Pro tennis player Alexander Zverev inadvertently became a high-profile example of the emptiness of solo achievement this summer. Born in Hamburg, Germany, to Russian parents, Zverev opened up to the media about struggling with loneliness. “I feel very alone out there at times. I struggle,” he said in July after a loss at Wimbledon. “I’m trying to find ways to get out of this hole. I keep finding myself back in it. I feel, generally speaking, quite alone in life at the moment.” While elite athletes face their own unique pressures, Zverev’s experience—and his outspokenness about it—underscores how pervasive loneliness has become, even among those in the public eye.

It’s been two years since former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm on the loneliness epidemic, warning that without meaningful social connections, “we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone.” Evidence confirms that a lack of social connection harms physical health, increasing the risk of heart disease by 29 per cent, the risk of stroke by 32 per cent and proving more detrimental than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The latest figures from Statistics Canada show that one in two Canadians feels lonely, with nearly 37 per cent reporting that they sometimes feel lonely.

The prescription, according to Murthy’s report, is “to build a movement to mend the social fabric of our nation.” A wave of new initiatives is emerging to do just that, including Timeleft, which organizes weekly five-person dinner parties with strangers, No Small Talk, an experimental dinner series focused on meaningful conversations, and The Breakfast, an app designed to get people off their phones and talking in real life.

“When I look under every social issue we face as a species—from gun violence to political polarization to environmental degradation—what I see underneath is this: I don’t belong, therefore I will harm myself or I will harm others,” says author and entrepreneur Radha Agrawal, who launched the Belong Center in 2023 as her own initiative to combat loneliness and help people move away from toxic individualism.

Agrawal’s drive came from her own experience rebuilding her personal network after realizing, at 30, she had few people she shared a deep connection with. “Once I saw the power of community, and felt the deep joy it brought to me personally, it became my mission to help create community for others too,” Agrawal writes in her 2018 book Belong, which chronicles not just her journey, but also her belief that true belonging can transform lives.

Agrawal is the co-founder of period underwear brand Thinx and global dance series Daybreaker—ventures she credits with helping her move out of isolation and embrace collaboration. Her father is Indian and her mother is Japanese, and both imbued their collectivist cultures into raising Agrawal and her sisters.

Agrawal draws her world view from her parents, learning intergenerational interdependence from her father’s family and, from her mother, the concept of wa. Meaning “harmony” in Japanese, wa is a way of life that emphasizes peaceful coexistence rooted in a consensus-based culture. “Community has always been a foundation of how I was raised in both those immigrant cultures,” Agrawal says, then adds with a laugh: “And also as a twin—sharing a womb.”

The Belong Center offers programming that includes in-person gatherings called Belong Circles, led by trained facilitators. The center, meanwhile, is backed by board members such as software entrepreneur and Burning Man board member Ping Fu, functional medicine pioneer Dr. Mark Hyman and food entrepreneur Kimbal Musk (brother of Elon). Agrawal’s first foray into building community was as co-founder of a sober dance party series held at dawn. Since its launch in 2013, Daybreaker has expanded to more than 66 cities worldwide, and, for Agrawal, the hundreds of thousands who have joined since then are “a very clear indication that people want community.” The Belong Center builds on that momentum, with regular gatherings in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, while also creating more niche communities for new mothers, LGBTQ+ people and neighbours seeking connection.

Citing Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam’s seminal book on loneliness, Dr. Jeremy Nobel says the culture of individualism in North America is contributing to rising isolation. Dr. Nobel, who teaches at Harvard, is the author of Project UnLonely, a book that shares its title with the signature initiative combating isolation from the organization he founded in 2003, the Foundation for Art & Healing.

“The prioritization of solo accomplishment as opposed to group accomplishment leads to a culture not only of individualism but also, in my opinion, of narcissism,” says Dr. Nobel, who is also a primary care physician and public health practitioner. A hyper-focus on the self means many are missing out on being part of something larger, losing opportunities for connection, he adds. “That’s what drives spiritual, existential loneliness.”

Despite the pandemic opening the public conversation about loneliness, researchers agree it still carries a stigma. Centring activities and interests is key to drawing people in the tent, says Julie Aitken Schermer, a professor in the departments of Psychology, and Management and Organizational Studies at the University of Western Ontario, who studies loneliness. She points to the example of Legions in the U.K., which have successfully supported elderly veterans. “They don’t say, ‘We don’t want you to be lonely, can you come and do this?’” Schermer explains. “They phrase it more cleverly: ‘We’re hoping to assemble this to put on display in the Legion. Would you be willing to come and help us put it together?’”

Research shows that senior citizens and college-aged young adults are two of the loneliest groups—but for very different reasons. For young people, online connections often lack depth and can erode the social skills needed for face-to-face interaction. Schermer cites her own classroom as an example: Before smartphones, students would chat while waiting for class to start; now the room is silent, as everyone is absorbed in their screens.

Moving social interaction offline and into real life is a hallmark of initiatives designed to help people connect more meaningfully. Social media has a knack for amplifying loneliness, creating the illusion of friendships through followers, while lacking true depth of connection. Agrawal argues this depth is essential to building community, writing in her book that “technological isolation is the first symptom” of a separation that could ultimately lead to human extinction.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been proposed by social media giants such as Meta as a solution. In May, Mark Zuckerberg said on a podcast that while most Americans have fewer than three friends, “the demand is for meaningfully more,” suggesting that AI chatbots could fill that gap. Agrawal is dismissive of the idea, saying that “there are a lot of physical, emotional pieces that AI will never replace.”

Ultimately, even in real life, there isn’t a single solution to loneliness—the antidote is authentic connection, which takes time and effort to build. But the biggest hurdle may be shedding the shame around the feeling. Dr. Nobel likens it to a biological signal: feeling lonely means you need connection, just as being thirsty means you need hydration. “Get curious about it, embrace it—see it as a signal,” he says.