delivered a health dividend. And there's been other research on the fact that when you help others, it's not only good for them, but it's also good for you. That people who don't help others actually live less long than people who do so. Yeah, so there is a health dividend, a meaningful health dividend if we feel more connected to others and are more

embedded in a community. And it's part of the reason in the United States that we see these areas where there are what are called deaths of despair. That often these are in places where, you know, the communities have

broken down totally. And I really love the the you know, what they do in a career, you know, and the fact that they they say they lived to one hundred and they and they say, well, we forget to die because the way they treat their old people there is they don't shun them like we do in America in Western societies. You know, when people are above us aorta in age, it's sort we forget about them, you know, and and we we need to integrate them into the

community for sure. I mean, it's a heartbreaking statistic. In the United States, sixty percent of nursing home residents never have a single visitor at all. See, you don't make me cry. I mean that's just like horrible, it's just horrible. And it's just I don't know why we why we why we don't actually you see the wisdom that they have. I mean, I try I try to get as many people over the age of ninety on my podcast as possible.

I know that sounds funny, but like this year, I've had Noam Chomsky, I've had yeah, there's so much wisdom of people who you know, I'm I have Jane o'connoman, who's he's approaching nineties eighty seven, Just people who it's such great wisdom, you know, of our elders, and they don't have to win a Nobel prize in order to have wisdom. I mean just you know, like my grandmam had more wisdom than maybe a lot of Nobel Prize winners just from her own sort of just life experiences.

And it's just it's a shame. It's a shame. But it's not just in the West. This is going on. In my book, I wrote about how in Japan, the fastest growing demographic who are being incarcerated are retire rates, and that's because so many elderly people there, or considerable numbers of elderly people there, are feeling so lonely and so abandoned by their families that they're intentionally committing crimes like shoplifting just in order to be jailed so that

they can find company and companionship somewhere. So yeah, but then not a positive because we don't want to feel negative. In South Korea, they have a wonderful scheme called cola tech. This is private businesses Cola text, which is an amalgamation

of word cola, like Coca cola and discothech. And these are daytime discos for elderly people, and thousands of elderly people dance by day at these daytime cola techs, and the entry fees are pretty low, you know, they're operating at scale, so they can afford to keep the price of the entry fee low and still make a good return. And you know, I love I love that thought. I love that thought of being old and going to dance

in discos by day. I love it. Well, sometimes I go to the dance clubs, you know, even you know, like the standard dance clubs where there's twenty year olds whatever, and you have and you see eighty year olds there. You know, so every now and then you see an eighty old couple coming. You know, I want to be you know, eighty, you know, and me and my partner you know, go to the dance clubs, you know, with everyone else. You know, why don't we just have to

dance with other eighty year olds? You know, why can't we? You know? The point there is integration, you know. Yeah, So in the UK, I don't know if there is a similar scheme in the United States, but in the UK there is an organization which does actually do pair young and old intentionally for dancing and that yeah, which is which is lovely, But you're right, we need to be One of the messages of my book, one of the important messages is about on need to do more

with people who are not like us. So people of different ages, people of different ethnicities, people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, people with different belief systems. We you know, were only as a society going to be able to heal our divides and come together if we get better at doing things with people who are not like us. So it can be dancing, it can be cooking, it can even be just sharing our stories. There's a story I write

in my book. I read about in my book which was initiated by a German newspaper, deed site, and the journalists were they really wanted to. They were very concerned about the growing polarization of political debate in Germany, something you know, we can relate to in other countries too, and they came up with this scheme whereby it was like a political tinder where they matched up people with significantly different political views. So, you know, they issued a

call across Germany. Thousands of people joined the scheme and then they matched up, so people who were anti immigration with people who were pro immigration, people who wanted Germany to leave Europe the EU, for people who didn't really different socioeconomic groups, trade unionists with CEOs, asylum seekers with anti immigration spokespeople, and all across the country. These pairs met up and they just had to meet up for

two hours. That was all they had to do and talk and the outcomes were standing just after just two hours, so such a short amount of time. The participants were significantly more aware of what they had in common, of what they shared, the concerns that they shared. Often it was their own family, you know, concerns over their own family. They also said that they would be much more likely

to invite someone like that to a social gathering. And interestingly, they said that they trusted Germans in general considerably more than when they'd been asked that question before the survey. And that's just speaking together. But if you layer upon that doing things together, the impact, the impact is real and significance and lasting. And that's something which we can initiate where we can participate in. But it's also something where I think there is a role for government as well.

And in France, for example, before the pandemic, they trialed like a kind of civic service for teenagers where they put together teenage is from really different backgrounds and they had to live together for a couple of months, work out how to live together, successfully, work together, do voluntary work, and again a scheme which had really exciting results. So there are structural ways we can replicate these kind of

coming togethers too as well. Wonderful any of the things that you described, are they related to muckbang ah, So Markfang is something else that I write? Okay, yes, because you wrote about that that was very interesting in the findings on that. Yeah, yes, so yes, because we've touched upon eating together and we'll come back to that. Mukbang

is eating together, but in a rather unusual way. So it's the practice of watching someone on screen eat and participating with them by perhaps sending the equivalent of likes balloons to them or little messages to them. And it's a practice there's really been growing in popularity, particularly in Asia, but also increasingly in the United States. And in Europe

as well. This practice of watching people eat. Often it is copious amounts of food, but not necessarily and often people are doing it as they're sitting at home on their own eating dinner by themselves. Because that's another part of the reason we are so much lonelier today than in the past is because we just do much less

with other people than in the past. We more likely to eat on our own, live on our own, be less likely to be members of a trade union, less likely to be members of a church or a parent teacher association. But yes, Matt Banker is watching, is puple eat and quasi participating in the process. What is fascinating though, is that face to face eating together, so really eating with real people is a really proven way for feeling much more bonded to others and also interestingly pays off

in the workplace as well. Because there was research done in Chicago with firefighters and the researchers wanted to understand why some certain companies for firefighters performed better than others, and what they found was that companies of firefighters who ate together performed twice as well as companies who didn't, so they felt much more bonded to each other and

that delivered in terms of better performance. So eating together and eating together, you know again, is a way of bringing you can use it to bring different types of people together. They also talk about in my book a scheme in the United Kingdom in Bristol where where they have regular gatherings where people from all different ethnicities and backgrounds come together and cook together and share their own dishes and recipes, and through talking about food and eating together,

they share their own stories and histories. Food is historically breaking bread together. It has been a way for people to come together. And so there's something quite sad at the thought of people now sitting at home watching a screen and having a kind of only quasi connection with someone else at the end of the screen the muckbangers. But on the other hand, arguably better than just sitting in the room on your own and not even having

that interaction at all. Absolutely, And I mean I was amazed just reading your book all the all the different things that people can do to increase their connection, manufactured connection, I should call it, you know, such as paying people to hug you right there there there, that's a that's a field. That's a field you know, a career, A career one one can have is to be a professional hugger. Yes, actually not too far from where you're based is where I met in Venice Beach, is where I met Gene,

who is a professional cuddler. And Jean told me that this is before the pandemic. Presumably it was put somewhat on pause during the pandemic, but before the pandemic, she said that, you know, real growing industry. They had the most ever professional cuddlers that that year's Las Vegas convention for professional Cuddlers. And I actually checked out in Venice Beach a cuddling session where you pay and it's a group cuddling session at a place called the Cuddle Sanctuary.

And yes, and you know, I didn't really know what to expect before I went, And to be honest, it probably didn't play that well to my British reserve and yet not perhpas my cup of tea. But it was, you know, I could see that it could play a really helpful role for people. And what was so interesting was just how diverse the people who were attending the session were. They just looked like people who were showing up at you know, at your weekly yoga class, wearing

kind of sweatpants and things. A real array of people, a university administratory, aspirring film directress, a debor c who just moved to Los Angeles, but people who just felt lonely, craving intimacy and connection, craving you know, something as basic as touch, very fundamental human need to be held, to be touched, and went and found a place to do it in a consensual way where they can meet that need.

There was one person I met those through this journey who had, you know, taken this to the extreme, Carl, because you know, this was a nice looking man. I met him in Beverly Hills at the Starbucks in his early fifties, told me about how he had moved to Los Angeles, felt very lonely. It was working for a media company, earning a good salary, but fans, it was very hard to meet new people have moved into town.

He was divorced and he started actually seeing Gene, which is how I met him, Jeane the Cuddler, And he said it transformed his life. He felt so much happier, so much less alone, so much more productive. And then he said to me, are you using my real name in your book and I said, no, I'm changing it. And he said, well, and I you know, can I tell you something In recent months, I haven't just been seeing Gene. It hasn't been enough. I've actually been seeing

other people to cuddle me. And I said, oh, gosh, that must be really expensive and he said, yes it is. And you know how I'm paying for it? And I said no, and he said, I live in my car. And this is a man in his fifties, earning a good salary, working for a major media company, who is so lonely, so starving closeness that he is living in his car, showering at the twenty four to seven gym, leaving his food in the refrigerator at work, just to

be able to have those moments of connection. It's obviously an extreme case, but when we know that one in five millennials so that they don't have a single friend at all, When we know that forty percent of office workers are feeling lonely at work, it raises really big questions about what kind of a society we've created that's manifesting in this way. In this way, absolutely, it also just just makes me think, like, is he addicted to hugs, like,

does he need an intervention like that? That seems so extreme that well, this is the psychologist in me. I'm on brand. I'm on brand by asking that question. But is he has he become too attached to the to the hug for sure, So I'm sure it's a legitimate

question in that case to be asking. But as we subcontract care and hugs and even friendship to the market, you know, I think there is a danger that more people will risk finding their needs met in these ways instead of what we might think of as more traditional, kind of real ways of connecting. I for example, another thing I experimented as part of my research with was I rented a friend in New York. You can rent friends. I rented Brittany for three hours. We had drank matcha

tea together in downtown Manhattan. We went to a bookstore, we went to urban outfitters and tried on sunglasses and hats. I mean, obviously it wasn't like being with an old friend, but it was. It was a fun experience. It was like being with a new friend, someone who laughed at all my jokes and seemed to find me very interesting. Of course, you did well, I'll give you that for free or half the price, half the price you paid Brittany, that's a deal. Well, she was forty dollars an hour,

so twenty dollars on yours. And on the one hand, you know these market interventions, whether it is Alexa, you know, being my friend or Brittany being my friend. On the one hand, you know this is there's something positive here that you know, for people who feel lonely, there are these ways that you can find connection, and with elderly people.

One of these social robot companies, elie Q and Israeli start up, these ship thousands of these little social robots to Floridians during the pandemic who were self isolating, to elderly Floridians, and they're estimate is a very heartwarming of people saying I would have felt so lonely had I not had my LQ robot with me. So on the one hand, the market actually does offer some kind of

exciting ways. The loneliness economy can help mitigate loneliness. And yet if we were to replace traditional human relationships with ones we could buy, the danger is that what we're doing is we're firstly replacing relationships where we have to give and take where we have to be mindful of the other with relationships that really don't demand that of us.

And the dangers of course that when these substitute products become it's even more compelling that we choose them over these flesh and blood normal relationships which demands so much more of us and therefore end up really isolating ourselves even more so. Yeah, so it's double edged. I'm excited on the one hand by the opportunity the market provides, especially when it comes to creating spaces for people to come together the secular cathedrals of the twenty first century.

I think the market really does have for an exciting role to play there. And to some degree, I'm excited about the role that artificial intelligence and social robots can play in alleviating loneliness, especially amongst the elderly. In Japan, where the takeup of this is its significant, you see elderly women knitting bonnets for their robot carers. Yeah. It's a thinking error to assume that people can't feel connected to an inanimate object. I mean, do you have are

they called rumbas in America? Well, those little vacuum those round vacuum cleaners. Oh yeah, you know what they other like vacuum cleaners. People become so attached to them that one inten give them names, one intent create costumes for them, which I find fascinating, and some people even take them on holiday. And those are just little vacuum cleaners. So

we can become attached to these objects. But the quest and that can be and that can be good for us as individuals if we're feeling lonely, But it does raise kind of interesting questions about what kind of society would we be if we were to substitute human relationships for robot ones. So maybe the challenge for us is to always be more human than the best robots, more caring, more compassionate, use the existence and the ever growing prevalence of these robots as a reason to make ourselves out

the robot. It's very interesting because you do talk about the implications of creating more human like AI and how it can reduce her empathy for our humans. I mean, you can get get to the point where could imagine a wife being to a husband. Why can't you be more like my robot? My robot listens to me all the time and does everything I want, how come you don't do more of that? Do you know what I mean?

Once we start comparing, we don't want to start comparing our fellow in messy humans, in perfect humans, to these perfect robots who take care of all of our needs. Yes, and also, as emotional AI becomes more advanced, you know, will you know much faster than our loving kind however and loving and kind our spouse or partner may be.

You know, we'll be able to just from the blink of our eyes, from the first kind of sound that it hears, be able to figure out our mood, how we're feeling, what we want in a way that a human will exactly. I mean, it's it's a it's exciting to think that these kinds of robots are on the horizon, but it's also kind of scary. I mean, we didn't even talk about sex robots. I mean, that's a whole

thing that's that's coming down the pipeline. And and I mean I I have a sex worker friends who tell me that most of the clients that they see they don't even want sex, they just want it, They just want connection. And I think that that's not discussed that frequently.

That's so true, and it's the same finding actually from sex robot manufacturers who say that one of the things that they're finding is the number of people who are buying a sex robot doll not to have intercourse with, but actually to be their friend, and some of them are marketing it for their robot, their sex robot dolls

very much in that way. There was some very weird, very advert that I saw which had pictures of the sex robot doll kind of perched on in a park like having a picnic in inverted commas with with their owner watching television next to the now. Yeah, yeah, well, I'm really glad that you have this conversation started, and it's one that we need to be having more of a a sia, especially especially as we get more technologies that try to fulfill this need concomitant with lack of

the real need in the real world. And it's it's that this is gonna this is going to be just such an important conversation to continue. Narita, thank you so much for being on the podcast day and for the great work you're doing. Thank you so much for having me on. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at this likecology podcast dot com. That's the

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