Are You Still Eating Salads?

Thanks to Business Insider, we now know that the parasite responsible for explosive diarrhea hasn't stopped corporate America from eating salads.

Reporter Julianna Kaplan recently took a stroll through Bryant Park at lunchtime and found that, despite the headlines, plenty of New Yorkers were happily enjoying their greens. I can confidently admit that I am too. I eat a salad almost every day for lunch, and I haven't changed my routine once.

Maybe I'm still eating salads because investigators aren't entirely sure what caused the outbreak, because I like to live dangerously, or simply because I don't like wasting groceries. Either way, I made the choice to eat the salad.

After seeing the headlines, I could have looked down at my lunch and thought, There's a chance every bite could end terribly. Or I could think, This is fresh, crunchy, and delicious.

It is the same salad, but a very different mindset.

As strange as it sounds, that realization made me think about loneliness.

I never imagined explosive diarrhea would lead me to write about the loneliness epidemic, but here we are.

Last week, I was introducing the concept of wicked problems to a group of high school students. Wicked problems are issues that are complex, multifaceted, and incredibly difficult, or sometimes impossible, to solve. I used the loneliness epidemic as an example and asked students to brainstorm potential solutions.

Their ideas were thoughtful, and they shared solutions like: create more opportunities for people to connect, encourage extracurricular activities, and limit social media use to encourage young people to spend more time together. None of those ideas would be easy to implement, but they were all solid.

Then one student said:

"I don't think young people are lonely. I think they think they're lonely."

They went on to explain that maybe young people aren't just lacking social connection, but maybe they are adopting the identity that they do. They hear over and over again that their generation is lonely, anxious, disconnected, and unhappy. Eventually, they stop asking whether those labels describe them personally, and they simply accept them as fact.

Before I go any further, let me be clear. Loneliness is real and just like cyclosporiasis, it has real consequences.

Research consistently shows that roughly half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General's Report declared loneliness and isolation an epidemic, warning that lacking social connection can carry health risks comparable to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day.

The Surgeon General defines loneliness as a "subjective, distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections."

Two words immediately stood out to me: subjective and perceived. Those words don't make loneliness any less serious, but they do suggest that the way we interpret our experiences matters.

A report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education identified several factors that Americans believe are contributing to the nation's loneliness epidemic. Technology topped the list, followed by not spending enough time with family, people being overworked or too exhausted to connect, worsening mental health, increasing individualism, and the changing nature of work. About half of respondents also pointed to declining religious or spiritual involvement and an increasing focus on ourselves.

Those are all important factors, and I'm not dismissing any of them.

But I keep coming back to my student's comment.

"I don't think young people are lonely. I think they think they're lonely."

Recently, I listened to an episode of The Interview from The New York Times featuring Yale cognitive scientist Dr. Laurie Santos. During the conversation, she explained how modern life has quietly increased the amount of friction involved in connecting with other people. Sharing that starting a conversation can feel awkward, so instead, many of us default to what is easier: we pull out our phones.

Dr. Santos suggested that today's young adults may have had fewer opportunities to practice socializing. As she put it:

"The modern world is taking away all of these subtle ways that we talk to one another."

She is so right. Think about how ATMs replaced conversations with bank tellers, how DoorDash and Uber Eats eliminated small interactions at restaurants, how self-checkout replaced chatting with the cashier, and how we ask ChatGPT a question instead of another person. None of these changes are inherently bad, but together they have quietly reduced the number of small, everyday interactions that once connected us to other people.

She went on to talk about research showing that being alone isn't always something to avoid. Philosophers have celebrated solitude for centuries because it creates space for reflection, creativity, and contemplation. She then painted the picture of a college student eating alone in the dining hall. She said something like:

One student might think, I'm sitting alone because nobody wants to sit with me.

But what if they thought instead, This is nice. I finally have a chance to think about my day before my next class.

Same dining hall, but a very different mindset.

That brings me back to my salad.

I wonder (and worry) that we've unintentionally created a feedback loop. We tell young people they're the loneliest generation in history, then they begin interpreting ordinary moments of solitude through that lens. Eating lunch alone isn't simply eating lunch alone anymore; it's evidence that something is wrong. Or a quiet Friday night isn't just a quiet Friday night; it's proof they're isolated.

What if some of those moments aren't loneliness at all? What if they're simply...solitude? Or, good-old-fashioned alone time?

I am in no way suggesting we ignore the loneliness epidemic or pretend it doesn't exist. The research is clear that meaningful relationships are essential to our health, happiness, and overall life satisfaction. We 100% need people and relationships. But I do think we also need to remember that being alone and being lonely are not the same thing.

So maybe a potential solution to the wicked problem of loneliness is helping people develop a healthier relationship with solitude and celebrating alone time while also creating more opportunities for meaningful connection.

Same problem, but a different mindset.

Just like choosing to eat the salad or not during a cyclosporiasis outbreak, we get to choose how we think about loneliness.

What will you choose?

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Find one thing that brings you joy today.